288 pp paperback ISBN 978 1 897959 38 1 £14.99 / US $24.95 / AUS $38.45 > about the authors | | Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon, Henry Patterson Northern Ireland 1921-2001
Political Forces and Social ClassesThe updated edition of this path-breaking history could scarcely be more timely, and covers the entire period between partition in 1921 and the evolving peace process at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The authors lay bare the key issues of Northern Ireland's history, from establishment of the B Specials to the realities of Direct Rule from London in the 1990s. They take issue with the stereotypes that portray Protestants as monolithic and unchanging in their loyalism and Catholics as uniformly alienated from the political establishment. Instead, this sophisticated yet accessible history reveals the economic realities behind the civil rights movement and shows how divisions between the Orange elite and the broader Protestant population sowed the seeds of the destruction of the Unionist state and its eventual replacement by a new system of devolved government and cross-border co-operation.
'Excellent' Fintan O'Toole
'Puts Ulster's past back into its Irish context with deep learning and few illusions'
New Statesman |
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344 pp paperback with flaps ISBN 978 1 897959 55 8 £14.99 / US $24.95 / AUS $34.95 > about the author | | E.H. Carr The Romantic Exiles1847: the Russian liberal Alexander Herzen and his family leave Moscow on a short-term permit, become embroiled in the revolution of 1848 in Paris and, unable to return to Tsarist Russia, are condemned to permanent exile. As they move from one European country to another, their lives are punctuated by romance and illusion, intrigue and adultery.
Through a series of perfectly executed pen portraits, Carr brings to life a fascinating group of liberal propagandists, exiled anarchists, dissident aristocrats and – inevitably – the occasional police spy, and their conspiratorial entanglements. He allows Herzen to take centre stage, although the actors themselves gave this honour to Mikhail Bakunin, 'the father of Russian anarchism' and the most charismatic figure in this extraordinary tale. This is also a story of financial skulduggery and personal tragedy for almost everyone involved as Romantic ideals – personal, political and philosophical – crumble in the face of the rise of nationalism across Europe.
'Remarkable' The Times
'Required reading' New York Times
'Our most distinguished historian' The Spectator |
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312 pp paperback with flaps, b&w illustrations ISBN 978 1 897959 49 7 £14.99 / US $19.95 / AUS $32.95 > about the author | | Norman Cohn Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of ZionHitler's anti-semitic obsession was fuelled by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hugely successful forgery containing the master-plan of an alleged Jewish conspiracy to control the world.
In a fascinating work of literary and historical detection, Norman Cohn unravels the origins of the Protocols. Tracing its roots in anti-semitic mythology, Cohn pinpoints the collaboration of hack writers and secret policemen in concocting a book that, published around the world, was once second only to the Bible in its circulation.
Even before Hitler came to power, the Protocols were one of the cornerstones of Nazi propaganda and, once the Second World War started, became the principal 'justification' for the attempted extermination of European Jewry.
Despite being completely discredited, the Protocols are still widely read, and Warrant for Genocide remains the key text for anyone wishing to understand one of the most pernicious and enduring myths of our time.
'A scholarly account of a moral enormity.' The Guardian
'Powerful and important ... There have been previous histories of the Protocols and the mythologies of modern anti-semitism, but this is the most lucid and ironic.'
George Steiner |
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224 pp paperback, 1 map ISBN 978 1 897959 40 4 £9.99 / US $14.95 / AUS $27.45 > about the authors | | Waldemar Lotnik, Julian Preece Nine Lives
Ethnic Conflict in the Polish-Ukrainian Borderlands
Foreword by Neal AschersonBy any standards, Waldermar Lotnik's experience of the Second World War was remarkable. Fighting in the Polish Resistance, his unit was engaged in a bitter ethnic conflict with pro-Nazi Ukrainians. Unknown in the West, this struggle was, like that raging at the same time between Serbs and Croats, provoked by the Germans arming one ethnic group and unleashing it against a rival. Lotnik described with total and sometimes frightening candour his part in a war without rules that claimed at least half a million lives.
Captured by the Germans, Lotnik was taken to the Majdanek concentration camp. There he carted corpses to the crematorium and, like every inmate, fought a day-to-day battle for survival. When the camp was liberated, he volunteered for the new 'Red' Polish air force and, while training to fly, was recruited by the KGB to inform on his comrades. After deserting, he joined the Polish Home Army, which in the summer of 1945 was fighting a desperate but doomed battle against the country's new occupiers. With the Soviets' victory never seriously in doubt, he escaped to the West to begin a new life.
'An unforgettable book … one of the most tragic and horrifying memoirs to emerge from the Second World War.'
Neal Ascherson
'Reveals a major hidden episode in Europe's bloody history of ethnic violence … The parallels with recent events in the Balkans are striking.'
The Observer |
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320 pp paperback ISBN 978 1 897959 31 2 £14.99 / US $24.95 / AUS $38.45 > about the author | | Henry Patterson The Politics of Illusion
A Political History of the IRAThis is the first comprehensive study of the IRA's attempts to create a 'social republicanism', a marriage between militant nationalism and the politics of the left. From agitation amongst peasantry in the 1920s to recent efforts to add a political dimension to purist nationalism, Henry Patterson analyses the various failed attempts to marry two fundamentally incompatible ideologies.
Friend and foe have described the IRA as 'socialists', 'Marxists', 'fascists' or simply as militaristic and murderous thugs. In this highly praised work the author steers us through the complex and inevitably secretive history of both the Provisional and the Official IRA, Sinn Fein and the various organisations with which they have been associated.
This fully revised new edition takes the history of Irish republicanism beyond Sinn Fein's best ever performance in the 1997 Westminster and Dail elections to the IRA's renewed ceasefire. Henry Patterson's conclusion is that 'physical force' or militarist nationalism and the politics of the left make uneasy and, when the rhetoric is cleared away, illusory bed-fellows.
'Of immense value' The Irish Times
'Subtle and authoritative'
Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books |
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288 pp paperback with flaps, maps and b&w illustrations ISBN 978 1 897959 47 3 £13.99 / US $19.95 / AUS $32.95 > about the author | | George Rudé The Crowd in History
A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730-1848What motivated the food rioters who sparked off the French Revolution? Who took part in the widespread disturbances that periodically shook eighteenth-century London? How did the Captain Swing movement of agricultural labourers destroying new machinery spread from one village to another in the English countryside? How did the sans-culottes organise in revolutionary Paris?
George Rudé was the first historian to ask such questions, and in doing so he identified 'the faces in the crowd' in some of the key episodes in modern European history. A classic work of 'history from below', The Crowd in History is remarkable above all for the clarity with which it deals with complex historical events. Crowds continue to make history and George Rudé's work retains all its freshness and relevance for both the general reader and the student of history and politics.
'He put the mind back into history and restored the dignity of man.'
A.J.P. Taylor
'Like all his work, this book is concentrated, simple and clear, and admirably suited to the non-specialist reader.'
Eric Hobsbawm, New York Review of Books |
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