‘A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’

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Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1789149592
Total Pages : 540 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (891 download)

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Book Synopsis ‘A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’ by : Donald Rayfield

Download or read book ‘A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’ written by Donald Rayfield and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2024-08-19 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With implications for the war in Ukraine, a surprising history of the Crimean Tatars from the fifteenth century to the present day. The Crimean Tatars were the Turkic-speaking native peoples of Crimea who established a powerful khanate in the 1440s, which remained in power until 1783. In this, the first history in English of this khanate for over one hundred years, eminent scholar Donald Rayfield shows that this misunderstood and much-feared nation was, in fact, a flourishing state with a vibrant literary culture, religious tolerance, a sophisticated constitution, and a prosperous economy. Rayfield’s book describes the establishment of the khanate, its reign, and its eventual fall, concluding with a vivid portrayal of the ruthless suppression of the Tatars—first by Russia and then the Soviet Union—and the final, effectively genocidal, invasion under Vladimir Putin. This vibrant and ultimately tragic chronicle is essential reading for anyone interested in the background of the current war in Ukraine.

Boudicca – Her Place in History and the Fortunes of Her Tribe

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Author :
Publisher : Austin Macauley Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1398415049
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (984 download)

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Book Synopsis Boudicca – Her Place in History and the Fortunes of Her Tribe by : Mark Cochrane

Download or read book Boudicca – Her Place in History and the Fortunes of Her Tribe written by Mark Cochrane and published by Austin Macauley Publishers. This book was released on 2022-08-31 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, through extensive research and analysis, endeavours to reveal what actually happened when in 60 AD Boudicca was elected to lead the united British tribes in their war against Roman rule. Despite the brutal punishment she had suffered at the hands of the Roman officials, Boudicca recovered to command a brilliantly effective military campaign against the pre-eminent super power of the ancient world. This is the story of the momentous events that culminated in the great British uprising against the Roman occupiers and their army, and challenges the credibility of the traditional ‘histories’ of Boudicca. So, while it is about Boudicca, her life and achievements, it also seeks to follow the fate of her tribal people – the Iceni. In the aftermath of the war, many migrated through Ireland to the Scottish Highlands. Regardless of a short lived ‘golden age’, the descendants of the Iceni have suffered a succession of ethnic cleansings over 2000 years through war, famine, migration, plague, forced emigration and invading armies. Today the remnants – represented by the McEachrans, Cochrans and the many variants of these names – are scattered throughout the world and have lost the identity of their origins.

Great State

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Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 1782833471
Total Pages : 594 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (828 download)

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Book Synopsis Great State by : Timothy Brook

Download or read book Great State written by Timothy Brook and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China is one of the oldest states in the world. It achieved its approximate current borders with the Ascendancy of the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century, and despite the passing of one Imperial dynasty to the next, it has maintained them for the eight centuries since. Even the European colonial powers at the height of their power could not move past coastal enclaves. Thus, China remained China through the Ming, the Qing, the Republic, the Occupation, and Communism. But, despite the desires of some of the most powerful people in the Great State through the ages, China has never been alone in the world. It has had to contend with invaders from the steppe and the challenges posed by foreign traders and imperialists. Indeed, its rulers for the majority of the last eight centuries have not been Chinese. Timothy Brook examines China's relationship with the world from the Yuan through to the present by following the stories of ordinary and extraordinary people navigating the spaces where China met and meets the world. Bureaucrats, horse traders, spiritual leaders, explorers, pirates, emperors, invaders, migrant workers, traitors, and visionaries: this is a history of China as no one has told it before.

Understanding Chekhov

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Publisher : Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN 13 : 9780299163143
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (631 download)

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Book Synopsis Understanding Chekhov by : Donald Rayfield

Download or read book Understanding Chekhov written by Donald Rayfield and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all Russian writers, Chekhov is one of the best liked and most easily appreciated. Yet because his work is subtle and understated, we need help to understand him. Chekhov can be (as his friends complained) the most elusive of writers, and one who appears capable of having two opposite views and opposite intentions simultaneously. Donald Rayfield, one of the world's foremost Chekhov scholars, reveals the layers of meaning on which the stories and plays are built. All Chekhov's important works are studied: we see how closely the two genres are connected and gain insight into Chekhov's rapid development over his brief twenty years of creative life, from medical student supplementing his income by writing comic stories, to father of twentieth-century drama and narrative prose.

Greece

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022680979X
Total Pages : 505 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (268 download)

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Book Synopsis Greece by : Roderick Beaton

Download or read book Greece written by Roderick Beaton and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-06-04 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many, “Greece” is synonymous with “ancient Greece,” the civilization that gave us much that defines Western culture today. But, how did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place and then define an identity for itself that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last three hundred years, of building a modern nation on the ruins of a vanished civilization—sometimes literally so. This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics; it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people, and of ideas. Opening with the birth of the Greek nation-state, which emerged from encounters between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, Roderick Beaton carries his story into the present moment and Greece’s contentious post-recession relationship with the rest of the European Union. Through close examination of how Greeks have understood their shared identity, Beaton reveals a centuries-old tension over the Greek sense of self. How does Greece illuminate the difference between a geographically bounded state and the shared history and culture that make up a nation? A magisterial look at the development of a national identity through history, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation is singular in its approach. By treating modern Greece as a biographical subject, a living entity in its own right, Beaton encourages us to take a fresh look at a people and culture long celebrated for their past, even as they strive to build a future as part of the modern West.

Tsar and Sultan

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0857728032
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (577 download)

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Book Synopsis Tsar and Sultan by : Victor Taki

Download or read book Tsar and Sultan written by Victor Taki and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tsar and Sultan offers a unique insight into Russian Orientalism as the intellectual force behind Russian-Ottoman encounters. Through war diaries and memoirs, accounts of captivity and diplomatic correspondences, Victor Taki's analysis of military documents demonstrates a crucial aspect of Russia's discovery of the Orient based on its rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. Narratives depicting the brutal realities of Russian-Turkish military conflicts influenced the Orientalisation of the Ottoman Empire. In turn, Russian identity was built as the counter-image to the demonised Turk. This book explains the significance of Russian Orientalism on Russian identity and national policies of westernisation. Students of both European and Middle East studies will appreciate Taki's unique approach to Russian-Turkish relations and their influence on Eurasian history.

Stranger to the Moon

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Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0811228630
Total Pages : 79 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (112 download)

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Book Synopsis Stranger to the Moon by : Evelio Rosero

Download or read book Stranger to the Moon written by Evelio Rosero and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fantastical novel about power and subservience by the great Evelio Rosero, winner of Colombia’s National Literature Prize The renowned Colombian writer Evelio Rosero has never been one to shy away from the darker aspects of his nation’s history and society. His magnificent novel Stranger to the Moon portrays a world that seems to exist outside time and place but taps into the dark myths and collective subconscious of his country, with its harrowing inequality and violence. A parable of pointed social criticism, with naked humans imprisoned in a house in order to serve the needs of “the vicious clothed ones,” the novel describes what ensues when a single “naked one” privately rebels, risking his own death and that of his fellow prisoners. Each subsequent section of the book adds further layers to the ritualistic and bizarre social order inhabited by its characters. Insects and reptiles are trained as agents and spies against the naked ones, and only the most fortunate humans manage to reach old age by taking up strategic spots near the kitchens and grabbing for the fiercely contested food. Stranger to the Moon is a brave, powerful, and distinctive novel by a writer who arguably holds the strongest claim to the title of Colombia’s greatest living author.

Sufi Warrior Saints

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0755643399
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (556 download)

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Book Synopsis Sufi Warrior Saints by : Harry S. Neale

Download or read book Sufi Warrior Saints written by Harry S. Neale and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-24 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a thematic collection of hagiographical stories of Sufi saints, often referred to as friends of Gods. Despite the diverse wealth of Sufi works, much of the rich, global and centuries old literature of Sufi warrior-saints, has yet to be translated into English. Examining hagiographical depictions of Sufi mujahids, Neale corrects frequent misunderstandings of the term jihad in relation to Sufi thought and practice. Using Sufi hagiography, treatises, travel narratives and Muslim histories, each chapter comprises the lives of Sufi saints during significant historical events, from the Crusades to the Mongol Invasion and in regions ranging from Islamic Spain to North Africa and India. Using Persian and Arabic sources, this compendium of translated hagiographies gives us a sense of the range, themes and global dissemination of the Sufi literature on war and heroism.

The Baloch and Balochistan

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Publisher : Trafford Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1466958979
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (669 download)

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Book Synopsis The Baloch and Balochistan by : Naseer Dashti

Download or read book The Baloch and Balochistan written by Naseer Dashti and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three thousand years ago, a group of Indo-Iranic tribes (called Balaschik at that time) settled in the northwestern Caspian region of Balashagan. Circumstances forced them to disperse and migrate towards south and eastern parts of Iranian plateau. In medieval times, they finally settled in present Balochistan where they became known as the Baloch. During their long and tortuous journey from Balashagan to Balochistan, the Baloch faced persecutions, deportations, and genocidal acts of various Persian, Arab and other regional powers. During 17th century, after dominating Balochistan culturally and politically, the Baloch carved out a nation state (the Khanate of Kalat). In 1839, the British occupied Balochistan and subsequently it was divided into various parts. In the wake of the British withdrawal from India in 1947, Balochistan regained its sovereignty but soon Pakistan occupied it in 1948. The historical account of the Baloch is the story of a pastoralist nomadic people from ancient times to mid-twentieth century. The author outlines the origin of the Baloch state and its variegated history of survival against powerful neighbors such as the Persians, the British and finally, Pakistan. This fascinating research work discovers the background of the long drawn-out conflict between the Baloch and Pakistan and Iranian states.

Shatterzone of Empires

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253006317
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis Shatterzone of Empires by : Omer Bartov

Download or read book Shatterzone of Empires written by Omer Bartov and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Baltic to the Black Sea, four major empires with ethnically and religiously diverse populations encountered each other along often changing and contested borders. Examining this geographically vast, multicultural region through a variety of methodological lenses, this volume offers informed and dispassionate analyses of how the many populations of these borderlands managed to coexist in a previous era and why the areas eventually descended into violence. An understanding of this region will help readers grasp the preconditions of interethnic coexistence and the causes of ethnic violence and war in many of the world's other borderlands both past and present.

The Albanian Bektashi

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1788315715
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (883 download)

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Book Synopsis The Albanian Bektashi by : Robert Elsie

Download or read book The Albanian Bektashi written by Robert Elsie and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bektashi dervish order is a Sufi Alevite sect found in Anatolia and the Balkans with a strong presence in Albania. In this, his final book, Robert Elsie analyses the Albanian Bektashi and considers their role in the country's history and society. Although much has been written on the Bektashi in Turkey, little has appeared on the Albanian branch of the sect. Robert Elsie considers the history and culture of the Bektashi, analyses writings on the order by early travellers to the region such as Margaret Hasluck and Sir Arthur Evans and provides a comprehensive list of tekkes (convents) and tyrbes (shrines) in Albania and neighbouring countries. Finally he presents a catalogue of notable Albanian Bektashi figures in history and legend. This book provides a complete reference guide to the Bektashi in Albania which will be essential reading for scholars of the Balkans, Islamic sects and Albanian history and culture.

The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century

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Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 1324003308
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century by : Thant Myint-U

Download or read book The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century written by Thant Myint-U and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did one of the world’s "buzzy hotspots" (Fodor’s 2013) become one of the top ten places to avoid (Fodor’s 2018)? Precariously positioned between China and India, Burma’s population has suffered dictatorship, natural disaster, and the dark legacies of colonial rule. But when decades of military dictatorship finally ended and internationally beloved Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi emerged from long years of house arrest, hopes soared. World leaders such as Barack Obama ushered in waves of international support. Progress seemed inevitable. As historian, former diplomat, and presidential advisor, Thant Myint-U saw the cracks forming. In this insider’s diagnosis of a country at a breaking point, he dissects how a singularly predatory economic system, fast-rising inequality, disintegrating state institutions, the impact of new social media, the rise of China next door, climate change, and deep-seated feelings around race, religion, and national identity all came together to challenge the incipient democracy. Interracial violence soared and a horrific exodus of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fixed international attention. Myint-U explains how and why this happened, and details an unsettling prognosis for the future. Burma is today a fragile stage for nearly all the world’s problems. Are democracy and an economy that genuinely serves all its people possible in Burma? In clear and urgent prose, Myint-U explores this question—a concern not just for the Burmese but for the rest of the world—warning of the possible collapse of this nation of 55 million while suggesting a fresh agenda for change.

Satan's Biggest Lie

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781948282659
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (826 download)

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Book Synopsis Satan's Biggest Lie by : Michael J. Oldham

Download or read book Satan's Biggest Lie written by Michael J. Oldham and published by . This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States' War on Terror has been ongoing for nearly three decades, ever since the first World Trade Center bombing in 1994. But this war has been ongoing for some 1,400 years, since Muhammad claimed that he was visited by the archangel Gabriel in a cave near Mecca in 610 A.D. and recited the Qur'an to him then and in a series of visitations thereafter. And thus, a new religion, Islam, was born. Muhammad advocated the use of force to convert the world to Islam and his followers have used both his tactics and his example since those early days of Islam. Rev. Dr. Oldham questions the encounter with Gabriel, primarily because the archangel Gabriel of the Bible always was a messenger from Jehovah God. He never recited anything from an "eternal holy book." The archangel Gabriel of the Bible normally "visited" people in dreams and visions. So, the question is: Did Muhammad converse with an archangel or a devil--perhaps Satan himself? This well-researched and fascinating book answers that question and several other "politically incorrect" questions.

Mein Kampf

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Author :
Publisher : ببلومانيا للنشر والتوزيع
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 522 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Mein Kampf by : Adolf Hitler

Download or read book Mein Kampf written by Adolf Hitler and published by ببلومانيا للنشر والتوزيع. This book was released on 2024-02-26 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Madman, tyrant, animal—history has given Adolf Hitler many names. In Mein Kampf (My Struggle), often called the Nazi bible, Hitler describes his life, frustrations, ideals, and dreams. Born to an impoverished couple in a small town in Austria, the young Adolf grew up with the fervent desire to become a painter. The death of his parents and outright rejection from art schools in Vienna forced him into underpaid work as a laborer. During the First World War, Hitler served in the infantry and was decorated for bravery. After the war, he became actively involved with socialist political groups and quickly rose to power, establishing himself as Chairman of the National Socialist German Worker's party. In 1924, Hitler led a coalition of nationalist groups in a bid to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich. The infamous Munich "Beer-hall putsch" was unsuccessful, and Hitler was arrested. During the nine months he was in prison, an embittered and frustrated Hitler dictated a personal manifesto to his loyal follower Rudolph Hess. He vented his sentiments against communism and the Jewish people in this document, which was to become Mein Kampf, the controversial book that is seen as the blue-print for Hitler's political and military campaign. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes his strategy for rebuilding Germany and conquering Europe. It is a glimpse into the mind of a man who destabilized world peace and pursued the genocide now known as the Holocaust.

Edge of Empires

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Author :
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1780230702
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (82 download)

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Book Synopsis Edge of Empires by : Donald Rayfield

Download or read book Edge of Empires written by Donald Rayfield and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, Georgia is a country of rainforests and swamps, snow and glaciers, and semi-arid plains. It has ski resorts and mineral springs, monuments and an oil pipeline. It also has one of the longest and most turbulent histories in the Christian or Near Eastern world, but no comprehensive, up-to-date account has been written about this little-known country—until now. Remedying this omission, Donald Rayfield accesses a mass of new material from recently opened archives to tell Georgia’s absorbing story. Beginning with the first intimations of the existence of Georgians in ancient Anatolia and ending with the volatile presidency of Mikheil Saakashvili, Rayfield deals with the country’s internal politics and swings between disintegration and unity, and divulges Georgia’s complex struggles with the empires that have tried to control, fragment, or even destroy it. He describes the country’s conflicts with Xenophon’s Greeks, Arabs, invading Turks, the Crusades, Genghis Khan, the Persian Empire, the Russian Empire, and Soviet totalitarianism. A wide-ranging examination of this small but colorful country, its dramatic state-building, and its tragic political mistakes, Edge of Empires draws our eyes to this often overlooked nation.

Winds of Change

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 1846147247
Total Pages : 499 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (461 download)

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Book Synopsis Winds of Change by : Peter Hennessy

Download or read book Winds of Change written by Peter Hennessy and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following Never Again and Having It So Good, the third part of Peter Hennessy's celebrated Post-War Trilogy 'By far the best study of early Sixties Britain ... so much fun, yet still shrewd and important' The Times, Books of the Year Harold Macmillan famously said in 1960 that the wind of change was blowing over Africa and the remaining British Empire. But it was blowing over Britain too - its society; its relationship with Europe; its nuclear and defence policy. And where it was not blowing hard enough - the United Kingdom's economy - great efforts were made to sweep away the cobwebs of old industrial practices and poor labour relations. Life was lived in the knowledge that it could end in a single afternoon of thermonuclear exchange if the uneasy, armed peace of the Cold War tipped into a Third World War. In Winds of Change we see Macmillan gradually working out his 'grand design' - how to be part of both a tight transatlantic alliance and Europe, dealing with his fellow geostrategists Kennedy and de Gaulle. The centre of the book is 1963 - the year of the Profumo Crisis, the Great Train Robbery, the satire boom, de Gaulle's veto of Britain's first application to join the EEC, the fall of Macmillan and the unexpected succession to the premiership of Alec Douglas-Home. Then, in 1964, the battle of what Hennessy calls the tweedy aristocrat and the tweedy meritocrat - Harold Wilson, who would end 13 years of Conservative rule and usher in a new era. As in his acclaimed histories of British life in the two previous decades, Never Again and Having it so Good, Peter Hennessy explains the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of a nation with inimitable wit and empathy. No historian knows the by-ways as well the highways of the archives so well, and no one conveys the flavour of the period so engagingly. The early sixties live again in these pages.

Anton Chekhov

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Author :
Publisher : Faber & Faber
ISBN 13 : 0571309291
Total Pages : 594 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (713 download)

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Book Synopsis Anton Chekhov by : Donald Rayfield

Download or read book Anton Chekhov written by Donald Rayfield and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The description 'definitive' is too easily used, but Donald Rayfield's biography of Chekhov merits it unhesitatingly. To quote no less an authority than Michael Frayn: 'With question the definitive biography of Chekhov, and likely to remain so for a very long time to come. Donald Rayfield starts with the huge advantage of much new material that was prudishly suppressed under the Soviet regime, or tactfully ignored by scholars. But his mastery of all the evidence, both old and new - a massive archive - is magisterial, his background knowledge of the period is huge; his Russian is sensitive to every colloquial nuance of the day, and his tone is sure. He captures a likeness of the notoriously elusive Chekhov which at last begins to seem recognisably human - and even more extraordinary.' Chekhov's life was short, he was only forty-four when he died, and dogged with ill-health but his plays and short stories assure him of his place in the literary pantheon. Here is a biography that does him full justice, in short, unapologetically to repeat that word 'definitive'. 'I don't remember any monograph by a Western scholar on a Russian author having such success. . . Nikita Mikhalkov said that before this book came out we didn't know Chekhov. . . The author doesn't invent, add or embellish anything . . . Rayfield is motivated by the Westerner's urge not ot hold information back, however grim it may be.' Anatoli Smelianski, Director of Moscow Arts Theatre School 'It is hard to imagine another book about Chekhov after this one by Donald Rayfield.' Arthur Miller, Sunday Times 'Donald Rayfield's exemplary biography draws on a daunting array of material inacessible or ignored by his predecessors.' Nikolai Tolstoy, The Literary Review 'Donald Rayfield, Chekhov's best and definitive biographer.' William Boyd, Guardian