On the day that Paris fell to the Nazis, R. G. Waldeck was checking into the swankiest hotel in Bucharest, the Athene Palace. A cosmopolitan center during the war, the hotel was populated by Italian and German oilmen hoping to secure new business opportunities in Romania, international spies cloaked in fake identities, and Nazi officers whom Waldeck discovered to be intelligent but utterly bloodless. A German Jew and a reporter for Newsweek, Waldeck became a close observer of the Nazi invasion. As King Carol first tried to placate the Nazis, then abdicated the throne in favor of his son, Waldeck was dressing for dinners with diplomats and cozying up to Nazi officers to get insight and information. From her unique vantage, she watched as Romania, a country with a pro-totalitarian elite and a deep strain of anti-Semitism, suffered civil unrest, a German invasion, and an earthquake, before turning against the Nazis. A striking combination of social intimacy and disinterest political analysis, Athene Palace evokes the elegance and excitement of the dynamic international community in Bucharest before the world had comes to grips with the horrors of war and genocide. Waldeck’s account strikingly presents the finely wrought surface of dinner parties, polite discourse, and charisma, while recognizing the undercurrents of violence and greed that ran through the denizens of Athene Palace.

As Homer remains an indispensable figure in the canons of world literature, interpreting the Homeric text is a challenging and high stakes enterprise. There are untold numbers of variations, imitations, alternate translations, and adaptations of the Iliad and Odyssey, making it difficult to establish what, exactly, the epics were. Gregory Nagy's essays have one central aim: to show how the text and language of Homer derive from an oral poetic system. In Homeric studies, there has been an ongoing debate centering on different ways to establish the text of Homer and the different ways to appreciate the poetry created in the language of Homer. Gregory Nagy, a lifelong Homer scholar, takes a stand in the midst of this debate. He presents an overview of millennia of scholarly engagement with Homer's poetry, shows the different editorial principles that have been applied to the texts, and evaluates their impact.

Extraordinary story of the exciting discovery of the true location of Odysseus' homeland of Ithaca.

Our world is unquestionably one in which ubiquitous movements of people, goods, technologies, media, money, and ideas produce systems of flows. Comparing case studies from across the world, including those from Benin, the United States, India, Mali, Senegal, Japan, Haiti, and Romania, this book focuses on quotidian landscapes of mobility. Despite their seemingly familiar and innocuous appearances, these spaces exert tremendous control over our behavior and activities. By examining and mapping the politics of place and motion, this book analyzes human beings’ embodied engagements with their built world and provides diverse perspectives on the ideological and political underpinnings of landscapes of mobility. In order to describe landscapes of mobility as a historically, socially, and politically constructed condition, the book is divided into three sections-objects, contacts, and flows. The first section looks at elements that constitute such landscapes, including mobile bodies, buildings, and practices across multiple geographical scales. As these variable landscapes are reconstituted under particular social, economic, ecological, and political conditions, the second section turns to the particular practices that catalyze embodied relations within and across such spaces. Finally, the last section explores how the flows of objects, bodies, interactions, and ecologies are represented, presenting a critical comparison of the means by which relations, processes, and exchanges are captured, depicted, reproduced and re-embodied.

Romania has tried over the last decade to erase the painful images of its orphanages seen around the world: starved and abused children, many hooked on glue huffing. Yet, according to historian Ian Hancock, over 80,000 children still languish in Romanian orphanages. Arges describes in detail the fate of one such child and how her existence is intertwined with an assassination attempt on the 'monster of the Carpathians', Nickolai Ceauscescu during the Christmas revolution of 1989. Told through the eyes of Andrena and Ceausescu's chief architect in alternating chapters, Arges is a riveting story of survival and, ultimately, redemption.

THE story of Greece began long, long ago in a strange wonderland of beauty. Woods and winds, fields and rivers, each had a pathway which led upward and onward into the beautiful land. Sometimes indeed no path was needed, for the rivers, woods, and lone hill-sides were themselves the wonderland of which I am going to tell. In the woods and winds, in the trees and rivers, dwelt the gods and goddesses whom the people of long ago worshipped. It was their presence in the world that made it so great, so wide, so wonderful...

Observing postcommunist Romania with the dual vision of a native and a scholar, Denise Roman focuses on the fluid act of identity-formation, and the construction or absence of identity-politics, in several minority or disempowered groups: youth, Jews, women, and queers. Roman shows how both aesthetic and moral judgments are born from and embedded in popular culture. Fragmented Identities is rich in observation and analysis, broad in scope, and exuberant in its account of cultural innovation and discourse wrought in response to the end of Communism and the influence of globalization.

Up for an atomic saga? But first, if little atoms could only talk, just think of the stories they could tell us about our planet and universe. This is a voyage of discovery on a celestial and planetary scale. Seven lovely little atoms are born in the Oort Cloud. They are thrown into a beautiful blue-water planet and are split up. They soon find that this water planet is the best atomic amusement park ever. They will meet and be hosted by many simple and complex life forms. They will suffer through earthquakes, asteroid strikes, thunderstorms, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions. They will see the best and worst of an emerging mankind. None of them will suffer, and all will have the fun of many lifetimes.

This textbook is endorsed by OCR and supports the specifications for AS and A-Level Classical Civilisation (first teaching September 2017). It covers all three options for Component 11: World of the Hero (Homer's Iliad, Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid). Why does the Trojan War continue to fascinate us? What makes Odysseus a hero? What links can be drawn between the Aeneid and today's global politics? This book guides AS and A-Level students to a greater understanding of the epics of Homer and Virgil, setting the poems in their cultural context and drawing on the scholarship of leading academics to explore the poetry, characters and underlying philosophies. The colour illustrations, from the Cyclops on a Greek pot to a photograph of protesting Yadizi women, reflect the universal impact and continuing relevance of these classical epics. The ideal preparation for the final examinations, all content is presented by an expert and experienced teacher in a clear and accessible narrative. Ancient literary sources are described and analysed. Helpful student features include study questions, quotations from contemporary scholars, further reading, and boxes focusing in on key people, events and terms. Practice questions and exam guidance prepare students for assessment. A Companion Website is available at www.bloomsbury.com/class-civ-as-a-level.