In The Europe Illusion, Stuart Sweeney considers Britain’s relationships with France and Prussia-Germany since the map of Europe was redrawn at Westphalia in 1648. A timely and far-sighted study, it argues that integration in Europe has evolved through diplomatic, economic, and cultural links cemented among these three states. Indeed, as wars became more destructive and economic expectations were elevated these states struggled to survive alone. Yet it has been rare for all three to be friends at the same time. Instead, apparent setbacks like Brexit can be seen as reflective of a more pragmatic Europe, where integration proceeds within variable geometry.

Over ten million Muslims live in Western Europe. Since the early 1990s, and especially after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, vexing policy questions have emerged about the religious rights of native-born and immigrant Muslims. Britain has struggled over whether to give state funding to private Islamic schools. France has been convulsed over Muslim teenagers wearing the hijab in public schools. Germany has debated whether to grant 'public-corporation' status to Muslims. And each state is searching for policies to ensure the successful incorporation of practicing Muslims into liberal democratic society. This 2004 book analyzes state accommodation of Muslims' religious practices in Britain, France, and Germany, first examining three major theories: resource mobilization, political-opportunity structure, and ideology. It then proposes an additional explanation, arguing that each nation's approach to Muslims follows from its historically based church-state institutions.

From the comfortable distance of seven decades, it is quite easy to view the victory of the Allies over Hitler’s Germany as inevitable. But in 1940 Great Britain’s defeat loomed perilously close, and no other nation stepped up to confront the Nazi threat. In this cogently argued book, Robin Prior delves into the documents of the time—war diaries, combat reports, Home Security’s daily files, and much more—to uncover how Britain endured a year of menacing crises. The book reassesses key events of 1940—crises that were recognized as such at the time and others not fully appreciated. Prior examines Neville Chamberlain’s government, Churchill’s opponents, the collapse of France, the Battle of Britain, and the Blitz. He looks critically at the position of the United States before Pearl Harbor, and at Roosevelt’s response to the crisis. Prior concludes that the nation was saved through a combination of political leadership, British Expeditionary Force determination and skill, Royal Air Force and Navy efforts to return soldiers to the homeland, and the determination of the people to fight on “in spite of all terror.” As eloquent as it is controversial, this book exposes the full import of events in 1940, when Britain fought alone and Western civilization hung in the balance.

The Sunday Times Bestseller 'Astonishing' ANTONY BEEVOR 'One of the most promising young historians to enter our field for years' MAX HASTINGS On a wet afternoon in September 1938, Neville Chamberlain stepped off an aeroplane and announced that his visit to Hitler had averted the greatest crisis in recent memory. It was, he later assured the crowd in Downing Street, 'peace for our time'. Less than a year later, Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began. This is a vital new history of the disastrous years of indecision, failed diplomacy and parliamentary infighting that enabled Nazi domination of Europe. Drawing on previously unseen sources, it sweeps from the advent of Hitler in 1933 to the beaches of Dunkirk, and presents an unforgettable portrait of the ministers, aristocrats and amateur diplomats whose actions and inaction had devastating consequences. 'Brilliant and sparkling . . . Reads like a thriller. I couldn't put it down' Peter Frankopan 'Vivid, detailed and utterly fascinating . . . This is political drama at its most compelling' James Holland 'Bouverie skilfully traces each shameful step to war . . . in moving and dramatic detail' Sunday Telegraph

The author examines book illustration of the Romantic period. He focuses on the decorative wood - and steel-engravings, which were used as embellishments with the purpose of appealing to the sophisticated book buyer. He also describes how the values of the time are reflected in the illustrations.

Were World Wars I and II inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen– Winston Churchill first among them–the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations. Among the British and Churchillian errors were: • The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France • The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that mutilated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler • Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo-Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest • The greatest mistake in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939, ensuring the Second World War Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “the Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.

Nurse Memoirs from the Great War in Britain, France, and Germany examines an understudied corpus of memoirs in English, French, and German stemming from the unprecedented involvement of women in the war effort. Jerry Palmer considers the memoirs in relationship to public opinion, collective memory and other women’s writing about the war. Through close-readings of the memoirs and their contexts, the book identifies themes present in the texts and considers the nurse memoir as rhetoric—examining to what extent the texts are promoting or countering arguments in the public sphere about their involvement or more widely about women’s position in society. Palmer explores the multiple contexts related to the nurse memoirs, including public response to volunteer wartime nursing, the organisation of the military health services of the three nations and their conduct in the war, and changes in the post-war organization of public health services and the professionalization of nursing.

By training his eye on the ways that people outside the halls of power reacted to the rapid onset and escalation of the fighting in 1914, Neiberg dispels the notion that Europeans were rabid nationalists intent on mass slaughter. He reveals instead a complex set of allegiances that cut across national boundaries.