A comparative study of nationalism in Greece and Turkey. This book traces the emergence and development of the Greek and Turkish nationalist projects, challenging the received wisdom about the inevitability of the rise of a 'Greek' and a 'Turkish' nation.

The History of Torture tells the complete story of torture, from its earliest uses right up to the present day, from the tools and techniques used, to the campaigns to abolish its use.

Peasants of remote history rarely speak to us in their own voices, but Thomas Bisson's engagement with the records of several hundred twelfth-century rural Catalonians enables us to hear these voices. Bisson describes these peasants socially and culturally, showing how their experience figured in a wider crisis of power during the twelfth century.

A view of America in the Sixties is offered in this collection of journalistic writings. The pieces cover the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination, the violent white reaction to civil rights legislation and the rise of black power, Vietnam and the student riots.

A survey of how, over the past 4,000 years, religious leaders, poets, painters, and ordinary people have visualized Hell--its location, architecture, furnishings, purpose, and inhabitants.

A marvelous global history of the pivotal year 1945 as a new world emerged from the ruins of World War II Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the great drama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and a new, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come on a global scale: across Asia (including China, Korea, Indochina, and the Philippines, and of course Japan) and all of continental Europe. Out of the often vicious power struggles that ensued emerged the modern world as we know it. In human terms, the scale of transformation is almost impossible to imagine. Great cities around the world lay in ruins, their populations decimated, displaced, starving. Harsh revenge was meted out on a wide scale, and the ground was laid for much horror to come. At the same time, in the wake of unspeakable loss, the euphoria of the liberated was extraordinary, and the revelry unprecedented. The postwar years gave rise to the European welfare state, the United Nations, decolonization, Japanese pacifism, and the European Union. Social, cultural, and political “reeducation” was imposed on vanquished by victors on a scale that also had no historical precedent. Much that was done was ill advised, but in hindsight, as Ian Buruma shows us, these efforts were in fact relatively enlightened, humane, and effective. A poignant grace note throughout this history is Buruma’s own father’s story. Seized by the Nazis during the occupation of Holland, he spent much of the war in Berlin as a laborer, and by war’s end was literally hiding in the rubble of a flattened city, having barely managed to survive starvation rations, Allied bombing, and Soviet shock troops when the end came. His journey home and attempted reentry into “normalcy” stand in many ways for his generation’s experience. A work of enormous range and stirring human drama, conjuring both the Asian and European theaters with equal fluency, Year Zero is a book that Ian Buruma is perhaps uniquely positioned to write. It is surely his masterpiece.

In this book Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of "ghost tours," frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South. As a staple of the tours, guides entertain paying customers by routinely relying on stories of enslaved black specters. But who are these ghosts? Examining popular sites and stories from these tours, Miles shows that haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain. "Dark tourism" often highlights the most sensationalist and macabre aspects of slavery, from salacious sexual ties between white masters and black women slaves to the physical abuse and torture of black bodies to the supposedly exotic nature of African spiritual practices. Because the realities of slavery are largely absent from these tours, Miles reveals how they continue to feed problematic "Old South" narratives and erase the hard truths of the Civil War era. In an incisive and engaging work, Miles uses these troubling cases to shine light on how we feel about the Civil War and race, and how the ghosts of the past are still with us.

A New York Times bestselling author reveals the story of a nearly forgotten moment in American history, when mass violence was not an aberration, but a regular activity—and nearly extinguished the Abolition movement. The 1830s were the most violent time in American history outside of war. Men battled each other in the streets in ethnic and religious conflicts, gangs of party henchmen rioted at the ballot box, and assault and murder were common enough as to seem unremarkable. The president who presided over the era, Andrew Jackson, was himself a duelist and carried lead in his body from previous gunfights. It all made for such a volatile atmosphere that a young Abraham Lincoln said “outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times.” The principal targets of mob violence were abolitionists and black citizens, who had begun to question the foundation of the U.S. economy — chattel slavery — and demand an end to it. Led by figures like William Lloyd Garrison and James Forten, the anti-slavery movement grew from a small band of committed activists to a growing social force that attracted new followers in the hundreds, and enemies in the thousands. Even in the North, abolitionists faced almost unimaginable hatred, with newspaper publishers, businessmen with a stake in the slave trade, and politicians of all stripes demanding they be suppressed, silenced or even executed. Carrying bricks and torches, guns and knives, mobs created pandemonium, and forced the abolition movement to answer key questions as it began to grow: Could nonviolence work in the face of arson and attempted murder? Could its leaders stick together long enough to build a movement with staying power, or would they turn on each other first? And could it survive to last through the decade, and inspire a new generation of activists to fight for the cause? J.D. Dickey reveals the stories of these Black and white men and women persevered against such threats to demand that all citizens be given the chance for freedom and liberty embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Their sacrifices and strategies would set a precedent for the social movements to follow, and lead the nation toward war and emancipation, in the most turbulent era of our republic of violence.

This is the updated edition of the first comprehensive history of Lebanon in the modern period. Written by a leading Lebanese scholar, and based on previously inaccessible archives, it is a fascinating and beautifully-written account of one of the world's most fabled countries. Starting with the formation of Ottoman Lebanon in the 16th century, Traboulsi covers the growth of Beirut as a capital for trade and culture through the 19th century. The main part of the book concentrates on Lebanon's development in the 20th century and the conflicts that led up to the major wars in the 1970s and 1980s. This edition contains a new chapter and updates throughout the text. This is a rich history of Lebanon that brings to life its politics, its people, and the crucial role that it has always played in world affairs.

Michigan’s city with a strange name has an even stranger—and spirited—past. The authors of Ghosts of Grand Rapids share its chilling tales. Kalamazoo’s violent and often anguished history has given way to myriad ghostly tales surrounding some of the town’s most prominent places. From the tortured souls roaming the Asylum Lake Preserve to the infamous suicide of the amateur actress Thelma, who reputedly haunts the Civic Auditorium to this day, it is no small wonder that the town is filled with apparitions longing to make their stories and their presence known. In this startlingly spooky collection of tales, ghost hunters Bray and DuShane gather stories from legend, lore and residents alike that bring new meaning to the age-old adage “seeing is believing.” Includes photos! “Highlight[s] over 30 different haunted locations in Kalamazoo including the Asylum Lake preserve, the Civic Auditorium, an abused grave marker that is supposedly responsible for demonic activity, and the gravesite of a deceased minister that oozes.” —Morning Sun