A look at how the political assassinations that occurred in Europe between 1918 and 1939 shaped the history and politics of the continent.

In this captivating new book, pre-eminent scholar Howard M. Sachar tells the story of the modern Western world through the lens of one particular act of revenge: political assassination. By detailing the deaths of key political figures during a very fraught time period--the immediate aftermath of World War I--Sachar explores a much larger history: the gradual demise of Europe and its descent into World War II. In beautiful prose, Sachar illustrates the consequences of the assassinations of Rosa Luxemburg and Kurt Eisner in Germany, and how the death of Giacomo Matteotti, a leader of the left in Italy, contributed to the rise of Mussolini. Through the executions of Matthias Erzberger, Walter Rathenau, and Ernst R?hm, Sachar shows the disintegration of Germany and the rise of Hitler. Further chapters explore the effects of political assassinations in Russia, Yugoslavia, and France, and the final chapter, which chronicles the deaths of Stefan and Lotte Zweig, serves as a thought-provoking metaphor for the assassination of the Old World itself. Taking an approach that is both dark and illuminating, Howard M. Sachar provides an entirely new perspective on this extremely pivotal moment in twentieth-century history.

A rediscovered World War I masterpiece—one of the few memoirs about the Italian front—for fans of military history and All Quiet on the Western Front An infantryman’s “harrowing, moving, [and] occasionally comic” account of trench warfare on the alpine front seen in A Farewell to Arms (Times Literary Supplement). Taking its place alongside works by Ernst JŸnger, Robert Graves, and Erich Maria Remarque, Emilio Lussu’s memoir as an infantryman is one of the most affecting accounts to come out of the First World War. A classic in Italy but virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, it reveals in spare and detached prose the almost farcical side of the war as seen by a Sardinian officer fighting the Austrian army on the Asiago plateau in northeastern Italy—the alpine front so poignantly evoked by Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. For Lussu, June 1916 to July 1917 was a year of continuous assaults on impregnable trenches, absurd missions concocted by commanders full of patriotic rhetoric and vanity but lacking in tactical skill, and episodes often tragic and sometimes grotesque, where the incompetence of his own side was as dangerous as the attacks waged by the enemy. A rare firsthand account of the Italian front, Lussu’s memoir succeeds in staging a fierce indictment of the futility of war in a dry, often ironic style that sets his tale wholly apart from the Western Front of Remarque and adds an astonishingly modern voice to the literature of the Great War.

A profound, important book, a moving personal detective story and an uncovering of secret pasts, set in Europe’s center, the city of bright colors—Lviv, Ukraine, dividing east from west, north from south, in what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A book that explores the development of the world-changing legal concepts of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” that came about as a result of the unprecedented atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich. It is also a spellbinding family memoir, as the author traces the mysterious story of his grandfather as he maneuvered through Europe in the face of Nazi atrocities. This is “a monumental achievement ... told with love, anger and precision” (John le Carré, acclaimed internationally bestselling author). East West Street looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of the two men who simultaneously originated the ideas of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university with the same professors, in “the Paris of Ukraine,” a major cultural center of Europe, a city variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, or Lviv. Phillipe Sands changes the way we look at the world, at our understanding of history and how civilization has tried to cope with mass murder

so the long stretch of life / reveals its curvature / by those widely separated // moments when we are / brushed / by this awareness // of an other / that we do not know In his latest collection of poems, poet, deep state researcher, and radical medievalist Peter Dale Scott interrogates topics that have occupied his later thought and writing, such as moreness (our need, as humans, to be more than we are), minding, and enmindment (the generative synergy, engaging both hemispheres of our bicameral mind, of intellectual and spiritual enlightenment, now out of kilter). In pursuit of these themes, Scott’s voice ranges far, from engaging with poets of the past and, hopefully, the future to critiques of coercive political power, from elegies for important figures in his life – Leonard Cohen, Daniel Ellsberg, Czeslaw Milosz, and Robert Silvers – to fan letters for “minders” Chelsea Manning and Dr Christine Blasey Ford. Dreamcraft is a book that crosses distances and straddles boundaries, moving from whistleblower law to the mimetic properties of DNA, from “the entropic spread / of the drifting cosmos / after the big bang” to “the push of lawn grass / under foot.”

Funded by the tobacco and fossil fuel industries, the Mises- and Hayek-inspired ‘free’ market has adopted ‘The Slogan of Liberty’ - but should their faith-based assertions be accorded the same epistemological status as a science? If Austrian economics is a branch of divinely revealed ‘knowledge’ - as the epigone Godfather, Hans Sennholz, insists - what validity do its policy recommendations have? Should those who falsely claim to have PhDs be tax-funded as ‘Post-Doctoral Fellows’ and ‘Professors’? This volume examines the consequences of the ‘free’ market colonisation of economics – climate change, financial crises and the corruption of academic discourse

Why is Eastern Europe still different from Western Europe, more than a quarter-century after the collapse of Communism? A History of Eastern Europe 1918 to the Present shows how the roots of this difference are based in Eastern Europe's tortured 20th century. Eastern Europe emerged in 1918 as the 'lands between', new states whose weakness vis-à-vis Germany and Soviet Russia soon became obvious. The region was the main killing-field of the Second World War, which visited unimaginable horrors on its inhabitants before their 'liberation' by the Soviets in 1945. The imposition of Communist dictatorships on the region, ironically, only deepened Eastern Europe's backwardness. Even in the post-Communist period, its problems continue to make it a fertile breeding-ground for nationalism and political extremism. A History of Eastern Europe 1918 to the Present explores the comparative backwardness of Eastern Europe and how this has driven strategies of modernisation; it looks at the ways in which the region has served as a giant test-tube for political experimentation and, in particular, at the enduring strength of nationalism, which since 1989 has re-emerged more virulent than ever. This book in the essential textbook for any student of 20th-century Eastern Europe.