This memoir describes a long and unusual life that started in eastern Turkey in 1896 in a house with an earthen floor, and ended in middle-class comfort in suburban Toronto nearly a century later. The author was an eyewitness to the first genocide of the 20th century, a horror in which most of his family was lost. He lived through the first World War and the Bolshevik Revolution that led to the creation of the Soviet Union. He fled from Soviet Armenia, first to Moscow and then to London. From there he went with wife and baby daughter to Toronto, where he faced the task of earning a living during the Great Depression. Caught up in this swirl of historical forces he describes in fascinating detail his remarkable story of survival. And, perhaps not the least remarkable fact of this life, he was over 80 years of age when he began writing his life story. There is much here to stimulate and educate, not only those who wish to know more about the Armenian Diaspora, but everyone with an interest in the human condition as it was experienced in other places and in another time.

This memoir describes a long and unusual life that started in eastern Turkey in 1896 in a house with an earthen floor, and ended in middle-class comfort in suburban Toronto nearly a century later. The author was an eyewitness to the first genocide of the 20th century, a horror in which most of his family was lost. He lived through the first World War and the Bolshevik Revolution that led to the creation of the Soviet Union. He fled from Soviet Armenia, first to Moscow and then to London. From there he went with wife and baby daughter to Toronto, where he faced the task of earning a living during the Great Depression. Caught up in this swirl of historical forces he describes in fascinating detail his remarkable story of survival. And, perhaps not the least remarkable fact of this life, he was over 80 years of age when he began writing his life story. There is much here to stimulate and educate, not only those who wish to know more about the Armenian Diaspora, but everyone with an interest in the human condition as it was experienced in other places and in another time.

The Armenian contribution to Ottoman photography is supposedly well known, with histories documenting the famous Ottoman Armenian-run studios of the imperial capital that produced Orientalist visions for tourists and images of modernity for a domestic elite. Neglected, however, have been the practitioners of the eastern provinces where the majority of Ottoman Armenians were to be found, with the result that their role in the medium has been obscured and wider Armenian history and experience distorted. Photography in the Ottoman East was grounded in very different concerns, with the work of studios rooted in the seismic social, political and cultural shifts that reshaped the region and Armenian lives during the empire's last decades. The first study of its kind, this book examines photographic activity in three sites on the Armenian plateau: Erzurum, Harput and Van. Arguing that local photographic practices were marked by the dominant activities and movements of these places, it describes a medium bound up in educational endeavours, mass migration and revolutionary politics. The camera both responded to and became the instrument of these phenomena. Light is shone on previously unknown practitioners and, more vitally, a perspective gained on the communities that they served. The book suggests that by contemplating the ways in which photographs were made, used, circulated and seen, we might form a picture of the Ottoman Armenian world.

The First World War did not end in November 1918. In Russia and Eastern Europe it finished up to a year earlier, and both there and elsewhere in the world it triggered conflicts that lasted down to 1923. Paramilitary formations were prominent in this continuation of the war. Paramilitary violence was an important ingredient in the clashes unleashed by class revolution in Russia. It structured the counter-revolution in central and Eastern Europe, including Finland and Italy, which in the name of order and authority reacted against a mythic version of Bolshevik class violence. It also shaped the struggles over borders and ethnicity in the new states that replaced the multi-national empires of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman Turkey. It was prominent on all sides in the wars for Irish independence. Paramilitary violence was charged with political significance and acquired a long-lasting symbolism and influence. War in Peace explores the differences and similarities between these various kinds of paramilitary violence within one volume for the first time. It contributes to our understanding of the difficult transitions from war to peace, re-situates the Great War in a longer-term context, and explains its enduring impact.

This memoir describes a long and unusual life that started in eastern Turkey in 1896 in a house with an earthen floor, and ended in middle-class comfort in suburban Toronto nearly a century later. The author was an eyewitness to the first genocide of the 20th century, a horror in which most of his family was lost. He lived through the first World War and the Bolshevik Revolution that led to the creation of the Soviet Union. He fled from Soviet Armenia, first to Moscow and then to London. From there he went with wife and baby daughter to Toronto, where he faced the task of earning a living during the Great Depression. Caught up in this swirl of historical forces he describes in fascinating detail his remarkable story of survival. And, perhaps not the least remarkable fact of this life, he was over 80 years of age when he began writing his life story. There is much here to stimulate and educate, not only those who wish to know more about the Armenian Diaspora, but everyone with an interest in the human condition as it was experienced in other places and in another time.

In Josef Škvorecký's first novel written in English, the narrator lives in two radically dissimilar worlds: the exile world of the post-Communist Czech Republic where old feuds, treacherous betrayals, and friendships persevere; and the comfortable, albeit bland world of middle-class Canada. Murder intrudes upon both world. One features a young female sleuth, a college beauty queen, jealousy in the world of academia, and a neat conclusion. The other is a tragedy caused by evil social forces and philosophies, in which a web of lies insidiously entangles Sidonia, the narrator's wife. A brilliantly stylish tour de force in which the bright, sarcastic comedy of one tale sharply contrasts with the dark, elegiac bitterness of the other, Two Murders in My Double Life confirms Škvorecký's reputation as a versatile and engaging writer.