This book reveals that the visual narrative of the events of the Russian campaign of 1812 was inextricably linked to Russia's search for national identity and helped to form competing definitions of 'Russianness'. No pre-revolutionary military event was more celebrated in Russian literature and art than the ‘Patriotic War of 1812’, during which Napoleon advanced his Grand Armée into Russia, only to retreat months later in defeat as his army faced starvation and capture during the ...

In this comprehensive account of censorship of the visual arts in nineteenth-century Europe, when imagery was accessible to the illiterate in ways that print was not, specialists in the history of the major European countries trace the use of censorship by the authorities to implement their fears of the visual arts, from caricature to cinema.

Interdisciplinary collection of essays on fine art painting as it relates to the First World War and commemoration of the conflictAlthough photography and moving pictures achieved ubiquity during the First World War as technological means of recording history, the far more traditional medium of painting played a vital role in the visual culture of combatant nations. The public’s appetite for the kind of up-close frontline action that snapshots and film footage coul...

The First World War followed a period of sustained peace in Europe during which people talked with confidence of prosperity, progress, and hope. But in 1914, Europe walked into a catastrophic conflict that killed millions, bled its economies dry, shook empires and societies to pieces, and fatally undermined Europe’s dominance of the world. It was a war that could have been avoided up to the last moment—so why did it happen?Beginning in the early nineteenth century and ending with t...

“A monumental new volume. . . . Revelatory, even revolutionary. . . . Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable.” — Boston GlobeOne of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History)Historian Christopher Clark’s riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I.Drawing on new schol...

In Solar Dance, acclaimed writer and scholar Modris Eksteins uses Vincent van Gogh as his lens for this brilliant survey of Western culture and politics in the last century.The long-awaited follow-up to Modris Eksteins' internationally acclaimed Rites of Springand Walking Since Daybreak. Now he has produced another thrilling, iconoclastic work of cultural history that is a trailblazing biography of an era--from the eve of the First...

A timely, enthralling history of Europe unlike any other: perfect for fans of A History of the World in 47 Borders and Prisoners of Geography.'One of the most engaging and fascinating histories of Europe I've read for years.' DOMINIC SANDBROOK, co-host of The Rest Is History podcastEurope's internal borders have rarely been 'natural'; they have more often been created by accident or force.In Borderline...

“This is the essential backstory, the history book that you need if you want to understand modern Russia and its wars with Ukraine, with its neighbors, with America, and with the West.”—Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy and Red Famine**Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus ReviewsFrom “the great storyteller of Russian history” (Financial Times

From the bestselling author of On Tyranny**, the definitive biography of Wilhelm Von Habsburg, enigmatic and eccentric archduke of Austria.****“Not often does scholarly history soar and entrap like a fine historical novel, but here it does.” —**Foreign AffairsWilhelm von Habsburg wore the court regalia of a Habsburg archduke, the simple suit of a Parisian exile, and every so often, a dress. After his youth...

**Winner of the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize"A superb and immensely important book."—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington PostThe Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another ten years...**The end of World War II in Europe is remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, but the reality was quite different. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed, and more than thirty mil...

In the first volume of her landmark philosophical work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, the political theorist traces the rise of antisemitism in Europe.Since it was first published in 1951, The Origins of Totalitarianism has been recognized as the definitive philosophical account of the totalitarian mindset. A probing analysis of Nazism, Stalinism, and the "banality of evil", it remains one of the most referenced works in studies and discussions ...

A seminal work as melodious and haunting as the era it chronicles.First published in 1968, Weimar Culture is one of the masterworks of Peter Gay's distinguished career. A study of German culture between the two wars, the book brilliantly traces the rise of the artistic, literary, and musical culture that bloomed ever so briefly in the 1920s amid the chaos of Germany's tenuous post-World War I democracy, and crashed violently in the wake of Hitler's rise to...