Résultats de "Charles River Editors" dans Toutes les catégories

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together, to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event - known as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 - galvanized a phenomenon that came to be known as the Scramble for Africa.

Over the last 2,000 years, ambitious men have dreamed of forging vast empires and attaining eternal glory in battle, but of all the conquerors who took steps toward such dreams, none were ever as successful as antiquity’s first great conqueror. Leaders of the 20th century hoped to rival Napoleon’s accomplishments, while Napoleon aimed to emulate the accomplishments of Julius Caesar. But Caesar himself found inspiration in Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), the Macedonian king who managed to stretch an empire from Greece to the Himalayas in Asia by the age of 30.

Among all the periods in ancient Egyptian history, the Ptolemaic Kingdom and its most famous ruler, Cleopatra, may be the most well-known today. By the 4th century BCE, it appeared as though ancient Egypt was in its final death throes. It had long ceased to be an influential kingdom in the Near East and Mediterranean regions, and it had been ruled over by a succession of foreign peoples including Libyans, Nubians, Assyrians, and Persians. But just when Egypt seemed was doomed to pass forever into obscurity, it was reinvigorated by outsiders, most notably Alexander the Great. While in the process of campaigning to destroy the Achaemenid Persian Empire and conquer the world in 331 BCE, he made a pit stop in Egypt that forever changed the course of Egyptian history. Although his understanding of ancient Egyptian chronology and religion was minimal, Alexander was intrigued by ancient pharaonic culture, knowing, as the 5th century BCE Greek historian Herodotus once wrote, “Egypt is the gift of the Nile.” As a result, Alexander endeavored to incorporate the land of the pharaohs into Hellenic Civilization.

French Senegal: The History of the French Colony and Senegal’s Transition to Independence examines how France established the colony, and how that colony affected events in the 20th century before Senegal became a modern nation.

The Balkan area has historically been one of the world’s most combustible regions. Home to several national groups and at a crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, the Balkans have exerted an outsized role on world affairs. Infamously, the 1914 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, was the final straw that led to World War I. The Balkans, however, had been flammable long before Princip’s bullets murdered the Austrian monarch-in-waiting.

The fighting in North Africa during World War II is commonly overlooked, aside from the famous battle at El Alamein that pitted the British under General Bernard Montgomery against the legendary "Desert Fox", Erwin Rommel. But while the Second Battle of El Alamein would be the pivotal action in North Africa, the conflict in North Africa began all the way back in the summer of 1940 when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared Italy's entrance into the war.

Gamal Abdel Nasser has been called many things. The father of modern-day Egypt. The founder of Arab nationalism. The leader of the Egyptian Revolution. The second president of the Egyptian Republic. The creator of his own brand of political and social governance - Nasserism. Anthony Eden, the former British prime minister, called him the "Mussolini of the Nile".

The Dissolution of Yugoslavia: The History of the Yugoslav Wars and the Political Problems that Led to Yugoslavia’s Demise examines how the multicultural nation broke apart in the 1980s and 1990s...you will learn about the Yugoslave Wars like never before.

Benito Mussolini: The Life and Legacy of Italy’s Fascist Prime Minister profiles one of the 20th century’s most notorious leaders. You will learn about Mussolini like never before.

Conspiracy theories, and particularly the belief that elements of the world are secretly controlled by individuals or groups, have been around for as long as people have lived in groups. Perhaps that’s inevitable - after all, those who are excluded from power are very likely to be inclined to see their position not as an outcome of their own choices or situation but because of the secret machinations of shadowy groups.

The Vietnam War could have been called a comedy of errors if the consequences weren’t so deadly and tragic. In 1951, while war was raging in Korea, the United States began signing defense pacts with nations in the Pacific, intending to create alliances that would contain the spread of Communism. As the Korean War was winding down, America joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, pledging to defend several nations in the region from Communist aggression. One of those nations was South Vietnam.

World War I, also known in its time as the “Great War” or the “War to End all Wars”, was an unprecedented holocaust in terms of its sheer scale. Fought by men who hailed from all corners of the globe, it saw millions of soldiers do battle in brutal assaults of attrition which dragged on for months with little to no respite. Such a war brought about technological innovation at a rate that made the boom of the Industrial Revolution seem stagnant. The Second Battle of Ypres resulted from the German decision to use poison gas against the Allied lines.

To us she appears inconsistent - religious yet aggressive, calculating yet emotional, with the light touch of the courtier, yet the strong grip of the politician - but is this what she was, or merely what we strain to see through the opacity of the evidence? As for her inner life, short of a miraculous cache of new material, we shall never really know. Yet what does come to us across the centuries, is the impression of a person who is strangely appealing to the early 21st century: A woman in her own right - taken on her own terms in a man's world.

At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, while much of the nation's attention was given to peaceful protests, boycotts, and figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., a young man named Malcolm Little was rising through the ranks to become one of the leaders and public faces of the Nation of Islam. As Malcolm X, he would come to be one of the most controversial figures in 20th century America, hailed as a bold human rights activist by some and reviled as a violent racist by others.

If one assembled a list of the most iconic actors of the film noir genre, Robert Mitchum would surely rank at the top of the list. With his deadpan façade and slow, monotone verbal delivery, Mitchum encapsulated the disillusioned hero of the postwar crime genre.

Throughout the history of Hollywood, perhaps no actor has a reputation as unique as Johnny Depp. Depp began his career in a very traditional manner by being a teen heartthrob on shows like 21 Jump Street, but as he once admitted, "As a teenager I was so insecure. I was the type of guy that never fitted in because he never dared to choose. I was convinced I had absolutely no talent at all. For nothing. And that thought took away all my ambition too."

The Arawak: The History and Legacy of the Indigenous Natives in South America and the Caribbean examines the culture and history of the indigenous groups and what happened when they came into contact with the Europeans. You will learn about the Arawak like never before.

Nicolae Ceaușescu, one of the 20th century’s most notorious dictators, was both typical and unusual. Outwardly, he resembled a standard leader of a communist country in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, yet he was even more repressive and opulent than his contemporaries. Nicolae Ceaușescu: The Life and Legacy of Romania’s Notorious Dictator During the Cold War examines the rise and reign of the Romanian leader.

The Boer War was the defining conflict of South African history and one of the most important conflicts in the history of the British Empire. Naturally, complicated geopolitics underscored it. The European history of South Africa began with the 1652 arrival of a small Dutch flotilla in Table Bay, at the southern extremity of the African continent. The Boer War: The History and Legacy of the Conflict That Solidified British Rule in South Africa looks at the controversial fighting and the manner in which it affected the 20th century.

In the 18th century, when Europeans first came upon the giant mounds and earthworks dotting the North American landscape, they couldn't imagine that the Native Americans they came into contact with were capable of producing such advanced technology and masterful engineering. In fact, when President George Washington sent Rufus Putnam to survey land in southeastern Ohio, Putnam reported that he'd discovered an impressive walled earthwork complex, which was obviously the work of some long-forgotten ancient civilization.