Author: Peter Green File Type: pdf This is a reissue, with a new introduction and an update to the bibliography, of the original edition, published in 1970 as The Year of Salamis in England and as Xerxes at Salamis* in the U.S. The long and bitter struggle between the great Persian Empire and the fledgling Greek states reached its high point with the extraordinary Greek victory at Salamis in 480 B.C. The astonishing sea battle banished forever the specter of Persian invasion and occupation. Peter Green brilliantly retells this historic moment, evoking the whole dramatic sweep of events that the Persian offensive set in motion. The massive Greek victory, despite the Greeks inferior numbers, opened the way for the historic evolution of the Greek states in a climate of creativity, independence, and democracy, one that provided a model and an inspiration for centuries to come. Greens accounts of both Persian and Greek strategies are clear and persuasive equally convincing are his everyday details regarding the lives of soldiers, statesmen, and ordinary citizens. He has first-hand knowledge of the land and sea he describes, as well as full command of original sources and modern scholarship. With a new foreword, The Greco-Persian Wars is a book that lovers of fine historical writing will greet with pleasure.* hr

Author: Jack Zipes File Type: pdf This book is a collection of traditional German fairy tales and fables, deliberately transformed into utopian narratives and social commentary by political activists in the Weimar Republic (1919-1933). Against a backdrop of financial and political instability, widespread homelessness, and the reformation of public institutions, numerous gifted writers such as Berta Lask, Kurt Schwitters, Hermynia zur Muhlen, Oskar Maria Graf, Bruno Schonlank, and Joachim Ringelnatz responded to the need for hope among the common people by creating fairy tales and fables that offered a new and critical vision of social conditions. Though many of their tales deal with the grim situation of common people and their apparent helplessness, they are founded on the principle of hope. This revised edition includes over 50 illustrations by contemporary international artists who reveal how similar the Weimar conditions were to the conditions in which we presently live. In this respect, the Weimar fairy tales and fables have not lost their spirit and significance. **

Author: Michael Palin File Type: epub Intrepid voyager, writer and comedian Michael Palin follows the trail of two expeditions made by the Royal Navys HMS Erebus to opposite ends of the globe, reliving the voyages and investigating the ship itself, lost on the final Franklin expedition and discovered with the help of Inuit knowledge in 2014.The story of a ship begins after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, when Great Britain had more bomb ships than it had enemies. The solid, reinforced hulls of HMS Erebus, and another bomb ship, HMS Terror, made them suitable for discovering what lay at the coldest ends of the earth. In 1839, Erebus was chosen as the flagship of an expedition to penetrate south to explore Antarctica. Under the leadership of the charismatic James Clark Ross, she and HMS Terror sailed further south than anyone had been before. But Antarctica never captured the national imagination what the British navy needed now was confirmation of its superiority by making the discovery, once and for all, of a route through the North-West Passage. Chosen to lead the mission was Sir John Franklin, at 59 someone many considered too old for such a hazardous journey. Nevertheless, he and his men confidently sailed away down the Thames in April 1845. Provisioned for three winters in the Arctic, Erebus and Terror and the 129 men of the Franklin expedition were seen heading west by two whalers in late July. No one ever saw them again. Over the years there were many attempts to discover what might have happened--and eventually the first bodies were discovered in shallow graves, confirming that it had been the dreadful fate of the explorers to die of hunger and scurvy as they abandoned the ships in the ice. For generations, the mystery of what had happened to the ships endured. Then, on September 9th, 2014, came the almost unbelievable news HMS Erebus had been discovered thirty feet below the Arctic waters, by a Parks Canada exploration ship. Palin looks at the Erebus story through the different motives of the two expeditions, one scientific and successful, the other nationalistic and disastrous. He examines the past by means of the extensive historical record and travels in the present day to those places where there is still an echo of Erebus herself, from the dockyard where she was built, to Tasmania where the Antarctic voyage began and the Falkland Islands, then on to the Canadian Arctic, to get a sense of what the conditions must have been like for the starving, stumbling sailors as they abandoned their ships to the ice. And of course the story has a future. It lies ten metres down in the waters of Nunavuts Queen Maud Gulf, where many secrets wait to be revealed.

Author: Patryk Polec File Type: pdf Polish Canadians typically identify themselves as stringent anti-Communists, a label solidified by the legacies of the 1980s Solidarity movement, its founder Lech Walesa, and the widespread anti-Communist riots that helped topple the Communist regime in 1989. Hurrah Revolutionaries challenges this common perception by examining the Polish immigrant community in Canada and the development of radical and traditionally deviant ideologies during the interwar period until the end of the Second World War. Patryk Polec unveils a versatile, well-funded, and influential Polish pro-Communist movement with a talented leadership that worked tirelessly to persuade traditionally conservative and religious immigrants to adopt an ideology that was anti-nationalist and atheist. He traces the roots of socialist support in Poland, its transplantation to Canada where the movement enjoyed its greatest support, the challenges the movement faced within an ethnic community influenced by Catholicism, and the complications caused by its links to the Communist International. Polec offers a deeper understanding of the ways in which the Communist Party was able to appeal to certain ethnic groups through cultural outreach as well as its complicated and often counter-productive relationship with the Soviet Union. Grounded in recently declassified Polish consular documents and RCMP surveillance reports, Hurrah Revolutionaries is the first full-length study of Polish Communists in Canada, a group that constituted a substantial portion of the countrys socialist left in the twentieth century.