Yale University Press – Knjiga.hr

Venona : decoding Soviet espionage in America

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:34:57 +0000

This extraordinary book is the first to examine the thousands of documents of the super-secret Venona Project—an American intelligence project that uncovered not only an enormous range of Soviet espionage activities against the United States during World War II but also the Americans who abetted this effort. “A virtual king’s ransom of top-secret bombshells and bangles. —Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report “This book clearly establishes the main contours of the previously hidden landscape of Soviet espionage in the United States in the 30s and 40s. — Maurice -Isserman, New York Times Book Review “John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have squeezed the pulp from five thousand pages of deciphered cables that verify the grim picture of the Communist underground given many decades ago by defectors such as Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers. —Sam Tanenhaus, The New Republic John Earl Haynes is 20th Century Political Historian, Library of Congress. Harvey Klehr is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History at Emory University. They are also the authors of The Secret World of American Communism and The Soviet World of American Communism, both published by Yale University Press.

Five Days in London May 1940

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 18:36:22 +0000

‘This book is a perceptive and thrilling account of a few dramatic days that really did change history.’ Robert Wilson, Canberra Times The days from 24 May to 28 May 1940 altered the course of the twentieth century, as the members of the British War Cabinet debated whether to negotiate with Hitler or to continue the war. The decisive importance of these five days is the focus of John Lukacs’s magisterial book.

Napoleon, for and against

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 11:58:31 +0000

The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character Since the 1880

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 08:56:51 +0000

In a book written out of a passionate belief in the staying powers of the democratic principles, a noted historian has written a major work that may be described as an interpretation of American thought and character since the 1880s. Impressive in its inclusive sweep.-Joseph Wood Krutch, New York Times

Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 16:42:20 +0000

Among all the great transitions that have marked Western history, only one—the triumph of Christianity—can be called in the fullest sense a “revolution” “Hart has the gifts of a good advocate. He writes with clarity and force, and he drives his points home again and again. He exposes his opponents’ errors of fact or logic with ruthless precision.”—Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement In this provocative book one of the most brilliant scholars of religion today dismantles distorted religious “histories” offered up by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other contemporary critics of religion and advocates of atheism. David Bentley Hart provides a bold correction of the New Atheists’ misrepresentations of the Christian past, countering their polemics with a brilliant account of Christianity and its message of human charity as the most revolutionary movement in all of Western history. Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the Age of Reason was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.

The Knights of Malta

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 16:38:51 +0000

A handsomely produced and illustrated history of an influential and mysterious 900-year-old order of Catholic knights, examining the order’s formative years, its military significance during its reigns on Rhodes and Malta, its artistic and architectural legacy, and its branches in nations throughout Europe. The final section addresses more recent events in the order’s history, from 100 years ago when the order had dwindled to only 1,000 knights drawn from the innermost circle of the European aristocracy, to the present number of 10,000 knights and exchange of ambassadors with some 60 governments. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Mon, 20 May 2024 17:49:01 +0000

Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today’s states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family—all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction. Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the “barbarians” who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.

Croatia: A Nation Forged in War

Wed, 08 May 2024 17:58:29 +0000

In this book an eyewitness to the breakup of Yugoslavia provides the first full and impartial account of the rise, fall, and rebirth of Croatia from its medieval origins to today`s tentative peace. Marcus Tanner describes the turbulence and drama of Croatia`s past and -drawing on his own experience and interviews with many of the leading figures in Croatia`s conflict-explains its violent history since Tito`s death in 1980.

The Virus in the Age of Madness

Sat, 04 May 2024 15:16:51 +0000

A trenchant look at how the coronavirus reveals the dangerous fault lines of contemporary society As seen on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS: “A stirring alarm addressed to an unsettled world.” (Kirkus Reviews) Forget the world that came before. The author of American Vertigo serves up an incisive look at how COVID-19 reveals the dangerous fault lines of contemporary society. With medical mysteries, rising death tolls, and conspiracy theories beamed minute by minute through the vast web universe, the coronavirus pandemic has irrevocably altered societies around the world. In this sharp essay, world-renowned philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy interrogates the many meanings and metaphors we have assigned to the pandemic—and what they tell us about ourselves. Drawing on the philosophical tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Lacan and Foucault, Lévy asks uncomfortable questions about reality and mythology: he rejects the idea that the virus is a warning from nature, the inevitable result of global capitalism; he questions the heroic status of doctors, asking us to think critically about the loci of authority and power; he challenges the panicked polarization that dominates online discourse. Lucid, incisive, and always original, Lévy takes a bird’s-eye view of the most consequential historical event of our time and proposes a way to defend human society from threats to our collective future.

Croatia : A Nation Forged in War

baja — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 10:43:05 +0000

From the ashes of former Yugoslavia an independent Croatian state has arisen, the fulfillment, in the words of President Franjo Tudjman, of the Croats’ thousand-year-old dream of independence. Yet few countries in Europe have been born amid such bitter controversy and bloodshed: the savage war between pro-independence forces and the Yugoslav army left about one-third of the country in ruins and resulted in the flight of a quarter of a million of the country’s Serbian minority. In this book an eyewitness to the breakup of Yugoslavia provides the first full account of the rise, fall, and rebirth of Croatia from its medieval origins to today’s tentative peace. Marcus Tanner describes the creation of the first Croatian state; its absorption into feudal Hungary in the Middle Ages; the catastrophic experience of the Ottoman invasion; the absorption of the diminished country into Habsburg Austria; the evolution of modern Croatian nationalism after the French Revolution; and the circumstances that propelled Croatia into the arms of Nazi Germany and the brutal, home-grown Ustashe movement in the Second World War. Finally, drawing on first-hand knowledge of many of the leading figures in the conflict, Tanner explains the failure of Tito’s Communists to solve Yugoslavia’s tortured national problem by creating a federal state, and the violent implosion after his death. Croatia’s unique position on the crossroads of Europe—between Eastern and Western Christendom, the Mediterranean, and the Balkans and between the old Habsburg and Ottoman empires—has been both a curse and a blessing, inviting the attention of larger and more powerful neighbors. The turbulence and drama of Croatia’s past are vigorously portrayed in this powerful history.