A poignant collection of letters written by the Latvian poet, novelist, and newspaper editor Arsenii Formakov while interned in Soviet labor camps Emily Johnson has translated and edited a fascinating collection of letters written by Arsenii Formakov, a Latvian Russian poet, novelist, and journalist, during two terms in Soviet labor camps, 1940 to 1947 in Kraslag and 1949 to 1955 in Kamyshlag and Ozerlag. This correspondence, which Formakov mailed home to his family in Riga, provides readers with a firsthand account of the workings of the Soviet penal system and testifies to the hardships of daily life for Latvian prisoners in the Gulag.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780300209310 20170530

In Hammer, Sickle, and Soil , Jonathan Daly tells the harrowing story of Stalin's transformation of millions of family farms throughout the USSR into 250,000 collective farms during the period from 1929 to 1933. History's biggest experiment in social engineering at the time and the first example of the complete conquest of the bulk of a population by its rulers, the policy was above all intended to bring to Russia Marx's promised bright future of socialism. In the process, however, it caused widespread peasant unrest, massive relocations, and ultimately led to millions dying in the famine of 1932--33. Drawing on scholarly studies and primary-source collections published since the opening of the Soviet archives three decades ago, now, for the first time, this volume offers an accessible and accurate narrative for the general reader. The book is illustrated with propaganda posters from the period that graphically portray the drama and trauma of the revolution in Soviet agriculture under Stalin. In chilling detail the author describes how the havoc and destruction wrought in the countryside sowed the seeds of destruction of the entire Soviet experiment.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780817920647 20180219

• "A pretty stiff time"
• "A whole jug full of experience"
• "I am the Devil"
• The adventures of Hu-hua and Hoo Loo
• "The late jar rather smashed my nerves"
• What lies beyond wealth
• "Hard to state without becoming hysterical"
• A pirate state organized for benevolence
• Make way for the Almoner of starving Belgium
• A hero in the house of truth
• Inconsolable in the hall of mirrors
• An engineer at the opera
• Meddling with God's economy
• Hoover versus a botched civilization
• Scandal, embarrassment, and the little feller
• Sleepless in good times
• "The wonder boy"
• "Giving genius its chance"
• "He didn't know where the votes came from"
• Nothing to fear but fear itself
• Just when we thought it was over
• "It seemed like the end of the world"
• The president in his fighting clothes
• "A human creature desperately hurt and pained"
• Through the abyss in a Buick
• Father of the new conservatism
• Reborn in a darker world
• Epilogue : "I admire a lot in Hoover's career."

"The definitive biography of Herbert Hoover, one of the most remarkable and least understood Americans of the twentieth century--a wholly original account that will forever change the way Americans understand the man, his presidency, and his battle against the Great Depression. An impoverished orphan who built a fortune. A great humanitarian. A president elected in a landslide and then resoundingly defeated four years later. Arguably the father of both New Deal liberalism and modern conservatism, Herbert Hoover lived one of the most extraordinary American lives of the twentieth century. Yet however astonishing, his accomplishments are often eclipsed by the perception that Hoover was inept and heartless in the face of the Great Depression. Now, Kenneth Whyte vividly re-creates Hoover's rich and dramatic life in all its complex glory. He follows Hoover through his Iowa boyhood, his cutthroat business career, his brilliant rescue of millions of lives during World War I and the 1927 Mississippi floods, his misconstrued presidency, his defeat at the hands of Franklin Roosevelt, his devastating years in the political wilderness, his return to grace as Truman's emissary to help European refugees after World War II, and his final vindication in the days of Kennedy's "New Frontier." Ultimately, Whyte brings to light Hoover's complexities and contradictions--his modesty and ambition, his ruthlessness and extreme generosity--as well as his profound political legacy. [This] is the epic, poignant story of the deprived boy who, through force of will, made himself the most accomplished figure in the land, and who experienced a range of achievements and failures unmatched by many Americans of his, or perhaps any, era. Here, for the first time, is the definitive biography that fully captures the colossal scale of Hoover's momentous life and volatile times." -- dust jacket.

Welcome to the House of European History, an initiative of the European Parliament. The purpose of the permanent exhibition is to offer visitors an outline of European history. The different topics are not presented according to national boundaries, but instead depict the main processes and phenomena that have united and divided Europeans through time. Perspectives on specific historic events are, of course, multiple. That is why a number of recurring questions underpin the displays. How does memory shape different visions of the past: How does history influence our lives today? What does the past tell us when we look ahead? In the exhibition you will not find ready-made answers. Instead, you are invited always to keep a critical eye, and to engage in the public conversation about Europe's past and its implications for the present and the future.

• Introduction: Exploiting "human raw material"
• Food: "Whoever does not work, shall not eat"
• Prisoners: "The contingent"
• Health: "Physical labor capability"
• Illness and mortality: "Lost labor days"
• Invalids: "Inferior workforce"
• Releases: "Unloading the ballast"
• Power: "We are not doctors but delousers"
• Selection: "The more (and less) valuable human element"
• Exploitation: "Labor utilization"
• Epilogue: Deaths and deceptions.

A new and chilling study of lethal human exploitation in the Soviet forced labor camps, one of the pillars of Stalinist terror In a shocking new study of life and death in Stalin's Gulag, historian Golfo Alexopoulos suggests that Soviet forced labor camps were driven by brutal exploitation and often administered as death camps. The first study to examine the Gulag penal system through the lens of health, medicine, and human exploitation, this extraordinary work draws from previously inaccessible archives to offer a chilling new view of one of the pillars of Stalinist terror.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780300179415 20170530

• Prologue
• Chapter 1. The Growing Menace
• Chapter 2. The Great Mecca
• Chapter 3. The Gathering Storm
• Chapter 4. The Fire This Time
• Chapter 5. This Most Marvelous City
• Chapter 6. Heat and Dirt, Anger and Fury
• Chapter 7. Take the "A" Train
• Chapter 8. Communists, Conservatives, and Conspiracies
• Chapter 9. Make Somebody Listen
• Chapter 10. Calming the Waters
• Chapter 11. All the Way with LBJ
• Chapter 12. The War on Crime Epilogue Notes List of Personal Interviews and Correspondence Index Acknowledgments.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

On the morning of July 16, 1964, a white police officer in New York City shot and killed a black teenager, James Powell, across the street from the high school where he was attending summer classes. Two nights later, a peaceful demonstration in Central Harlem degenerated into violent protests. During the next week, thousands of rioters looted stores from Brooklyn to Rochester and pelted police with bottles and rocks. In the symbolic and historic heart of black America, the Harlem Riot of 1964, as most called it, highlighted a new dynamic in the racial politics of the nation. The first "long, hot summer" of the Sixties had arrived. In this gripping narrative of a pivotal moment, Michael W. Flamm draws on personal interviews and delves into the archives to move briskly from the streets of New York, where black activists like Bayard Rustin tried in vain to restore peace, to the corridors of the White House, where President Lyndon Johnson struggled to contain the fallout from the crisis and defeat Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, who had made "crime in the streets" a centerpiece of his campaign. Recognizing the threat to his political future and the fragile alliance of black and white liberals, Johnson promised that the War on Poverty would address the "root causes" of urban disorder. A year later, he also launched the War on Crime, which widened the federal role in law enforcement and set the stage for the War on Drugs. Today James Powell is forgotten amid the impassioned debates over the militarization of policing and the harmful impact of mass incarceration on minority communities. But his death was a catalyst for the riots in New York, which in turn foreshadowed future explosions and influenced the political climate for the crime and drug policies of recent decades. In the Heat of the Summer spotlights the extraordinary drama of a single week when peaceful protests and violent unrest intersected, the freedom struggle reached a crossroads, and the politics of law and order led to demands for a War on Crime.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780812248500 20170612

• The evolution of Israel's national security doctrine
• New challenges for Israel's national security
• Facing reality: Lebanon and Gaza
• The Arab Spring and the Arab turmoil: a new Middle Eastern reality.

The turmoil which has been rattling the Middle East in recent years has confronted Israel with fresh challenges and opportunities and requires it to rethink the three levels of its strategy and security policies: National security Strategy (sometimes referred to as Grand Strategy), National Security Policy and National Military Strategy. The book points to the years 1979-1981 as the years of transition from conventional military challenges faced by Israel to the novel challenges of terrorism, missiles and rockets, sub-state guerrilla organizations on its borders and the prospect of nuclear weapons in hostile hands. Some of these challenges have been exacerbated by the unraveling of neighboring Arab states. The book's review of the evolution of Israeli policies through almost seven decades of war and conflicts shows the absence of a full-fledged grand strategy, the structural weakness of national security policy formulation by successive governments at the cabinet level and the dominant role of the IDF. This state of affairs helps explain why and how Israel has responded to the recent turmoil in a piecemeal fashion rather than formulate a comprehensive policy that would enhance its ability to respond to the new challenges and take advantage of the new opportunities.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780817920449 20170530

• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Overview; Introduction
• Diagnosing the Situation Today
• Policy and Regulatory Options: State Regulators-Compensating Nuclear Plant Benefits
• State Regulators-Internalizing Other Costs
• State Legislators-Compensating Nuclear Plant Benefits
• State Legislators-Internalizing Other Costs
• Regional Grid Operators
• Federal Agencies
• Congress
• Improving Nuclear's Value: Owners & Operators
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: US Civilian Nuclear Power Reactors
• Appendix B: Recent Nuclear Plant Closures.

In Keeping the Lights On at America's Nuclear Power Plants, Jeremy Carl and David Fedor discuss the decline of American nuclear power in light of major economic, technological and political challenges. They show how high costs, low public support, and popular clean energy trends threaten America's near- and long-term nuclear viability. American nuclear power plants are closing at a historically unprecedented pace, and there's little evidence of public or political will to stop the bleeding. Recognizing the nuclear industry's flaws, the authors argue that nuclear energy is widely misunderstood. They discuss the nuclear industry's failure to capture the public's attention and imagination, and survey the new national conversation about America's renewable energy future -- a conversation that does not include nuclear. For all these challenges, the authors argue that permanently opting out of the nuclear enterprise would be a mistake. Making the case for continued nuclear investment, they show how ""keeping the lights on"" at America's nuclear plants can bolster American technology leadership, security, and commitment to curbing carbon emissions. They offer a menu of policy options designed to spur meaningful action at state and federal levels, to change the industry's status quo, and to reintroduce nuclear to America's energy conversation.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780817920951 20170829