Otros libros que te pueden interesar

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  Madness Betrayal and the Lash -...

  Stephen R. Bown

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  From 1792 to 1795, George Vancouver sailed the Pacific as the captain of his own expedition and as an agent of imperial ambition. To map a place is to control it, and Britain had its eyes on America's Pacific coast. And map it Vancouver did. His voyage was one of history's greatest feats of maritime daring, discovery, and diplomacy, and his marine survey of Hawaii and the Pacific coast was at its time the most comprehensive ever undertaken. But just two years after returning to Britain, the forty-year-old Vancouver, hounded by critics, shamed by public humiliation at the fists of an aristocratic sailor he had flogged, and blacklisted because of a perceived failure to follow the Admiralty's directives, died in poverty, nearly forgotten. In this riveting and perceptive biography, historian Stephen Bown delves into the events that destroyed Vancouver's reputation and restores his position as one of the greatest explorers of the Age of Discovery.

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  The Queen Mother

  Helen Cathcart

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  Affectionately known as the Queen Mother, she was born a commoner and never expected to be Queen. Yet, her life was forever changed with the abdication of her brother-in-law, Edward VIII, and she rose to become one of the most popular royal figures. 
   
   
   
  Helen Cathcart's fascinatingly intimate account charts the life of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, from her birth and early years, to her courtship and marriage to the second son of King George V and Queen Mary, through the abdication crisis, and later period as Queen consort, before giving insight into the first forty years of her life as Queen Mother after her daughter, Elizabeth II, had ascended to the throne. 
   
   
   
  During her long life the Queen Mother witnessed numerous challenges to her nation, including two world wars and the decline of British power, yet, as Cathcart reveals, she remained an unwavering pillar of support to both her husband and her daughter through these difficult times. 
   
   
   
  Drawing information from family letters, royal journals, and the personal recollections, The Queen Mother is an exceptionally detailed picture of one of the most influential women of the twentieth century.

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  Time of My Life The: Dirty Dancing

  Andrea Warner

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  An engaging exploration into the enduring popularity of Dirty Dancing and its lasting themes of feminism, activism, and reproductive rights 
   
  When Dirty Dancing was released in 1987, it had already been rejected by producers and distributors several times over, and expectations for the summer romance were low. But then the film, written by former dancer Eleanor Bergstein and starring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze as a couple from two different worlds, exploded. Since then, Dirty Dancing’s popularity has never waned. The truth has always been that Dirty Dancing was never just a teen romance or a dance movie — it also explored abortion rights, class, and political activism, with a smattering of light crime-solving. 
   
  In The Time of My Life, celebrated music journalist Andrea Warner excavates the layers of Dirty Dancing, from its anachronistic, chart-topping soundtrack, to Baby and Johnny’s chemistry, to Bergstein’s political intentions, to the abortion subplot that is more relevant today than ever. The film’s remarkable longevity would never have been possible if it was just a throwaway summer fling story. It is precisely because of its themes — deeply feminist, sensitively written — that we, over 30 years later, are still holding our breath during that last, exhilarating lift.

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  Hitler's Army - Soldiers Nazis...

  Omer Bartov

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  In Hitler's Army, Omer Bartov focuses on the titanic struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union—where the vast majority of German troops fought—to show how the savagery of war reshaped the army in Hitler's image. Both brutalized and brutalizing, these soldiers needed to see their bitter sacrifices as noble patriotism and to justify their own atrocities by seeing their victims as subhuman. In the unprecedented ferocity and catastrophic losses of the Eastern front, soldiers embraced the idea that the war was a defense of civilization against Jewish/Bolshevik barbarism, a war of racial survival to be waged at all costs. Bartov describes the incredible scale and destruction of the invasion of Russia in horrific detail. Even in the first months—often depicted as a time of easy victories—undermanned and ill-equipped German units were stretched to the breaking point by vast distances and bitter Soviet resistance. Bartov goes on to explore letters, diaries, military reports, and other sources, showing how widespread Hitler's views became among common fighting men—men who grew up, he reminds us, under the Nazi regime. In the end, they truly became Hitler's army. 
   
   
   
  This book sheds new light on how deeply Nazi ideology penetrated the nation. Hitler's Army makes an important correction not merely to the historical record but to how we see the world today.

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  The Problem of Democracy -...

  Shadi Hamid

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  What happens when democracy produces "bad" outcomes? Is democracy good because of its outcomes or despite them? This "democratic dilemma" is one of the most persistent, vexing problems for America abroad, particularly in the Middle East—we want democracy in theory but not necessarily in practice. 
   
   
   
  When Islamist parties rise to power through free elections, the United States has too often been ambivalent or opposed, preferring instead pliable dictators. With this legacy of democratic disrespect in mind, and drawing on new interviews with top American officials, Shadi Hamid explores universal questions of morality, power, and hypocrisy. Why has the United States failed so completely to live up to its own stated ideals in the Arab world? And is it possible for it to change? 
   
   
   
  In The Problem of Democracy, Hamid offers an ambitious reimagining of this ongoing debate and argues for "democratic minimalism" as a path to resolving democratic dilemmas in the Middle East and beyond. In the seemingly eternal tension between democracy and liberalism, recognized by the ancient Greeks and the American founders alike, it may be time to prioritize one over the other, rather than acting as if the two are intertwined when increasingly they are not.

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  The Congress of Vienna -...

  Nova Ashford

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  The Congress of Vienna, held between 1814 and 1815, came at a pivotal moment in European history. The continent had just endured the upheaval caused by the Napoleonic Wars, which had left Europe in chaos and instability. Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to power and subsequent expansionist ambitions had dramatically altered the political landscape, reshaping borders and redrawing alliances. By 1814, with Napoleon's defeat and exile, Europe was left to deal with the aftermath of a decade of war and turmoil. The challenge for the leaders of the major powers was to rebuild a stable Europe while ensuring that the events which had led to war would not be repeated. 
  The immediate concern was to restore order and prevent any single nation from becoming too powerful. Napoleon’s domination of Europe, followed by his eventual fall, had created an imbalance of power that threatened the security of the continent. The leaders of the great powers—Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia—realized that to avoid future conflict, they needed to create a system that would maintain peace and stability through diplomacy and careful balancing of power. This would be achieved not by restoring the status quo exactly as it had been before the Napoleonic Wars, but by reshaping Europe in a way that would prevent any one nation from becoming overwhelmingly dominant. 
  The Congress of Vienna aimed to establish a new framework based on the principles of legitimacy and a balance of power. Legitimacy referred to the restoration of rightful monarchs who had been overthrown by Napoleon, while the balance of power involved redistributing territory and influence in a way that would prevent any single country from threatening the security of the others. It was a delicate process, as the major powers had competing interests and varying visions of what a stable Europe would look like. Nonetheless, the common goal was to create a system that could provide long-term peace.

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