Europe's Tragedy

Europe's Tragedy
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 1048
Release :
ISBN-10 : UCSD:31822036404168
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (68 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Europe's Tragedy by : Peter Hamish Wilson

Download or read book Europe's Tragedy written by Peter Hamish Wilson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 1048 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The horrific series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years War (1618 - 48) tore the heart out of Europe, killing perhaps a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to whole areas of Central Europe to such a degree that many towns and regions never recovered. All the major European powers apart from England were heavily involved and, while each country started out with rational war aims, the fighting rapidly spiralled out of control, with great battles giving way to marauding bands of starving soldiers spreading plague and murder. The war was both a religious and a political one and it was this tangle of motives that made it impossible to stop. Whether motivated by idealism or cynicism, everyone drawn into the conflict was destroyed by it. At its end a recognizably modern Europe had been created but at a terrible price. Peter Wilson's book is a major work, the first new history of the war in a generation, and a fascinating, brilliantly written attempt to explain a compelling series of events. Wilson's great strength is in allowing the reader to understand the tragedy of mixed motives that allowed rulers to gamble their countries' future with such horrifying results. The principal actors in the drama (Wallenstein, Ferdinand II, Gustavus Adolphus, Richelieu) are all here, but so is the experience of the ordinary soldiers and civilians, desperately trying to stay alive under impossible circumstances. The extraordinary narrative of the war haunted Europe's leaders into the twentieth century (comparisons with 1939 - 45 were entirely appropriate) and modern Europe cannot be understood without reference to this dreadful conflict.

The Thirty Years War

The Thirty Years War
Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Total Pages : 1038
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780674246256
ISBN-13 : 067424625X
Rating : 4/5 (56 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Thirty Years War by : Peter H. Wilson

Download or read book The Thirty Years War written by Peter H. Wilson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 1038 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world. When defiant Bohemians tossed the Habsburg emperor’s envoys from the castle windows in Prague in 1618, the Holy Roman Empire struck back with a vengeance. Bohemia was ravaged by mercenary troops in the first battle of a conflagration that would engulf Europe from Spain to Sweden. The sweeping narrative encompasses dramatic events and unforgettable individuals—the sack of Magdeburg; the Dutch revolt; the Swedish militant king Gustavus Adolphus; the imperial generals, opportunistic Wallenstein and pious Tilly; and crafty diplomat Cardinal Richelieu. In a major reassessment, Wilson argues that religion was not the catalyst, but one element in a lethal stew of political, social, and dynastic forces that fed the conflict. By war’s end a recognizably modern Europe had been created, but at what price? The Thirty Years War condemned the Germans to two centuries of internal division and international impotence and became a benchmark of brutality for centuries. As late as the 1960s, Germans placed it ahead of both world wars and the Black Death as their country’s greatest disaster. An understanding of the Thirty Years War is essential to comprehending modern European history. Wilson’s masterful book will stand as the definitive account of this epic conflict. For a map of Central Europe in 1618, referenced on page XVI, please visit this book’s page on the Harvard University Press website.

Eurotragedy

Eurotragedy
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 673
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780199351381
ISBN-13 : 0199351384
Rating : 4/5 (81 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Eurotragedy by : Ashoka Mody

Download or read book Eurotragedy written by Ashoka Mody and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: EuroTragedy is an incisive exploration of the tragedy of how the European push for integration was based on illusions and delusions pursued in the face of warnings that the pursuit of unity was based on weak foundations.

The Thirty Years War

The Thirty Years War
Author :
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Total Pages : 538
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781681371238
ISBN-13 : 1681371235
Rating : 4/5 (38 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Thirty Years War by : C. V. Wedgwood

Download or read book The Thirty Years War written by C. V. Wedgwood and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe in 1618 was riven between Protestants and Catholics, Bourbon and Hapsburg--as well as empires, kingdoms, and countless principalities. After angry Protestants tossed three representatives of the Holy Roman Empire out the window of the royal castle in Prague, world war spread from Bohemia with relentless abandon, drawing powers from Spain to Sweden into a nightmarish world of famine, disease, and seemingly unstoppable destruction.

The Tragedy of a Generation

The Tragedy of a Generation
Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Total Pages : 399
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780674074941
ISBN-13 : 0674074947
Rating : 4/5 (41 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Tragedy of a Generation by : Joshua M. Karlip

Download or read book The Tragedy of a Generation written by Joshua M. Karlip and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tragedy of a Generation is the story of a failed ideal: an autonomous Jewish nation in Europe. It traces the origins of two influential strains of Jewish thought—Yiddishism and Diaspora Nationalism—and documents the waning hopes and painful reassessments of their leading representatives against the rising tide of Nazism and the Holocaust.

The History of the Thirty Years' War

The History of the Thirty Years' War
Author :
Publisher : Library of Alexandria
Total Pages : 527
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781613103661
ISBN-13 : 1613103662
Rating : 4/5 (61 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The History of the Thirty Years' War by : Friedrich Schiller

Download or read book The History of the Thirty Years' War written by Friedrich Schiller and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Lessons of Tragedy

The Lessons of Tragedy
Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
Total Pages : 183
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780300244922
ISBN-13 : 0300244924
Rating : 4/5 (22 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Lessons of Tragedy by : Hal Brands

Download or read book The Lessons of Tragedy written by Hal Brands and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “brilliant” examination of American complacency and how it puts the nation’s—and the world’s—security at risk (The Wall Street Journal). The ancient Greeks hard-wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and courage—to spur citizens and their leaders to take the difficult actions necessary to avert such a fate. Today, after more than seventy years of great-power peace and a quarter-century of unrivaled global leadership, Americans have lost their sense of tragedy. They have forgotten that the descent into violence and war has been all too common throughout human history. This amnesia has become most pronounced just as Americans and the global order they created are coming under graver threat than at any time in decades. In a forceful argument that brims with historical sensibility and policy insights, two distinguished historians argue that a tragic sensibility is necessary if America and its allies are to address the dangers that menace the international order today. Tragedy may be commonplace, Brands and Edel argue, but it is not inevitable—so long as we regain an appreciation of the world’s tragic nature before it is too late. “Literate and lucid—sure to interest to readers of Fukuyama, Huntington, and similar authors as well as students of modern realpolitik.” —Kirkus Reviews