Bøger af Louise Slavicek

The State of Israel was born on May 14, 1948, in the city of Tel Aviv, in what was then officially known as Palestine. The new Jewish state was founded 2,000 years after Palestine's Roman conquerors exiled the Jews from the land they had once ruled as the Kingdom of Israel and less than 50 years after Jewish immigrants began returning to their ancient homeland as part of the Zionist movement. Within hours of Israel's establishment, armies of the five neighboring Arab countries had already begun assembling along the new nation's borders. The next morning, Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese troops invaded, launching the first in a series of conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Illustrated with full-color and black-and-white photographs, and accompanied by a chronology, bibliography, and further resources, The Establishment of the State of Israel, Updated Edition explains how this conflict has affected the history of the region and the Middle East peace process. Historical spotlights and excerpts from primary source documents are also included.

As one of history's most horrific political upheavals, the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, when the Chinese Communist Party officially launched the radical movement on the orders of its autocratic chairman, Mao Zedong. He intended for the movement to revitalize China's revolutionary fervor while simultaneously accelerating the country's evolution into a true communist utopia. China's young people became the advance guard for this new revolution, forming themselves into paramilitary Red Guard units. These adolescent shock troops humiliated, beat, and murdered teachers, intellectuals, local party officials, and others whom they judged to be insufficiently devoted to Mao and his radical ideals. By the time the Cultural Revolution finally ended in 1976, it had claimed the lives of some 3 to 4 million Chinese and left many millions more physically or psychologically scarred. Illustrated with full-color and black-and-white photographs, and accompanied by a chronology, bibliography, and further resources, The Chinese Cultural Revolution, Updated Edition provides a clear and comprehensive account of how this sweeping policy changed the course of Chinese history in the 20th century. Historical spotlights and excerpts from primary source documents are also included.

In 1347, Europe was hit by the worst natural disaster in its recorded history: the Black Death. Now believed to be a combination of bubonic plague and two other rarer plague strains, the Black Death ravaged the continent for several terrible years before finally fading away in 1352. Most historians believe that the pandemic, which also swept across parts of Western Asia and North Africa, annihilated 33 to 60 percent of Europe's population--roughly 25 to 45 million men, women, and children. This massive depopulation had a deep impact on the course of European history, speeding up or initiating important social, economic, religious, and cultural changes.

The Mexican Revolution, the deadliest social upheaval in Latin American history, erupted in 1910 when political reformers, peasants, and exploited workers overthrew Mexico's longtime dictator, Porfirio Díaz. Although it took just six months for the rebels to defeat Díaz, the revolution would grind on for almost another decade, as a succession of political and military leaders-many of them more interested in securing power for themselves than in helping Mexico's downtrodden masses-vied for control. By the time the revolution petered out in 1920, it had claimed more than a million Mexican lives and left the country's economy in shambles. Yet it had also laid the groundwork for a series of far-reaching social and economic reforms, including the biggest redistribution of land in the history of the Americas. Illustrated with full-color and black-and-white photographs, and accompanied by a chronology, bibliography, and further resources, The Mexican Revolution, Updated Edition provides a clear and comprehensive account of the social and political upheaval surrounding the revolution, its major players, and its lasting effects. Historical spotlights and excerpts from primary source documents are also included.