Audio book description"Neighbours...hah! People'd live for ages side by side, nodding at one another amicably on their way to work, and then some trivial thing would happen, and someone would be having a garden fork removed from their ear." Throughout history, there's always been a perfectly good reason to start a war. Never more so if it is over a "strategic" piece of old rock in the middle of nowhere. It is, after all, every citizen's right to bear arms to defend what they consider to be their own. Even if it isn't. And in such pressing circumstances, you really shouldn't let small details like the absence of an army - or indeed the money to finance one - get in the way of a righteous fight with all the attendant benefits of out-and-out nationalism.
Audio book descriptionA revelatory study of how Americans were bound together as a young nation by the words, the image, and the myth of George Washington, and how slavery shaped American nationalism in ways that define and haunt us still. How did people in our country, Nor…
Audio book descriptionTake a historical look at the virulent and violent phenomena called "ultra-nationalism" in Japan. Professor Befu starts with loyalty toward the feudal overlords during the Tokugawa era, and shows how it was transmuted and elevated after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 into loyalty toward the concept of Japan as embodied in the divine person of the emperor. He then goes on to show why, despite many successes in the late 19th and early 20th century, Japan continued to feel threatened, beleaguered, and misunderstood - feelings which resulted, ultimately, in the manifestation of "ultra-nationalism."…
Audio book descriptionThe Book of Kings is an epic novel that begins in the years shortly before World War II and leads up to the present day. While Europe drifts toward Nazism, four students share an apartment on the rue de Fleurus in Paris. Thackara brilliantly forges the stories of these four men whose lives mirror the larger picture. The title alludes to God's prophetic warning to Samuel about the rise of man-made kings. James Thackara, as John Walsh wrote in The New Yorker, "watches Hitler's rise from a dozen different perspectives: at Nuremberg rallies; as reported in dinner table gossip; in close-up appearances at Hindenburg's side; in letters and rumors of war; in the gradually thickening atmosphere of fright and inevitability." A work of extraordinary vision and range, The Book of Kings magnificently fuses myth and the inexorable events of history.
Audio book descriptionHear the speeches of chief executives spanning 85 years of American history, from William Howard Taft at the turn of the century to Bill Clinton in 1993. This comprehensive 6 volume collection includes the most famous and finest orations of 17 American presidents. Many of the speeches have been handpicked by the president who gave them, or by his estate. You'll hear Theodore Roosevelt speak about the Progressive Party, listen to FDR give his inspiring "we have just begun to fight" campaign address, and hear Richard Nixon present his 1969 address to the nation about the Vietnam War. These riveting speeches give a unique perspective on the nation's past, revealing which events - from trust-busting to the Great Depression to the Middle East oil crisis - were important enough to command an address from the U.S. commander-in-chief.
