From The Ashes Of History

In recent years, calls for reparations and restorative justice, alongside the rise of populist grievance politics, have demonstrated the stubborn resilience of traumatic memory. From the transnational Black Lives Matter movement's calls for reckoning with the legacy of slavery and racial oppression, to continued efforts to secure recognition of the Armenian genocide or Imperial Japan's human rights abuses, international politics is replete with examples of past violence reasserting itself in the present. But how should scholars understand trauma's long-term impacts? Why do some traumas lie dormant for generations, only to surface anew in pivotal moments? And how does trauma scale from individuals to larger political groupings like nations and states, shaping political identities, grievances, and policymaking? In From the Ashes of History, Adam B. Lerner looks at collective trauma as a foundational force in international politics--a shock to political cultures that can constitute new actors and shape decision-making over the long-term. As Lerner shows, uncovering collective trauma's role in international politics is vital for two key reasons. First, it can help explain longstanding tensions between groups--an especially relevant topic as scholars examine the transnational resurgence of nationalism and populism. Second, it pushes the discipline of International Relations to more completely account for mass violence's true long-term costs, particularly as they become embedded in longstanding structural inequalities and injustices. While IR scholarship has largely dismissed non-systematic, latent phenomena like trauma, Lerner argues that collective trauma can help draw the lines between international political groups and frame the logics of international political action. Drawing on three historical cases that uncover the impact of collective trauma in Indian, Israeli, and American foreign policymaking, From the Ashes of History demonstrates the broad utility of collective trauma as a theoretical lens for investigating how mass violence's legacy can resurge and dissipate over time.

These stories of trauma cannot be limited to the catastrophes they name, and the theory of catastrophic history may ultimately be written in a language that already lingers in a time that comes to us from the other side of the disaster.

The formation, organization, and accessibility of archives and libraries are critical for the production of historical narratives. They contain the materials with which historians and others reconstruct past events. Archives and libraries, however, not only help produce history, but also have a history of their own. From the early colonial projects to the formation of nation states in Latin America, archives and libraries had been at the center of power struggles and conflicting ideas over patrimony and document preservation that demand historical scrutiny. Much of their collections have been lost on account of accidents or sheer negligence, but there are also cases of recovery and reconstruction that have opened new windows to the past. The essays in this volume explore several fascinating cases of destruction and recovery of archives and libraries and illuminate the ways in which those episodes help shape the writing of historical narratives and the making of collective memories.

*#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER *Winner, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Nonfiction *Winner, Indigenous Voices Awards *Winner, High Plains Book Awards *Finalist, CBC Canada Reads *A Globe and Mail Book of the Year *An Indigo Book of the Year *A CBC Best Canadian Nonfiction Book of the Year In this extraordinary and inspiring debut memoir, Jesse Thistle, once a high school dropout and now a rising Indigenous scholar, chronicles his life on the streets and how he overcame trauma and addiction to discover the truth about who he is. If I can just make it to the next minute...then I might have a chance to live; I might have a chance to be something more than just a struggling crackhead. From the Ashes is a remarkable memoir about hope and resilience, and a revelatory look into the life of a Métis-Cree man who refused to give up. Abandoned by his parents as a toddler, Jesse Thistle briefly found himself in the foster-care system with his two brothers, cut off from all they had known. Eventually the children landed in the home of their paternal grandparents, whose tough-love attitudes quickly resulted in conflicts. Throughout it all, the ghost of Jesse’s drug-addicted father haunted the halls of the house and the memories of every family member. Struggling with all that had happened, Jesse succumbed to a self-destructive cycle of drug and alcohol addiction and petty crime, spending more than a decade on and off the streets, often homeless. Finally, he realized he would die unless he turned his life around. In this heartwarming and heart-wrenching memoir, Jesse Thistle writes honestly and fearlessly about his painful past, the abuse he endured, and how he uncovered the truth about his parents. Through sheer perseverance and education—and newfound love—he found his way back into the circle of his Indigenous culture and family. An eloquent exploration of the impact of prejudice and racism, From the Ashes is, in the end, about how love and support can help us find happiness despite the odds.

A sweeping history of twentieth-century Europe that examines its unprecedented destruction—and abiding promise A sweeping history of twentieth-century Europe, Out of Ashes tells the story of an era of unparalleled violence and barbarity yet also of humanity, prosperity, and promise. Konrad Jarausch describes how the European nations emerged from the nineteenth century with high hopes for continued material progress and proud of their imperial command over the globe, only to become embroiled in the bloodshed of World War I, which brought an end to their optimism and gave rise to competing democratic, communist, and fascist ideologies. He shows how the 1920s witnessed renewed hope and a flourishing of modernist art and literature, but how the decade ended in economic collapse and gave rise to a second, more devastating world war and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Jarausch further explores how Western Europe surprisingly recovered due to American help and political integration. Finally, he examines how the Cold War pushed the divided continent to the brink of nuclear annihilation, and how the unforeseen triumph of liberal capitalism came to be threatened by Islamic fundamentalism, global economic crisis, and an uncertain future. A gripping narrative, Out of Ashes explores the paradox of the European encounter with modernity in the twentieth century, shedding new light on why it led to cataclysm, inhumanity, and self-destruction, but also social justice, democracy, and peace.

A New York Times reporter offers a powerful indictment of the CIA and its intelligence-gathering capabilities as he traces the history of the organization from the end of World War II to Iraq, in a study that condemns the CIA for its record, its inability to understand world affairs, the violence it has unleashed, and its undermining of American politics. Reprint. 150,000 first printing.

In Fire under the Ashes, John Donoghue recovers the lasting significance of the radical ideas of the English Revolution, exploring their wider Atlantic history through a case study of Coleman Street Ward, London. Located in the crowded center of seventeenth-century London, Coleman Street Ward was a hotbed of political, social, and religious unrest. There among diverse and contentious groups of puritans a tumultuous republican underground evolved as the political means to a more perfect Protestant Reformation. But while Coleman Street has long been recognized as a crucial location of the English Revolution, its importance to events across the Atlantic has yet to be explored. Prominent merchant revolutionaries from Coleman Street led England’s imperial expansion by investing deeply in the slave trade and projects of colonial conquest. Opposing them were other Coleman Street puritans, who having crossed and re-crossed the ocean as colonists and revolutionaries, circulated new ideas about the liberty of body and soul that they defined against England’s emergent, political economy of empire. These transatlantic radicals promoted social justice as the cornerstone of a republican liberty opposed to both political tyranny and economic slavery—and their efforts, Donoghue argues, provided the ideological foundations for the abolitionist movement that swept the Atlantic more than a century later.

'Hughes takes us on a breathless tour through cricket history, the great players, personalities, matches and events. He never slackens pace or dwells on the dry details of the scoreboard.' - The Times From the William Hill Award-Winning author of A Lot of Hard Yakka comes Cricket's Greatest Rivalry: A History of the Ashes in 10 Matches, a fast-paced, distinctive history of the iconic, 135-year-old cricketing rivalry between England and Australia. The new paperback edition is completely revised and updated to include the tumultuous two series of 2013-2014, which saw more more twists and turns in this enthralling contest. No other sport has a fixture like the Ashes. From the early 1880s the rivalry between these two great sporting nations has captured the public imagination and made sporting legends of its stars. Commentator, analyst and award-winning cricket historian Simon Hughes tells the story of the ten seminal series that have become the stuff of sporting folklore. Cricket's Greatest Rivalry places you right at the heart of the action of each pivotal match, explaining the social context of the time, the atmosphere of the crowd and the background and temperaments of the players that battled in both baggy green and blue caps. Simon starts his story at the very birth of the Ashes and tells the tale of the band of Australians that took on the best gentleman and players in the Empire's HQ and beat them on their home turf. That momentous occasion set the tone for some epic contests including: The thrilling 1902 Test at Old Trafford, which was one by a mere three runs. The incredible innings of Hobbs and Sutcliffe in front of a tense and packed Oval in 1926. The legendary 'bodyline' series of Jardine, Larwood, Bradman et al in 1933. The incredible run chase in 1948 that also saw Bradman's last test. England's reprise in the fifth test of 1953 when Lock, Trueman, Bailey and Hutton steered the hosts to a whirlwind victory. The fearsome pace attack from the likes of Lillie and Thompson that transformed the contest in the first Test of 1974 and shaped the Ashes as a tournament for decades to come. Botham's Ashes in 1981 that restored pride in a sports-mad nation. The match up at old Trafford where the magic of one Shane Warne sent shockwaves through the game. And finally the breaking of the Aussie stranglehold in 2005, when Flintoff, Pietersen and Vaughan did the seemingly impossible and re-established the greatest of rivalries. The book also includes complete statistics and records of all the Ashes fixtures and results and much, much more!