Archives de catégorie : History

EDEN UNDONE d’Abbott Kahler

With a mystery as alluring and exotic as the Galapagos itself, EDEN UNDONE explores the universal and timeless desire to seek Utopia—and how human fallibility renders such a quest doomed.

EDEN UNDONE:
A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II
by Abbott Kahler
Crown, Fall 2024
(via Writers House)

In December 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul George Allan Hancock and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on the shore of a remote Galapagos island. The deaths, though shocking, seemed inevitable. For the past four years Hancock had been traveling to the Galapagos, as had other wealthy, prominent Americans, to collect specimens for scientific research. On his first trip, Hancock was surprised to discover an equally exotic group of humans: European exiles who had fled political and economic unrest, hoping to create a Utopian paradise. One was so devoted to a life of isolation that he’d had his teeth extracted and replaced with a set of steel dentures.

As Hancock and his fellow American explorers would witness, the paradise suffered from chaos. The three sets of exiles—a Berlin doctor and his lover, a traumatized World War I veteran and his young family, and an Austrian Baroness with two adoring lovers—turned against each other. Petty slights led to angry confrontations. The Baroness, wielding a riding crop and pearl-handled revolver, staged physical fights between her two lovers, seduced American tourists, and threatened a friend of businessman and philanthropist Vincent Astor. The conclusion was deadly: two exiles missing and two others dead, with the survivors hurling accusations of murder.

Using never-before-published archives, and set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to World War II, Abbott Kahler weaves a chilling, stranger-than-fiction tale worthy of Agatha Christie. With a mystery as alluring and exotic as the Galapagos itself, EDEN UNDONE explores the universal and timeless desire to seek Utopia—and how human fallibility renders such a quest doomed.

Abbott Kahler, formerly writing as Karen Abbott, is the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City; American Rose; Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy; and The Ghosts of Eden Park, which was an Edgar Award finalist for best fact crime and a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award. Her debut novel, Where You End, was published January 2024.

THE SHORTEST HISTORY OF MUSIC d’Andrew Ford

From prehistory to now, the fascinating story of why music is vital to the human experience.

THE SHORTEST HISTORY OF MUSIC
by Andrew Ford
Black Inc. (Australia), August 2024

From award-winning broadcaster and composer Andrew Ford, The Shortest History of Music is a lively, authoritative tour through several thousand years of music. Packed with colourful characters and surprising details, it sets out to understand what exactly music is – and why humans are irresistibly drawn to making it.

This is not a traditional chronological account. Instead, Andrew Ford focuses on key themes in the history of music and considers how they have played out across the ages. How has music interacted with other social forces, such as religion and the economy? How have technological changes shaped the kinds of music humans make? From lullabies to concert halls, songlines to streaming services, what has music meant to humans at different times and in different places?

Andrew Ford OAM is a composer, writer and broadcaster who has won awards in each of those capacities, including the Paul Lowin Prize for his song cycle Learning to Howl, a Green Room Award for his opera Rembrandt’s Wife and the Albert H Maggs Prize for his large ensemble piece, Rauha. He has been composer-in-residence for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. In 2014 he was Poynter Fellow and visiting composer at Yale University, in 2015 visiting lecturer at the Shanghai Conservatory, and in 2018 HC Coombs Creative Arts Fellow at the Australian National University. Ford has written widely on all manner of music and published ten previous books. He has written, presented and co-produced five radio series for the ABC and, since 1995, presented The Music Show each weekend on Radio National. He was awarded an OAM in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

BATTLEGROUND UKRAINE d’Adrian Karatnycky

A prominent foreign policy analyst details the power centers that shape modern Ukraine.

BATTLEGROUND UKRAINE
From Independence to the War with Russia
by Adrian Karatnycky
Yale University Press, June 2024
(via Liza Dawson Associates)

The first major English-language history of Ukraine from its emergence after the demise of the Soviet Union through the current Russian invasion.

In 1991, after seventy years of imperial Soviet rule, Ukraine became an independent country. Since 2022, it has been fighting for its survival by resisting an unprovoked, brutal, and ongoing invasion by Russia. At the center of its resistance is the resilience of a united people.

Adrian Karatnycky tells the history of how the Ukrainian state and nation gradually emerged through the tenures of the six presidents who have led Ukraine since the collapse of the USSR, including Volodymyr Zelensky, elected in 2019.

Karatnycky shows that despite the influence of corrupt oligarchs, pressures from Russia, and the legacies of Soviet rule, a disparate but inclusive Ukrainian nation has emerged that inspires the world as it defends the principle that states have the right to their national sovereignty.

Ukraine’s battle is our battle, so understanding its post-independence history is vital if the battle is to be won. Adrian Karatnycky has done an outstanding job of telling that story, warts and all.” –Bill Emmott, former editor in chief, The Economist, and Chairman, International Institute for Strategic Studies

An indispensable history of contemporary Ukraine by a writer who is himself one of the builders of contemporary Ukraine. The point of view is intimate. The insights are astute. The sympathy extends to all who labored, fought, and sacrificed for a liberal, democratic, and European Ukraine.” –David Frum, the Atlantic

Adrian Karatnycky has a knowledge of Ukraine that comes not only with reading history but also with making it. A participant in many key events in Ukraine’s recent past, in this important book, he provides unique insights into the rise of independent Ukraine and explains why the country and its people keep fighting when others gave up.” –Serhii Plokhy, Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History, Harvard University

Truly invaluable. Adrian Karatnycky’s knowledge of and personal feel for Ukraine— its leaders and its people—come through on every page. Want to make yourself an expert on the problem that will define Europe’s future for decades to come? Read this book!” –Stephen Sestanovich, Davis Professor of International Affairs, Columbia University, Former US Ambassador-at-Large to the Newly Independent States of the Former USSR

Adrian Karatnycky is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Through the council’s Ukraine program, as a labor union official, and as CEO of Freedom House, he has been deeply engaged in Ukraine for over three decades. He has written about Ukraine for leading newspapers and journals.

DINOSAURS AT THE DINNER PARTY d’Edward Dolnick

From the bestselling author of The Clockwork Universe and The Writing of the Gods, a historical adventure story about the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones, leading to a whole new understanding of human history.

DINOSAURS AT THE DINNER PARTY
How An Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended The World
by Edward Dolnick
Scribner, August 2024
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

In the early 1800s the world was a safe and cozy place. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed footprints the size of dinner plates—the first dinosaur tracks ever found. Soon, in England, Victorians unearthed enormous bones—bones that reached as high as a man’s head. Outside of myths and fairy tales, no one had even imagined that creatures like three-toed giants had once lumbered across the land. And if anyone had somehow conjured up such a scene, they would never have imagined that all those animals could have vanished, hundreds of millions years ago. The thought of sudden, arbitrary disappearance from life was unnerving and forced the Victorians to rethink everything they knew about the world.

In DINOSAURS AT THE DINNER PARTY, celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; and moves to a brilliant, eccentric geologist named William Buckland, a kind of Doctor Doolittle on a mission to eat his way through the entire animal kingdom; and then on to Richard Owen, the most respected and the most despised scientist of his generation.

Entertaining, erudite, and featuring an unconventional cast of characters, DINOSAURS AT THE DINNER PARTY tells the story of how the accidental discovery of prehistoric creatures upended humanity’s understanding of the world and their place in it, and how a group of paleontologists worked to bring it back into focus again.

Edward Dolnick is the author of The Writing of the Gods, The Clockwork Universe, The Forger’s Spell, and the Edgar Award–winning The Rescue Artist, among other books. A former chief science writer at The Boston Globe, he has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. He lives with his wife near Washington, DC.

BEKLAUTE FRAUEN de Leonie Schöler

How women made history – and men took the credit.

BEKLAUTE FRAUEN
(Stolen Fame: Philosophers, Scholars, Pioneers: History’s Invisible Heroines)
by Leonie Schöler
Penguin, February 2024

Muse, secretary, wife: these are some of the labels used to describe the women whose influence on history has been erased. Their achievements have brought honour and fame to the men close to them – such as Karl Marx, Bertolt Brecht and Albert Einstein, who couldn’t have done what they did without their female friends, daughters or lovers – but they themselves remain largely unknown. The list includes scientists like Rosalind Franklin and Lise Meitner, who, unlike their male colleagues, were never celebrated for their discoveries; and authors and artists like Marie Hirsch, Lou Andreas-Salomé and Hedwig Thun, who hid behind male pseudonyms all their lives in order to be taken seriously. In « Stolen Fame », Schöler tells their stories, introducing us to the women who changed human history and showing that there are still issues around participation and visibility. Behind every successful man is a system that empowers him – and that system stands in every woman’s way.

For fans of Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, Unlearn Patriarchy by Lisa Jaspers et al., The Patriarchy of Thing » by Rebekka Endler and Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly.

Leonie Schöler is a historian, journalist and presenter. Her articles have been published in taz and Zeit Online, and she also works as an editor and online filmmaker (« Jäger und Sammler », « Y-Kollektiv » and « Auf Klo ») for various broadcasters. Her documentary exposing fraud and money laundering at Germany’s largest meat processing company came out in 2021, and she is the author and director of a 2022 online series about the infamous Wannsee Conference (both shown by ZDF). She produces popular history content for TikTok and Instagram and talks to her more than 170k followers about politics past and present. In 2022, she became presenter of ZDF’s Heureka programme (shown on YouTube).