Citizens of Everywhere
Citizens of Everywhere

Author: Peter Gumbel

Publisher: Haus Publishing

Published: 2020-12-11

Total Pages: 62

ISBN-13: 1913368084

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In 1939, as war loomed, Peter Gumbel’s Jewish-born grandparents fled Nazi Germany for England. But within a matter of decades, their grandson, appalled by the Brexit referendum, had become a citizen of the country they fled eighty years ago. How had it come to this? Drawing on one family’s migration stories, Citizens of Everywhere explores the nature of belonging amid cycles of pluralism and nationalism. In an increasingly global world, nativist and diasporic impulses pull many people in contradictory directions that can be difficult to even understand. In Citizens of Everywhere, Gumbel grapples with this complexity through his own family history, revealing the personal costs of Britain’s recent isolationist retreat. Along the way, he laments the decline of British pluralism at the worst possible moment—as it rejects the European project and engages in an ill-fated struggle against an ever more interconnected world.

Imperial Nostalgia
Imperial Nostalgia

Author: Peter Mitchell

Publisher:

Published: 2021-07-12

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781526161314

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A short, polemical study of the persistence of imperial nostalgia in modern British culture, politics, heritage and media.

Perfidious Albion
Perfidious Albion

Author: Sam Byers

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780571336302

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A searing, satirical portrait of a divided England in a connected age - a 1984 for our times.

Britain Alone
Britain Alone

Author: Philip Stephens

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2021-01-26

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 0571341799

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NEW AND UPDATED EDITIONA magisterial and profoundly perceptive survey of Britain's post-war role on the global stage, from Suez to Brexit. 'The fullest long-run political and diplomatic narrative yet of Britain's fateful, tragi-comic road to Brexit.'DAVID KYNASTON'An instant classic . . . Stephens is a master of historical codebreaking.'PETER HENNESSEYAward-winning Financial Times journalist Philip Stephens paints a fascinating portrait of sixty years - from Suez to Brexit - as Britain struggles to reconcile its waning power with its past glory. Drawing on decades of personal contact and interviews with senior politicians and diplomats in Britain, the United States and across the capitals of Europe, Britain Alone is a magisterial and deeply perceptive history of our nation and how we arrived at the state we are in.'Commanding . . . Rarely if ever, in the history of the British state since 1707, has one half of Britain's ruling elite committed an act of policy viewed with such absolute contempt by the other half; and rarely has that contempt been expressed with such elegance, such fluency, and such a devastating wealth of supporting detail, as in this mighty survey.' SCOTSMAN'Profoundly knowledgeable.' CHRIS PATTEN'Compelling.' LAWRENCE FREEDMAN'A fascinating history.' IRISH TIMES'A magnificent, exhilarating book' PROSPECT

Empire of Guns
Empire of Guns

Author: Priya Satia

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018-04-10

Total Pages: 569

ISBN-13: 0735221871

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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as inextricable from the gun trade "A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war. Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it. Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history -- a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.

The Sinews of Power
The Sinews of Power

Author: John Brewer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-11

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1134998511

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First published in 1989. `The book is a distinguished work - of importance to students of governmental development generally. It is written in a fluent, non-technical manner that should reach a wide audience.' American Historical Review.

Private Island
Private Island

Author: James Meek

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2014-10-07

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1781682909

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“The essential public good that Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and now Cameron sell is not power stations, or trains, or hospitals. It’s the public itself. it’s us.” In a little over a generation the bones and sinews of the British economy – rail, energy, water, postal services, municipal housing – have been sold to remote, unaccountable private owners, often from overseas. In a series of brilliant portraits the award-winning novelist and journalist James Meek shows how Britain’s common wealth became private, and the impact it has had on us all: from the growing shortage of housing to spiralling energy bills. Meek explores the human stories behind the incremental privatization of the nation over the last three decades. He shows how, as our national assets are sold, ordinary citizens are handed over to private tax-gatherers, and the greatest burden of taxes shifts to the poorest. In the end, it is not only public enterprises that have become private property, but we ourselves. Urgent, powerfully written and deeply moving, this is a passionate anatomy of the state of the nation: of what we have lost and what losing it cost us – the rent we must pay to exist on this private island.

Englishness
Englishness

Author: Ailsa Henderson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-03-04

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0192643789

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Until the Brexit referendum, there was widespread doubt as to whether English nationalism existed at all, at least beyond a small fringe. Since then, it has come to be regarded an obvious explanation for the vote to Leave the European Union. Subsequent opinion polls have raised doubts about the extent of continuing English commitment to the Union of the United Kingdom itself. Yet even as Englishness is apparently reshaping Britain's place in world and perhaps, ultimately, the state itself, it remains poorly understood. In this book Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones draw on data from the Future of England Survey, a specially commissioned public attitudes survey programme exploring the political implications of English identity, to make new and original arguments about the nature of English nationalism. They demonstrate that English nationalism is emphatically not a rejection of Britain and Britishness. Rather, English nationalism combines a sense of grievance about England's place within the United Kingdom with a fierce commitment to a particular vision of Britain's past, present, and future. Understanding its Janus-faced nature - both England and Britain - is key not only to understanding English nationalism, but also to understanding the ways in which it is transforming British politics.

Diet for a Large Planet
Diet for a Large Planet

Author: Chris Otter

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2023-06-05

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0226826538

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A history of the unsustainable modern diet—heavy in meat, wheat, and sugar—that requires more land and resources than the planet is able to support. We are facing a world food crisis of unparalleled proportions. Our reliance on unsustainable dietary choices and agricultural systems is causing problems both for human health and the health of our planet. Solutions from lab-grown food to vegan diets to strictly local food consumption are often discussed, but a central question remains: how did we get to this point? In Diet for a Large Planet, Chris Otter goes back to the late eighteenth century in Britain, where the diet heavy in meat, wheat, and sugar was developing. As Britain underwent steady growth, urbanization, industrialization, and economic expansion, the nation altered its food choices, shifting away from locally produced plant-based nutrition. This new diet, rich in animal proteins and refined carbohydrates, made people taller and stronger, but it led to new types of health problems. Its production also relied on far greater acreage than Britain itself, forcing the nation to become more dependent on global resources. Otter shows how this issue expands beyond Britain, looking at the global effects of large agro-food systems that require more resources than our planet can sustain. This comprehensive history helps us understand how the British played a significant role in making red meat, white bread, and sugar the diet of choice—linked to wealth, luxury, and power—and shows how dietary choices connect to the pressing issues of climate change and food supply.