In Operation Cobra, six US divisions during six dramatic days in Normandy ended the stalemate on the western front, breaking through German defenses after seven weeks of grueling attrition warfare. ...After D-Day examines the experiences of U.S. soldiers in the July 25-30, 1944, Normandy campaign: their mistakes, hardships, and fears, as well as their leadership, courage, and determination. Drawing on original archival sources, Carafano argues that previous accounts of Operation Cobra are flawed. Standard explanations of its success--the force of air power, innovative tactics, superior logistics, the inestimable value of "citizen soldiers," hedgerow busting "rhino" tanks--are in fact myths. And serious mistakes were made: one of the most famous US generals, Omar Bradley, ordered strategic bombing close to US lines, a decision that led to the killing and maiming of hundreds of US soldiers by "friendly fire." Nonetheless, Carafano demonstrates, operational flexibility--the ability of commanders to exercise effective combat leadership and take advantage of troop strengths and material advantages--resulted in Allied victory.
Hiding the Guillotine Taieb, Emmanuel; Raillard, Sarah-Louise; Roth, Mitchel P
2020, 2020-11-15
eBook, Book
Hiding the Guillotine examines the question of state involvement in violence by tracing the evolution of public executions in France. Why did the state move executions from the bloody and public ...stage of the guillotine to behind prison doors? In a fascinating exploration of a grim subject, Emmanuel Taïeb exposes the rituals and theatrical form of the death penalty and tells us who watched, who participated in, and who criticized (and ultimately brought an end to) a spectacle that the state called "punishment." France's abolition of the death penalty in 1981 has long overshadowed its suppression of public executions over forty years earlier. Since the Revolution, executions attracted tens of thousands of curious onlookers. But, gradually, there was a shift in attitude and the public no longer saw this as a civilized pastime. Why? Combining material from legal archives, police files, an executioner's notebooks, newspaper clippings, and documents relating to 566 executions, Hiding the Guillotine answers this question. Taïeb demonstrates the ways in which the media was at the vanguard of putting an end to the publicity surrounding the death penalty. The press had ample reason to be critical: cities were increasingly being used for leisure activity and prisons for those accused of criminal activity. The agitation surrounding each execution, coupled with a growing identification with the condemned, would blur these boundaries. Ranked among the top hundred history books by the website, Café du Web Historizo, Hiding the Guillotine has much to impart to students of legal history, human rights, and criminology, as well as to American historians.
The Marais Reader, Keith
07/2020, Volume:
71
eBook
A cultural history of one of Paris's most fascinating and variegated areas, whose history can be summarized as 'from riches to rags and back again.' The Marais was the beating heart of fashionable ...Paris from the Middle Ages through to the time of Louis XIV, when the court's move to Versailles marked the start of a decline in its fortunes. Thereafter it became a working-class, largely Jewish area, sometimes described as a 'ghetto', and by the early twentieth century was in a parlous condition from which it was extricated by the Paris City Council and the 1960s restoration plan of André Malraux (which did not go without criticism and opposition). Its most recent avatar has been as the best-known gay quartier of the capital, though again this identity has not been a straightforward or always easily-accepted one. The stress throughout will be on representations - literary, cinematic, autobiographical, photographic and in graphic-novel form - as much as if not more than the unfolding of historical events.
Why do secular states pursue different policies toward religion? This book provides a generalizable argument about the impact of ideological struggles on the public policy making process, as well as ...a state-religion regimes index of 197 countries. More specifically, it analyzes why American state policies are largely tolerant of religion, whereas French and Turkish policies generally prohibit its public visibility, as seen in their bans on Muslim headscarves. In the United States, the dominant ideology is 'passive secularism', which requires the state to play a passive role, by allowing public visibility of religion. Dominant ideology in France and Turkey is 'assertive secularism', which demands that the state play an assertive role in excluding religion from the public sphere. Passive and assertive secularism became dominant in these cases through certain historical processes, particularly the presence or absence of an ancien régime based on the marriage between monarchy and hegemonic religion during state-building periods.
Arsenic (As) is reputed to be a redox-sensitive element but has not been fully explored yet as a proxy in marine sediments and sedimentary rocks, compared to extensively examined elements such as ...molybdenum (Mo) and uranium (U). Here the behavior of As is compared to that of Mo and U in a number of paleo-environmental situations that have been studied before and are, therefore, rather well constrained. The results indicate that attention must be paid to the reference values used to normalize sedimentary As content in geochemical studies. The most-commonly used references (namely the Post-Archean Australian Shale and average upper crust of Earth, to be opposed to the Average Shale) tend to overestimate slightly As enrichments as shown by As enrichment factors being quasi systematically larger than 1, whatever the geological setting. The results also show that As enrichments are less straightforward compared to those of Mo and U, when using these elements as redox proxies. In addition, the depositional milieus that endured the most hydrologically-restricted and/or reducing (euxinic) conditions are not those with the highest As enrichments. Thus, arsenic shows a redox-sensitive behavior but is not adequate as a redox proxy. However As enrichments are correlated with Mo enrichments in two distinct types of situations: settings impacted 1) by particulate iron shuttling processes and, 2) by diagenetic fluid circulation (cold seeps). In both cases, the Mo-As correlation is induced by the strong relationship between these trace metals and reactive iron: Fe conveys both As and Mo to the sediment where they are trapped. Thus arsenic has a promising potential to allow recognition of past depositional environments associated with iron shuttling and (cold) seep circulations. Lastly, high-TOC, high-Mo, low-As situations point out possible occurrences of sulfurized organic matter in sediments. High Mo concentrations indicate reducing, sulfidic conditions prone to organic-matter accumulation (high TOC values), but low As concentrations indicate that reactive iron was a limiting factor, preventing As capture. Under such conditions, free H2S was not associating with iron and could react with organic matter, causing its sulfurization.
•Arsenic (As) is redox sensitive.•As is not a reliable redox proxy•As enrichments through iron-shuttling and/or at cold seeps•High-TOC, high-Mo, low-As: possible occurrences of sulfurized organic matter.
Empire lost Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi
2009., 2009, 2009-12-31, 20090101
eBook
Despite the loss of the French Empire, France and its former colonies are still bound by a common historical past. With the new global promotion of la Francophonie, the relation between the various ...constituencies of the French-speaking regions of the world is reexamined and debated in this book, through the conversation between scholars dealing with diverse texts and contexts that present the colonial contact and its imprint. The book illustrates how, in France and in its other worlds, that contact, its repercussions, and its memory are lived and expressed today in a variety of textual representations. The historical contact between France and its other worlds has given birth to new kinds of cross-cultural expressions in the arts, in literature, and in aesthetics, establishing interrelations and generating appropriations from both sides of the Hexagon frontier, highlighting the fluidity and the permeability of its cultural borders. The book subtext tells that the frontier between France and its other worlds is no more an unshakable geographical, political, and cultural limit, but rather a line that has become mobile, fluctuating, and permeable, and across which currents, ideas, sensitivities, and creativity are expressed, bearing testimony to vitality and diversity but also to a cross-fertilization of cultures and societies (re) crossing or meeting at that line. Seen from this latter perspective, the book comes also as an interrogation of the inclusiveness or exclusiveness of the words francophone and Francophonie, and, at an academic level, a mutual exclusion of French and Francophone Studies.
In the raucous decade following World War I, newly blurred boundaries between male and female created fears among the French that theirs was becoming a civilization without sexes. This new gender ...confusion became a central metaphor for the War's impact on French culture and led to a marked increase in public debate concerning female identity and woman's proper role. Mary Louise Roberts examines how in these debates French society came to grips with the catastrophic horrors of the Great War. In sources as diverse as parliamentary records, newspaper articles, novels, medical texts, writings on sexology, and vocational literature, Roberts discovers a central question: how to come to terms with rapid economic, social, and cultural change and articulate a new order of social relationships. She examines the role of French trauma concerning the War in legislative efforts to ban propaganda for abortion and contraception, and explains anxieties about the decline of maternity by a crisis in gender relations that linked soldiery, virility, and paternity. Through these debates, Roberts locates the seeds of actual change. She shows how the willingness to entertain, or simply the need to condemn, nontraditional gender roles created an indecisiveness over female identity that ultimately subverted even the most conservative efforts to return to traditional gender roles and irrevocably altered the social organization of gender in postwar France.
An encounter between a warring knight and the world of learning could seem a paradox. It is nonetheless related with the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, an essential intellectual movement for western ...history. Knights not only fought in battles, but also moved in sophisticated courts. Knights were interested in Latin classics and reading, and writing poetry. Supportive of “jongleurs” and minstrels, they enjoyed literary conversations with clerics who would attempt to reform their behaviour, which was often brutal. These lettered warriors, while improving their culture, learned to repress their own violence and were initiated to courtesy: selective language, measured gestures, elegance in dress, and manners at the table. Their association with women, who were often learned, became more gallant. A revolution of thought occurred among lay elites who, in contact with clergy, began to use their weapons for common welfare. This new conduct was a tangible sign of Medievalist society's leap forward towards modernity. This monograph contains a great deal of detailed information about the attitudes towards learning and written culture among members of the nobility in different parts of Europe in the Middle Ages.
