検索キーワード： 西ヨーロッパ

By the early ninth century, the Carolingian empire was at the height of its power. The Franks, led by Charlemagne, had built the largest European domain since Rome in its heyday. Though they jockeyed for power, prestige, and profit, the Frankish elites enjoyed political and cultural consensus. But just two generations later, their world was in shambles. Civil war, once an unthinkable threat, had erupted after Louis the Pious’s sons tried to overthrow him—and then placed their knives at the other’s neck. Families who had once charged into battle together now drew each other’s blood.

D-Day was bloody, chaotic and frequently terrifying. Its outcome was far from certain. And at its epicentre were tens of thousands of young men, many seeing their first active service. It was a single day that changed millions of lives. A critical turning point of the Second World War. Using audio interviews with British, American, Canadian and German veterans, as well as French civilians, this immersive new oral history describes what it was actually like to take part in the landings on 6 June 1944 and the weeks of ferocious fighting in Normandy that followed.

Een bruisende geschiedenis van het Amsterdamse straatleven in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw. Na alle boeken over belangrijke bestuurders krijgen nu eindelijk ook de gewone Amsterdammers uit die tijd een gezicht. Het Amsterdamse centrum staat vol monumenten. Maar al die stenen herinneringen aan een rijk verleden zeggen weinig over hoe de zeventiende- en achttiende-eeuwse Amsterdammers de openbare ruimte gebruikten. Wie kwam je tegen in de straten van het oude Amsterdam? Wat zag je, hoorde je en maakte je mee als je je door de stadspoorten naar binnen begaf?

Part biography, part memoir, part travelogue, Suchet draws on his own life and career as a foreign correspondent and news anchor to show how Beethoven’s music has accompanied him through the best and worst of times. It was with him as a music-loving and adventurous teenager, as a journalist entering Beirut in the grip of civil war, and as he has continued to explore the old cities of Bonn and Vienna, in search of the man behind the music. In this novel and compelling book, we see Beethoven brought vividly – and sometimes painfully – to life.

For centuries much of Europe was in the hands of the very peculiar Habsburg family. An unstable mixture of wizards, obsessives, melancholics, bores, musicians and warriors, they saw off – through luck, guile and sheer mulishness – any number of rivals, until finally packing up in 1918. From their principal lairs along the Danube they ruled most of Central Europe and Germany and interfered everywhere – indeed the history of Europe hardly makes sense without them.

There are many reasons to be fascinated by Germany: forests, architecture and fairy tales, not to mention its history and inhabitants’ penchant for very peculiar food. Our distant and often maligned cousin, this is a place in which innumerable strange characters have held power, in which a chaotic jigsaw of borders have moved about seemingly at random, and which at the dark heart of the 20th century fell into the hands of truly terrible forces. And now Simon Winder is here to tell us everything else there is to know about this mesmerizing, tortured and endlessly fascinating country.

In AD 843, the three surviving grandsons of the great Emperor Charlemagne met at Verdun. After years of bitter squabbles over who would inherit the family land, they finally decided to divide the territory and go their separate ways. In a moment of staggering significance, one grandson inherited what became France, another Germany and the third Lotharingia: the chunk that initially divided the other two. The dynamic between these three great zones has dictated much of our subsequent fate.

The tenth century dawned in violence and disorder. Charlemagne’s empire was in ruins, most of Spain had been claimed by Moorish invaders, and even the papacy in Rome was embroiled in petty, provincial conflicts. To many historians, it was a prime example of the ignorance and uncertainty of the Dark Ages. Yet according to historian Paul Collins, the story of the tenth century is the story of our culture’s birth, of the emergence of our civilization into the light of day.

The Dutch East India Company, officially the United East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie; VOC), was a megacorporation created in the early 17th century by a government-directed merger of many competing Dutch trade services. You might think that Amazon or Google is big, but the VOC is still thought to be the world's biggest corporation in documented history.

The Battle of the Bulge was the largest land engagement of World War II. The German counter-attack, spearheaded by three Panzer armies, found the Allies unprepared and ill-equipped. As the fighting raged across the frosty forests of the Ardennes, it was left to a few untested US Infantry divisions to hold the Allied lines. Written by one of the world's leading experts on the subject, this account provides an essential introduction to the events of winter 1944-'45 and to the many soldiers who risked their lives in defence of freedom.

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was zonder twijfel één van de merkwaardigste figuren van de Nederlandse geschiedenis. Kuyper richtte zijn eigen dagblad, partij, universiteit en kerk op, de instrumenten waarmee hij de strijd aanbond tegen ‘de revolutie’, tegen liberalisme, socialisme, evolutieleer, Tachtigerpoëzie, Multatuli, enzovoorts. Terwijl hij voor zijn gereformeerde achterban een nieuwe Mozes leek, was hij voor menig ander een dagelijkse steen des aanstoots. Maar wat men ook van hem vond, feit is dat de invloed van deze ‘geroepene’ op de Nederlandse samenleving aanzienlijk was.

In The Red Hotel, former Daily Telegraph Foreign Editor and Russian expert Alan Philps sets out the way Stalin created his own reality by constraining and muzzling the British and American reporters covering the Eastern front during the war and forcing them to reproduce Kremlin propaganda. War correspondents were both bullied and pampered in a gilded cage of the Metropol Hotel. Through the use of British archives and Russian sources, the story of the role of the women of the Metropol Hotel and the foreign reporters they worked with is told for the first time.

Milan Kundera’s early nonfiction work feels especially resonant in our own time. In these pieces, Kundera pleads the case of the “small nations” of Europe who, by culture, are Western with deep roots in Europe, despite Russia imposing its own Communist political regimes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Kundera warns that the real tragedy here is not Russia but Europe, whose own identity and culture are directly challenged and threatened in a way that could lead to their destruction.

Based on select writings from a collection of more than two thousand Dutch diaries written during World War II in order to record this unparalleled time, and maintained by devoted archivists, The Diary Keepers illuminates a part of history we haven’t seen in quite this way before, from the stories of a Nazi sympathizing police officer to a Jewish journalist who documented daily activities at a transport camp.

Nine thousand men of the First British Airborne Division were parachuted into the peaceful countryside that surrounded Arnhem. Their objective was to capture and hold the bridge over the Rhine ahead of the advancing British Second Army. Nine days later, after some of the fiercest street-fighting of the war, 2,000 paratroopers managed to escape to safety.

Het bijzondere verhaal van Nederlands vergeten buurland Moresnet. Van 1816 tot 1918 lag Moresnet aan de Nederlandse zuidgrens. Het landje had 300 inwoners, die zich in de loop van de tijd echt een volk begonnen te voelen. Ze hadden een eigen hoofdstad (het dorp Kelmis), een staatshoofd (de burgemeester) en een verdedigingsmacht (de veldwachter). De vrijheid en lage belastingen trokken duizenden avonturiers aan en Moresnet groeide uit tot een voorbeeld van hoe mensen zonder grote overheid gelukkig en welvarend konden worden. Sterker nog, de wereldvrede moest hier beginnen.

1302 is een historisch jaar. Vlaanderen dankt er zelfs zijn feestdag aan: 11 juli, de dag waarop in Kortrijk de Guldensporenslag werd uitgevochten. Lange tijd was 1302 ook het onderwerp van talloze polemieken en mythes. Wat maakt 1302 zo iconisch? Het verhaal van 1302 begint met het economisch welvarende Vlaanderen dat ten prooi valt van een sluwe Franse koning. Maar wanneer al lang gistende spanningen in de Vlaamse steden tot explosie komen, stort het Franse bouwwerk in.

In Nine Desperate Days: America's Rainbow Division in the Aisne-Marne Offensive, historian Robert Thompson chronicles the hardships and tenacity of the men from the 42nd Division during this pivotal campaign. The Americans did not break despite heavy losses, and were able to drive the Germans back from territory they initially gained. The efforts of the Rainbow Division during Aisne-Marne were key to the ultimate Allied victory and are a symbol of American valor and sacrifice during the "war to end all wars."

Find out how the people of this country fought against nature to cultivate land below sea level. Discover how they survived wars, invasions, and natural disasters and developed a trading nation that would become the envy of Europe. Uncover the truth behind bloody battles fought between medieval royalty, warlords, and rebellious guilds of Dutch workers, all of which shaped the country we know today.

In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards became the first nation in history to have worldwide reach; across most of Europe to the Americas, the Philippines, and India. Goodwin tells the story of Spain and the Spaniards, from great soldiers like the Duke of Alba to literary figures and artists such as El Greco, Velázquez, Cervantes, and Lope de Vega, and the monarchs who ruled over them.