24 Hrs at the Somme - 1 July 1916

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One hundred years after Battle of the Somme, Robert Kershaw attempts to understand the carnage, using the voices of the British and German soldiers who lived through that awful day. In the early hours of July 1, 1916, the British General staff placed its faith in patriotism and guts, believing that one "Big Push" would bring on the end of the Great War. By sunset, there were 57,470 men—more than half the size of the present-day British Army—who lay dead, missing or wounded. On that day hope died. 

Juxtaposing the British trench view against that from the German parapet, Kershaw draws on eyewitness accounts, memories and letters to expose the true horror of that day. Among the mud, gore and stench of death, there are also stories of humanity and resilience, of all-embracing comradeship and gritty patriotic British spirit. However, it was this very emotion which ultimately caused thousands of young men to sacrifice themselves on the Somme.

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Forgotten Peace - Reform, Violence, and the Making of Contemporary Colombia

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Forgotten Peace examines the efforts of Colombian society to move beyond the worst of the war in the mid-century in the Western Hemisphere and demonstrates how this effort formed concepts of the past. In the key context of Reform optimism transformed into alienation, Robert A. Karl reconstructs meetings between public officers, farmers, provincial elites and urban intellectuals.

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In order to provide the most comprehensive account of the roots of the FARC insurgency in any language, Karl offers a sizeable reinterpretation of Colombian history, as well as a worldwide process of democratic transformation, growth, and formation of minds in the 1950s and 1960s. Overviewing modern violence theories in Latin America, Forgotten Peace difficulties.

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Beliefs and Rituals in Archaic Eastern North America - An Interpretive Guide

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Archaic Eastern America's rituals and beliefs describe, illustrate and provide non-dogmatic interpretations of Archaic America's rituals and beliefs. The author Cheryl Claassen developed both a comprehensive reference and an opening in fresh archaeological taxonomies, relations, and understandings of Native American culture by compiling an array of comprehensive entries.

In an introductory paper on Archaic rituals, the material is accompanied by two parts of the papers containing reports and articles on archaeological locations. It contains studying appropriate ritual and faith methods, and information on geologic characteristics, artifact characteristics and burial environments. It also contains ethnography. Claassen's research focuses on American Archaic periods and on the geographic areas bordered by the Great Plains, North and South Florida at the end of the Ice Age roughly 11,000 years ago. This era and area share certain views and procedures, such as sacrifice, the burial of the dirt mound and oyster shell.

This interpretive manual serves as a platform for fresh interpretations and concepts of this era. For instance, Claassen connects rituals to topographic characteristics and posits the Pleistocene-Holocene transition as a significant stimulus for Archaic views. She also extends the interpretation of current information earlier understood in financial or environmental terms to include how this same information can also disclose spiritual and symbolic activities. Similarly, Claassen interprets Archaic culture in terms of human agency and social constraint, focusing on ritual acts as drivers of social conversion and ethnogenesis.

Beliefs and Rituals in Archaic Eastern North America, richly annotated and cross-referenced for ease of use, will benefit academics and students of archeology and Native American culture. The archeological record overview by Claassen should foster the creation of initial archeological and historical links and patterns. Such an approach, Claassen suggests, may reveal patterns of influence extending from early eastern Americans to the Aztec and Maya.

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