In his new book, Tony Le Tissier provides the first detailed account of the Soviet-German conflict east of Berlin, culminating in 1945 with the last major land battle in Europe that proved decisive for the fate of Berlin. When the first Red Army soldier reached the Oder on the 31st of January, everyone at the Soviet Headquarters expected Marshall Zhukov's troops to bring a quick end to the war. However, despite desperate fighting by both sides, a stalemate persisted for two months, at the end of which the Soviet bridgeheads north and south of Kustrin were united and the fortress finally fell. By drawing not only on official sources, but also on the accounts of individuals involved, Le Tissier meticulously reconstructs the difficult breakthrough achieved on the Oder: the establishment of bridgeheads, the battle for the fortress of Kustrin, the bloody fight for Seelow Heights. Numerous maps and step by step illustrations show the operations of both contestants in detail and reveal a most interesting episode in the history of the Second World War in Europe.

In his new book, Tony Le Tissier provides the first detailed account of the Soviet-German conflict east of Berlin, culminating in 1945 with the last major land battle in Europe that proved decisive for the fate of Berlin. When the first Red Army soldier reached the Oder on the 31st of January, everyone at the Soviet Headquarters expected Marshall Zhukov's troops to bring a quick end to the war. However, despite desperate fighting by both sides, a stalemate persisted for two months, at the end of which the Soviet bridgeheads north and south of Kustrin were united, and the fortress finally fell.

By drawing not only on official sources, but also on the accounts of individuals involved, Le Tissier meticulously reconstructs the difficult breakthrough achieved on the Oder: the establishment of bridgeheads, the battle for the fortress of Kustrin, and the bloody fight for Seelow Heights. Numerous maps and step by step illustrations show the operations of both contestants in detail and reveal a most interesting episode in the history of the Second World War in Europe.

Cleary examines the origins, spread, and results of human rights movements in Latin America, and he analyzes the mark such movements have made in world politics. He shows the enormous difficulties encountered by fledgling grassroots groups which first challenged military dictatorships over the disappeared, detention, torture, and pervasive repression. He chronicles the amazingly dynamic growth of human rights organizations, affecting democratic processes in Latin America and foreign policy in the United States.

This book is particularly important because it establishes, for the first time, a record of why, how, where, and when the concept of human rights--not long ago absent as a practical concept--generates so powerful a Latin American response. The alliances so formed are shown to evoke continued popular support and to effect on-going fundamental changes in Latin America. An important survey to all scholars, researchers, and students of human rights and political affairs in Latin America.

This book provides the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological foundation that teachers, principals, professors, and students preparing for teaching will need in order to be informed and effective planners and evaluators of character education programs and good character educators. Through its clear definition of terms, review of Constitutional and public support, comparative analysis of philosophical approaches, synthesis of many relevant theories of child development, K-12 core curriculum, description of many instructional strategies, and methodology for program evaluation, this handbook effectively prepares prospective program planners and character educators to create comprehensive programs that are developmentally appropriate, adapted to the unique needs and characteristics of school communities, and soundly evaluated.

Dr. Vessels presents a wide range of options, developmental and practical guidelines for choosing from among these options, and a creative core curriculum and evaluation technology that he hopes school community members will find useful for their particular school or system.

Blending an analysis of general political, diplomatic, and military trends with a description of how Zionist pioneers coped with ongoing social developments and challenges, Stein recounts the events that would ultimately lead to the formation of the State of Israel in May 1948. The study begins with the wave of Russian pogroms that erupted in 1882 and stimulated an interest in Jewish migration to Palestine. Stein proceeds to the experiences of the first batch of settlers as they established farms, fostered the rejuvenation of Hebrew, and coped with the local Arab population. He examines how Theodore Herzl's worldwide modern Zionist movement gathered momentum and led to a further increase in Jewish settlement in Palestine.

This book covers key events such as the pioneering efforts to establish collective farms, the inauguration of Jewish defense organizations, the Balfour Declaration, and the formation of the British Mandate. Stein focuses on the gradual but persistent consolidation of the Jewish community as a self-contained body, looking closely at important institutions such as the Trade Union Federation, as well as the development of political parties. Later chapters chronicle the growing strife with the Arab population and the disintegration of the British Mandate, which would eventually culminate in the declaration of a Jewish state.

This scholarly analysis of the music of Taylor Swift identifies how and why she is one of the early 21st century's most recognizable and most popular stars.

By the age of 13, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift had already inked a development deal with a major record label. This early milestone was an appropriate predictor of what accomplishments were to come. Now a superstar artist with an international fanbase of millions and several critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums, Swift has established herself as one of the most important musicians of the 21st century. This accessible book serves Taylor Swift fans as well as students of contemporary popular music and popular culture, critically examining all of this young artist's work to date.

The book's organization is primarily chronological, covering Taylor Swift's album and single releases in order of release date while also documenting the elements of her music and personality that have made her popular with fans of country music and pop music across a surprisingly diverse age range of listeners. The chapters address how Swift's songs have been viewed by some fans as anthems of empowerment or messages of encouragement, particularly by members of the LGBTQ community, those who have been bullied or been seen as outsiders, and emerging artists. The final chapter places Swift's work and her public persona in the context of her times with respect to her use of and relationship with technology--for example, her use of social media and songwriting technology--and her expressions of a new type of feminism that is unlike the feminism of the 1970s.

Miller shows how government institutions changed the meaning of American citizenship during the World War II era. He considers the state's role in creating concepts of citizenship and subjectivity by analyzing the application within military and educational institutions of systems of discipline associated with Frederick W. Taylor and scientific management.

Miller also explores a neglected aspect of Michel Foucault's concerns about citizenship and subjectivity when examining the power of institutions and bureaucracies in creating and precluding political identities. Of particular interest to scholars and students involved with American political history and theory and the sociology of work/education/war and conflict.

It would be difficult, indeed, to imagine anyone more qualified to give us a celebration, from the perspective of an insider, of the Broadway musical. From the first run of Guys and Dolls in 1950 to the recent debut of Rent, Stuart Ostrow, a prot D'eg D'e of the great composer-lyricist Frank Loesser, has been personally involved in many of the major Broadway productions of our time. The steadily growing number of fans of the Great White Way will delight in his reminiscences about the shows that have shaped musical theater, such as Hello Dolly, Funny Girl, Man of LaMancha, Cabaret, 1776, and M. Butterfly--to name just a few.

Readers of A Producer's Broadway Journey will certainly be entertained by Ostrow's behind-the-scenes anecdotes of Bob Fosse, Barbra Streisand, Betty Buckley, Cole Porter, Lerner and Loewe, Hal Prince, Ethel Merman, and many other legends encountered in his accomplished career. But in addition to the tales or re-writes, stand-ins, near-disasters, and moments of theatrical magic, the author also provides a unique historical perspective on almost half a century of the musical.

The study of the effects of context--defined here as a geographically bounded social unit--on individuals is a new and rapidly developing field. This unique volume reviews this development both quantitatively and qualitatively, examines how and why individual political behavior can be influenced by various contextual characteristics of the locality in which the individual resides, and proposes a conceptual framework to guide future research. A separate chapter is devoted to exploring methodological problems unique to this field of study. This is the first study to integrate and synthesize the diverse existing research and to provide an overall approach to the field. While the authors' conclusions do not contradict the dominant views in the field, they do challenge prevailing emphases and approaches--stressing the importance of structural and global effects, the utility of an information-flow approach to contextual effects, and new methodological strategies. Even readers without strong statistical backgrounds will find this volume both accessible and informative.

The volume first reviews the history of contextual studies, defining contextual analysis, and offering a taxonomy of contextual effects and then reviews relevant literature to integrate, compare, and assess the range of empirical work in the field. Chapter three constructs an overarching approach to the study of context based on the concept of information flow and is followed by a discussion of the methodological difficulties that have made the study of contextual effects a contentious one. The increasingly important area of modeling contextual effects is reviewed next and directions for future research are suggested. The final chapter looks at several understudied areas in contextual effects that could benefit from scholarly attention. Though scholarly, this readable volume is aimed at a broad audience and will be of particular interest to those concerned with political behavior, including political scientists, sociologists, urbanologists, geographers, and social psychologists.

This study presents an in-depth survey of the principal policies and personalities of American diplomacy of the era, together with a discussion of recent historiography in the field. For two decades between the two world wars, America pursued a foreign policy course that was, according to Rhodes, shortsighted and self-centered. Believing World War I had been an aberration, Americans na Dively signed disarmament treaties and a pact renouncing war, while eschewing such inconveniences as enforcement machinery or participation in international organizations. Smug moral superiority, a penurious desire to save money, and naíveté ultimately led to the neglect of America's armed forces even as potential rivals were arming themselves to the teeth.

In contrast to the dynamic drive of the New Deal in domestic policy, foreign policy under Franklin D. Roosevelt was often characterized by a lack of clarity and, reflecting Roosevelt's fear of isolationists and pacifists, by presidential explanations that were frequently evasive, incomplete, or deliberately misleading. One of the period's few successes was the bipartisan Good Neighbor policy, which proved far-sighted commercially and strategically. Rhodes praises Cordell Hull as the outstanding secretary of state of the time, whose judgment was often more on target than others in the State Department and the executive branch.

The global market of the 21st century came into existence to produce products and services for mass consumption. Its purpose is to create consumer cultures in nations that fully participate in its benefits. It is the product of cooperation among industrial nations following World War II. Seavoy traces out the evolution of the global market from its foundations in imperial commercial rivalries of the mid-15th century to the present.

The global economy rests on the foundation of imperial commercial rivalries that began when Columbus sailed west to America and da Gama sailed east to India. Thereafter, Spanish and Portuguese global commerce was challenged by the Dutch, English, and French. During the 19th century these nations rapidly expanded into the political vacuum of Africa and elsewhere because industrialization gave them--and Germany, Japan, and Russia--the power to intrude into subsistence cultures worldwide. After World War II the political leaders of the United States and Western Europe were determined to end the imperial commercial rivalries that had contributed to World War I and World War II. Imperial commercial rivalries would be replaced by cooperative commercial politics among the principal industrial nations. Behind the shield of NATO, Western European nations and the United States devised rules and institutionalized them in the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, European Union, and NAFTA that rapidly increased the volume of global trade. As Seavoy points out, increasing trade had three purposes, full employment in industrial nations which, in turn, would create the political stability needed for democratic governance, and the production of an abundance of products so that the citizens of participating nations could enjoy the benefits of consumer cultures.

The creation of consumer cultures required the dissolution of obsolete empires and concentrating production on products for export among industrial nations. Nations that failed to fully participate rapidly fell behind in acquiring the technologies and management skills necessary to produce the abundance of products that could create consumer cultures. The global market and its derivative, consumer cultures, could only have come into existence during the peace following World War II. In Seavoy's analysis the absence of world wars results in a world where global economy and peace are synonymous terms. This is a sweeping synthesis that will be of interest to scholars, students, and the reading public interested in economic development and world economic history.

The final entry in this all-you-need-to-know series summarizes the best points in the previous 12 books, updates many of them, and integrates must-have knowledge into a unified, indispensable whole.

Entrepreneurs need authors who will speak to them as equals, sharing the secrets they found as they built their own businesses. Crafted in that spirit, Praeger's Entrepreneur's Guide series provides practical, accessible, and authoritative advice on the major considerations in establishing and growing a new venture. Each book includes wisdom, tales from the trenches, worksheets, templates, sample documents, and resource lists to help entrepreneurs leverage their time and money. The Entrepreneur's Guide to Running a Business distills and shares the important points from each of the series' previous books, making the road to success smoother and more certain.

This culmination of the professional development series takes the reader through all the important steps of starting and running an enterprise. It includes such essentials as writing the business plan, hiring the team, raising capital, managing technology, doing market research, and, of course, marketing the product. Once the business is up and running, the book can be consulted for advice on managing growth and inspiring and retaining employees, as well as for knowledge about handling crises and flourishing even during a recession.

Educators, neurologists, and psychologists explain how the high-stakes testing movement, and the race to wire classrooms, is actually stunting our children's intellects, blocking brain development and sometimes fueling mental illness. These experts, including a Pulitzer-Prize nominee, explain why play is not a luxury, but rather a necessity of learning.

Testing and technology has become a mantra in American schools, reaching down as far as kindergarten and preschool as politicians and policymakers aim to ensure that our country has a competitive edge in today's information-based economy. But top educators and child development experts are battling such reforms. Here, educators, neurologists, and psychologists explain how the high-stakes testing movement, and the race to wire classrooms, is actually stunting our children's intellects, blocking brain development and sometimes fueling mental illness. These experts, including a Pulitzer-Prize nominee, explain why play is not a luxury, but rather a necessity of learning.

This book also spotlights a program at Yale University that, in response to the dearth of play in preschool curricula, emphasized learning through play for youngsters. Children who participated scored significantly higher on tests of school readiness. In addition, an internationally recognized expert explains why--in striking contrast to U.S. policies starting academics in preschool--several European countries are raising the age when they begin formal schooling to 6 or 7.