The 49th Engineer Combat Battalion is called the "Ghost Battalion" because so little is known about this fascinating unit in WWII and its contributions to history. The 49th landed on Utah Beach on D-day, clearing beach obstacles, mines, taking and holding key points, building bridges and rescuing Airborne soldiers trapped behind enemy lines. Follow this unit through major campaigns and battles including Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge), Huertgen Forest, Cherbourg, Cologne Plain and Ruhr Pocket. This is a true historical rendering of their story taken from actual unit journals, battle casualty reports, photos and maps.

This groundbreaking study considers Italian Romanticism and the modern myth of Italy. Ranging across European and international borders, he examines the metaphors, facts, and fictions about Italy that were born in the Romantic age and continue to haunt the global literary imagination.

A moving and spectacular tale of love, jealousy, and exotic travel, centering on three significant figures in the surrealist movement. This book describes the secret journey made by an extraordinary ménage à trois: the painter Max Ernst, Paul Eluard (cofounder of surrealism with André Breton), and Eluard's wife Gala. The author unravels the story of Ernst's love affair with Gala, Eluard's disappearance, Ernst and Gala's pursuit of him, their meeting in Saigon where the love triangle came apart, and the resulting departure of the Eluards, who left Ernst to explore the jungles of French Indochina alone. The impact on the work of both men was profound. As for Gala, she eventually dropped both her lovers for Salvador Dali.

The results of the last European Elections of 2014 confirmed the rise of right and far right 'populist' parties across the EU. The success of a range of parties, such as Denmark’s Dansk Folskeparti, Slovenia’s Slovenska demokratska stranka, France’s Front National, Greece’s Golden Dawn, the United Kingdom Independence Party, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Italy and the Austrian FPÖ, has been perceived as a political wave which is transforming the face of the European Parliament, and challenging at some level the hegemony of the 'big four' well-established European political forces that lead the Strasbourg’s assembly: the ALDE, EPP, S&D and Greens/ALE. As 'populism' has become a major issue in many EU countries, this collection aims to provide a critical understanding of related trends and recommend ways in which they can be challenged both in policy and praxis, by using the gender-race-ethnicity-sexual orientation intersectionality approach. This international volume combines extensive transnational comparative data analysis, as well as research at discursive, attitudinal and behavioural levels.

The 20th century has witnessed crucial changes in our perceptions of Europe. Two World Wars and many regional conflicts, the end of empires and of the Eastern Bloc, the creation and expansion of the European Union, and the continuous reshaping of Europe’s population through emigration, immigration, and globalization have led to a proliferation of images of Europe within the continent and beyond. While Eurocentrism governs current public debates in Europe, this book takes a special interest in literary and cinematographic imaginings of Europe that are produced from more distant, decentred, or peripheral vantage points and across differences of political power, ideological or ethnic affinity, cultural currency, linguistic practice, and geographical location. The contributions to this book demonstrate how these particular imaginings of Europe, often without first-hand experience of the continent, do not simply hold up a mirror to Europe, but dare to conceive of new perspectives and constellations for Europe that call for a shifting of critical positions. In so doing, the artistic visions from afar confirm the significance of cultural imagination in (re)conceptualizing the past, present, and future of Europe. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

What does race feel like? What does race make people feel? Ghost People traces the haunting feelings that constitute race as a structural, social, and psychic experience in modern European history by focusing on the case of Jewish racialization. From Enlightenment constructions of rational humanism, to nineteenth-century colonialism, antisemitism and the racialization of Jews in Europe, to the construction of Judaism as a religion and the disavowal of racial categories in liberal secularism, Nahme asks after the enduring problem of race for Jewish identity, and for how Jews have remained haunted by the specter of race in the modern world.

In order to understand today’s nationalism, we need to address the historical decline of working-class communities, the sense of loss brought by deindustrialisation and how working-class people have been denied a voice in society and politics. Discontent has manifested strongly in these deprived post-industrial areas, often branded as communities that have been left behind under neoliberal globalisation. Whilst more and more people are voicing their discontent with a system that fails to provide social security and economic stability, many researchers have branded them merely as racists, xenophobes and ill educated. Although prejudices are likely to play a part in all political outcomes, today’s dissatisfaction across the West cannot be reduced to mere emotion and intolerance. This book therefore utilises on-the-ground research with working-class individuals in a Leave voting locale in Britain, exploring their discontent with politicians, the Labour Party, the European Union, immigration, refugees and the prolonged calls for a second referendum. It situates this sentiment towards society and politics within the decline of capitalism's post-war era and the loss of well-paid industrial jobs, increase in non-unionised service employment and the hollowing out of community spirit.

The appearance of Galileo's Dialogue in a forgotten painting launches John Heilbron's exploration of science and culture in Stuart England, and its deep connections with continental Europe. Ranging across art history, politics, and religion, he unravels the painting's mysteries, setting its sitters and painter against their rich cultural backdrop.

The position of women in Austrian society, politics, and in the economy follows the familiar trajectory of Western societies. They were expected to accept their "proper place" in a male patriarchal world. Achieving equality in all spheres of life was a long struggle that is still not completed in spite of many advances. The chapters in Women in Austria attest to the growing interest and vibrancy in the area of women's studies in Austria and present a cross-section of new research in this field to an international audience. The volume includes with book reviews on Austrian business history, the Waldheim memoirs, Jews in postwar Austria, and political scandals in twentieth-century Austria. Women in Austria covers a plethora of significant social issues and will be essential to the work of women's studies scholars, sociologists, historians, and Austrian area specialists.