Education here in the United States leaves much to the imagination concerning western societie's historic connection to Africa... This book takes into account the socio-economical, and political relationships that the western world has maintained with Africa and other parts of the eastern world since the 1400s, and is a must read in my opinion....
Fischer offers a captivating analysis of Europe’s turbulent history during the first half of the twentieth century, from the optimism at the turn of the century to the successive waves of destruction of the First and Second World Wars.
Despite the fact that its capital city and over one third of its territory was within the continent of Europe, the Ottoman Empire has consistently been regarded as a place apart, inextricably divided from the West by differences of culture and religion. A perception of its militarism, its barbarism, its tyranny, the sexual appetites of its rulers and its pervasive exoticism has led historians to measure the Ottoman world against a western standard and find it lacking.
The dark, existential despair of Romanian philosopher Cioran's short meditations is paradoxically bracing and life-affirming. Written in 1934, when he was 22 and desperately insomniac, this feverishly lyrical, at times slyly humorous confessional outpouring reveals Cioran as an angry young man in morally decaying Europe--a far cry from the elegant, curt stylist of his later books. Here Cioran rails at life's irrationality and absurdities; embraces solitude, melancholy and the awareness of death...
Copenhagen, 1800, and after seven years of cruel war against France, Britain's long-standing ally, Denmark, suddenly poses a threat. The scene of battle shifts abruptly from Europe to the Baltic where Rear-Admiral Richard Bolitho is thrown immediately into a fierce struggle with the enemy.
