Following Stalin's death in 1953 and Khruschev's acknowledgment of Stalin's crimes in 1956, "sincerity" emerged as a cultural imperative in the Soviet Union. Unlike the fare of the Stalin era, the cinema of this period turned inward, insisting on ordinary characters and creating a sense of spontaneity through particular staging methods and ......
Founded in 1932, the Perkonkrusts ("Thunder Cross") was the largest and most prominent right-wing political party in Latvia in the early twentieth century. Its motto-"Latvia for Latvians!"-echoed the ultranationalist rhetoric of similar movements throughout Europe at the time. Unlike the Nazis in Germany or the Fascists in Italy, however, the ......
Time is slippery. At Some Point openly acknowledges this while exploring the intersections between past and present, childhood and adulthood, midlife and mortality. Joyously and solemnly tugging on the threads that connect us-to life, to the planet, to each other-David O'Connell finds meaning in the small things: vacation photos, middle school ......
An unflinching tale of selfishness and sacrifice, guilt and resentment, hope and despair, Bruce Snider's fourth collection tells the story of two brothers torn apart by opioid addiction. "He needed help," writes Snider. "I imagined the chemicals in his brain like the chemicals in mine. // I imagined our DNA, mirrors facing one another-an infinite ......
Readers first meet Simone Lerrante, a Belgian war orphan, as a child refugee in Sussex, England, her memory damaged by trauma. The novel offers a kaleidoscopic vision of Simone's fractured life and piecemeal understanding of self across multiple points of view. Following her from Cambridge to New York City and across the United States - through a ......
Delightfully blending literary fiction with speculative genres, the stories in The Church of Divine Electricity somehow manage to feel as though they could take place today. In Emily Mitchell's created worlds, as in our own, technology bewitches us, especially with its ability to heighten both connections and isolation. Whether being held by a ......
Searching for Dads, Daddies, Father Figures, and Fatherhood
Not all little boys want to grow up to be like their dads. The shy ones, the sensitive ones, the ones people mock as strange or call queer, sometimes want to grow up and be loved by men who stand in for their fathers. They'll put up with bullying from an older brother, taunts from the gym teacher, long work hours from a boss, and even discipline ......
The Salvation Army from Imperial Germany to Nazism
Ever since the Salvation Army, a British Protestant social welfare organization, arrived in Germany in 1886, it has navigated overlapping national and international identities. After decades of existing on the margins of the German religious landscape while solidifying its role as a social service provider, the Salvation Army proactively shaped ......
Labor and Creativity in Germany's Long Nineteenth Century
In The Work of Music, Celia Applegate examines the cultural history of Austro-German music through the lens of labor from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia to the Third Reich. She explores the working world of music and musicians, the various jobs they performed, the work music did in society, the observations and commentaries of contemporaries on the ......
