On June 15, 1888, a mere ninety-nine days after ascending the throne to become king of Prussia and German emperor, Frederick III succumbed to throat cancer. Europeans were spellbound by the cruel fate nobly borne by the voiceless Fritz, who for more than two decades had been celebrated as a military hero and loved as a kindly gentleman. A number of grief-stricken individuals reportedly offered to sacrifice their own healthy larynxes to save the ailing emperor.

Frank Lorenz Müller, in the first comprehensive life of Frederick III ever written, reconstructs how the hugely popular persona of “Our Fritz” was created and used for various political purposes before and after the emperor’s tragic death. Sandwiched between the reign of his ninety-year-old father and the calamitous rule of his own son, the future emperor William II, Frederick III served as a canvas onto which different political forces projected their hopes and fears for Germany's future. The book moves beyond the myth that Frederick’s humane liberalism would have built a lasting Anglo-German partnership, perhaps even preventing World War I, and beyond the castigations and exaggerations of parties with a different agenda. Surrounded by an unforgettable cast of characters that includes the emperor’s widely hated English wife, Vicky—daughter of Queen Victoria—and the scheming Otto von Bismarck, Frederick III offers in death as well as in life a revealing, poignant glimpse of Prussia, Germany, and the European world that his son would help to shatter.

An overview of nationalism and its impact on the study of history from one of India’s most prominent historians.
 
In this timely book, historian Romila Thapar delves into the complex world of nationalism and its impact on the interpretations of the past and on the discipline of history itself. History, she expounds, is no mere collection of information and chronology, and its purpose extends well beyond storytelling.
 
Recognizing nationalism as a powerful force that gives rise to various narratives that provide ancestry to communities and shape the direction of societies, Thapar explores how, in India, two conflicting notions of nationalism have evolved and shaped the idea of the nation. Today, one such nationalistic theory claims the victimization of one religious community by another through centuries of “misrule.” Such a claim willfully ignores ample evidence to the contrary to suit a particular political and ideological purpose. Thapar counters such attempts at misrepresentation by citing several historical instances of the nuanced interface and intermingling of cultures, as well as by showing how today’s conflicts have their roots in the British colonial construction of India’s history. She also addresses the recent controversy surrounding the deletions of sections of Indian history textbooks published by NCERT, the Indian educational council, and suggests that the intention is more likely to be the promotion of a particular reading of history that conforms to the ideology of those in power.
 
Engaging and thought-provoking, Our History, Their History, Whose History? invites readers to question the authenticity of historical narratives touted by one group of nationalists, and it explores the clash between professional historians who study the past to understand our inherited present and fabricators who wield history for political gain.

Nationalism matters in China, and what matters in China matters to everyone. China’s new nationalism, Robert Bickers shows, is rooted not in its present power but in shameful memories of its former weaknesses. Invaded, humiliated, and looted in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by foreign powers, China looks out at the twenty-first century through the lens of the past. History matters deeply to Beijing’s current rulers, and Out of China explains why.

Bickers tracks the long, often agonizing process by which the Chinese regained control of their own country. He describes the corrupt, lurid modernity of prewar Shanghai, the often tiny patches of extraterritorial land controlled by foreign powers, the entrepôts of Hong Kong and Macao, and the myriad means—through armed threats, technology, and legal chicanery—by which China was kept subservient until, gradually, it emerged from Western control. This plural and partial subjugation of China is a story that involves not only European powers and Japan but also the United States.

This complex history must be grasped not to atone for the sins of the past but to recognize China’s internationalized landscapes with all their contradictions, violence, cosmopolitanism, and ambitions. The story of the foreign presence in China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is too important to be left in the hands of the Chinese party-state and its approved script. Out of China is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand what shapes China’s view of the world in the twenty-first century.

Joel Kovel argues that the inner contradictions of Zionism have led Israel to a ‘state-sponsored racism’ fully as incorrigible as that of apartheid South Africa and deserving of the same resolution. Only a path toward a single-state secular democracy can provide the justice essential to healing the wounds of the Middle East.

Kovel is well-known writer on the Middle East conflict. This book draws on his detailed knowledge to show that Zionism and democracy are essentially incompatible. He offers a thoughtful account of the emergence and disintegration of Zionism that integrates psychological, political, cultural, economic, and ideological levels.

Ultimately, Kovel argues, a two-state solution is essentially hopeless as it concedes too much to the regressive forces of nationalism, wherein lie the roots of continued conflict.