Synopses & Reviews
Before World War II an intimate connection between the ideas of Europe and romantic love was widely accepted and virtually unchallenged. Only after Europe was ravaged by war and fractured by superpower conflict was this connection called into question. Today, with the success of the European Union, such themes are reemerging in art, literature, music, and everyday conversation.
In Europe in Love, Love in Europe we revisit Europe between world wars to explore the lost connections between love, culture, and ideology. Passerini investigates different ways in which historians, politicians, psychoanalysts, and psychologists analyzed the crisis of European civilization, providing a history of ideas and emotions. Her focus on specific texts ranges from best-selling novels to artworks set in the context of debates on marriage, sex, and friendship. Europe in Love, Love in Europe concludes with the story of a correspondence between spouses, an English woman and a German man during World War II, a powerful example of what it could mean to live the European dimension of a love relationship in that historical moment.
Passerini offers a compelling original perspective on the modern anxiety over national identity and European unity-and a powerful rejoinder to political and cultural Eurocentrism.
Review
“Metelits has written an engaging study that contributes a wealth of original data on three insurgencies as well as an innovative argument for why they behave differently toward civilian populations.”
- Deborah Avant, author of The Market for Force
Review
"A highlight of the final chapter is its finding that well-intentioned reform carried out by states can inadvertently lead to increased insurgent violence."
“Metelits has written an engaging study that contributes a wealth of original data on three insurgencies as well as an innovative argument for why they behave differently toward civilian populations.”
Synopsis
Once considered nationalists, many insurgent groups are now labeled as terrorists and thought to endanger not just their own people, but the world. As the unprecedented trends in political violence among insurgents have taken shape, and as hundreds of thousands of civilians continue to be displaced, brutalized, and killed,
Inside Insurgency provides startling insights that help to explain the nature of insurgent behavior.
Claire Metelits draws from over 100 interviews with insurgent soldiers, commanders, government officials, scholars, and civilians in Sudan, Kenya, Colombia, Turkey, and Iraq, offering a new understanding of insurgent group behavior and providing compelling and intimate portraits of the SPLA, FARC, and PKK. The engaging narratives that emerge from her on-the-ground fieldwork provide incredibly valuable and accurate first-hand documentation of the tactics of some of the world's most notorious insurgent groups. Inside Insurgency offers the reader a timely and intimate understanding of these movements, and explains the changing behavior of insurgent groups toward the civilians they claim to represent.
About the Author
Luisa Passerini is Professor of Twentieth-Century History at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Her books include Fascism in Popular Memory, Memory and Totalitarianism, and Autobiography of a Generation.