A bullet misses its target in Sarajevo, a would-be Austrian painter gets into the Viennese academy, Lord Halifax becomes British prime minister in 1940 instead of Churchill: seemingly minor twists of fate on which world-shaking events might have hinged. Alternative history has long been the stuff of parlor games, war-gaming, and science fiction, but over the past few decades it has become a popular stomping ground for serious historians. The historian Richard J. Evans now turns a critical, slightly jaundiced eye on a subject typically the purview of armchair historians. The book’s main concern is examining the intellectual fallout from historical counterfactuals, which the author defines as “alternative versions of the past in which one alteration in the timeline leads to a different outcome from the one we know actually occurred.” What if Britain had stood at the sidelines during the First World War? What if the Wehrmacht had taken Moscow? The author offers an engaging and insightful introduction to the genre, while discussing the reasons for its revival in popularity, the role of historical determinism, and the often hidden agendas of the counterfactual historian. Most important, Evans takes counterfactual history seriously, looking at the insights, pitfalls, and intellectual implications of changing one thread in the weave of history. A wonderful critical introduction to an often-overlooked genre for scholars and casual readers of history alike.

The author of Sefer Emeq Ha-Bakha (The Vale of Tears), Yosef ha-Cohen, was a sixteenth-century Jewish doctor of Spanish origin who lived in Italy. This book was not printed in his lifetime. A few copies of the manuscript copied by hand survived. In this volume, Yosef ha-Cohen collected essays written about pogroms against the people of Israel during the Second Temple period and the loss of political independence in Eretz Israel.

The Book Smugglers is the nearly unbelievable story of ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts—first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets—by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. It is a tale of heroism and resistance, of friendship and romance, and of unwavering devotion—including the readiness to risk one’s life—to literature and art. And it is entirely true. Based on Jewish, German, and Soviet documents, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and the author’s interviews with several of the story’s participants, The Book Smugglers chronicles the daring activities of a group of poets turned partisans and scholars turned smugglers in Vilna, “The Jerusalem of Lithuania.” The rescuers were pitted against Johannes Pohl, a Nazi “expert” on the Jews, who had been dispatched to Vilna by the Nazi looting agency, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, to organize the seizure of the city’s great collections of Jewish books. Pohl and his Einsatzstab staff planned to ship the most valuable materials to Germany and incinerate the rest. The Germans used forty ghetto inmates as slave-laborers to sort, select, pack, and transport the materials, either to Germany or to nearby paper mills. This group, nicknamed “the Paper Brigade,” and informally led by poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, a garrulous, street-smart adventurer and master of deception, smuggled thousands of books and manuscripts past German guards. If caught, the men would have faced death by firing squad at Ponar, the mass-murder site outside of Vilna. To store the rescued manuscripts, poet Abraham Sutzkever helped build an underground book-bunker sixty feet beneath the Vilna ghetto. Kaczerginski smuggled weapons as well, using the group’s worksite, the former building of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, to purchase arms for the ghetto’s secret partisan organization. All the while, both men wrote poetry that was recited and sung by the fast-dwindling population of ghetto inhabitants. With the Soviet “liberation” of Vilna (now known as Vilnius), the Paper Brigade thought themselves and their precious cultural treasures saved—only to learn that their new masters were no more welcoming toward Jewish culture than the old, and the books must now be smuggled out of the USSR.

In both these essays, "On the Indians" and "On The Laws of War", published here for the first time in Hebrew, Francisco de Vitoria lays down the foundations of international law as it is known today. De Vitoria develops for the first time concepts which will become the core of contemporary international law and international conventions, and in particular, participation in an unjust war, the ruler's personal responsibility for the decision about going to war, and the direct and indirect responsibility of subjects taking part in the hostilities. Both essays are firmly embedded in the debates of early modern Europe about the Law of Nature and the Law of Nations, and their impact on claims of European rulers to imperium and dominium (Imperial slugs and control) on overseas territories. In his wide-ranging Introduction to this book, Prof. Amos M egged places the two essays within the context and spectrum of the scholarly debates that were conducted at the major European universities during the early modern period, and provides the readers with a unique interpretation of the most distinctive themes in the essays, namely, the issue of human rights and international law, and presents personal insights on these aspects.

Walter (1887-1966) and his son Moshe (1922-2017) Wolf, both born in Hamburg, had very unusual life stories. Their autobiographies coalesce and intertwine in this powerful book - the father recounts his Jewish-bourgeoisie childhood in Germany, his military service with the German forces during World War I, his work as a banker and the building of his family; he tells of his escape from Nazi Germany and his new life in the United States. Meanwhile, his son pursues his point of view, continuing the family story from the moment he arrived in Israel, describing his own choices - working the land and joining the British Army in the war against Germany. This outstanding tale enriches even further the fascinating, multi-faceted image of German Jewry, offering a path, now more relevant than ever, into contemporary Israeli society.

Perspectives. Revue de l’Université Hébraïque de Jérusalem (auparavant HSLA, édition française), paraît une fois l’an. La Rédaction accepte des articles ayant trait aux sciences humaines et plus particulièrement à la littérature, la stylistique littéraire, les arts et l’histoire. Toute correspondance doit être adressée à la Rédaction de Perspectives, Université Hébraïque de Jérusalem, Mont Scopus, 91905 Jérusalem, Israël. La Rédaction se réserve le droit d’apporter de légères modifications aux mss. acceptés pour la publication. Perspectives. Revue de l’Université Hébraïque de Jérusalem ne publie pas de comptes rendus. L’ensemble des articles réunis dans ce 22e volume de Perspectives rendent hommage à Claude Vigée, à son œuvre poétique comme à sa pensée. Toutes deux traversent le siècle et lui laissent leur marque indélébile. C’est ce dont témoignent tous les auteurs qui ont accepté de participer à ce numéro.

Avec cette 21e livraison consacrée à “Enfants de Kafka”, Perspectives entre dans sa troisième décénie. Un long parcours qui nous a permis d’aborder les sujets les plus divers: “Malraux et ses harmoniques juives” comme “Samson et superman”. Deux axes de réflexions se sont dégagés : “La nature de l’héritage” et “Réception et création”. Le premier insiste surtout sur l’apport spécifique de Kafka et le second sur l’accueil, la perception personnelle de cet apport mais la ligne qui sépare ces deux axes est poreuse, l’apport spécifique de Kafka est ressenti différemment selon les auteurs qui ont participé à ce numéro.

The historian Willy Cohn kept a diary from his youth till his death in 1941. The book contains the entries written from 1933 till 1941, which had been hidden in Berlin by family members. This is a comprehensive document containing deep, serious descriptions. The diary was written from a subjective point of view, but also from the point of view of a professional historian. Cohn described the initial shock felt when the Nazis came into power, and the deep disappointment with the disappearance of the humanistic and democratic values he believed in which collapsed right in front of his eyes, as well as the move of many acquaintances to ‘the other side’. This reality created an ongoing conflict with the German patriotism which was part of his personality and became empowered even more during his military service in World War I . The diary includes much documentation of the Jewish community’s life: the efforts made and actions taken in dealing with the economic collapse which resulted from Nazi policy; the serious debate between the Orthodox and the Liberals, between Zionists and non-Zionists, regarding the objectives of the community youth's education; the cultural renaissance which took place within German-Jewish society in the first years of the Nazi regime, which Cohn was a part of by lecturing in his town and in many other communities on topics of Jewish history and Zionism. The stronghold which tightened around the Jewish community after the November 1938 pogrom (Kristallnacht), the isolation which was even more hurtful than the life-threatening economic hardship, the relationships between Jews and non-Jews during these times of crisis, the hope that the German people still has positive forces which will overcome evil, and the desperate efforts to leave Germany and immigrate to Israel – all these are expressed in a unique manner in the diary .

The biographies in this volume comprise the concluding part of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae. Their main subjects are the events of the Roman Empire during the years 235-284. These were the days of the so called Illyrian Caesars on the throne of Rome. The Empire was compelled in those days to face too often and too dangerous incursions of barbarians, as well as tireless efforts of various provincials trying to free themselves from Roman mastery. Rome was forced to recruit more and more barbarians to fill up the ranks of her soldiery and officers. Rome even experienced a strong shortage of silver and gold metals to coin her Denarii and Aurei. These deficiencies revealed Rome's weakness abroad and caused disquiet and instability within the borders of the Empire. However in spite of inflation, overtaxing and blackmailing bureaucracy the people of Israel in their country managed to continue their recovery due to the failed uprising in the century passed. The author-editor of these biographies remains anonymous. Although one may presume he had been a fifth century Roman of the senatorial circles. The author-editor did not pretend to be a professional biography writer. Nevertheless, it is clear that he had been a man of letters who made great efforts to provide a vivid and reliable account of those stormy days, the last generations of pagan Rome.

Ce volume de Perspectives consacré à Figures de la renaissance se propose de rendre compte à la fois de la Renaissance, en tant que période historique, et du phénomène de renaissance proprement dit. C'est peut-être une gageure, mais notre revue tenait à relever le défi.

Breast-feeding has, throughout the generations, been perceived as a natural and instinctive activity essential for the survival of the human race. And yet, the chosen method, its frequency, and the importance attributed to it depend on varying cultural trends, as demonstrated by the visual representations of breast-feeding that testify to its intricate connection to social, religious, and economic ideologies. A “mania” on the subject of breast-feeding and its significance has become apparent in the Western world over the last few decades. In the book Crying over Spilt Milk , the author investigates the ideological concepts behind the endorsement of maternal breast-feeding in modern Western society. Using diverse visual and textual sources and surveying hundreds of artworks produced from the time of the French Revolution to the First World War,Gal Ventura reveals the historical, political, religious, and economic factorsthat shaped the representations of breast-feeding and its substitutes in French art. She thus sheds lights on the changing attitudes toward maternal breast-feeding in nineteenth-century France, which have had a considerable impact on the glorification of breast-feeding in the Western world to this very day.

A hundred texts by over thirty French intellectuals of the 18th century translated into Hebrew.