James Hawes

The bestselling story of Europe's most admired and feared country, from Julius Caesar to Angela Merkel

The perception of modern Germany as a final outpost of liberal democratic ideals is placed in a historical context, and addressed as a point on a trajectory beginning with Julius Caesar's invasion in 58 BC, in this concise, politically-charged history of Germany, which situates the extremes of the German political experience throughout ancient and recent history in relation to the broader climate.

The Shortest History of Germany

Everybody knows the face of Franz Kafka, whether they have read any of his works or not. And that brooding face carries instant images: bleak and threatening visions of an inescapable bureaucracy, nightmarish transformations, uncanny predictions of the Holocaust. But while Kafka’s genius is beyond question, the image of a mysterious, sickly, shadowy figure who was scarcely known in his own lifetime bears no resemblance to the historical reality. Franz Kafka was a popular and well-connected millionaire’s son who enjoyed good-time girls, brothels, and expensive porn, who landed a highly desirable state job that pulled in at least $90,000 a year in today’s dollars for a six-hour day, who remained a loyal member of Prague’s German-speaking Imperial elite right to the end, and whose work was backed by a powerful literary clique. Here are some of the prevalent Kafka myths: *Kafka was the archetypal genius neglected in his lifetime. *Kafka was lonely. *Kafka was stuck in a dead-end job, struggling to find time to write. *Kafka was tormented by fear of sex. *Kafka was unbendingly honest about himself to the women in his life – too honest. *Kafka had a terrible, domineering father who had no understanding of his son’s needs. *Kafka’s style is mysterious and opaque. *Kafka takes us into bizarre worlds. James Hawes wants to tear down the critical walls which generations of gatekeepers---scholars, biographers, and tourist guides---have built up around Franz Kafka, giving us back the real man and the real significance of his splendid works. And he'll take no prisoners in the process.

Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life

Die kürzeste Geschichte Deutschlands

Brian Marley, a divorced Englishman, is alone in the vilest jungle on earth, about to die live on television. A contestant on Brit Pluck, Green Hell, Two Million, the ultimate reality TV show, Marley has managed to outlive his rivals and win enough money to change his life. Except that the TV crew has just been wiped out in a helicopter crash. With the crocodiles closing in, he has no option but to climb the vast cliff at his back. Inevitably, he falls......And awakes in a lost world that is remarkably like an Englishman's heaven. There's cricket and rugger, the Union Jack, plucky boys, pretty girls, a tough but fair headmaster -an entire miniature civilization preserved by the surviving passengers from Comet IV, which vanished in 1958. Firmly convinced that they were the first casualties of World War III, they have kept an idyllic, pre-sixties England alive. But when Brian's rescuers do find him at last, when the world of the Daily Star confronts that of the Eagle, when the Prime Minister, spotting an opportunity for a sound-bite, meets the Headmaster, the novel shifts gear into a glorious satire worthy of Evelyn Waugh.

Speak for England

Die kürzeste Geschichte Englands

Kisa Almanya Tarihi

Take four ne'er-do-wells: a 28-year-old ex-public schoolboy who can't bear the idea of setting down; Suzy the Black Widow, who has a deliciously flat stomach and drives like she's breathing through the carbs; Brady the Reservoir Dogs fetishist; and Chico the fat Portuguese waiter. Add some plastic guns, the IRA and a white Merc with fins and you have a plan. What plan? The plan to walk into Michael Winner's private bank and walk out with half a million quid. Fast, clever, stylish, funny and utterly compulsive, this is a first novel with everything.

A White Merc with Fins

À medida que James Hawes avança no tempo, de César até ao Brexit, por entre conquistas, impérios e guerras, tece uma nova e profunda narrativa de Inglaterra. A ilha-fortaleza está dividida por uma linha que é anterior à invasão dos romanos; o seu destino tem estado sempre ligado aos dos países vizinhos, goste-se ou não; e há mil anos que se rege por um sistema de classes diferente de todos os outros no planeta. Nunca houve um momento melhor para perceber porque é que Inglaterra é como é – e não há melhor guia do que este.

A Mais Breve História de Inglaterra

Johann Albrecht Bengel

William Lewery Blackley

Being an Adaptation of Bengel's Gnomon, with Numerous Notes, Showing the Precise Results of Modern Criticism and Exegesis -

The Critical English Testament:

Set in Dublin, this novel excels in the black humour for which the author of "Rancid Aluminium" is renowned.

Dead Long Enough

"A fast-paced tour of 2,000 years of English history, tracing its secret north-south divide and notorious class system"--

Empire and Division from the Anglo-Saxons to Brexit

The Shortest History of England

A completely fresh look at the culture clash between Britain and Germany that all but destroyed Europe. Half a century before 1914, most Britons saw the Germans as poor and rather comical cousins - and most Germans looked up to the British as their natural mentors. Over the next five decades, each came to think that the other simply had to be confronted - in Europe, in Africa, in the Pacific and at last in the deadly race to cover the North Sea with dreadnoughts. But why? Why did so many Britons come to see in Germany everything that was fearful and abhorrent? Why did so many Germans come to see any German who called dobbel fohltwhile playing Das Lawn Tennisas the dupe of a global conspiracy? Packed with long-forgotten stories such as the murder of Queen Victoria's cook in Bohn, the disaster to Germany's ironclads under the White Cliffs, bizarre early colonial clashes and the precise, dark moment when Anglophobia begat modern anti-Semitism, this is the fifty-year saga of the tragic, and often tragicomic, delusions and miscalculations that led to the defining cataclysm of our times - the breaking of empires and the womb of horrors, the Great War. Richly illustrated with the words and pictures that formed our ancestors' disastrous opinions, it will forever change the telling of this fateful tale.

The Culture-Clash which Led to the First World War

Englanders and Huns

# 1 Bestseller internațional „O lectură obligatorie" – The Economist „Cea mai provocatoare carte a anului" – Der Spiegel De citit într-o după-amiază, de reținut pentru o viață O țară deopotrivă admirată și temută, Germania s-a situat în epicentrul evenimentelor mondiale nu de puține ori: Reforma, cele două Războaie Mondiale, căderea Zidului Berlinului. S-a conturat ca națiune modernă de-abia în 1871 – și totuși, astăzi, Germania este a patra economie a lumii și purtător de stindard al democrației liberale. „Nu are rost să studiezi trecutul dacă acesta nu luminează prezentul", scrie James Hawes în această concisă istorie care a captivat deja sute de mii de cititori în mai multe țări. Astăzi, poate mai mult decât oricând, avem mare nevoie să înţelegem, după cum spune autorul, „adevărata istorie a Germaniei". „O Germanie așa cum nu ați mai cunoscut-o până acum: o teză îndrăzneață, o analiză competentă și o lectură captivantă. Fie că împărtășiți sau nu punctul de vedere al acestei cărți, ea este o lectură obligatorie pentru oricine este interesat de drumul parcurs de Germania pentru a ajunge la ceea ce este astăzi." – Karen Leeder, Universitatea Oxford „O încercare temerară de a remedia o ignoranță seculară în doar 200 de pagini... nu doar o palpitantă trecere în revistă a momentelor decisive din istoria Germaniei, dar și o regândire serioasă, bine documentată și radicală a continuităților din viața politică germană." – Nicholas Boyle, Universitatea Cambridge „Cuprinzătoare, însuflețită și captivantă… dacă vrei să înțelegi țara de care mare parte din lumea democratică își agață azi speranțele, acesta este locul de unde să pornești." – Irish Examiner „Occidentul este în plină defensivă. Puterile anglo-saxone, mari și mici, s-au retras în fantasma măreției pierdute. Populiștii din toată Europa strigă în gura mare că imigrația și globalizarea sunt lucrătura unui sistem nefast, condus de păpușari nevăzuți. Nevenindu-i să creadă ce noroc a dat peste el, țarul Vladimir constată cum se aliniază pionii din Marele Joc; statele baltice și grupul de la Vișegrad tremură – și toată lumea privește spre Berlin." – James Hawes Cu o privire proaspătă, ancorată în momentul prezent, James Hawes rescrie istoria Germaniei, poziționând-o pe harta Europei și a lumii și revelându-i potențialul de actor major în configurarea lumii actuale.

De la Iuliu Cezar la Angela Merkel – O repovestire pentru vremurile noastre

O scurtă istorie a Germaniei

In Soho Paul Salmon, co-producer of the ghastly Britpack Russian Mafia caper Base Metal, is busy chasing his next project, schmoozing It-girls and not taking cocaine. In Pontypool, Dr Jane Feverfew is busy wooing her ludicrous students, fighting her leek-carrying ex and wondering what the hell made her come to a country where she can't even spell the name of her son's school. In Cardiff, the Welsh cultural mafia are busy quaffing Australian cava at the annual Cymru-Wales Oscwr ceremony as they plan the disposal of next year's EU grants... Jane hasn't had sex for two years, but there are the same number of passable single men over thirty in Wales as anywhere else- that is, none. Her only excitement in life is a coy e-flirtation. But when she despairingly posts her mock-screenplay of a Spanish classic on the ResistYoof.com website (just to show the sort of crap that Yoof likes) Paul Salmon happens upon it in a moment of coke-fuelled desperation...-Salmon lies, cheats and grovels to get the film Green Lighted as a Welsh epic, while also turning his lustful attentions onto Jane - who unleashes her secret, lifelong ambition to be a cheerleader or actress, not a bluestocking. As crossed wires, bad faith and wild ambition pile up, Jane dives blithely into the White Powder desert of actors, agents and W1 clubs, where old friends count for nothing, new ones count for less and the big, bad mother of all come-downs is waiting just around the next corner.-As Soho is annihilated in a firestorm of drugs, extra virgin oil and fennel, Jane comes to her senses too late - or at least, too late for salvation to come from any but the most unlikely of quarters...-James Hawes's fourth novel takes his not-quite-innocent heroine on a wildly comic journey from the eccentricities of Wales into the unholy Soho movie-world which he came to know whilst co-producing the notoriously disastrous film version of his second bestseller, Rancid Aluminium.

James Hawes

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