Undaunted By Exile

The inspiration for the Netflix series premiering March 3rd "Hugely enjoyable, magnificently researched, and deeply absorbing." —Jason Goodwin, New York Times Book Review At midnight, December 31, 1925, citizens of the newly proclaimed Turkish Republic celebrated the New Year. For the first time ever, they had agreed to use a nationally unified calendar and clock. Yet in Istanbul—an ancient crossroads and Turkey's largest city—people were looking toward an uncertain future. Never purely Turkish, Istanbul was home to generations of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, as well as Muslims. It welcomed White Russian nobles ousted by the Russian Revolution, Bolshevik assassins on the trail of the exiled Leon Trotsky, German professors, British diplomats, and American entrepreneurs—a multicultural panoply of performers and poets, do-gooders and ne’er-do-wells. During the Second World War, thousands of Jews fleeing occupied Europe found passage through Istanbul, some with the help of the future Pope John XXIII. At the Pera Palace, Istanbul's most luxurious hotel, so many spies mingled in the lobby that the manager posted a sign asking them to relinquish their seats to paying guests. In beguiling prose and rich character portraits, Charles King brings to life a remarkable era when a storied city stumbled into the modern world and reshaped the meaning of cosmopolitanism.

An examination of the popular music culture of the post-Bolshevik Russian emigration and the impact made by this group on American culture and politics. Performing Tsarist Russia in New York begins with a rich account of the musical evenings that took place in the Russian émigré enclave of Harlem in the 1920s and weaves through the world of Manhattan’s Russian restaurants, Tin Pan Alley industry, Broadway productions, 1939 World’s Fair, Soviet music distributors, postwar Russian parish musical life, and Cold War radio programming to close with today’s Russian ball scene, exploring how the idea of Russia Abroad has taken shape through various spheres of music production in New York over the course of a century. Engaging in an analysis of musical styles, performance practice, sheet music cover art, the discourses surrounding this music, and the sonic, somatic, and social realms of dance, author Natalie K. Zelensky demonstrates the central role played by music in shaping and maintaining the Russian émigré diaspora over multiple generations as well as the fundamental paradox underlying this process: that music’s sustaining power in this case rests on its proclivity to foster collective narratives of an idealized prerevolutionary Russia while often evolving stylistically to remain relevant to its makers, listeners, and dancers. By combining archival research with fieldwork and interviews with Russian émigrés of various generations and emigration waves, Zelensky presents a close historical and ethnographic examination of music’s potential as an aesthetic, discursive, and social space through which diasporans can engage with an idea of a mythologized homeland, and, in turn, the vital role played by music in the organization, development, and reception of Russia Abroad.

Pliny's Women offers a comprehensive consideration of the many women who appear in the letters of Pliny the Younger. Combining detailed prosopography with close literary analysis, Jacqueline Carlon examines the identities of the women whom Pliny includes and how they and the men with whom they are associated contribute both to this presentation of exemplary Romans and particularly to his own self-promotion. Virtually all of the named women in Pliny's nine-book corpus are considered. They form six distinct groups: those associated with opposition to the principate; the family of Pliny's mentor, Corellius Rufus; his own family members; women involved in testamentary disputes; ideal wives; and women of unseemly character. Detailed analysis of each letter mentioning women includes the identity of its recipient and everyone named within, its disposition within the collection, Pliny's language and style, and its significance to our perception of the changing social fabric of the early principate.

A “colorful” novel about the fall of one of history’s most notorious figures—and the defeat that would come to define him (Publishers Weekly). It is 1814, and Napoleon Bonaparte retreats to Paris following the debacle of his Russian invasion. Once there, the leader is met with more resistance—a plot to restore a royal to the throne of France succeeds and a humiliated Napoleon is forced to abdicate and go into exile. Octave Senecal, Napoleon’s loyal aide and savior, tells the tale of their journey south through the angry, mob-filled countryside to Elba, a tiny island off the coast of Tuscany. Horribly bored by this turn of events, Napoleon passes the time gambling with his mother, spearing the occasional tuna with local fishermen, and fretting constantly that secret agents and murderers surround him. He also secretly plans his escape and return to glory. With captivating historical detail and “the allure of an epic,” this novel by the award-winning author of The Battle brings to life the complex man behind the renowned general, and offers a fitting send-off to a legend (Anita Brookner).

This Book Is An Attempt To Document The Lives Of Members Of The Exiled Tibetan Community In Indian And Elsewhere. It Thus Aims To Fill A Gap In Our Understanding. The Book Focuses On Two Main Themes: How Tibetans In Exile Preserve Their Culture, And How The Community Prepares Itself For The Return To Tibet. The Book Also Carries An Interview With His Holiness The Dalai Lama