Kirjahaku

An expansive history of how an economic shock a half century ago created a world that is addicted to mass migration. The oil shock of 1973 changed everything. It brought the golden age of American and European economic growth to an end; it destabilized Middle Eastern politics; and it set in train processes that led to over one hundred million unexpected--and unwanted--immigrants. In War, Work, and Want, Randall Hansen asks why, against all expectations, global migration tripled after 1970. The answer, he argues, lies in how the OPEC Oil crisis transformed the global economy, Middle Eastern geopolitics and, as a consequence, international migration. The quadrupling of oil prices and attendant inflation destroyed economic growth in the West while flooding the Middle East with oil money. American and European consumers, their wealth drained, rebuilt their standard of living on the back of cheap labor--and cheap migrants. The Middle East enjoyed the benefits of a historic wealth transfer, but oil became a poisoned chalice leading to political instability, revolution, and war, all of which resulted in tens of millions of refugees. The economic, and migratory, consequences of the OPEC oil crisis transformed the contours of domestic politics around the world. They fueled the growth of nationalist-populist parties that built their brands on blaming immigrants for collapsing standards of living, willfully ignoring the fact that mass immigration was the effect, not the cause, of that collapse. In showing how war (the main driver of refugee flows), work (labor migrants), and want (the desire for ever cheaper products made by migrants) led to the massive upsurge in global migration after 1973, this book will reshape our understanding of the past half-century of global history.

'A chilling look at Nazi Germany in collapse' Globe and Mail'Excellent' Evening Standard | 'Fascinating' Ben MacintyreRaze Paris to the ground. Burn the bridges. Destroy all industry.These were just a few of the insane orders issued by Hitler in the closing months of the Second World War, as the Allies made their unstoppable advance on Germany.Had it not been for the determination and bravery of a few Germans – officers and ordinary civilians – who disobeyed Hiter, Europe might have been a scorched ruin. Many paid with their lives.Might Rommel have opened the Western Front to the Allies on 20 July 1944 had he not been shot at a few days earlier? Did Albert Speer single-handedly prevent the destruction of bridges, factories and towns? Did a Prussian general save Paris?In this compelling book, distinguished historian Randall Hansen explores the extraordinary phenomenon of disobedience-as-resistance and its effect on both the war and its aftermath.A gripping account of German resistance to Hitler’s tyranny in the last year of World War Two, in its 80th anniversary year.

‘Insightful, rigorously researched and splendidly written' Donald L. Miller, author of Masters of the Air During World War II, Allied bombing obliterated every major German and Japanese city. Before the dropping of the atomic bombs, conventional bombing had killed approximately 400,000 Germans and 330,00 Japanese, the vast majority civilians.Two-thirds of Germans who died under the bombs did so in 1944 and 1945, and in the last year of the war cities with little military were obliterated. In Japan, American bombers destroyed all but three major Japanese cities, and the people in them, after March 1945. These raids occurred, in other words, when Allied victory was assured and when precision bombing techniques were far more advanced than they were earlier in the war.Fire and Fury asks why.Based on extensive archival sources, interviews with bombing survivors, airmen, and published first-hand accounts, the book looks at the bombing campaign from an avowedly human perspective – Allied, German and Japanese. It recreates the experience of living through the death of a city. It presents the complex personalities of the senior airmen, and explores why bombing campaigns that seem so excessive seventy-five years later seemed reasonable, to many, at the time. It explains why those campaigns became so murderous so late in the war. And it asks, with the full benefits of time’s fullness, whether it was all worth it.Perfect for fans of Max Hastings, James Holland and Antony Beevor.‘Outstanding’ Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World‘Clear, well-argued and grippingly told’ Keith Lowe, author of Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943