Union History

In December 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a speech about a conflict that had some leading figures in Britain and France, including Churchill himself, briefly discussing the idea of going to war with the Soviet Union, even though they were already fighting Adolf Hitler. Of course, war makes strange bedfellows, and one year later, Churchill would find himself allied with the Soviet Union against Germany and Finland. It’s an interesting saga, one with roots in imperial Russian history and the desire of the Finns to be free in their northern forests.

Few sports have had a more eventful last 50 years than rugby union. Even fewer involve such a range of different cultures, contrasting characters or diverse geographical settings. With the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France and the 200th anniversary of the game’s ‘birth’ on the horizon, Around the World in 80 Minutes sets out to find the game’s most inspiring people and places. Observant, amusing and thought-provoking, the book takes listeners on a global journey to meet key figures from rugby’s ‘golden age’ between 1973 and 2023.

In Killer in the Kremlin, award-winning journalist John Sweeney takes listeners from the heart of Putin's Russia to the killing fields of Chechnya, to the embattled cities of an invaded Ukraine. In a disturbing exposé of Putin's sinister ambition, Sweeney draws on thirty years of his own reporting - from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya, to the annexation of Crimea and a confrontation with Putin over the shooting down of flight MH17 - to understand the true extent of Putin's long war.

The Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, subsequent war in Eastern Ukraine, and economic sanctions imposed by the West transformed European politics. The conflict did not escalate to the levels originally feared but nor was either side able to bring it to a definitive conclusion. Ukraine suffered a loss of territory but was not forced into changing its policies away from the Westward course adopted as a result of the EuroMaidan uprising of February 2014. President Putin was left supporting a separatist enclave as Russia's economy suffered significant damage.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist reveals the little-known story of the Union soldiers from Alabama who played a decisive role in the Civil War, and how they were scrubbed from the history books.

In a clear and engaging way, this book shows how the principle of emptiness, the philosophic heart of Tibetan Buddhism, connects intimately to quantum nonlocality and other foundational features of quantum mechanics. Detailed connections between emptiness, modern relativity, and the nature of time are also explored. For Tibetan Buddhists, the profound interconnectedness implied by emptiness demands the practice of universal compassion.

In this fully updated fourth edition, Pinder and Usherwood cover the migrant crisis and the UK's decision to leave the Union, set in the context of a body that is now involved in most areas of public policy. Discussing how the EU continues to draw in new members, they conclude by considering the future of the Union and the choices and challenges that may lie ahead.

This audiobook offers the first systematic analysis of Putin's two wars, placing the Second Chechen War and the War with Georgia of 2008 in their broader historical contexts. Drawing on extensive original Russian sources, Marcel H. Van Herpen analyzes in detail how Putin's wars were prepared and conducted and why they led to allegations of war crimes and genocide.

To understand the significance of the parts played by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher in East-West relations in the second half of the 1980s, Brown addresses several specific questions: What were the values and assumptions of these leaders, and how did their perceptions evolve? What were the major influences on them? To what extent were they reflecting the views of their own political establishment or challenging them? How important for ending the East-West standoff were their interrelations?

What do ordinary Russians think of Putin? Who are his supporters? And why might their support now be faltering? Alive with the voices and experiences of ordinary Russians and elites alike, Sam Greene and Graeme Robertson craft a compellingly original account of contemporary Russian politics.

Every American president since the end of the Cold War has called for better relations with Russia. But each has seen relations get worse by the time he left office. Now, the two countries are facing off in a virtual war being fought without clear goals or boundaries. Why? George Beebe argues that new game-changing technologies, disappearing rules of the game, and distorted perceptions on both sides are combining to lock Washington and Moscow into an escalatory spiral that they do not recognize.

Ginsburg and Amanda Tyler, Berkeley Law professor and former Ginsburg law clerk, bring together RBG's most penetrating opinions - many previously unpublished - sharing details from Justice Ginsburg's family life and long career.

Richard Griffiths invites the listener to look closer at the history and the underlying reasons behind the main developments of European integration. He passionately presents a history that is richer and intellectually more satisfying than much of the elegiac literature on the European union that passes for history. A solid and humorous account on the making of the union.

The Dead Hand is the suspense-filled story of the people who sought to brake the speeding locomotive of the arms race, then rushed to secure the nuclear and biological weapons left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union - a dangerous legacy that haunts us even today. The Cold War was an epoch of massive overkill. In the last half of the 20th century the two superpowers had perfected the science of mass destruction and possessed nuclear weapons with the combined power of a million Hiroshimas.

History didn't end. Democracy didn't triumph. America’s leading role in the world is no longer assured. Instead, authoritarian rule is on the rise, and the global order established after 1945 is under attack. This is the phenomenon Katie Stallard tackles in Dancing on Bones as she examines how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate the past to serve the present and secure the future of authoritarian rule.

As a general, Ulysses S. Grant is routinely described in glowing terms: the man who turned the tide of the Civil War, who accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox; the man who had the stomach to see the war through to final victory. But his presidency is another matter. The most common word used to characterize it is "scandal."

The European Union is the most ambitious, and one of the most contentious, international organizations ever created. Decisions made in Brussels shape the lives of over 500 million Europeans, and its laws and policies resonate around the world. But how has the European Union endured over three turbulent decades marred by crises at home and abroad? In this major account, Dermot Hodson traces the development of the European Union from its establishment in 1993 through to Brexit, COVID-19, and the invasion of Ukraine.

In this examination of Union and Confederate foreign relations during the Civil War, from both European and American perspectives, Howard Jones demonstrates that the consequences of the conflict between North and South reached far beyond American soil.

This DIA report examines a resurgent Russia’s military power to foster a deeper understanding of its core capabilities, goals, and aspirations in the 21st century. The resurgence of Russia on the world stage - the Crimean Peninsula, destabilizing Eastern Ukraine, intervening on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and shaping the information environment to suit its interests - poses a major challenge to the United States. Moscow will continue to aggressively pursue its foreign policy and security objectives by employing the full spectrum of the state’s capabilities.

When Reagan and Gorbachev sat down in Reykjavik in 1986, George Shultz said that it was “the poker game with the highest stakes ever played”. It was the last time the world had a chance to do away entirely with nuclear weapons. This is the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable summit conference. An Impossible Dream is the first exploration of recently available archives of both sides - top-secret archives of the Kremlin, the personal papers of Gorbachev, as well as Reagan's archives.