Eric Rentschler's new book, The Use and Abuse of Cinema, takes readers on a series of enthralling excursions through the fraught history of German cinema, from the Weimar and Nazi eras to the postwar and postwall epochs and into the new millennium. These journeys afford rich panoramas and nuanced close-ups from a nation's production of fantasies and spectacles, traversing the different ways in which the film medium has figured in Germany, both as a site of creative and critical enterprise and as a locus of destructive and regressive endeavor. Each of the chapters provides a stirring minidrama; the cast includes prominent critics such as Siegfried Kracauer and Rudolf Arnheim; postwar directors like Wolfgang Staudte, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, and Alexander Kluge; representatives of the so-called Berlin School; and exponents of mountain epics, early sound musicals, rubble films, and recent heritage features. A film history that is both original and unconventional, Rentschler's colorful tapestry weaves together figures, motifs, and stories in exciting, unexpected, and even novelistic ways.
German cinema of the Third Reich, even a half-century after Hitler's demise, still provokes extreme reactions. "Never before and in no other country," observes director Wim Wenders, "have images and language been abused so unscrupulously as here, never before and nowhere else have they been debased so deeply as vehicles to transmit lies." More than a thousand German feature films that premiered during the reign of National Socialism survive as mementoes of what many regard as film history's darkest hour. As Eric Rentschler argues, however, cinema in the Third Reich emanated from a Ministry of Illusion and not from a Ministry of Fear. Party vehicles such as Hitler Youth Quex and anti-Semitic hate films such as Jew Süss may warrant the epithet "Nazi propaganda," but they amount to a mere fraction of the productions from this era. The vast majority of the epoch's films seemed to be "unpolitical"--melodramas, biopix, and frothy entertainments set in cozy urbane surroundings, places where one rarely sees a swastika or hears a "Sieg Heil." Minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels, Rentschler shows, endeavored to maximize film's seductive potential, to cloak party priorities in alluring cinematic shapes. Hitler and Goebbels were master showmen enamored of their media images, the Third Reich was a grand production, the Second World War a continuing movie of the week. The Nazis were movie mad, and the Third Reich was movie made. Rentschler's analysis of the sophisticated media culture of this period demonstrates in an unprecedented way the potent and destructive powers of fascination and fantasy. Nazi feature films--both as entities that unreeled in moviehouses during the regime and as productions that continue to enjoy wide attention today--show that entertainment is often much more than innocent pleasure.
First Published in 1986. This collection of essays by an international team of scholars is the first sustained investigation in any language of the historical interactions between German film and literature. It is a book about adaptations and transformations, about why filmmakers adapt certain material at certain times. The major impetus at work is the desire to expand the field of adaptation study to include sociological, theoretical and historical dimensions, and to bring a livelier regard for intertextuality to the studies of German film and literature. It is concerned with the ways in which filmmakers in Germany- from Pabst and von Sternberg to Fassbinder, Herzog and Sanders-Brahms- have engaged and been engaged by, literary history.
ITOHS GHOST Manchuria 1945 The suicide of a Japanese soldier obscures the terrible crimes committed there. Japan 1952 Seven years later Itoh returns. His ghost terrorizes anyone who remembers. Akiko, Itohs daughter, is kidnapped. A mysterious letter leads Itohs lover on a perilous journey to find him. Itohs enemies will track him down and kill him before he incriminates them. Can Itohs Ghost bring the truth to light before its too late?
Insiders' Guide to Connecticut is the essential source for in-depth travel information for visitors and locals to the Nutmeg State. Written by a local (and true insider), Insiders' Guide to Connecticut offers a personal and practical perspective of the state that makes it a must-have guide for travelers as well as residents looking to rediscover their home state.
The index fund wouldn’t be jack without Jack. It was just one innovation fueled by The Vanguard Group founder Jack Bogle’s radical idea in 1975 to make investors the actual owners of his new fund company. While the move was as much to save his job as it was to save investors, the end result was powerful: a fund company for the people and by the people. Bogle began a 50-year process of lowering costs inch by inch, which ultimately unleashed a populist revolt that has saved average investors trillions of dollars while reforming and right-sizing much of the entire financial industry. Today, nearly every dollar invested in America goes to either Vanguard funds or Vanguard-influenced funds. But Bogle’s impact and this “great cost migration” reaches well beyond index funds into many other areas, such as active management, ETFs, the advisory world, quantitative investing, ESG, behavioral finance and even trading platforms. The Bogle Effect takes readers through each of these worlds to show how they—and the investors they serve—are being reshaped and reformed. While hundreds of fund providers have copied the index fund that Vanguard made popular no one is yet to copy its “mutual” ownership structure. Why? This book explores that question as well as what made Bogle such an anomaly—seemingly immune to the overwhelming magnet of ambition that dictates Wall Street, made famous by movies like Wall Street, The Big Short, and The Wolf of Wall Street. On the flip side, Bogle wasn’t perfect by any stretch—he could be moralizing, cantankerous, and tended to make virtue out of necessity. The Bogle Effect is animated by the author’s hours of one-on-one, exclusive interviews with Bogle in the years before he passed, which reveal his philosophy, vision, intellect, and humor. Dozens of additional interviews with people who worked with him, lived with him, were influenced by him, and disagreed with him round out a portrait of this revolutionary figure. You will never look at the financial industry or your portfolio the same way again.
This concise, easy-to-use resource on the Holocaust is rich in factual and statistical information, and provides a comprehensive compilation of the people and terms that are essential for an understanding of the Holocaust. In 2,000 entries, it profiles major personalities, covers concentration and death camps, cities and countries, and significant events. Also included are important terms translated from German, French, Polish, Yiddish, and twelve other languages. Biographical entries give a brief history, the person's significance, and their historical context. Geographical entries pinpoint exact locations using other cities or countries as landmarks, and give the number of Jewish inhabitants before Nazi occupation, and the percentage of Jews killed. Historical background is provided for such events as Kristallnacht and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and entries on concentration and death camps give details on the nationalities interned, the camp's specific location, and its history. This reference is impressive in its scope and includes major perpetrators, bystanders, collaborators, victims, rescuers such as Righteous Gentiles, Jewish ghetto fighters, and partisans. It also explores the role of women and the complicity of physicians and industrialists during the Holocaust more fully than any other reference. This dictionary provides the information needed by students whose understanding of the Holocaust is limited by the absence of a single accessible research text.
This paper assesses the impact of climate-related disasters on medium-term growth and analyzes key structural areas that could substantially improve disaster-resilience. Results show that (i) climaterelated disasters have a significant negative impact on medium-term growth, especially for sub-Saharan Africa; and (ii) a disaster’s intensity matters much more than its frequency, given the non-linear cumulative effects of disasters. In sub-Saharan Africa, electrification (facilitating irrigation) is found to be most effective for reducing damage from droughts while improved health care and education outcomes are critical for raising resilience to floods and storms. Better access to finance, telecommunications, and use of machines in agriculture also have a significant impact.
A remarkable compilation of over 400 pages of statistics and records of every match and every player for the Wales national Rugby Union team from the first match in February 1881 up to December 2023.
“A dense and scholarly book about . . . the relationship between the Nazi party and the occult . . . reveals stranger-than-fiction truths on every page.”—Daily Telegraph The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire. “[Kurlander] shows how swiftly irrational ideas can take hold, even in an age before social media.”—The Washington Post “Deeply researched, convincingly authenticated, this extraordinary study of the magical and supernatural at the highest levels of Nazi Germany will astonish.”—The Spectator “A trustworthy [book] on an extraordinary subject.”—The Times “A fascinating look at a little-understood aspect of fascism.”—Kirkus Reviews “Kurlander provides a careful, clear-headed, and exhaustive examination of a subject so lurid that it has probably scared away some of the serious research it merits.”—National Review
The most comprehensive and up-to-date optics resource available Prepared under the auspices of the Optical Society of America, the five carefully architected and cross-referenced volumes of the Handbook of Optics, Third Edition, contain everything a student, scientist, or engineer requires to actively work in the field. From the design of complex optical systems to world-class research and development methods, this definitive publication provides unparalleled access to the fundamentals of the discipline and its greatest minds. Individual chapters are written by the world's most renowned experts who explain, illustrate, and solve the entire field of optics. Each volume contains a complete chapter listing for the entire Handbook, extensive chapter glossaries, and a wealth of references. This pioneering work offers unprecedented coverage of optics data, techniques, and applications. Volume III, all in full color, covers vision and vision optics.
ITOHS GHOST Manchuria 1945 The suicide of a Japanese soldier obscures the terrible crimes committed there. Japan 1952 Seven years later Itoh returns. His ghost terrorizes anyone who remembers. Akiko, Itohs daughter, is kidnapped. A mysterious letter leads Itohs lover on a perilous journey to find him. Itohs enemies will track him down and kill him before he incriminates them. Can Itohs Ghost bring the truth to light before its too late?
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