This topical book provides unprecedented analysis of football's place in post-war and post-reunification Germany. The expert team of German and British contributors offers wide-ranging perspectives on the significance of football in German sporting and cultural life, showing how it has emerged as a focus for an expression of German national identity and pride in the post-war era. Some of the themes examined include: footballing expressions of local, regional and national identity; ethnic dynamics, migrant populations and Europeanization; German football’s commercial economy; women’s football. Key moments in the history of German football are also explored, such as the victories in 1954, 1972 and 1990, the founding of the Bundesliga, and the winning bid for the 2006 World Cup. (Routledge)

This book: The system transformation after German unification in 1990 constituted an experiment on an unprecedented scale. At no point in history had one state attempted to redesign another without conquest, bloodshed or coercion but by treaties, public policy and bureaucratic processes. Unification was achieved by erasing the eastern political and economic model. However, in the meantime it has become clear that the same cannot be said about social transformation. On the contrary, social and cultural attitudes and differentiation have continued and resulted in deep divisions between West and East Germany. After unification, the injustices of politics seemed to have been replaced, in the eyes of most former GDR citizens, by unexpected injustices in the personal spheres of ordinary people who lost their jobs and faced unknown realities of deprivation and social exclusion. These are the main concerns of the contributors to this volume. Incorporating new research findings and published data, they focus on key aspects of economic, political, and social transformation in eastern Germany and compare, through case studies, each area with developments in the West.

This book: In recent years, traditional interpretations of the processes of industrialisation in Britain have been superceded by a more subtle, macro-economic, gradualist understanding of industrialisation. In particular, commentators have now come to consider the importance of geography and the notion that historical change occurs in space as well as time. Concentrating on the Midlands, this book, drawing on a wealth of original research by an eminent collection of scholars, seeks to develop a fresh understanding of the complex range of urban industrial activity taking place in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focusing on the concomitant urbanisation, it explains how regional urban systems both shaped and responded to processes of industrialisation and how urban systems influenced growth and raised the potential for development in particular locales. (Manchester University Press)

"A Nation of Shopkeepers" reflects research on retail history and cultures of consumption. The contributors challenge existing ideas about retail development, showing how, for example, large-scale retailers played a far lesser role in the development of the modern city that is generally thought, and how the success of department stores was determined less by "entrepreneurial" spirit and more by the unforseen consequences of legislation. With the growing interest in cultures of consumption, this book should be useful to specialists and students in retail history, human geography and social and cultural history. (I.B. Taurus publishers)

THIS BOOK: Textiles form the largest group of designed objects available for study, whether as objects in their own rights, as constituents parts of fashion, furniture and interiors, or as industry - the latter embracing production, trade and working environments and experiences. This anthology demonstrates the range of textile studies through eighteen essays that consider the process of designing and making, the makers and manufacturers, the product itself, or how it is sold, used and perceived. Tackling subjects from prehistory to the 1990s, each has been ed to be of particular interest to students and professionals in design, cultural history, fashion and textiles, but also will be of use to anyone who is interested in the study of objects. Set within the context of interdisciplinary techniques in the study of designed objects, the contributors have been drawn from diverse professional backgrounds in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Their experience encompasses the history of textiles and dress, design and economics, museology, social history, psychoanalytical therapy, artchitecture, sociology and textile practice. Divided into four sections, this volume both demonstrates and explores cross-disciplinary research, while enriching and making acccessible the myriad of ways in which textiles - and objects in general - can be interpreted. The editors are the freelance historian, Mary Schoeser, and Dr Christine Boydell, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History of Art and Material Culture, De Montfort University. Published widely, they previously collaborated on the exhibition and publication The Architect of Floors: modernism, art and Marion Dorn designs (1996). (Middlesex University Press)

This volume examines conflicts over food and their implications for European societies in the first half of the Twentieth century. Ranging across Europe, from Scandinavia and Britain to Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union, this volume explores the political, economic and cultural dynamics that shaped conflicts over food and their legacies. (Palgrave Macmillan)

"Reinventing Gender" focuses on the consequences of post-communist transformation for women in eastern Germany and evaluates their responses. In the GDR era, women were required to take on employment while the state provided child care and financial incentives for mothers. Since the duty to work applied to men as well as women, women did not perceive their situation as disadvantaged or gender as a barrier to their socio-economic participation. Gender was not linked with inequality and there was no feminist discourse, although the hidden reality was that women's issues lagged behind those of men. In the post-communist era gender emerged as a new divide. While the politicians had expected that eastern German women would focus on their families, they confounded policy-makers by refusing to regard homemaking as an acceptable lifestyle. However, since unification women have had fewer employment opportunities and lower job security. Gender has been reinvented in two ways: a sense of injustice among women and their bid for labour market inclusion, and the experience of unfamiliar barriers to employment on the grounds of gender. In recasting their biographies by postponing marriage and childbirth and developing new strategies of risk management to retain their place in the newly competitive labour market, women are trying to avoid the pitfalls of gender and take advantage of the opportunities in the post-communist setting.

This chapter: Mike Haynes looks at the origins of the Hungarian revolt, in terms of workplace politics while Anne Alexander reviews the impact that Suez had on Nasser s reputation within the Arab world and Arab nationalist politics. In the afternoon there was a widening of the focus. This book: ‘Through the Smoke of Budapest 50 Years On’, The February 2006 Conference of the London Socialist Historians Group was held at the Institute of Historical Research in central London, one of a series of such conferences over the previous ten years. Assembled were a modest group of academics and activists come to mark the 50th anniversary of the events of 1956, and to do so in a particular way. Firstly by presenting new historical research on the questions under review rather than trotting out tired orthodoxies. Secondly by linking historical inquiry to political activism. It was queried why such a conference was held in February 2006 rather than in the autumn, and the answer was a simple one. To intervene historically in the debates of the year by setting a socialist historical agenda for doing so.