San Antonio College Library

This program traces the history of Eastern Europe from the reign of Franz Josef to the rise of Hitler and the beginnings of the Second World War. Topics covered include the war for Macedonia pitting Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece against the Turks; political manipulation of the Balkans by Russia, Austria, Britain, and France; domination of Serbia; the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; the fall of czarist Russia; the Hungarian Revolution of...

Behind 1900 Vienna's facade of elegance and affluence, a new generation of artists, musicians, writers, and thinkers was struggling to escape the straitjacket of Austro-Hungarian society. In this vintage program, George Steiner, one of the great literary minds of the 20th century, presents his wide-ranging theories on time, language, and culture within the context of Vienna in 1900-a city and time that gave the world Wittgenstein, Schoenberg, Klimt,...

In 1922, the people of Ireland turned against each other in one of the bloodiest civil wars in history. In its wake, internecine feuding incited decades of terrorist atrocities. This program features interviews with participants in the Civil War, some in their 90s, whose passionate defense of the side they took remains as strong and vivid as ever. Contributions from surviving relatives of participants in the war, including three sons and daughters...

Bernard Wasserstein presents a disturbing interpretation of the collapse of European Jewish civilization even before the Nazi onslaught. Wasserstein shows how the harsh realities of the age devastated the lives of communities and individuals. By 1939, the Jews faced an existential crisis that was as much the result of internal decay as of external attack.

Fueled by an unflagging determination, Francois Mitterrand succeeded in revitalizing France's political left and then holding the nation's highest office for fourteen pivotal years. Drawing on interviews with Mitterrand, his former cabinet members, and others, this program sorts out the melange of triumphs, failures, rivalries, and scandals that made up the late president's career in power politics. Archival footage firmly sets the life of the magisterial...

The Bielski Brothers commanded the largest Jewish partisan group operating in occupied Europe during World War II. They saved the lives of more Jews than Oscar Schindler and took revenge against hundreds of Nazis and collaborators. Remarkably, their story has never been told before on film. This moving and powerful program tells their unique story and how they built an entire town to house their 1,500 members half-underground in the primordial forests...

World War I would soon write finis to the world of glitter and elegance. Formality was loosening, the Gibson girl was the rage, and so was wearing grotesque assemblages of dead birds affixed to hats. The first of the major couture houses were established, and Japanese influence belatedly hit the fashion world, combining the worst of East and West. From hobble skirts to tailored suits, women responded to emancipation with raised hems and bobbed hair...

From the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo to the delegates signing the Versailles Treaty, this program covers the events that set off the war and the war itself: the German invasion of Belgium; the Battle of the Marne, of Ypres, Verdun, the Somme, Gallipoli; the naval Battle of Jutland, the sinking of the Blucher, and the German U-boat campaign; airplanes, Zeppelins, and the newly-invented tank; the U.S. entry into the war; the last massive German...

This book is an account of a continent locked in a struggle between tolerance and racial extermination, imperial ambition and national self-determination, liberty and the tyrannies of Right and Left.