Schets van de geschiedenis van de huidige bewoners van Siberië, afstammelingen van Nederlandse protestanten die in de zestiende eeuw naar het oosten gevlucht waren. Ook de huidige situatie komt aan bod.

One of the most creative periods of Russian culture and the most energized period of the Revolution coincided in the fateful years 1913-1931. During this time both the Party and the intellectuals of Petersburg strove to transform backward Russia into a nation so advanced it would shine like a beacon for the rest of the world. Yet the end result was the Stalinist culture of the 1930s with its infamous purges.

In this new book, Katerina Clark does not attempt to account for such a devolution by looking at the broad political arena. Rather, she follows the quest of intellectuals through these years to embody the Revolution, a focus that casts new light on the formation of Stalinism. This revisionist work takes issue with many existing cultural histories by resisting the temptation to structure its narrative as a saga of the oppressive regime versus the benighted intellectuals. In contrast, Clark focuses on the complex negotiations between the extraordinary environment of a revolution, the utopian striving of both politicians and intellectuals, the local culture system, and that broader environment, the arena of contemporary European and American culture. In doing so, the author provides a case study in the ecology of cultural revolution, viewed through the prism of Petersburg, which on the eve of the Revolution was one of the cultural capitals of Europe. Petersburg today is in the national imagination of modern Russia, a symbol of Westernization and radical change.

In vijftig verrassende hoofdstukken biedt Het grote verhaal van Nederland inzicht in de facetten van onze geschiedenis, die het dagelijks leven tot op de huidige dag mee bepalen. Van Hunebed tot euro, van beeldenstorm tot tachtigjarige oorlog, van Floris V tot Drees, van middeleeuwen tot multiculturele samenleving. Leidraad daarbij is de Canon van de Nederlandse geschiedenis. Het grote verhaal van Nederland is een zeer actueel boek vol achtergrondmateriaal voor de grote publieke debatten van onze tijd.

The Russian Civil War (1918-1924) in Asiatic Russia was like the American Wild West as one regime after another tried to establish its rule over the freedom-loving peasants and miners of the West Siberian plains and mountains. A key role in this struggle was played by the partisan armies put together by anarchists, which fought first against the Whites, then against the Reds. Like the better known Ukrainian peasant movement led by Nestor Makhno- known as the Makhnovshchina - the Siberian anarchists aimed to establish free federations of rural communes and worker-managed industrial enterprises. Long ignored or stigmatized as bandits by Soviet historians and their nationalist successors, the Siberian anarchist-partisans are rescued from oblivion in this pioneering study.

The concept of purification of the soul as a whole is and always be central to the message of Islam and to the welfare of humans, both in this life and the hereafter.

Set in the heart of the Sussex Downs, Charleston Farmhouse is the most important remaining example of Bloomsbury decorative style. But the garden, described by Virginia Woolf on her arrival in 1916 as "charming. . . now run rather wild" became and remained central to life in the farmhouse. The walled garden, created by Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry from the vegetable garden after the war, as well as the pond, the orchard, and the lawns which shade off into the fields, all contributed in a major sense to the creative energies of the place. And this creativity is reflected in the numerous works of art in stone, in wood, in brick, and in ceramic that Bell, Fry, Duncan Grant, and the next generation -- notably Quentin Bell -- contributed to the garden to enhance (and sometimes to comment on or to counterpoint) the simple but expressive planting schemes. Now, for the first time, the year-round charm and glory of this most English and most artistic of gardens has been captured by one of Britain's leading garden photographers.