This is the morning of the 15th of February in Australia. We’ve just have had breakfast. I am very much looking forward to continue reading Jonathan Franzen’s ‘Purity’. I have only a few more pages to read.
Last night we watched ‘The End is my Beginning’. This was a very thought provoking film about the end of life. It was filmed like a documentary and based on the life of an Italian journalist and his family.
https://auntyuta.com/2017/02/14/the-end-is-my-beginning/
http://cineuropa.org/nw.aspx?t=newsdetail&l=en&did=200173
by Vittoria Scarpa
25/03/2011
A man on his deathbed recounts his life and experiences to his son in what should be a film teeming with flashbacks, seeing as how the man is Tiziano Terzani and the theatre of his adventures are Vietnam and its devastating war, Mao’s China, Ghandi’s India and the Himalayas.
Instead, The End Is My Beginning [+], an adaptation of the bestseller by the great Italian writer and journalist, directed by Jo Baier, is a long dialogue between father and son, noteworthy performances from the leads (Bruno Ganz and Elio Germano), a theatrical film shot in one setting: Terzani’s real house in Tuscany, where he spent his last days among the pristine countryside and mountains, talking to his son Folco about life, disease and death.
Adapted for the big screen by Folco Terzani and the film’s German producer, Ulrich Limmer, the memories of the unforgettable Asian correspondent for Der Spiegel and Corriere della Sera, who passed away in 2004, are presented directly and simply: “We wondered whether or not to use flashbacks,” said Limmer, “but then decided to show something increasingly more rare: one man speaking, and another listening”.
The choice was a decidedly courageous one, and it paid off thanks to the intensity of the cast, the quality of the dialogue, and viewers’ awareness that they are watching an authentic and in some way illuminating adventure. “More than a film, it’s a unique experience,” said Germano, who to portray Folco spent two months at the Terzani’s house “in contact with the stars, mountains and wind, and collecting chestnuts”.
The challenge pays off also thanks to the total lack of melodrama. Everything is measured, restrained, like Germano’s emotions. Though his gazes and silences, the actor expresses the undeniable conflict of a son towards a larger-than-life father, as well as his curiosity and the desire to understand his parent.
Produced by Collina Film Production and B.A. Production in collaboration with Beta Film and RAI Cinema, The End Is My Beginning is released in Italy on April I by Fandango on 60 screens, after having garnered 230,000 admissions in Germany.
(Translated from Italian)
This is early morning Monday, the 13th of February. I just had a look at what the Sydney Morning Herald published last night about the weather and I put this in another post this morning:
https://auntyuta.com/2017/02/13/hottest-place-on-the-planet/
Just now all this feels quite unbelievable to me. I do not say that it is not true, it’s just that where I am it feels right now more like a cool winter’s morning: The outside temperature is a cool 15 C. What a change from two days ago!
“The coast and parts of the ranges were the only areas in NSW to escape high-30s or 40s on Saturday.” This is what it says in Peter Hannam’s article in the SMH.
Further it says:”NSW and other parts of south-eastern Australia were the hottest in the world on Saturday, according to the Climate Reanalyzer website.”
Here is what was said about fire conditions a couple of days ago:
“Soaring temperatures across much of the state have led to warnings of catastrophic fire conditions. In Walgett, the temperature has hit 46 degrees.
As NSW faces the “worst possible fire conditions” in its history with ‘extreme’ and catastrophic’ warnings in place across large slabs of the state, RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said the situation was as “bad as it gets” and warned it was set to get worse on Sunday when winds are expected to sweep through scorched parts of mid to northern NSW.
“To put it simply [the conditions] are off the old scale,” he said. “It is without precedent in NSW”.
As of 11am, the RFS reported 76 bush and grass fires across NSW with 26 not yet contained. Deputy Commission Rob Rogers told ABC news: “It’s going to be a really tough day.”
I am sure a lot of fires in rural NSW are still burning now. It is a huge task for fire crews to keep them away from homes as much as possible.
Here is a comment I made yesterday: “We were quite lucky today. we had an overcast sky, all day and a bit of wind and the temperature went no higher than 28 Celsius which I find very pleasant. The rest of NSW still has sweltering conditions and severe fire alert. Today, I was able to do a lot of reading in the Novel “Purity” by Jonathan Franzen.”
FEBRUARY 12 2017 – 9:49PM
Red hot: NSW smashes February statewide heat records two days in a row
Peter Hannam
CONTACT VIA EMAIL
FOLLOW ON FACEBOOK
FOLLOW ON GOOGLE PLUS
TWITTER TWEET
Meteorologists were predicting NSW would set a state-wide record for February warmth during the current heatwave but few would have tipped the mark would be broken two days in a row.
The blast of summer heat has placed south-eastern Australia on the map as the hottest place on the planet.
I googled today some reviews of this book.
The links to the two reviews at the top I publish to show how much two reviews about the same book can actually differ.
My thoughts on reading this book:
I am now more than halfway through Jonathan Franzen’s “Purity”.
I would agree that for me this book is not all that easy one to read. There are pages with a lot of information which at times I find rather difficult to digest and remember. However I can sense that all the information provided shows a lot about our modern world and how people in it are affected. Other sections in the book are very easy to read and show, how complicated ordinary lives can become in our modern world. I like being able to read parts of the book for a few hours in one go. Making it possible to read for an extended time, the book seems to be getting more and more interesting. I can’t wait to find out more about its characters!
I just found the following in The Guardian:
“Sydney airport recorded its hottest February day ever at 42.9C, breaking a 37-year record. Wood said the month was on track to be the hottest on record in both Sydney and Brisbane, following on from their hottest January on record.”
Here is an article by the ABC about Australia’s heatwave:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-11/states-ready-for-extreme-heatwave/8261520
We live in Dapto, 100 km south of Sydney. Today, Saturday, we expect 41c. Right now it is still early morning and the outside temperature is only about 23C. We plan on driving to Warrawong later on, spending some time in the shopping centre and in the afternoon we want to visit the GALA Cinema to see a French movie: Rosalie Blum.
Yesterday afternoon my lady friends came over to my place. It was our Friday games afternoon. Erika is away in Geelong, Victoria, visiting some friends. But Barbara, Irene and Marion did come despite the heat and I not having any air-conditioning. I had our ceiling fans in the living room going the whole time. Blinds and curtains were in front of all the windows. We started playing at 2 pm. I think our inside temperature was then only about 28C. But three hours later, when the ladies left, the inside temperature had climbed to 32C.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/jacobs-aletta-henriette
A pioneer in many realms—birth control, women’s suffrage, peace activism, and envisioning a wider future for women—Aletta Henriette Jacobs was born on February 9, 1854, in the small town of Sappemeer, Netherlands, the eighth of eleven children of Abraham Jacobs, a country doctor, and Anna de Jongh. Her assimilated Jewish family maintained social and intellectual ties with other Jewish families in the area.
When still a child, accompanying her adoring father on his visits to patients, she already yearned to be a doctor, but as she grew older she was constrained and disheartened by the schooling then available for young women. Two Jewish physicians who were close family friends provided support: Dr. L. Ali Cohen guided her to start training for pharmacy as an interim goal; after Jacobs received crucial letters of permission from the liberal minister J.R. Thorbecke, Dr. S.S. Rosenstein, rector of the University of Groningen, welcomed her admission to the faculty of medicine.
She began her studies in 1871 at the University of Groningen, where she and her sister Charlotte were the first female students. Overcoming bouts of illness, she graduated on March 8, 1879 as the first woman physician in the Netherlands. She promptly traveled to London and, while pursuing further clinical training, soon moved into the orbit of various British radicals and freethinkers, including birth-control advocates and suffrage leaders.
She set up her medical practice in Amsterdam and began to have a significant impact on women’s health. She introduced the pessary (diaphragm) to the Netherlands despite intense opposition from male colleagues, held a free clinic for poor women two mornings a week, and campaigned to change the unhealthy working conditions of salesgirls.
A small and slender woman, she married Carel Victor Gerritsen, a Dutch grain merchant, legislator and reformer, in 1892, after a long acquaintance. They enjoyed an egalitarian relationship, their otherwise happy and productive life together marred only by one devastating loss: the child they longed for lived only a day.
The International Council of Women’s 1899 meeting in London had a galvanizing effect on Jacobs. There she met inspiring leaders such as Susan B. Anthony with whom she had been acquainted only through correspondence. In 1903 she gave up her medical practice and committed herself to the struggle for women’s suffrage, becoming in that year president of the Dutch suffrage organization. When the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) came into being in Berlin in 1904, she further expanded her activities . After her husband’s death in 1905 from cancer and a period of depression, she resumed her suffrage work, traveling through the Austro-Hungarian empire in the fall of 1906 with IWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt. She hosted a brilliantly successful IWSA conference in the Netherlands in 1908. She also brought feminist social and economic theory to the Netherlands by translating Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Women and Economics (1900), and Olive Schreiner’s Women and Labor (19l0).
She and Catt traveled together again in 1911–12 on a sixteen-month itinerary including South Africa, the Middle East, India, Ceylon, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, the Philippines, China and Japan. They looked into the situation of women and, when they could, encouraged women to improve their lot. Throughout the journey Jacobs wrote lively reports for the Dutch paper De Telegraaf.
After the outbreak of war in 1914, Jacobs strove to use her international network to try to stop the slaughter. With a small group of planners, she called for an international women’s conference at the Hague and invited the acclaimed American reformer Jane Addams to chair the proceedings. Despite the resistance of governments and the hazards of wartime travel, a resilient group of women from belligerent and neutral nations convened at the Hague from April 28 to May 1, 1915, and passed farsighted resolutions. Jacobs participated in one of the two small post-conference delegations, her group traveling through a war-obsessed Europe, meeting with leaders of the belligerent nations to encourage mediation. In September 1915 she voyaged to the United States in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade President Woodrow Wilson to mediate the conflict.
During and after the war she continued to lead Dutch women in their struggle for suffrage. Victory came in 1919. That year she and others from the Hague group founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Her health weakened and her finances straitened, she spent her later years in close contact with her dear friends the Broese van Groenous, still traveling to conferences and speaking her mind, and receiving honors and appreciation from Dutch women and from abroad. She died on August 10, 1929, in Baarn, Netherlands.
Over localisatie van physiologische en pathologische verschijnselen in de groote hersenen. Dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1879
Jacobs chose an aspect of brain physiology as the subject for her medical dissertation. This was an unusual choice at the time, as the subject had been little studied.
De vrouw, haar bouw en haar inwendige organen. Deventer: 1897
A pioneering explanation for the ordinary reader of the anatomy of women, including detailed description of the entire reproductive system. Many illustrations.
Vrouwenbelangen. Drie vraagstukken van aktuelen aard. Amsterdam: 1899.
A compilation of three articles setting forth Jacobs’s strongly held positions on controversial issues: women’s need for economic independence, the regulation of prostitution, and the importance of family planning.
Uit het leven van merkwaardige vrouwen. Amsterdam: 1905.
A collection of seven biographical sketches first published in 1903–1905 in the Dutch suffrage journal Maandblad voor Vrouwenkiesrecht . They portray British and American women reformers and suffrage leaders Jacobs admired and knew personally. The subjects include her close friends Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt.
Gerritsen, C.V. and Aletta H. Jacobs. Brieven uit en over Amerika. Amsterdam: 1906.
A collection of the articles Jacobs and her husband Carel Victor Gerritsen wrote for Dutch publications during their 1904–05 visit to the United States when they first traveled through the country with a group of delegates to the 1904 St. Louis conference of the Interparliamentary Union and subsequently traveled on their own. Gerritsen’s pieces usually focus on political and economic matters, while Jacobs deals with the condition of women, prison reform, and other social issues.
Reisbrieven uit Afrika en Azië, benevens eenige brieven uit Zweden en Noorwegen. 2 vols. Almelo: 1913.
A collection of the articles Jacobs wrote for the Dutch paper De Telegraaf during the sixteen- month trip she and United States suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt took in 1911–12 through Africa and Asia. Includes observations of women’s situation, accounts of efforts by the two travelers to organize and energize local women, impressions of local notables and of tourist attractions, and informal ethnographic and sociological observations.
Memories: My Life as an International Leader in Health, Suffrage, and Peace. Translated by Annie Wright. Edited by Harriet Feinberg. New York: 1996.
English translation of Jacobs’s autobiography Herinneringen, first published in 1924. Includes a literary analysis of the memoir by the editor, a historical perspective by Harriet Pass Freidenreich, notes that contain brief biographical data on many European feminists, and a wide-ranging bibliography that includes many works in Dutch and some in German.
[The Aletta Jacobs Papers are housed at the Internationaal Informatiecentrum en Archief voor de Vrouwenbeweging (IIAV) in Amsterdam.]
Addams, Jane, Emily Balch and Alice Hamilton. Women of the Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results. New York: l9l5.
Vivid accounts by three key participants in the Hague conference and its aftermath, including their reflections on the war and on the role of media in molding public opinion, and their impressions of the European leaders of belligerent and neutral nations with whom they had personal encounters. Appendices include the set of resolutions adopted at the congress.
Blackburn, Susan. “Western feminists observe Asian women: an example from the Dutch East Indies” . In Women Creating Indonesia. The first fifty years, edited by Jean Gelman Taylor, 1–21. Clayton, Australia: 1997.
Focuses on the articles Jacobs wrote for De Telegraaf during the three months she and Catt spent in the Indies, where Jacobs, a Dutch woman with relatives and many contacts in the islands, played a special role. Emphasis on the tension between her positive view of Dutch colonial rule and her espousal of international feminism. Bibliography includes works in English and Dutch about Indonesian women and Indonesian history.
Bonner, Thomas N. To the Ends of the Earth: Women’s Search for Education in Medicine. Cambridge, Mass: l992.
Traces women’s struggle to study medicine in Paris, Zürich, Bern, St. Petersburg, and other centers of medical learning—their achievements, their setbacks, and the perseverance of the pioneers, particularly the first Americans who went to Europe to study. Does not treat Jacobs directly but gives a nuanced international context for her achievements. Extensive bibliography includes many works in German and Russian.
Bosch, Mineke. Een onwrikbaar geloof in rechtvaardigheid. Aletta Jacobs, 1854–1929. Amsterdam: 2005.
The first full-length scholarly biography of Jacobs, published by Uitgeverij Balans in Amsterdam.
Bosch, Mineke. “Aletta Jacobs and the Women’s International Congress at the Hague, l9l5: Peace, internationalism and the discourse of Dutch nationalism.” Paper delivered at the conference: Hull-House as a Resource for Teaching U.S. and World History. September 22–23, 2000. University of Illinois at Chicago.
Presents Jacobs’s peace initiative within its Dutch context, with a focus on how the Dutch saw their small nation and its colonial policies in relation to the other great colonial powers. Bosch argues that Jacobs’s initiative actually brought her suffrage work closer to fruition because of the special nature of Dutch nationalism at the time.
Bosch, Mineke. “Colonial Dimensions of Dutch Women’s Suffrage: Aletta Jacobs’s Travel Letters from Africa and Asia.” Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 11 #2 (1999): 8–34.
Critical reinterpretation. in light of post-colonial and feminist theory, of Jacobs’s articles in De Telegraaf for Dutch readers. Her acceptance, indeed advocacy of the idea of ‘benevolent’ colonial role is according to Bosch not really in conflict with her international feminism but rather a way of asserting a key role for Western feminists in outreach to other nations and cultures.
Bosch, Mineke, with Annemarie Kloosterman. Politics and Friendship. Letters from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902–1942. Columbus: l990.
Focuses on the evolution and development of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), including the upheavals brought about in the organization by World War I and by the rise of fascism in the l930s. Emphasis on the inextricably entwined personal and professional lives of the women involved. Each explanatory chapter is followed by a selection of letters among five key participants: Aletta Jacobs, Carrie Chapman Catt, Rosa Manus, Anna Howard Shaw and Rosika Schwimmer. Appendices include boards and officers of the IWSA from 1904 to 1942. Bibliography of works in English and Dutch, some in German.
This book is a translation and adaptation of Mineke Bosch and Annemarie Kloosterman, Lieve Dr. Jacobs: Brieven uit de Wereldbond voor Vrouwenkiesrecht 1902-42. Amsterdam: 1985.
Feinberg, Harriet. “Aletta Jacobs’s Reisbrieven uit Afrika en Azië.” Unpublished paper. Cambridge, Mass: l995.
Overview, with vignettes and extended quotations, of the articles Jacobs wrote for De Telegraafduring the journey she and Catt took in l9ll–12. Highlights Jacobs’s impressions of different nations’ colonial rule, then the near-epiphany she and Catt experienced in China, and seeks to assess whether her views of nonwhite women changed during the journey.
Feinberg, Harriet. “ A Pioneering Dutch Feminist Views Egypt: Aletta Jacobs’s Travel Letters.” Feminist Studies 10 (2) (Fall l990): 65–77.
Describes Jacobs’s impressions in the articles she wrote from Egypt and Mandate Palestine, and finds an interplay of two modes of discourse: ‘encouraging our peers’— based on an idea of universal sisterhood—and ‘lifting up our native sisters’—based on an assumption of white Western superiority. Argues that her suffrage work pulls Jacobs toward the egalitarian mode.
Posthumus-van der Goot, W.H. Vrouwen vochten voor de vrede. Arnhem: l961.
Broad exploration of the growth of peace activism in Europe and the United States during the nineteenth century, before and during World War I, in the interwar years, and after World War II. Jacobs and her circle are considered mainly in chapters l3–15. Reflections and speculations on the role of Quakers and other peace groups and on future prospects for peace. No bibliography.
Posthumus-van der Goot, W.H. and Anna de Waal, eds. Van Moeder op Dochter: De maatschappelijke positie van de vrouw in Nederland vanaf de Franse tijd. Revised edition, Nijmegen: l977.
Pioneering in-depth study of the social position of women in the Netherlands from 1798 to the l960s. Jacobs is prominent in the sections on suffrage and on health; she is considered within a rich context of other early Dutch feminists. Appendices include Dutch women’s organizations, Dutch women elected to the legislature. No bibliography.
Randall, Mercedes. Improper Bostonian: Emily Greene Balch. Nobel Peace Laureate l946. New York: l964.
Biography by a younger close associate of Balch which explores the development of her commitment to pacifism. The book gives a detailed and emotional account of her participation in the Hague conference and its aftermath, of her subsequent pacifist activities during the war, and of the founding meeting in Zurich of the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom.(WILPF). Much material is drawn from private correspondence and unpublished papers.
Rupp, Leila. Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement. Princeton: l997.
Focuses on the International Council of Women (ICW), the International Alliance of Women (IAW) [formerly IWSA] and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in a broad inquiry into the personal relationships and issues that shaped these and other groups. Considerable attention is given to Jacobs and her Dutch cohorts. Extensive bibliography includes many manuscript collections, conference proceedings, and dissertations, as well as an international range of primary and secondary sources.
Tilburg, Marja et al, ‘Op mij rusten grooter en ernstiger plichten.’ Dr. Aletta Jacobs’
zorg voor de wereld.’ RUG: Werkgroep Vrouwenstudies Letteren Groningen, l992.
A group of three articles prepared in connection with a 1992 exhibit honoring Jacobs at the University of Groningen’s museum.The booklet includes a biographical sketch by Mineke Bosch, an assessment of Jacobs’s contribution as a physician by Annita Deen, and an analysis of her belief in progress by Claudia Vrieling. Photographs, illustrations, bibliography.
Van Brakel, Nouchka, film producer. Aletta Jacobs, het hoogste streven. Netherlands, Circe Films, l995.
An appealing, somewhat fictionalized film focusing on Jacobs’s medical training, her early years of practice, and her relationship with Carel Gerritsen. Includes flashbacks to her childhood and glimpses of her in old age.
Van Voris, Jacqueline. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life. New York: l987.
Biographical study emphasizing Catt’s growth toward internationalism and her feminist networks. Chapters 10 and 11 cover Catt and Jacobs’s 1911–1912 trip through Africa and Asia and form a useful complement to Jacobs’s own account in her Reisbrieven, particularly because Van Voris quotes from Catt’s private diary while Jacobs’s articles were intended for publication in a Dutch newspaper.
Wenger, Beth. “Radical politics in a reactionary age: the unmaking of Rosika Schwimmer, l9l4–l930.” Journal of Women’s History, Vol.2 #2 (fall l990): 66–99.
Biographical study of Jacobs’s Hungarian Jewish friend and associate in suffrage and peace work, from whom she was later estranged. Wenger chronicles Schwimmer’s ascendance as an outspoken pacifist and feminist and her difficult, often desperate, later years in the United States.
Wilde, Inge de. “ Aletta Jacobs en het geluk van de wereld.” In In de vaart der volken. Nederlanders rond 1900, 161–171. H. Belién, M. Bossenbroek and G.J. van Setten (eds). Amsterdam: l998,
Succinct biography integrating much recent Jacobs scholarship into a balanced, clear account of Jacobs’s aspirations and multiple achievements.
Wilde, Inge de . Nieuwe deelgenoten in de wetenschap: Vrouwelijke studenten and docenten aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen l871–1919. Dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Assen: l998.
Traces the history of women’s presence at the University of Groningen. The second chapter, pp. 40–84 is devoted to Aletta Jacobs and her sister Charlotte Jacobs, the first two female students. De Wilde provides corroboration and enhancement for some of Jacobs’s assertions in her autobiography, questions and modifies others. The extensive bibliography on higher education for women, particularly in the Netherlands, includes all de Wilde’s prior published work on Jacobs and her circle and on other academic women and women’s organizations.
Wilde, Inge de, ed. “Er is nog zooveel te doen op de wereld.” Brieven van Aletta H. Jacobs aan de familie Broese van Groenou. Zutphen: l992.
Personal letters from Jacobs to various members of this family who were very dear to her give insights often absent from her more public writings. General introduction plus comments and notes on most letters. Many photographs.
Wilde, Inge de. Aletta Jacobs in Groningen. Groningen: Studium Generale/Universiteitsmuseum/Rijksuniversiteit te Groningen, l979.
Examines the currents of thought in Groningen intellectual circles about higher education for women, and traces Jacobs’s progress from her preparations for admission to completion of her dissertation. Reproduces key documents and letters. Bibliography of Jacobs’s articles on medical and social problems.
Wiltsher, Anne. Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War. Connecticut: l985.
Narrative of the tumultuous events within the suffrage movement, particularly among the British suffrage leaders, leading up to the Hague conference and beyond. Focuses on Jacobs’s fiery friend Rosika Schwimmer, from whom she was later bitterly estranged. Written by a journalist, the book creates vital scenes and moments that embody key issues.
Feinberg, Harriet. “Aletta Henriette Jacobs.” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 1 March 2009. Jewish Women’s Archive. (Viewed on February 8, 2017) <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/jacobs-aletta-henriette>
http://christopherpetitt.com/about-the-book/
Christopher Petitt is a strategic management and financial consultant with lifelong passions for military and political history.
A former CPA and auditor of large financial institutions and an executive for a major hedge fund, Petitt has provided consulting on the causes and effects of the recent global financial crisis, public-private financing for domestic infrastructure, and infrastructure development in the West Bank.
He currently serves on the RAND Corporation Advisory Boards for the Center for Middle East Public Policy and Center for Corporate Ethics and Governance.
He has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He now resides in Portland, Oregon.
Click here for more about The Crucible of Global War.
“Nobody outside of despots and tyrants and dictators bent on world domination ever wants to go to war. And yet entire nations of people are moved to do so because, to put it simply, there is no other choice… They can try to put it off. They can institute political and economic policies that ignore the underlying realities and watch as conditions deteriorate to the breaking point. They can try futilely to stem the tide of history. But they can only kick the can so far down the road. Ultimately, people go to war.”
So writes Christopher Petitt in this groundbreaking work. Global economic malaise, record financial inequality, chaos in the Middle East (including the rise of ISIS), Russian expansion, the Eurozone crisis, the growth of China’s military, the loss of American influence – the world is beginning to see turmoil that may rival the global turmoil of the 1930s on the eve of the Second World War. Are there instructive parallels? The power structures of the world are changing, and if history is a guide, the changing will not come quietly.
In The Crucible of Global War – And the Sequence that is Leading Back to It, Petitt – history devotee, market economist, avid student of Middle East affairs – lays out in chilling detail the connections between today’s geopolitical disorder and the critical moments throughout history that have preceded times of global war. Is it humankind’s destiny to experience global war again? Is war inevitable?
The Crucible of Global War is a page-turning exposition of history, politics, economics, current events, and philosophy – a must-read for anyone interested in gaining insight into the nature of history and the inexorable unfolding of the perilous times ahead.
AuntyUta 
re: “[The Aletta Jacobs Papers are housed at the Internationaal Informatiecentrum en Archief voor de Vrouwenbeweging (IIAV) in Amsterdam.]”
The IIAV has changed its name to Aletta: Institute for Women’s History, named after her. English-language website: http://www.aletta.nu/aletta/en….
seems like no way to contact the author ;(