When Norman Itzkowitz wrote the Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition he intended to provide his readers with a well focused overview of the rise and the subsequent decline of the Ottoman Empire from the fourteenth century through to the early decades of the twentieth century.

More rare and often harder to identify than dinosaur bones, the fresh excrement of ancient animals if exposed to conditions favorable to preservation can become fossilized. The specimens can become rock-hard nodes. They are called "coprolite". High in phosphate, ground coprolite "dinosaur poop" was used for fertilizer and briefly used in munitions development during early World War I.

A brief look at one angle as to why the British entered WW1.

Herbert Henry Asquith had become Britain’s Prime Minister in 1908 after the death of Henry Campbell Bannerman and was eventually replaced by David Lloyd George. Asquith had previously been the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and had started the process of increasing welfare provision. Asquith was an effective political campaigner as well as a capable administrator. e was not the type of man easily panicked although he seemed to lack the dynamism of Lloyd George or Winston Churchill. Of course he had also been help to promote both men before the First World War started.

As a whole American economy growth during this period was impressive, economic growth that contributed to the expansion of the largest corporations. The period witnessed the American economy overtaking the British, and German economies in terms of output, modern practices, and profits. US corporations were able to take advantage of high level of foreign investment, a growing domestic market, as well as improving access to foreign markets. Although foreign investment slowed as a result of the First World War, it had being a major advantage up to 1913. For instance 19% of British investments went to the US between 1911 and 1913 (Hobsbawm, 1987 p. 348). Increased profits made it an advantage for American corporations to get bigger in size. It made good sense to concentrate ownership as much as possible (Hobsbawm, 1994 p. 86).

The French author Albert Dauzat told a fascinating legend that emerged from World War One in a book that was published two years after the Great War. Civilian skeptics laughed at the soldiers’ tales of the murderous giant hound of No Man’s Land, but to the soldiers it was a gruesome reality…

Ashared history has frequently divided Europeans as much as it has united them. Europeans are or have been divided in most other ways yet diversity is not always the same as being divided. There will be an evaluation of the factors that could have made a shared history more a divisive factor than a unifying factor amongst Europeans.

A personal and powerful journey through the war graves of Ypres.

A comparison of frontal assault on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918, and the D-Day invasion in 1944.

Background on women during the first World War.