A Greater Love

by Olga Watkins

The true story of a woman's incredible journey into the heart of the Third Reich to find the man she loves. When the Gestapo seize 20-year-old Olga Czepf's fiance she is determined to find him and sets off on an extraordinary 2,000-mile search across Nazi-occupied Europe risking betrayal, arrest and death. As the Second World War heads towards its bloody climax, she refuses to give up - even when her mission leads her to the gates of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps... Now 89 and living in London, Olga tells with remarkable clarity of the courage and determination that drove her across war-torn Europe, to find the man she loved. The greatest untold true love story of World War Two.

Another Man's Shoes

by Sven Somme

Another Man's Shoes is a gripping first-hand account of a Norwegian scientist's escape from German custody during the Second World War after his arrest for spying. Written just after the war, Sven Somme vividly describes his 200-mile trek across the mountains, pursued by German soldiers, in a bid to reach Sweden and freedom in 1944.

From That Flame

A Novelized Account of the Life, Death, and Legacy of Ahmed Shah Massoud

by MaryAnn T. Beverly

FROM THAT FLAME follows journalist Michelle Garrett as she interviews the legendary Commander Ahmed Shah Massoud – the “Lion of Panjshir” – in Afghanistan’s rugged Hindu Kush Mountains. Without warning, an attack by Taliban and al-Qaeda troops propels Michelle into a wartime adventure with Commander Massoud and his Mujahidin, one in which a friendship between the journalist and Massoud grows, giving her a unique perspective into the man the Wall Street Journal credited as being “the Afghan who ended the Cold War.”

Command Culture

Officer Education in the U.s. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940, and the Consequences for World War Ii

by JÞorg Muth

In Command Culture, Joerg Muth examines the different paths the United States Army and the German Armed Forces traveled to select, educate, and promote their officers in the crucial time before World War II. Muth demonstrates that the military education system in Germany represented an organized effort where each school and examination provided the stepping stone for the next. But in the United States, there existed no communication about teaching contents or didactical matters among the various schools and academies, and they existed in a self chosen insular environment. American officers who finally made their way through an erratic selection process and past West Point to the important Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, found themselves usually deeply disappointed, because they were faced again with a rather below average faculty who forced them after every exercise to accept the approved "school solution." Command Culture explores the paradox that in Germany officers came from a closed authoritarian society but received an extremely open minded military education, whereas their counterparts in the United States came from one of the most democratic societies but received an outdated military education that harnessed their minds and limited their initiative. On the other hand, German officer candidates learned that in war everything is possible and a war of extermination acceptable. For American officers, raised in a democracy, certain boundaries could never be crossed. This work for the first time clearly explains the lack of audacity of many high ranking American officers during World War II, as well as the reason why so many German officers became perpetrators or accomplices of war crimes and atrocities or remained bystanders without speaking up. Those American officers who became outstanding leaders in World War II did so not so much because of their military education, but despite it.

Finish Forty and Home

The Untold World War II Story of B-24s in the Pacific

by Phil Scearce

Finish Forty and Home was selected as a title within the Best of the Best from University Presses 2012 program and presented at the annual American Library Association conference. During the early years of World War II in the Pacific theatre, against overwhelming odds, young American airmen flew the longest and most perilous bombing missions of the war. They faced determined Japanese fighters without fighter escort, relentless anti-aircraft fire with no deviations from target, and thousands of miles of over-water flying with no alternative landing sites. Finish Forty and Home, by Phil Scearce, is the true story of the men and missions of the 11th Bombardment Group as it fought alone and unheralded in the South Central Pacific, while America had its eyes on the war in Europe. The book opens with Sgt. Herman Scearce, the author’s father, lying about his age to join the Army Air Corps at 16. The narrative follows Scearce through training and into combat with his new crewmates, including pilot Lt. Joe Deasy, whose last-minute transfer from training duty thrusts the new crew into the squadron commander’s role. Inexperienced crews are pressed into combat with navigational training inadequate for the great distances flown over Pacific routes, and losses mount. Finish Forty and Home takes the reader into combat with B-24 Liberator bomber crews facing the perils of long missions against tiny Japanese-held island targets. After new crews assembled into a squadron on Hawaii, they are sent on a mission to bomb Nauru. Soon the squadron moves on to bomb Wake Island, Tarawa, and finally Iwo Jima. These missions bring American forces closer and closer to the Japanese home islands and precede the critical American invasions of Tarawa and Iwo Jima. The 42nd Squadron’s losses through 1943 were staggering: 50 out of 110 airmen killed. Phil Scearce explores the context of the war and sets the stage for these daring missions, revealing the motivations of the men who flew them: to finish forty combat missions and make it home again. He based his story upon substantial research at the Air Force Historical Research Agency and the National Archives, interviews with surviving airmen, and interviews and correspondence with the survivors of men who were lost. His is the first book to document America’s bomber offensive in the early days of the Pacific War.

Egypt

by Ben Hubbard

Spanning history from Ancient Egypt through Roman, Greek and Aztec times, History Spy brings the past to life using devices which never fail to get attention. Stunning art, cunning mazes, and a spy adventure draw young readers into the heart of troubled times. While they come to grips with complicated situations, they find out more than they bargained for about the way people worked and lived. The accompanying side art and detailed facts about that period see to that.

Rome

by Ben Hubbard

Spanning history from Ancient Egypt through Roman, Greek and Aztec times, History Spy brings the past to life using devices which never fail to get attention. Stunning art, cunning mazes, and a spy adventure draw young readers into the heart of troubled times. While they come to grips with complicated situations, they find out more than they bargained for about the way people worked and lived. The accompanying side art and detailed facts about that period see to that.

D-Day in History and Memory

The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration

by Michael Dolski, Sam Edwards, and John Buckley, eds.

Over the past sixty-five years, the Allied invasion of Northwestern France in June 1944, known as D-Day, has come to stand as something more than a major battle. The assault itself formed a vital component of Allied victory in the Second World War. D-Day developed into a sign and symbol; as a word it carries with it a series of ideas and associations that have come to symbolize different things to different people and nations. As such, the commemorative activities linked to the battle offer a window for viewing the various belligerents in their postwar years. This book examines the commonalities and differences in national collective memories of D-Day. Chapters cover the main forces on the day of battle, including the United States, Great Britain, Canada, France and Germany. In addition, a chapter on Russian memory of the invasion explores other views of the battle. “This collection takes readers into how an ‘event’ becomes many events: central to the canonical American narrative about ‘The Great Crusade,’ engaged with mixed feelings by the French, and almost completely written out of the Russian narrative of the war, for example.”—Edward T. Linenthal, author of Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields

Sorbonne Confidential

by Laurel Zuckerman

After losing her high tech job in Paris, Alice Wunderland dreams of a new, unemployment-proof career as English teacher and decides to dedicate a year to training for France's prestigious competitive exam; After all, she reasons, how hard can it be for an educated American to pass a test in English? She enrolls at the Sorbonne, but her Arizona English fails to impress. Even Shakespeare's English falls short. Only one English will do: Sorbonne English! Even while learning this new language, Alice vows to investigate: Why devise an English exam that few native speakers can pass ? Could this explain why French schoolchildren rank last for English skills in Europe? Is it true that Frenchness is a question of formatting? If so, can a foreigner even one with French nationality ever become truly French? As riots break out in France among the children of immigrants, Alice cannot help but wonder: could there be any connection between her bewildering experience and theirs? A hilarious, hair-raising insider's look at the esoteric world of French Education. (Harriet Welty Rochefort --author of French Toast).

WWII Voices

by Hilary Kaiser

These oral histories give voice to both American veterans who chose to reside in France after World War II and to French women who married GIs and subsequently emigrated to the United States. Author Hilary Kaiser introduces us into the lives of seventeen soldiers of various ethnicity, gender and rank, and revisits their diverse experience as American servicemen in WWII France. Ms. Kaiser elicits fascinating and candid first person narratives of the key wartime events which transformed the lives of these men and women. Each chapter constitutes an inspirational short story starting with WWII and ending with the present day status of these unsung heroes and the women who loved them. Anyone with an interest in WWII and its effects on the lives of ordinary men and women will thoroughly enjoy this book

L’embryon et son âme dans les sources grecques (VIe s. av. J.-C.-Ve s. apr. J.-C.)

by Marie-Hélène CONGOURDEAU 

Comment l’âme vient-elle à l’embryon? Quel rapport le corps entretient-il avec son âme? Cet ouvrage explore les théories des tenants d’une épopée de l’âme tombée du ciel, attelée à un corps et cherchant à regagner le monde des esprits purs, et celles des irréductibles de l’âme non séparable pour qui l’âme ne peut se concevoir indépendamment du corps qu’elle anime. D’où vient l’âme? Quand s’unit-elle au corps en gestation? L’enquête montre que c’est sur ces fondations que se bâtira la réflexion médiévale, avec ses retombées juridiques et éthiques.

Flogging Others

Corporal Punishment and Cultural Identity from Antiquity to the Present

by G.Geltner

Corporal punishment is often seen as a litmus test for a society's degree of civilization. Its licit use purports to separate modernity from premodernity, enlightened from barbaric cultures. As Geltner argues, however, neither did the infliction of bodily pain typify earlier societies nor did it vanish from penal theory, policy, or practice. Far from displaying a steady decline that accelerated with the Enlightenment, physical punishment was contested throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, its application expanding and contracting under diverse pressures. Moreover, despite the integration of penal incarceration into criminal justice systems since the nineteenth century, modern nation states and colonial regimes increased rather than limited the use of corporal punishment. Flogging Others thus challenges a common understanding of modernization and Western identity and underscores earlier civilizations' nuanced approaches to punishment, deviance, and the human body. Today as in the past, corporal punishment thrives due to its capacity to define otherness efficiently and unambiguously, either as a measure acting upon a deviant's body or as a practice that epitomizes - in the eyes of external observers - a culture's backwardness.

Seks, drugs en rock en roll in de gouden eeuw

by Benjamin Roberts

In Seks, Drugs en Rock 'n' Roll in de Gouden Eeuw (‘Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll in the Golden Age’), historian Benjamin B. Roberts paints a fascinating portrait of the lives of young men int he first half of the seventeenth century. He describes the riotous behaviour of prominent figures such as Rembrandt – born in 1606 – and brings the values of his rebellious peers to life. Roberts convincingly demonstrates that young men rebelled then as they do now, and moved against previous generations. They grew out their hair, wore outrageous clothes, smoked, drank too much, got into fights with the city guards, cheated, and sang bawdy songs. This accessibly written book paints a vivid portrait of youth culture in the Golden Age; a time when the advent of printing allowed for a rapid spread of a culture of permissiveness. The spread of liberal ideas, together with the rising incomes, created a new generation of ‘bad boys’. Using hilarious examples, Roberts shows that deviant behaviour is timeless.

Jimmy Hoffa Called My Mom A Bitch: Profiles in Stupidity

by Jason H. Vines

The book is broken up into various chapters of stupidity: Stupid Democrats, Stupid Republicans, Stupid Atheists, Stupid Christians, Stupid Criminals, Stupid Policies, Stupid People and so on. The “Stupid Criminals” chapter contains one of my favorite columns that appeared on the Detroit News’ political website. The June 29, 2010 column is titled “Globe Al Warming Gets Rubbed the Wrong Way,” and it takes on allegations that the former VP got inappropriately horny with female masseuse at a Portland, Oregon hotel. That column also continues the sick, yet hilarious saga of Otis “Masturgate” Mathis, the illiterate (no kidding), former head of Detroit Public Schools who was forced out after he admittedly fondled himself in front of numerous female superintendents. No, I am not making this up. I coined the scandal “Masturgate” and it soon became the rage in Detroit media and made my column one of the most popular on the site.

Rembrandt

The Painter Thinking

by Ernst van de Wetering

Even during the artist’s lifetime, contemporary art lovers considered Rembrandt van Rijn to be an exceptional artist. In this revelatory sequel to the acclaimed Rembrandt: The Painter at Work, renowned Rembrandt authority Ernst van de Wetering investigates precisely why the artist, from a very early age, was praised by prominent connoisseurs. He argues that Rembrandt, from his very first endeavors in painting, embarked on a journey past all the foundations of the art of painting that, according to (up till now misinterpretated) contemporary written sources, were considered essential in the seventeenth century. Rembrandt never stopped searching for solutions to the pictorial problems that confronted him; this led over time to radical changes in course that can’t simply be attributed to stylistic evolution or natural development. In a quest as rigorous and novel as the artist’s, Van de Wetering reveals how Rembrandt became the best painter the world had ever seen. Gorgeously illustrated throughout, this groundbreaking exploration reconstructs Rembrandt’s closely guarded theories and methods, shedding new light both on the artist’s exceptional accomplishments and on the practice of painting in the Dutch Golden Age.

AmaZizi: the Dlamini of Southern Africa 2nd Ed

by Jongisilo Z. Z. Pokwana Ka Menziwa, Ngangomzi Pokwana Ah! Jongumhlaba

The Dlamini people are a stock race that, during the 19th century, spread throughout the then largely uninhabited Southern Africa. Today they can be found concentrated in Swaziland, in the Eastern Cape, in KwaZulu Natal and in many other parts of the country. The first edition traced a story of these people from before 2000 years ago until today, then focused on a section of the Dlamini known as AmaZizi. The second edition expands this base with new research and information. If you have the surname Dlamini, the history and traditions of your ancestors can be found within these pages.

Environmental and Social Justice in the City

Historical Perspectives

by Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud and Richard Rodger (eds)

The world is full of environmental injustices and inequalities, yet few European historians have tackled these subjects head on; nor have they explored their relationships with social inequalities. In this innovative collection of historical essays the contributors consider a range of past environmental injustices, spanning seven northern and western European countries and with several chapters adding a North American perspective. In addition to an introductory chapter that surveys approaches to this area of environmental history, individual chapters address inequalities in the city as regards water supply, air pollution, waste disposal, factory conditions, industrial effluents, fuel poverty and the administrative and legal arrangements that discriminated against segments of society.

A Fairytale in Question

Historical Interactions between Humans and Wolves

by Patrick Masius and Jana Sprenger (eds)

International in range and chronological in organisation, this volume aims to grasp the maincurrents of thought about interactions with the wolf in modern history. It focuses on perceptions, interactions and dependencies, and includes cultural and social analyses as well as biological aspects. Wolves have been feared and admired, hunted and cared for. At the same historical moment, different cultural and social groups have upheld widely diverging ideas about the wolf. Fundamental dichotomies in modern history, between nature and culture, wilderness and civilisation and danger and security, have been portrayed in terms of wolf–human relationships. The wolf has been part of aesthetic, economic, political, psychological and cultural reasoning albeit it is nowadays mainly addressed as an object of wildlife management. There has been a major shift in perception from dangerous predator to endangered species, but the big bad fairytale wolf remains a cultural icon. This volume roots study of human–wolf relationships coherently within the disciplines of environmental and animal history for the first time

Die Jüdische Revolution

Untersuchungen zu Ursachen, Verlauf und Folgen der hasmonäischen Erhebung

by Johannes Christian Bernhardt

In 168 BCE, the Seleucid King Antiochus IV intervened against the Temple cult in Jerusalem, resulting in a revolt by the Hasmoneans that led to their establishment as high priests and to the independence of Judea. This study examines the causes and the consequences of the revolt as an historical process and offers a political-theological interpretation of the events. ;

Handbook Global History of Work

by Marcel van der Linden, Karin Hofmeester

A comprehensive survey of labour historiography around the world, including contributions on the definition of work, descriptions of various kinds of work and different types of labour relations. Reflects upon on people'sattitudes towards work; workers'organizations and strikes, the incentives that made people work and the various types of migration that are work related. Covers the period from 1500 onwards. ;