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      • Second Story Press

        Our books are sold around the world, have been translated into over 50 languages, won many awards, and have been adapted for film and stage.   We publish stories that feature strong female characters and explore themes of social justice, human rights, equality, and ability issues. Our list spans adult fiction and nonfiction; children’s fiction, nonfiction and picture books; and young adult fiction and nonfiction.

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      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        October 2021

        War Train

        by Donald Willerton

        To Mogi Franklin, it simply seemed like a better summer job than stocking supermarket shelves in Bluff, Utah. But the opportunity to help with his sister Jennifer's architectural assessment of the newly refurbished, once-grand-and-glorious hotel and restaurant in Las Vegas, New Mexico, turned out to be much more―the kind of brain-testing mystery he loved and excelled at, along with a heavy serving of adventure and danger.The mystery was more than seventy-five years old: the robbery of a local bank by two gunmen who'd walked out the door with thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills and then simply vanished. The link with the present-day hotel suddenly appeared in an unexpected find hidden in the “ton of junk” from an unknown attic room uncovered during the building's reconstruction. There among the old clothes, books, papers, and other remnants from the early days of World War II, Mogi finds a clue, then another and then more, leading far back in the hotel's unique history.As articles in a sensationalistic local newspaper seem to tie the clues together―and lead as well to false trails and blind alleys―Mogi digs deeper into the fascinating history of the Castañeda Hotel and its storied Harvey House restaurant to unravel the untold tale linking the robbery to a mother's love for the twin sons she was never able to give enough to. Read less

      • Trusted Partner
        True stories
        2018

        World War II, Uncontrived and Unredacted. Testimonies from Ukraine

        by Vakhtanh Kipiani

        The war separated families, took lives, broke fates ... It is very important to know and remember it at any time. Even many decades later, new details, memories, and testimonies appear. This book gathers several fascinating, true family stories written from accounts of parents, grandparents, etc. The authors, whose articles were collected with the help of the popular scientific publication Historical Truth, tell us about the worst war of the 20th century, about the fate of those people whose lives were divided forever into “before” and “after.” Here we can find first-hand accounts about Ukrainians who fought in various armies, about the lives of deported people, about the fate of people taken to compulsory labor camps, and about the men and women who remain in our memories forever. - Historical Truth - honestly and openly about WWII - exclusive materials

      • Trusted Partner
        20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000
        October 2013

        Northern Ireland in the Second World War

        Politics, economic mobilisation and society, 1939–45

        by Philip Ollerenshaw

        This original and distinctive book surveys the political, economic and social history of Northern Ireland in the Second World War. Since its creation in 1920, Northern Ireland has been a deeply divided society and the book explores these divisions before and during the war. It examines rearmament, the relatively slow wartime mobilisation, the 1941 Blitz, labour and industrial relations, politics and social policy. Northern Ireland was the only part of the UK with a devolved government and no military conscription during the war. The absence of military conscription made the process of mobilisation, and the experience of men and women, very different from that in Britain. The book's conclusion considers how the government faced the domestic and international challenges of the postwar world. This study draws on a wide range of primary sources and will appeal to those interested in modern Irish and British history and in the Second World War.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2014

        Ireland during the Second World War

        Farewell to Plato’s Cave

        by Bryce Evans

        In the first book detailing the social and economic history of Ireland during the Second World War, Bryce Evans reveals the real story of the Irish emergency. Revealing just how precarious the Irish state's economic position was at the time, the book examines the consequences of Winston Churchill's economic war against neutral Ireland. It explores how the Irish government coped with the crisis and how ordinary Irish people reacted to emergency state control of the domestic marketplace. A hidden history of black markets, smugglers, rogues and rebels emerges, providing a fascinating slice of real life in Ireland during a crucial period in world history. As the first comparison of economic and social conditions in Ireland with those of the other European neutral states - Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal - the book will make essential reading for the informed general reader, students and academics alike. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        The French empire at War, 1940–1945

        by Martin Thomas

        The French empire at war draws on original research in France and Britain to investigate the history of the divided French empire - the Vichy and the Free French empires - during the Second World War. What emerges is a fascinating story. While it is clear that both the Vichy and Free French colonial authorities were only rarely masters of their own destiny during the war, preservation of limited imperial control served them both in different ways. The Vichy government exploited the empire in an effort to withstand German-Italian pressure for concessions in metropolitan France and it was key to its claim to be more than the mouthpiece of a defeated nation. For Free France too, the empire acquired a political and symbolic importance which far outweighed its material significance to the Gaullist war effort. As the war progressed, the Vichy empire lost ground to that of the Free French, something which has often been attributed to the attraction of the Gaullist mystique and the spirit of resistance in the colonies. In this radical new interpretation, Thomas argues that it was neither of these. The course of the war itself, and the initiatives of the major combatant powers, played the greatest part in the rise of the Gaullist empire and the demise of Vichy colonial control.

      • Trusted Partner
        December 2020

        Teddy's War

        by Donald Willerton

        To Elias Gunnarson, his dad, Teddy, was part of “the greatest generation,” a man who fought valiantly in World War II, was honorably discharged, married his high school sweetheart, and lived happily ever after. Right? Wrong! The truth, he finds, lies shrouded in an intricately complex web baring only superficial resemblance to the terrible reality lived by those who battled from the sands of Omaha Beach to the horrors of Dachau. As letters, videos, stories, and memories unfold the true tale of Teddy's war, Elias learns that the lives of his mother, his father, and his father's brother, Jake, were not what they seemed, and that dying a hero does not absolve a person from the sins of his past.

      • Trusted Partner
        History
        October 2021

        Holodomor research and genocide studies

        by Andrii Kozytsky

        The book describes the research of the Holodomor and other issues related to genocidal studies. Demographic and sociocultural aspects of the Holodomor-genocide, methods and narratives of denial of the Holodomor, other issues related to the history of the biggest crime committed against Ukrainians in the 20th century are considered. The second thematic block of the collection concerns the discussions surrounding the qualification of the Ukrainian-Polish conflict in Volyn during the Second World War. Most of the scientific articles included in the book were written during 2016–2021. Some of the research works are published for the first time. The publication is for historians, journalists, political scientists, and anyone interested in the problems of studying the history of the Holodomor and genocides of the 20th century.

      • Trusted Partner
        Fiction
        September 2017

        A Vision of Battlements

        by Anthony Burgess

        by Andrew Biswell, Paul Wake

        A Vision of Battlements is the first novel by the writer and composer Anthony Burgess, who was born in Manchester in 1917. Set in Gibraltar during the Second World War, the book follows the fortunes of Richard Ennis, an army sergeant and incipient composer who dreams of composing great music and building a new cultural world after the end of the war. Following the example of his literary hero, James Joyce, Burgess takes the structure of his book from Virgil's Aeneid. The result is, like Joyce's Ulysses, a comic rewriting of a classical epic, whose critique of the Army and the postwar settlement is sharp and assured. The Irwell Edition is the first publication of Burgess's forgotten masterpiece since 1965. This new edition includes an introduction and notes by Andrew Biswell, author of a prize-winning biography of Anthony Burgess.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        2022

        Tempting Fate, Hardening the Will: Ukraine and Ukrainians in the XX - Early XXI Century. In Three Books

        by Larysa Yakubova (project coordinator)

        The transformation of a mental Ukraine into a real Ukraine, people - into a nation, a territory – into a state is a semantic axis of this trilogy. Book 1. Ukraine and Ukrainians in 1917-1939 The first book is devoted to the interwar period – a key stage of ethnic modernization and mobilization of Ukrainians, the culmination of the Ukrainian Revolution, and the battle for Ukraine in the context of the First World War. Book 2. Between World War II and the Cold War: Wars in the Destiny of Ukraine The second book tells about Ukrainians in the Second World War, after which the Ukrainian lands were united within one state, and in the Cold War, which made possible the sovereignty of Ukraine. Book 3. 30 Years of Independence: Challenges, Trials, Answers The third book is dedicated to the period of Ukrainian Independence and summarizes the thirty years of Ukrainian post-totalitarian transit. Contradictions of internal development, geopolitical challenges, three modern Ukrainian revolutions, and the Russian-Ukrainian war are the focus of understanding the path of Ukraine and Ukrainians in the global world.

      • Trusted Partner
        Society & culture: general

        A TIME OF WOLVES: GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 1945 - 1955

        by Harald Jähner

        A dance among the ruins: Harald Jähner’s major new portrait of Germany’s post-war societyCountless former soldiers drift through the towns and cities; countless children grow up without a father. The old order has been destroyed and although the streets seem eerily empty, the traditional annual street carnivals are soon back in full swing, jazz can be heard among the ruins, intellectuals rekindle a culture of discussion and debate.Harald Jähner’s book is the first history of Germany’s national mentality in the immediate post-war period. It focusses on the German people in all their diversity: the “re-educators” Alfred Döblin and Rudolf Herrnstadt, who tried in two different zones of occupation to win the trust of their fellow Germans; Beate Uhse, owner of a mail order company for “marital hygiene”, who questioned the old moral code governing what was deemed proper; the many nameless black market traders, pockets stuffed with Lucky Strike cigarettes; stylish housewives sitting at kidney-shaped coffee tables that were to become emblematic for a freer and affordable world. Using major political developments as a backdrop, this book weaves a series of life stories into a nuanced panorama that makes the monumental changes affecting the nation tangible for its readers. 1945 to 1955 was a raw, wild decade poised between two eras, portrayed here as a period that proved decisive for Germany’s future development – and one starkly different to how most Germans imagine it today.

      • Trusted Partner
        True stories
        2015

        Courage and Fear

        by Ola Hnatiuk

        Courage and Fear is a study of a multicultural city in times of great change. Olya Hnatiuk presents a meticulously documented portrait of Lviv’s ethnically diverse intellectuals during World War II. As the Soviet, Nazi, and once again Soviet occupations tear the city’s social structures apart, groups of Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish doctors, academicians, and artists try to survive, struggling to manage complex relationships and to uphold their ethos. As their pre-war lives are violently upended, courage and fear shape their actions. Olya Hnatiuk employs diverse sources in several languages to tell the story of Lviv from a multi-ethnic perspective and to challenge the nation focused narratives dominant in Central and Eastern Europe.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2022

        Exiting war

        The British Empire and the 1918–20 moment

        by Romain Fathi, Margaret Hutchison, Andrekos Varnava, Michael Walsh, Alan Lester

        Exiting war explores a particular 1918-20 'moment' in the British Empire's history, between the First World War's armistices of 1918, and the peace treaties of 1919 and 1920. That moment, we argue, was a challenging and transformative time for the Empire. While British authorities successfully answered some of the post-war tests they faced, such as demobilisation, repatriation, and fighting the widespread effects of the Spanish flu, the racial, social, political and economic hallmarks of their imperialism set the scene for a wide range of expressions of loyalties and disloyalties, and anticolonial movements. The book documents and conceptualises this 1918-20 'moment' and its characteristics as a crucial three-year period of transformation for and within the Empire, examining these years for the significant shifts in the imperial relationship that occurred and as laying the foundation for later change in the imperial system.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2021

        Catholic nuns and sisters in a secular age

        Britain, 1945–90

        by Carmen M. Mangion

        This is the first in-depth study of post-war female religious life. It draws on archival materials and a remarkable set of eighty interviews to place Catholic sisters and nuns at the heart of the turbulent 1960s, integrating their story of social change into a larger British and international one. Shedding new light on how religious bodies engaged in modernisation, it addresses themes such as the Modern Girl and youth culture, '1968', generational discourse, post-war modernity, the voluntary sector and the women's movement. Women religious were at the forefront of the Roman Catholic Church's movement of adaptation and renewal towards the world. This volume tells their stories in their own words.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        March 2017

        Images of the army

        The military in British art, 1815-1914

        by J. W. M. Hichberger

        In an age when engraving and photography were making artistic images available to a much wider public, artists were able to influence public attitudes more powerfully than ever before. This book examines works of art on military themes in relation to ruling-class ideologies about the army, war and the empire. The first part of the book is devoted to a chronological survey of battle painting, integrated with a study of contemporary military and political history. The chapters link the debate over the status and importance of battle painting to contemporary debates over the role of the army and its function at home and abroad. The second part discusses the intersection of ideologies about the army and military art, but is concerned with an examination of genre representations of soldiers. Another important theme which runs through the book is the relation of English to French military art. During the first eighty years of the period under review France was the cynosure of military artists, the school against which British critics measured their own, and the place from which innovations were imported and modified. In every generation after Waterloo battle painters visited France and often trained there. The book shows that military art, or the 'absence' of it, was one of the ways in which nationalist commentators articulated Britain's moral superiority. The final theme which underlies much of the book is the shifts which took place in the perception of heroes and hero-worship.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        2020

        Zero Point Ukraine

        by Olena Stiazhkina

        The Western understanding of what happened in Ukraine during World War II has been shaped by historical and ideological narratives created by the Kremlin. The Ukrainian version of the story has been dissolved in the concept of the “great victorious Russian people” and distorted by attempts to equate Ukrainian national army to German Nazis, while the occupation and colonisation of Ukraine by Russian Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s has widely been ignored or artificially silenced. In her Four Essays on World War II, Olena Stiazhkina inscribes the Ukrainian history of the war into a wider European and world context. Amongst other aspects, she analyzes the mobilization measures on the eve of the war, thus questioning Soviet narratives. Scrutinising the social and political processes initiated by the Bolshevik leadership in the 1920s and 1930s, Stiazhkina concludes that mobilisation and militarisation were integral parts of Soviet power policy. The Soviet and contemporary Russian narratives about World War II have been used to justify the Kremlin’s policies towards democratic countries. Today, Russia remains deeply engaged in the falsification of the past, which underpins the claims of the so-called “Russian World” and the ongoing war against Ukraine. Olena Stiazhkina’s book promotes a new, historically adequate understanding of what happened in Ukraine before, during, and after World War II.

      • Trusted Partner
        Medicine
        May 2024

        Jewish refugees and the British nursing profession

        A gendered opportunity

        by Jane Brooks

        This book follows the lives of female Jewish refugees who fled Nazi persecution and became nurses. Nursing was nominally a profession but with its poor pay and harsh discipline, it was unpopular with British women. In the years preceding the Second World War, hospitals in Britain suffered chronic nurse staffing crises. As the country faced inevitable war, the Government and the profession's elite courted refugees as an antidote to the shortages, but many hospitals refused to employ Continental Jews. The book explores the changes in the refugees' status and lives from the war years to the foundation of the National Health Service and to the latter decades of the twentieth century. It places the refugees at the forefront of manoeuvres in nursing practice, education and research at a time of social upheaval and alterations in the position of women.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2023

        Precision

        by James Patton Rogers

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