Biography: general Books
Authorhouse James H. Critchfield: His Life's Story
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£21.59
Worthy Books I Take My Coffee Black: Reflections on Tupac,
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£26.25
Hachette Books Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to
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£22.50
ECW Press,Canada Wrestling With Rhinos: The Adventures of a
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£18.89
ECW Press,Canada Traveling Music: The Soundtrack to My Life and
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£17.09
ECW Press,Canada The Doctor Who Was Followed By Ghosts: The Family
Book SynopsisThis haunting memoir of Li Qunying, a Chinese Communist doctor, traces all of the major events of brutal twentieth-century China, interweaving eyewitness history, folklore, superstition and Li Qunying's own first-hand accounts.
£21.24
ECW Press,Canada Kid Rex: The Inspiring True Account of a Life
Book SynopsisThe story of one woman's struggle to overcome anorexia.
£17.09
Vehicule Press A Stone in My Shoe: In Search of Neighborhood
Book SynopsisPoet George Ellenbogen’s memoir is more than a collection of anecdotes of his immigrant family and their journey from Franz Joseph’s Austro-Hungarian empire to Montreal in the 1920s. A Stone in My Shoe charts his discovery of how an immigrant Jewish neighborhood—a tight-knit shtetl with extended families that had its own shops, institutions, and daily Yiddish newspapers—sustained him and his family as well as thousands of others. The revelations ripple outward and what surfaces—the markers of his parents’ navigation in a new world and his own youth in the 1940s and 1950s Montreal—extend to all. They become part of the universal map in which readers will recognize their own quirky courses into childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
£15.26
Exile Editions Dialectical Dancer
Book SynopsisThrough a combination of amiable anecdotes, sharp-eyed historical reporting, and intense tangled memories of family life, this autobiography captures the legendary personality of television host Larry Zolf. Zolf could not be cajoled or cozened, and as this account demonstrates, he had a healthy distrust of those who didn’t drink, laugh, or lust. He regretted little and only ever wanted to keep on talking, and the sound of his voice runs through this book, telling a simple tale of great depth and subtlety. Revealing the phenom often known as “the Schnozz” to be the most personal of journalists and wittiest of astute observers, this history explores the “dialectical dancer” who played backroom crony to Robert Kennedy and taught Pierre Elliott Trudeau to be a stand-up comedian. Additional yarns include how Zolf befriended a KKK sheriff in Mississippi, the time he was beaten about the head with a cane by a one-legged cabinet minister, and how the memorable character sometimes wore a false nose and glasses to press conferences, only so he could take them off and declare, “Here is the nose who knows!”
£22.91
Exile Editions The Kid from Simcoe Street: A Memoir and Poems
Book SynopsisIn this frank and moving memoir, the author recalls growing up in a poor and alcohol-ridden neighborhood of a small city before and during World War II. Following his experiences after the war, the narrative relates the shattering of his mother’s dreams and his own inability to bridge the gulf between himself and his alcoholic father, casting a dark shadow over his childhood. The account reveals how the protagonist never permitted his rocky beginnings to affect his hope for the future, portraying his survival in a bleak environment and of the early road traveled in becoming a man of honor, reputation, and respect as a judge of the Superior Court of Ontario. Also featuring a diverse selection of the author’s poetry, this anthology reflects not only the author’s experiences on the bench but the empathy and compassion for the underdog that he learned while growing up on Simcoe Street.Trade Review“It is every writer's dream: you give a workshop, someone hands you a manuscript, you read it right away, you can't put it down. It's raw. Driven. There's a fresh voice. A perspective you never considered. You laugh. Weep. It's so good you know you can recommend it to your publisher.” —Susan Musgrave, Vancouver Sun“[The author] is a careful and precise recorder of the dramas and tragedies . . . [He] reminds the reader of Alden Nowlan at his finest.” —George Fetherling, Vancouver Sun“Sensitive, humane . . . written in a spare, graceful style where only what's necessary makes it to the page.” —Toronto Star
£19.51
Exile Editions Mongolian Études: To the Ends of an Empire: A
Book SynopsisA wonderful look at Soviet-era life as witnessed from the edge of the empire, this book is comprised of letters, poems, and prose pieces that together create a narrative. Through an entirely original form, Vladimir Azarov, who trained to be an architect in Moscow during Stalin's Iron Curtain years, begins with a simple exploratory exchange of letters between him and a faceless bureaucrat during his days overseeing the design and construction of the Soviet Embassy in the isolated republic of Mongolia. What follows is an unfolding sequence that finds Azarov meeting a remarkable Mongolian woman and later discovering the memoirs of one of Russia's greatest poets, Anna Akhmatova, eventually revealing an unlikely love story between the Mongolian woman and Akhmatova's son. This enthralling account serves as both a cultural study and an exploration of the human condition.
£13.46
Nimbus Publishing Ltd Rogues and Rascals: True Stories of Maritime Lives and Legends
£18.95
Arsenal Pulp Press The World Is Moving Around Me: A Memoir of the
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£15.29
Arsenal Pulp Press How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler's Memoir
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£14.39
Arsenal Pulp Press Dead Reckoning: How I Came to Meet the Man Who
Book SynopsisIn this gripping and emotional memoir, a woman confronts the man who murdered her father twenty years earlier.
£16.19
Black Rose Books Requiem for a Lightweight
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£12.99
Trafford Publishing This Old House by the Lake
£14.25
Trafford Publishing Hospital History and Medical Practice in My Small Town: With Personal Stories of the Author
£11.88
Guardian Books The Hedge
£12.39
Scholars Press Letters from Ancient Egypt
£19.32
Fulcrum Inc.,US In Search of Kinship (PB): Modern Pioneering on
Book SynopsisIn superbly crafted writing, Page Lambert weaves together stories of western ranching traditions and ancient native American beliefs.
£14.20
Fulcrum Inc.,US Growing Up True: Lessons from a Western Boyhood
Book SynopsisWritten in a compellingly simple style, Growing Up True evokes the struggles of a boy stretching for manhood in rural Colorado during and after World War II. But the lessons and demands of real life always nipped at the edges of his fantastic dreams.
£17.95
Fulcrum Inc.,US Boxeando por Cuba: La Historia de un Immigrante
Book SynopsisIn 1961, fearing the communist rule of Fidel Castro, Guillermo Vicente Vidal's family sent him to America through Operation Peter Pan. He arrived in Colorado and was sent to an orphanage with his brothers, and his family reunited four years later. Fifty years later, he served as Denver's mayor. This is his story of overcoming incredible odds.Trade Review"I really enjoyed it." --President Bill Clinton "The book is lovely, beautifully written and so evocative of a time and place." --Anna Quindlen "Growing up in a wealthy, privileged family in Havana in the 1950s, Guillermo seemed to lead an idyllic life, but, in fact, he and his brothers lay awake for hours as their parents raged at each other long into the night. Then Castro came to power, and, in 1961, Guillermo's parents sent the boys to the U.S. with more than 14,000 other Cuban children on Operation Peter Pan. When relatives in Miami failed to meet the Vidal brothers, they found themselves in an orphanage in Denver, where they suffered brutal abuse. After many years, their parents joined them; Vidal grew up to be mayor of Denver, and today he is a Hispanic business leader. Cuban Americans will certainly take pride in the successful immigrant story here, but the candor of the personal drama at home gives the book added depth and resonance. Paralleling the broader context of political uproar in Cuba and the missile crisis are the raging battles between the parents, from which there wasno escape." --Booklist "Una historia que inspira." --Ken Salazar, Secretario del Interior de Estados Unidos "Un libro lirico y magico." --John Hickenlooper, gobernador de Colorado "Una historia inquietante sobre la transicion a la adultez, que recuerda una novela 'dickensiana', aunque...totalmente veridica." --Helen Thorpe, periodista
£16.10
Graywolf Press,U.S. My Lesbian Husband: Landscapes of a Marriage
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£18.99
Graywolf Press,U.S. Early Morning: Remembering My Father, the Poet
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£19.80
Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl The Language of Blood
£11.39
Graywolf Press A Lie about My Father
Book SynopsisMy father told lies all his life and, because I knew no better, I repeated them. Lies about everything, great and small, were the very fabric of my world.The lie in the title of astonishing memoir Lie About My Father is born of shame. Traveling around upstate New York in the nineties, John Burnside can''t bear to share the truth about his father during a casual conversation with a hitchhiker. He covers his uneasiness with a lie. It felt natural to do so.His father, abandoned as a baby on a stranger''s doorstep, created a masterful web of deceit to erase this unbearable fact. John, even as a child, represented everything that was wrong with the world and became the recipient of his father''s selfhatred in the form of enraged violence, and worse, petty, cruel belittlement. Growing up in the tough working-class neighborhoods of Scotland and later England, John learned to lie back to his father and, later, about his father.
£13.50
Graywolf Press The Narrow Door: A Memoir of Friendship
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£14.40
Graywolf Press The Last Englishmen: Love, War, and the End of
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£23.80
Graywolf Press The Last Englishmen: Love, War, and the End of
Book SynopsisA sumptuous biographical saga, both intimate and epic, about the waning of the British Empire in IndiaJohn Auden was a pioneering geologist of the Himalaya. Michael Spender was the first to draw a detailed map of the North Face of Mount Everest. While their younger brothers-W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender-achieved literary fame, they vied to be included on an expedition that would deliver Everest's summit to an Englishman, a quest that had become a metaphor for Britain's struggle to maintain power over India. To this rivalry was added another: in the summer of 1938 both men fell in love with a painter named Nancy Sharp. Her choice would determine where each man's wartime loyalties would lie.Set in Calcutta, London, the glacier-locked wilds of the Karakoram, and on Everest itself, The Last Englishmen is also the story of a generation. The cast of this exhilarating drama includes Indian and English writers and artists, explorers and Communist spies, Die Hards and Indian nationalists, political rogues and police informers. Key among them is a highborn Bengali poet named Sudhin Datta, a melancholy soul torn, like many of his generation, between hatred of the British Empire and a deep love of European literature, whose life would be upended by the arrival of war on his Calcutta doorstep.Dense with romance and intrigue, and of startling relevance for the great power games of our own day, Deborah Baker's The Last Englishmen is an engrossing story that traces the end of empire and the stirring of a new world order.
£16.20
North Atlantic Books,U.S. A Homeopathic Love Story: The Story of Samuel and
Book SynopsisAt last we have a serious and enchanting book which approaches the story of these extraordinary people in a historical and critical light. The clarity of Rima Handley''s careful and fascinating research allows us to see homeopathy as its founders saw it, from within their own time and without the dogma or interpretations of the gurus which have colored it since. This book is a must for any lover of biography as well as anyone interested in the history of medicine or homeopathy.
£18.90
North Atlantic Books,U.S. Emanuel Swedenborg: Essential Readings
Book SynopsisBest known for his focus on the intuitive force within, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) also anticipated major modern discoveries in mineralogy, psychology, and anatomy. In this succinct and readable collection, Stanley expertly brings the most significant writings from Swedenborg''s oeuvre together, showing readers a man who created a hieroglyphic language, reimagined the Genesis story, influenced Blake, Balzac, Strindberg, and Yeats, and authored a number of anonymous works that put the Swedish clergy of his day on high alert. This is the fourth title in the Western Esoteric Masters Series from North Atlantic Books.
£12.59
Chicago Review Press Once a King, Always a King: The Unmaking of a
Book SynopsisThis riveting sequel to My Bloody Life traces Reymundo Sanchez’s struggle to create a “normal” life outside the Latin Kings, one of the nation's most notorious street gangs, and to move beyond his past. Sanchez illustrates how the Latin King motto “once a king, always a king” rings true and details the difficulty and danger of leaving that life behind. Filled with heartpounding scenes of his backslide into drugs, sex, and violence, Once a King, Always a King recounts how Sanchez wound up in prison and provides an engrossing firsthand account of how the Latin Kings are run from inside the prison system. Harrowing testaments to Sanchez’s determination to rebuild his life include his efforts to separate his family from gang life and his struggle to adapt to marriage and the corporate world. Despite temptations, nightmares, regressions into violence, and his own internal demons, Sanchez makes an uneasy peace with his new life. This raw, powerful, and brutally honest memoir traces the transformation of an accomplished gangbanger into a responsible citizen.Trade Review"Riveting sequel to 'My Bloody Life'." -- Zona Latina."The pseudonymous author must be enthusiastically applauded for his struggle to extract himself from the jaws of the monster." -- KirkusReviews"A slow-motion riot of drugs, sex and gunplay." -- Publishers Weekly on My Bloody Life"A survivor who turned his life around, Sanchez writes plainly and powerfully, and what is shocking about his tragic tale is not the barbaric actions of young gangbangers but the appalling collusion of adults, from criminally abusive parents to mercenary gun dealers and immoral cops." -- Booklist on My Bloody Life"Sanchez carefully traces his own transformation from an inner-city Puerto Rican boy who likes to play baseball into an accomplished gangbanger in Chicago's notorious Latin Kings--someone for whom pulling the trigger was becoming second nature." -- The Washington Post on My Bloody Life
£18.86
Chicago Review Press Nerd Girl Rocks Paradise City: A True Story of
Book SynopsisAfter college, Anne Thomas Soffee journeyed to Los Angeles to start a career as a rock journalist and small-time heavy metal flack. This hilarious peek into the early years of the hair-band era reveals the hierarchy of fishnets, bustiers, and chicks with the Holy Grail—a backstage pass. A taste for other people's prescriptions and too much beer edges her freelance journalism work right off her schedule. She struggles with not being thin enough, pretty enough, or cool enough when, in the midst of the L.A. riots, Soffee is offered a coveted slot in Virginia Commonwealth University's MFA writing program. Determined to pull herself out of current habits, Soffee starts turning her life around, making a stop at rehab before she heads off to graduate school. Her quarter-life crisis is packed with offbeat characters that prove that fact is often funnier than fiction.Trade Review"Funny, trashy and smart." -- The New York Times"A truly well-written rock 'n' roll memoir." -- Punk Planet"A laugh-out-loud charmer." -- Bust"Totally enjoyable." -- Maximum Rock n Roll"Funny as hell!" -- Score! Music Magazine"A compelling read." -- Metal Maniacs"Incredibly sharp . . . Easy to read and clever, making it hard to put down." --Venuszine.com"Wickedly funny." -- Seattle WeeklyTable of Contents"That Girls Has a Ring in Her Nose"; I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone"; Confessions of a Reluctant Danzig Bimbo; Strippers, Clown Rooms, and Danzig Among the Mangoes; Payola Means Never Having to Say "You Suck"; Idle Worship; Industry Weasel; There Goes the Neighbourhood; Last Call; Tattoo Me.
£17.95
HarperCollins Publishers Inc The Words of Gandhi
Book SynopsisGandhi's ideas are as meaningful today as they were during his long and inspiring life. His enlightening thoughts and beliefs, especially on violence and the atomic bomb, reveal his eloquent foresight about our contemporary world. The words of one of the greatest men of the twentieth century, chosen by the award-winning director Richard Attenborough from Gandhi's letters, speeches, and published writings, explore the prophet's timeless thoughts on daily life, cooperation, nonviolence, faith, and peace. This bestselling volume includes an introduction by Attenborough and an afterword by "Time magazine" Senior Foreign Correspondent Johanna McGeary that places Gandhi's life and work in the historical context of the twentieth century. This book and the film "Gandhi" were the result of producer/director Richard Attenborough's long commitment to keeping alive the flame of Gandhi's spiritual achievement and the wisdom of his actions and his words. They are the wisdom and words of peace. Also included are twenty striking historical photographs, specially selected from the archives at the National Gandhi Museum in New Delhi, that capture the important personal, political, and spiritual aspects of Gandhi's career.
£11.48
University of Arkansas Press Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia
Book SynopsisThe first of William Gilmore Simms's Border Romance series, this is a vividly accurate and entertaining account of two very different societies in frontier Georgia during the height of the gold-rush era.
£48.60
University of Arkansas Press Anna Akhmatova & Her Circle
Book SynopsisThis powerful collection of fifteen memoirs by and about one of the greatest poets of our time weaves an unforgettable drama of friendship, grace, and courage, through long years of heartbreak and hunger.
£40.80
University of Arkansas Press Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President
Book SynopsisKeeping Faith is Jimmy Carter’s account of the satisfaction, frustration, and solitude that attend the man in the Oval Offce. Mr. Carter writes candidly about the crises that confronted him during his tenure as President of the United States and leader of the free world, from 1977 to 1981.“The President who cared” details his anguish over the hostage crisis in Iran, his triumph against all odds at Camp David, his secret communications with China’s Deng Xiaoping, and his dramatic and revealing encounters with Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and other world leaders.Mr. Carter also shares glimpses of his private world - his feelings of being an outsider in Washington, his relationship with Rosalynn, his pain about the attacks on his friends and his brother Billy.Captivatingly written, this rich historical document delineates a morally responsible president who has continued to earn respect and admiration as a world statesman and advocate for the poor and repressed of all nations.Trade ReviewSeldom has a presidential memoir been so self-revealing." —Wall Street Journal"Responsible, truthful, intelligent, earnest, rational, purposeful. Thus the man: thus the book." —The Washington Post"A wonderfully vivid closeup portrait of Leonid Brezhnev. And Mr. Carter’s detailed report on the Camp David Middle East peace summit is absolutely riveting." —The New York Times
£999.99
University of Arkansas Press The First Well: A Bethlehem Boyhood
Book SynopsisThe First Well is an engaging autobiographical account of Jabra’s boyhood in Bethlehem, where he was born in 1920, and later in Jerusalem, where he moved as a teenager with his parents.Through the eyes and heart of a sensitive, highly imaginative boy, Jabra describes the first sources of his artistic sensibility—the houses, fields, and orchards of his childhood and the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The First Well is the story of his intellectual and spiritual growth nurtured and encouraged by his family, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and his teachers. His story is both captivatingly innocent and full of wisdom. Wordsworth’s observation, “The Child is father of the Man,” is entirely apt as Jabra’s literary and artistic interests take root and blossom. Here is a chronicle of the experiences and events he drew upon as he became one of the leading authors of the Arab world.
£31.30
University of Arkansas Press Charles Hillman Brough: A Biography
Book SynopsisTen years in the making, taken largely fron primary materials, some lent by descendents, this biography is a balanced portrait of an extraordinary Arkansas leader, progressive governor of the state from 1917 to 1921.
£26.55
University of Arkansas Press Helen Halsey, or The Swamp State of Conelachita:
Book SynopsisIn this novelette, William Gilmore Simms records one of the awful realities of America's early frontier, that of women trapped in ill-fated marriages. Forced into a union with her lover, Helen Halsey is exploited and victimized in a domestic situation from which there is no release.Utilizing the compression of the short novel form, Simms weaves elaborate plot lines of violence, romance, and intrigue to create a fast-moving, action-packed tale of an America just beginning its search for identity, justice, and spiritual truth. Edgar Allan Poe said of Simms that "in invention, in vigor, in movement, in the power of exciting interest, and in the artistical arrangement of his themes," he surpassed "any of his countrymen."
£38.90
University of Arkansas Press Autumn Equinox
Book SynopsisJabbour Douaihy’s Autumn Equinox is a diary of a young man recently resettled in his Lebanese village after going to college in the United States. It continues from the end of May through the September equinox of 1986, narrating his efforts to remake himself through adjustments to his reading, writing, and eating habits, his dress, his posture, his family relationships, his love life. . . . The diary begins with a view of an Israeli bombing in South Lebanon and ends with a description of refugee families fleeing to the mountain villages. Otherwise, except for allusions to what is going on in the capital, the Lebanese Civil War is far from the story, although its violence has never been far from this village. America, personified by a Lara who does not answer his letters, is a faraway land of nostalgia. The village is here, at the center of the young man’s narration, peopled by comic characters who seem to insist on their own unchanging selfhoods and to resist his attempts to be different. The Civil War and the Occupation, the author seems to be saying, are not the only sources of turmoil. Violence and revenge have been part of the people’s consciousness, and people might indeed need to redefine themselves while at the same time adjusting to the environment.
£17.06
Purdue University Press Seeds of Hope: An Engineer's World War II Letters
Book SynopsisWhile he served in the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, William Sabel dutifully wrote home to his parents in Chicago every week. More than half a century later, five years' worth of correspondence is featured in Seeds of Hope: An Engineer's World War II Letters. Sabel was 25 years old, single, and living on a poultry farm in Marshall County, Indiana, when he was drafted into military service in April 1941. As an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers he traveled overseas in January 1943 and served in the South Pacific for three years. When he returned home in February 1946, Sabel discovered that his mother had saved all of his letters, totaling about 300, in a box. In the early 1990s, when he became interested in computers, Sabel decided to compile all of his letters chronologically, a process that took about 14 months. This book details his various experiences, ranging from his unit's involvement in building hospitals and roads to interesting stories about crops such as watermelons and cucumbers for the hospital from seeds Sabel's parents had sent from home. Seed's of Hope: An Engineer's World War II Letters is funny, provocative, enlightening, and just a plain good read providing a glimpse behind the scenes of the war in the Pacific.
£8.95
Purdue University Press Of Exile and Music: A Twentieth Century Life
Book SynopsisThis fascinating autobiography is set against the backdrop of some of the most dramatic episodes of the twentieth century. It is the story of a stubborn struggle against unjust regimes, sustained by a deep belief in the strength of the human spirit and the transcendental power of music. It is also an account of a rich spiritual life, during which the author has built upon her Jewish roots through the study of Eastern philosophy and meditation. Born in Germany, Eva Mayer Schay's early childhood in Mallorca was an idyllic one. Her parents had emigrated to the island following the Nazi party's rise to power, but in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, the family was repatriated to Germany. Her father was arrested and given the choice of concentration camp or departing for Italy. They managed to leave Mussolini's Italy for South Africa before the race laws were implemented. During World War II, Mayer Schay's parents were classed as "enemy aliens" in South Africa, which led to considerable hardship. Her father died in 1945, after the end of the war. She went through all her schooling and university in Johannesburg, continued her musical studies in London, and after returning to Johannesburg, taught violin, played chamber music, and became a member of the SABC Symphony Orchestra. Defying apartheid, she was fired, later reinstated, but left Johannesburg to play with the Durban Civic Orchestra in 1959. Appalled at the increasing harshness of the nationalist government and by the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, she and her mother finally emigrated to England in 1961.In London, Mayer Schay worked as freelance violinist and was married in 1967. In September 1968, she joined the orchestra of Sadler's Wells Opera at the Coliseum Theatre, later renamed English National Opera, where she remained for almost thirty years.
£999.99
Purdue University Press Afternoons with Puppy: Inspirations from a
Book SynopsisAfternoons with Puppy is a heartwarming account of dynamic relationships and outcomes involving a therapist, his therapy animals, and his patients, gathered from almost two decades of ongoing practice. It is a narrative of Dr. Aubrey H. Fine's experiences and his growing respect for the power of the animals’ effects on his patients and himself. Fine observes that healing is rarely, if ever, accomplished in isolation. There is always a reaching out and a connection at the heart of the therapeutic enterprise. Afternoons with Puppy reveals the ways in which our bond with animals centers our being. Interacting with an animal, as simple as having a puppy in your lap gnawing on your thumb, strips away the unimportant and provides the neutral, primal ground on which healing and new growth can take place. Afternoons with Puppy is an emotional journey that will continue long after the last page.
£17.95
Purdue University Press Saving Lives in Auschwitz: The Prisoners’
Book SynopsisIn a 1941 Nazi roundup of educated Poles, Stefan Budziaszek—newly graduated from medical school in Krakow—was incarcerated in the Krakow Montelupich Prison and transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp in February 1942. German big businesses brutally exploited the cheap labor of prisoners in the camp, and workers were dying. In 1943, Stefan, now a functionary prisoner, was put in charge of the on-site prisoner hospital, which at the time was more like an infirmary staffed by well-connected but untrained prisoners. Stefan transformed this facility from just two barracks into a working hospital and outpatient facility that employed more than 40 prisoner doctors and served a population of 10,000 slave laborers.Stefan and his staff developed the hospital by commandeering medication, surgical equipment, and even building materials, often from the so-called Canada warehouse filled with the effects of Holocaust victims. But where does seeking the cooperation of the Nazi concentration camp staff become collusion with Nazi genocide? How did physicians deal with debilitated patients who faced “selection” for transfer to the gas chambers? Auschwitz was a cauldron of competing agendas. Unexpectedly, ideological rivalry among prisoners themselves manifested itself as well. Prominent Holocaust witnesses Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi both sought treatment at this prisoner hospital. They, other patients, and hospital staff bear witness to the agency of prisoner doctors in an environment better known for death than survival.
£23.36
Purdue University Press Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of
Book SynopsisUnlike other American astronauts, Virgil I. ""Gus""Grissom never had the chance to publish his memoirs. Killed along with his crewin a launch pad fire on January 27, 1967, Grissom also lost his chance to walkon the moon and return to describe his journey. Others went in his place. Thestories of the moon walkers are familiar. Less appreciated are Grissom'scontributions.The international prestige of winning the Moon Race cannotbe understated, and Grissom played a pivotal and enduring role in securing thatlegacy for the United States. Indeed, Grissom was first and foremost a ColdWarrior, a member of the first group of Mercury astronauts whose goal it was tobeat the Soviet Union into space and eventually to the moon.Drawing on extensive interviews with fellow astronauts, NASA engineers, family members, and friends of Gus Grissom, George Leopold deliversa comprehensive and corrective account of Grissom’s life that places his careerin the context of the Cold War and the history of human spaceflight.Calculated Risk: TheSupersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom adds significantly to ourunderstanding of that tumultuous and ultimately triumphant period in American history.Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Pure Oxygen 1. 1926 2. Work 3. Purdue 4. Wingman 5. Test Pilot 6. Mercury Seven 7. Extracurricular Activities 8. The Flight of Liberty Bell 7 9. Down a Peg 10. Apogee 11. Risk and Reward 12. How Astronauts Talk 13. Front of the Line 14. Death at 218 Feet 15. Abandon in Place Notes Bibliography Index
£16.10
Purdue University Press Eva and Otto: Resistance, Refugees, and Love in
Book SynopsisEva and Otto is a truestory about German opposition and resistance to Hitler as revealed through the early lives of Eva Lewinski Pfister (1910–1991) and Otto Pfister (1900–1985). It is an intimate and epic account of two Germans—Eva born Jewish, Otto born Catholic—who worked with a little-known German political group that resisted and fought against Hitler in Germany before 1933 and then in exile in Paris before the German invasion of France in May 1940. After their improbable escapes from separate internment and imprisonment in Europe, Eva obtained refuge in America in October 1940 where she worked to rescue other endangered political refugees, including Otto, with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. As revealed in recently declassified records, Eva and Otto later engaged in different secret assignments with the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in support of the Allied war effort. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, Eva and Otto gave each other hope and strength as they acted upon what they understood to be an ethical duty to help others threatened by fascism. The book provides a sobering insight into the personal risks and costs of a commitment to that duty. Their unusually beautiful writing—directed to each other in diaries and correspondence during two long periods of wartime separation—also reveals an unlikely and inspiring love story.Table of Contents Preface Prologue Part I. Eva's Path to 28 Boulevard Poissonnière 1. Childhood in Goldap (1910–1926) 2. Study in France and at the Walkemühle (1926–1932) 3. Anti-Nazi Work in Germany (1932–1933) 4. Early Years in Exile in Paris (1933–1935) Part II. Otto's Path to 28 Boulevard Poissonnière 5. Childhood in Munich (1900–1920) 6. "Education" in Italy and France (1920–1935) Part III. Resistance and Love in Paris, 1935–1940 7. Anti-Nazi Work in Paris 8. War Begins: Internment, Sabotage, and Love Part IV. German Invasion on May 9, 1940: Eva and Otto Forced on Separate Paths 9. Eva's Internment at Vélodrome d'Hiver and Camp de Gurs 10. Eva's Refuge in Castagnède, Montauban, and Marseille 11. Otto's Capture and Imprisonment by the Nazis 12. Otto's Return to Paris and Flight to Montauban 13. Eva's Escape over the Pyrenees and Unexpected Delay in Lisbon Eva's Voyage from Lisbon to New York Part V. New York, 1940–1941: Urgent Efforts to Rescue ISK Colleagues, including Otto 15. Eva's Daunting Task of Obtaining U.S. Visas 16. Help from Eleanor Roosevelt and Other Americans 17. Three Crucial Meetings on December 27, 1940 18. 1940 Correspondence 19. Eva's Other Activities before the End of 1940 20. Further Pleas to Help Otto and Other Refugees 21. Otto's Wait for a Visa in Southern France 22. Otto's Escape to America 23. Eva's Defense of Her Decision to Marry Otto Part VI. Rescue Efforts and Work for the OSS in the Face of Personal Challenges 24. Priorities: Eva's Rescue and Relief Work 25. René-Eva Correspondence: Eva's Secret Work with the Office of Strategic Services 26. Three Big Decisions in 1943–1944 27. A Devastating Loss Part VII. Separated Again 28. Otto's OSS Mission and Eva and Otto's Wartime Correspondence 29. The War Drags On, Reports on Nazi Atrocities, and Another Personal Loss 30. Questions about the Future as the Allies Battle in Europe Part VIII. Hope Renewed 31. 1945: Signs of Spring as the War in Europe Grinds to an End 32. A New Life Epilogue Afterword Acknowledgments Appendix A. Summary Backgrounds of ISK Members on Eva's List of Applicants for Emergency Visas Appendix B. Examples of René-Eva and Robert-Eclair Correspondence Appendix C. Eva's Memorial Summary of Otto's Life Notes Bibliography Index
£23.36
