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Rescued from oblivion by an impulse eBay purchase, the letters of Eileen Alexander are one of the great literary discoveries…
of the 21st century: an extraordinary woman writing to show what it meant to be a woman, and in love, during the Second World War. In summer 1939, Eileen was an exceptionally bright young graduate leaving Cambridge with a First. She was tentatively in love, and war was brewing. She would spend the next years of her life in London, writing the most intimate, brilliant love letters of the Second World War. Eileen's letters to Gershon Ellenbogen tell an incredible story. Her writing gives dazzling displays of intelligence and devotion, by turn generous, erudite, angry, scurrilous, and very, very funny. Eileen can find a biting or ironic quotation for every eventuality. She can skewer a pompous colleague in two lines of airmail. She writes frankly about sex, about ambition as an intelligent woman, about the terrible things that happened to her fiercest friends, and about the painful uncertainty of loving a man away at war. Told by an unknown master letter writer of the twentieth century, this is a unique story of war as it was lived by women – and an unforgettable account of ardent, real love as it unfolds
British ceramic artist relates tracing his family's history through the ownership of a collection of netsuke, ornamental Japanese carvings, which…
he inherited in 1994. Describes the wealthy Ephrussi clan's lives in Vienna and Paris and their origins as Jewish merchants from Odessa, Russia. 2010
The true story of the extraordinary life and brutal death of Mildred Harnack, the American leader of one of the…
largest underground resistance groups in Germany, who was executed on Hitler's direct order—uncovered by her great-great-niece in this riveting, deeply researched account. Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler's regime and called for revolution. Her coconspirators circulated through Berlin under the cover of night, slipping the leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms, phone booths. When the first shots of the Second World War were fired she became a spy, couriering top-secret intelligence to the Allies. On the eve of her escape to Sweden, she was ambushed by the Gestapo. At a Nazi military court, a panel of five judges sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler overruled the decision and ordered her execution. On February 16, 1943, she was strapped to a guillotine and beheaded.Historians identify Mildred Harnack as the only American in the leadership of the German resistance, yet her remarkable story has remained almost unknown until now.Fusing elements of biography, political thriller, and scholarly detective story, Harnack's great-great-niece Rebecca Donner brilliantly interweaves letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, testimony of survivors, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into a powerful, enthralling story, reconstructing the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history
Author of Ship of Ghosts (DB 63121) chronicles the seven sea battles to secure the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal…
that began in August 1942. Official documents and day-by-day accounts drawn from survivors portray an underfunded campaign, nascent use of radar, tremendous losses, and a determined Japanese opponent. 2011
Analyzes The Diary of a Young Girl (DB 57022) as a literary work, a Holocaust narrative, and a cultural artifact.…
Examines the evidence that Anne rewrote her memoir to increase its appeal. Discusses the published book's use in classroom instruction and its adaptation for stage and film. 2009
Author of Religious Literacy (DB 64243) posits that religion is more than a private matter and affects the world socially,…
economically, politically, and militarily--as a force for both good and evil. Discusses the major religions, their traditions, and the importance of the differences among them. 2010
American diplomat and foreign correspondent uses overseas archives to document French fashion designer Coco Chanel's collaboration with the Nazis during…
World War II. Discusses Chanel's childhood; emergence on the social scene as a couture, perfume maker, and mistress of titled men; anti-Semitism; and involvement with the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS). 2011
Author recounts her experiences as a young Jewish girl during Hitler's rise to power. Recalls being trapped in Ukraine while…
visiting her grandmother, returning to her family in Hungary, and being forcibly moved to an Auschwitz ghetto. Describes the many wartime restrictions. For grades 6-9. Newbery Honor Book. 1981
Emmy Award-winning journalist relates discovering her father's hidden past, years after her mother's death. Recounts learning that Richard Cosby, born…
Ryszard Kossobudzki in Poland, endured life as a World War II freedom fighter, a POW, an escapee, and a refugee. 2010
Uses extracts from diaries and memoirs to describe Terezín, Czechoslovakia, in 1941-1945, when the Nazis turned the small town into…
a transit camp for imprisoning Jewish people before sending them to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Relates the prisoners' feelings and their observations about camp events. For grades 5-8. 2011
Inspired by her mother Jutta's poesiealbum--an album of poems written by friends--and Jutta's diary, Levy presents a blank-verse recollection of…
the rapidly increased danger for Jews in Nazi Germany, which culminated in Jutta's family moving to the United States before World War II. For grades 5-8. 2010
Follows the lives of U.S. ambassador William E. Dodd and his family, who moved to Berlin, Germany, in 1933. Discusses…
their attitudes toward the Nazi Party, obliviousness to Hitler's true character, and naive reactions to the persecution of Jews and Americans and the enforcement of stringent laws. Bestseller. 2011
Framed by an account of housewife and mother Greta Kuckhoff, this chronicle of resistance to the Nazis by a group…
of artists, intellectuals, and German government workers in Berlin details the actions and risks these ordinary citizens took to protest anti-Semitism--and relates the consequences. 2009
Portrays the WWII special army unit--composed of architects, museum directors, curators, and archivists--formed in 1943 to recover cultural treasures that…
had been plundered by the Nazis. Describes the bombed historical buildings the group preserved and works of art it salvaged. 2009
Portrays the exploits of the Polish pilots who joined the British air force after Hitler overran their country in 1939.…
Highlights the Kosciuszko Squadron's feats during the Battle of Britain and recounts the fate of five of the men after the allies abandoned Poland to Stalin. Some violence. 2003
After the 9/11 attacks three American women--one Jewish, one Christian, and one Muslim--decided to collaborate on an interfaith children's book…
to show the similarities among their religions. They discovered that their own misunderstandings had to be addressed first, leading to candid dialogue as their faith club sought common ground. 2006
Author, born in the 1980s, describes being raised by her Hasidic grandparents in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood after her mother left…
her developmentally disabled father. Discusses being an outcast and her arranged marriage, limited access to reading material, and lack of educational or employment opportunities. Bestseller. 2012
Account of the eleven-day evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied troops from near the French port of Dunkirk in 1940.…
Describes the efforts of a hastily assembled fleet to transport trapped British and French soldiers safely across the English Channel as the German army approached. 1982
In the tradition of Ben Macintyre, Tim Cook, and other bestselling World War Two historians, a riveting and updated telling…
of the tragic Dieppe raid of 1942.On the moonless night of August 18th 1942 a flotilla pushes out into the flat water of the Channel. They are to seize the German-held port of Dieppe and hold it for at least twenty-four hours, showing the Soviets the Allies were serious about a second front and to get experience ahead of a full-scale invasion. But confidence turned to carnage with nearly two thirds of the attackers dead, wounded or captured. The raid - the Royal Air Force's biggest battle since 1940- was both a disaster and a milestone in the narrative of the war. It was cited as essential to D-Day, but the tragedy was all too predictable. Using first-hand testimony and highlighting recently declassified source material from archives across several countries, bestselling author Patrick Bishop's account of this doomed endeavour reveals the big picture and unearths telling details that fully bring Operation Jubilee to life for the first time.
Recounts the catastrophic explosion at the U.S. Navy's Port Chicago munitions base near San Francisco on July 17, 1944. Details…
the mutiny trial of fifty African American seamen who refused to continue work after the blast and discusses the trial's impact on the budding civil rights movement. 1993