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The Stunning and Emotional Autobiography of an Auschwitz Survivor April 7, 1944—This date marks the successful escape of two Slovak…
prisoners from one of the most heavily-guarded and notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, fled over one hundred miles to be the first to give the graphic and detailed descriptions of the atrocities of Auschwitz. Originally published in the early 1960s, I Escaped from Auschwitz is the striking autobiography of none other than Rudolf Vrba himself. Vrba details his life leading up to, during, and after his escape from his 21-month internment in Auschwitz. Vrba and Wetzler manage to evade Nazi authorities looking for them and make contact with the Jewish council in Zilina, Slovakia, informing them about the truth of the &“unknown destination&” of Jewish deportees all across Europe. This first-hand report alerted Western authorities, such as Pope Pius XII, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the reality of Nazi annihilation camps—information that until then had only been recognized as nasty rumors.I Escaped from Auschwitz is a close-up look at the horror faced by the Jewish people in Auschwitz and across Europe during World War II. This newly edited translation of Vrba&’s memoir will leave readers reeling at the terrors faced by those during the Holocaust. Despite the profound emotions brought about by this narrative, readers will also find an astounding story of heroism and courage in the face of seemingly hopeless circumstances.My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams
By Abigail Adams. 2007
Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson
By Daniel Ellsberg, S. Brian Willson. 2011
After serving in the Vietnam War, S. Brian Willson became a radical, nonviolent peace protester and pacifist, and this memoir…
details the drastic governmental and social change he has spent his life fighting for. Chronicling his personal struggle with a government he believes to be unjust, Willson sheds light on the various incarnations of his protests of the U.S. government, including the refusal to pay taxes, public fasting, and, most famously, public obstruction. On September 1, 1987, Willson was run over by a U.S. government munitions train during a nonviolent blocking action in which he expected to be removed from the tracks. Providing a full look into the tragic event, Willson, who lost his legs in the incident, discusses how the subsequent publicity propelled his cause toward the national consciousness. Now, 23 years later, Willson tells his story of social injustice, nonviolent struggle, and the so-called American way of life.Pistoleros!: Volume 1: 1918
By Farquhar McHarg. 2011
In Farquhar McHarg's autobiography, a young boy from Glasgow finds himself in the middle of Barcelona's revolutionary underworld at the…
tail end of World War I. Volume One chronicles McHarg's liaisons between the British Secret Service Bureau and the Spanish anarchists. McHarg tells of a corrupt Spanish regime bent on crushing a rebellious working class and the generous and recklessly idealistic men and women who struggled to transform it after rejecting traditional party politics. When a lifelong friend and fellow anarchist was gunned down, McHarg raced to write this epic history before he too could be silenced. This unique, first-person account of revolutionary activities in 20th-century Europe gives rare perspective and insight into modern revolutionary history.FDR and Lucy: Lovers and Friends
By Resa Willis. 2005
Simon Bolivar, The Liberator
By Guillermo Antonio Sherwell. 2006
The different commanders had obtained some partial successes, but they soon recognized the necessity of Bolivar's leadership, and sent Arismendi…
to Port-au-Prince to ask him to return. Admiral Brion also besought him to go back to Venezuela. At the end of December Bolivar reached Margarita Island with some Venezuelan exiles. Once there, he issued a proclamation convoking an assembly, for his paramount desire was to have the military power subordinated to the civil government.Galvanized: The Odyssey of a Reluctant Carolina Confederate
By Michael K. Brantley. 2020
Every Civil War veteran had a story to tell. But few stories top the one lived by Wright Stephen Batchelor.…
Like most North Carolina farmers, Batchelor eschewed slaveholding. He also opposed secession and war, yet he fought on both sides of the conflict. During his time in each uniform, Batchelor barely avoided death at the Battle of Gettysburg, was captured twice, and survived one of the war&’s most infamous prisoner-of-war camps. He escaped and, after walking hundreds of miles, rejoined his comrades at Petersburg, Virginia, just as the Union siege there began. Once the war ended, Batchelor returned on foot to his farm, where he took part in local politics, supported rights for freedmen, and was fatally involved in a bizarre hometown murder. Michael K. Brantley&’s story of his great-great-grandfather&’s odyssey blends memory and Civil War history to look at how the complexities of loyalty and personal belief governed one man&’s actions—and still influence the ways Americans think about the conflict today.Nehru (Routledge Historical Biographies)
By Benjamin Zachariah. 2004
This engaging new biography dispels many myths surrounding Nehru, and distinguishes between the icon he has become and the politician…
he actually was. Benjamin Zachariah places Nehru in the context of the issues of his time, including the central theme of nationalism, the impact of Cold War pressures on India and the transition from colonial control to a precarious independence. How did Jawaharlal Nehru come to lead the Indian nationalist movement, and how did he sustain his leadership as the first Prime Minister of independent India? Nehru's vision of India, its roots in Indian politics and society, as well as its viability have been central to historical and present-day views of India. Connecting the domestic and international aspects of his political life and ideology, this study provides a fascinating insight into Nehru, his times and his legacy.Sulla: The Last Republican (Classical Lives Ser.)
By Arthur Keaveney. 2004
In this second edition of Arthur Keaveney's classic biography, a fresh generation of students, scholars and readers are introduced to…
one of the most pivotal figures in the outgoing Roman Empire. A definitive book in its field, this second edition is a must read. Completely rewritten and updated to include the further discoveries of the last two decades, it challenges traditional views of Sulla as a tyrant and harsh military dictator and instead delivers a compellingly complex portrait of a man obsessed with the belief that he was blessed with divine favour.Written by a leading authority on the classical world, this lively and entertaining book transports us through Sulla's rise from poverty and obscurity to his dictatorship of Rome, highlighting his dedication and achievements in better ordering the Republic before his decline a generation later.David Livingstone: African Explorer (Sower Ser.sower Series Biographies)
By John H. Tiner, Diane Davis, Joyce Bohn, Rebecca Booher. 1997
Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-century Holy Woman
By Samuel Fanous, Henrietta Leyser. 2004
Samuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser present a vivid interdisciplinary study devoted to the life, work and extant vita of Christina…
of Markyate, which draws on research from a wide range of disciplines. This fascinating and comprehensive collection surveys the life of an extraordinary medieval woman. Christina of Markyate made a vow of chastity at an early age, against the wishes of her parents who intended her to marry. When forced into wedlock, she fled in disguise and went into hiding, receiving refuge in a network of hermitages. Christina became a religious recluse and eventually founded a priory of nuns attached to St. Albans. Beautifully illustrated, this book provides students who regularly encounter Christina with a research compendium from which to begin their studies, and introduces Christina to a wider audience.Alfonso X, the Justinian of His Age: Law and Justice in Thirteenth-Century Castile
By Joseph F. O'Callaghan. 1975
In this magisterial work, Joseph O'Callaghan offers a detailed account of the establishment of Alfonso X's legal code, the Libro…
de las leyes or Siete Partidas, and its applications in the daily life of thirteenth-century Iberia, both within and far beyond the royal courts. O'Callaghan argues that Alfonso X, el Sabio (the Wise), was the Justinian of his age, one of the truly great legal minds of human history.Alfonso X, the Justinian of His Age highlights the struggles the king faced in creating a new, coherent, inclusive, and all-embracing body of law during his reign, O'Callaghan also considers Alfonso X's own understanding of his role as king, lawgiver, and defender of the faith in order to evaluate the impact of his achievement on the administration of justice. Indeed, such was the power and authority of the Alfonsine code that it proved the king's downfall when his son invoked it to challenge his rule. Throughout this soaring legal and historical biography, O'Callaghan reminds us of the long-term impacts of Alfonso X's legal works, not just on Castilian (and later, Iberian) life, but on the administration of justice across the world.The Scholems: A Story of the German-Jewish Bourgeoisie from Emancipation to Destruction
By Jay Howard Geller. 2019
The evocative and riveting stories of four brothers—Gershom the Zionist, Werner the Communist, Reinhold the nationalist, and Erich the liberal—weave…
together in The Scholems, a biography of an eminent middle-class Jewish Berlin family and a social history of the Jews in Germany in the decades leading up to World War II.Across four generations, Jay Howard Geller illuminates the transformation of traditional Jews into modern German citizens, the challenges they faced, and the ways that they shaped the German-Jewish century, beginning with Prussia's emancipation of the Jews in 1812 and ending with exclusion and disenfranchisement under the Nazis. Focusing on the renowned philosopher and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem and his family, their story beautifully draws out the rise and fall of bourgeois life in the unique subculture that was Jewish Berlin. Geller portrays the family within a much larger context of economic advancement, the adoption of German culture and debates on Jewish identity, struggles for integration into society, and varying political choices during the German Empire, World War I, the Weimar Republic, and the Nazi era. What Geller discovers, and unveils for the reader, is a fascinating portal through which to view the experience of the Jewish middle class in Germany.Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism
By Richard Drake. 2018
Richard Drake presents a new interpretation of Charles Austin Beard's life and work. The foremost American historian and a leading…
public intellectual in the first half of the twentieth century, Beard participated actively in the debates about American politics and foreign policy surrounding the two world wars. Drake takes this famous man's life and rewrites his intellectual biography by placing the European dimension of Beard's thought at the center. This radical change of critical focus allows Drake to correct previous biographers' oversights and, in Charles Austin Beard, present a far more nuanced appreciation for Beard's life than we have read before.Drake proposes a restoration of Beard's professional reputation, which he lost in large part because of his extremely unpopular opposition to America's intervention in World War II. Drake analyzes the stages of Beard's development as a historian and critic: his role as an intellectual leader in the Progressive movement, the support that he gave to the cause of American intervention in World War I, and his subsequent revisionist repudiation of Wilsonian ideals and embrace of non-interventionism in the lead-up to World War II. Many of his dire predictions about the inevitable consequences of pre-World War II American foreign policy have come to pass. Drake shows that, as Americans tally the ruinous costs—both financial and moral—of nation-building and informal empire, the life and work of this prophet of history merit a thorough reexamination.Bitter Choices: Loyalty and Betrayal in the Russian Conquest of the North Caucasus
By Michael Khodarkovsky. 2014
Russia’s attempt to consolidate its authority in the North Caucasus has exerted a terrible price on both sides since the…
mid-nineteenth century. Michael Khodarkovsky tells a concise and compelling history of the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian seas during the centuries of Russia’s long conquest (1500–1850s). The history of the region unfolds against the background of one man’s life story, Semën Atarshchikov (1807–1845). Torn between his Chechen identity and his duties as a lieutenant and translator in the Russian army, Atarshchikov defected, not once but twice, to join the mountaineers against the invading Russian troops. His was the experience more typical of Russia’s empire-building in the borderlands than the better known stories of the audacious kidnappers and valiant battles. It is a history of the North Caucasus as seen from both sides of the conflict, which continues to make this region Russia’s most violent and vulnerable frontier.Napoleon and de Gaulle: Heroes and History
By Patrice Gueniffey. 2020
One of France’s most famous historians compares two exemplars of political and military leadership to make the unfashionable case that…
individuals, for better and worse, matter in history. Historians have taught us that the past is not just a tale of heroes and wars. The anonymous millions matter and are active agents of change. But in democratizing history, we have lost track of the outsized role that individual will and charisma can play in shaping the world, especially in moments of extreme tumult. Patrice Gueniffey provides a compelling reminder in this powerful dual biography of two transformative leaders, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle. Both became national figures at times of crisis and war. They were hailed as saviors and were eager to embrace the label. They were also animated by quests for personal and national greatness, by the desire to raise France above itself and lead it on a mission to enlighten the world. Both united an embattled nation, returned it to dignity, and left a permanent political legacy—in Napoleon’s case, a form of administration and a body of civil law; in de Gaulle’s case, new political institutions. Gueniffey compares Napoleon’s and de Gaulle’s journeys to power; their methods; their ideas and writings, notably about war; and their postmortem reputations. He also contrasts their weaknesses: Napoleon’s limitless ambitions and appetite for war and de Gaulle’s capacity for cruelty, manifested most clearly in Algeria. They were men of genuine talent and achievement, with flaws almost as pronounced as their strengths. As many nations, not least France, struggle to find their soul in a rapidly changing world, Gueniffey shows us what a difference an extraordinary leader can make.A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America
By Stacy Schiff. 2005
Stacy Schiff draws from new and little-known sources to illuminate the least-explored part of Franklin's life. From these pages emerge…
a particularly human and yet fiercely determined Founding Father, as well as a profound sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country's bid for independence.Abigail Adams: A Writing Life
By Edith B. Gelles. 2002
In this book, Edith B. Gelles asserts that Abigail Adams' vivid, insightful letters are "the best account that exists from…
the pre to the post-Revolutionary period in America of a woman's life and world." Adams' spontaneous, witty letters serve dual purposes for the modern reader: it provides an intriguing first hand account of pivotal historical events and it shows how these events from the Boston Tea Party to the War of 1812 entered the private sphere. Included in the book is a chronology, notes and reference section and a selected bibliography. This book will be a must for all scholars of American literature, history and politics seeking to understand this literary figure.Rome in Crisis
By Plutarch. 2010
Bringing together nine biographies from Plutarch's Parallel Lives series, this edition examines the lives of major figures in Roman history,…
from Lucullus (118-57 BC), an aristocratic politician and conqueror of Eastern kingdoms, to Otho (32-69 AD), a reckless young noble who consorted with the tyrannical, debauched emperor Nero before briefly becoming a dignified and gracious emperor himself. Ian Scott-Kilvert s and Christopher Pelling s translations are accompanied by a new introduction, and also includes a separate introduction for each biography, comparative essays of the major figures, suggested further reading, notes and maps.George W. T. Beck, an influential rancher and entrepreneur in the American West, collaborated with William F. &“Buffalo Bill&” Cody…
to establish the town of Cody, Wyoming, in the 1890s. He advanced his financial investments in Wyoming through his numerous personal and professional contacts with various eastern investors and politicians in Washington DC. Beck&’s family—his father a Kentucky senator and his mother a grandniece of George Washington—and his adventures in the American West resulted in personal associates who ranged from western legends Buffalo Bill, Jesse James, and Calamity Jane to wealthy American elites such as George and Phoebe Hearst and Theodore Roosevelt. This definitive edition of Beck&’s memoir provides a glimpse of early life in Wyoming, offering readers a rare perspective on how community boosters cooperated with political leaders and wealthy financiers. Beck&’s memoir, introduced and annotated by Lynn J. Houze and Jeremy M. Johnston, offers a unique and sometimes amusing view of financial dealings in eastern boardrooms, as well as stories of Beck&’s adventures with Buffalo Bill in Wyoming. Beck&’s memoir demonstrates not only his interest in developing the West but also his humor and his willingness to collaborate with a variety of people.