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Showing 341 - 360 of 830 items
By Joshua M. Greene. 2021
Winner of Best of Los Angeles Award "Best Holocaust Book - 2021" "A must-read that hopefully will be adapted for…
the screen. Greene lets Wilzig's effervescent spirit shine through, and his story will appear to a wide variety of readers." - Library Journal Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story and an epic David-and-Goliath adventure. While American teens were socializing in ice cream parlors, Siggi was suffering beatings by Nazi hoodlums for being a Jew and was soon deported along with his family to the darkest place the world has ever known: Auschwitz. Siggi used his wits to stay alive, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from camp Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis, a service that earned him a visa to America. On arrival, he made three vows: to never go hungry again, to support the Jewish people, and to speak out against injustice. He earned his first dollar shoveling snow after a fierce blizzard. His next job was laboring in toxic sweatshops. From these humble beginnings, he became President, Chairman and CEO of a New York Stock Exchange-listed oil company and grew a full-service commercial bank to more than $4 billion in assets. Siggi's ascent from the darkest of yesterdays to the brightest of tomorrows holds sway over the imagination in this riveting narrative of grit, cunning, luck, and the determination to live life to the fullestBy Brent E. Jones. 2021
An intimate true account of Americans at war, Days of Steel Rain is an epic drama about an unlikely group…
of men forced to work together in the face of an increasingly desperate enemy during the final year of World War II. Sprawling across the Pacific, this untold story follows the crew of the newly-built "vengeance ship" USS Astoria , named after her sunken predecessor lost earlier in the war. At its center lies U.S. Navy Captain George Dyer, who vowed to return to action after suffering a horrific wound. He accepted the ship's command in 1944, knowing it would be his last chance to avenge his injuries and salvage his career. Yet with the nation's resources and personnel stretched thin by the war, he found that just getting the ship into action would prove to be a battle. Tensions among the crew flared from the start. Astoria 's sailors and Marines were a collection of replacements, retreads, and older men. Some were broken by previous traumatic combat, most had no desire to be in the war, yet all found themselves fighting an enemy more afraid of surrender than death. The reluctant ship was called to respond to challenges that its men never could have anticipated. From a typhoon where the ocean was enemy to daring rescue missions in the Philippines, a gallant turn at Iwo Jima, and the ultimate crucible against the Kamikaze at Okinawa, they endured the worst of the final year of the war at sea. Days of Steel Rain brings to life more than a decade of research and firsthand interviews, depicting with unprecedented insight the singular drama of a captain grappling with a prospective mutiny amidst some of the most brutal fighting of World War II. Throughout, Brent Jones fills the narrative with secret diaries, memoirs, letters, interpersonal conflicts, and the innermost thoughts of the Astoria men. Days of Steel Rain weaves an intimate, unforgettable portrait of leadership, heroism, endurance, and redemptionBy Malcolm Gladwell. 2021
In The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, Malcolm Gladwell, author…
of New York Times bestsellers including Talking to Strangers and host of the podcast Revisionist History, uses original interviews, archival footage and his trademark insight to weave together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard. As listeners hear these stories unfurl, Gladwell examines one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history. Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists had a different view. This "Bomber Mafia" asked: What if precision bombing could, just by taking out critical choke points — industrial or transportation hubs – cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal? In Revisionist History, Gladwell re-examines moments from the past and asks whether we got it right the first time. In The Bomber Mafia, he employs all the production techniques that make Revisionist History so engaging, stepping back from the bombing of Tokyo, the deadliest night of the war, and asking, "Was it worth it?" The attack was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives but may have spared more by averting a planned US invasion. Things might have gone differently had LeMay's predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. As a key member of the Bomber Mafia, Haywood's theories of precision bombing had been foiled by bad weather, enemy jet fighters, and human error. When he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of warBy Jonathan Haslam. 2021
The Spectre of War looks at a subject we thought we knew-the roots of the Second World War-and upends our…
assumptions with a masterful new interpretation. Looking beyond traditional explanations based on diplomatic failures or military might, Jonathan Haslam explores the neglected thread connecting them all: the fear of Communism prevalent across continents during the interwar period. Marshalling an array of archival sources, including records from the Communist International, Haslam transforms our understanding of the deep-seated origins of World War II, its conflicts, and its legacy. Haslam offers a panoramic view of Europe and northeast Asia during the 1920s and 1930s, connecting fascism's emergence with the impact of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. World War I had economically destabilized many nations, and the threat of Communist revolt loomed large in the ensuing social unrest. As Moscow supported Communist efforts in France, Spain, China, and beyond, opponents such as the British feared for the stability of their global empire, and viewed fascism as the only force standing between them and the Communist overthrow of the existing order. The appeasement and political misreading of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy that followed held back the spectre of rebellion-only to usher in the later advent of warBy Daniel James Brown. 2021
&“Masterly. An epic story of four Japanese-American families and their sons who volunteered for military service and displayed uncommon heroism……
Propulsive and gripping, in part because of Mr. Brown&’s ability to make us care deeply about the fates of these individual soldiers...a page-turner.&” – Wall Street Journal &“ A masterwork of American history that will change the way we look at World War II."—Adam Makos, author of A Higher Call From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat , a gripping World War II saga of patriotism, highlighting the contributions and sacrifices that Japanese immigrants and their American-born children made for the sake of the nation: the courageous Japanese-American Army unit that overcame brutal odds in Europe; their families, incarcerated back home; and a young man who refused to surrender his constitutional rights, even if it meant imprisonment. They came from across the continent and Hawaii. Their parents taught them to embrace both their Japanese heritage and the ways of America. They faced bigotry, yet they believed in their bright futures as American citizens. But within days of Pearl Harbor, the FBI was ransacking their houses and locking up their fathers. And within months many would themselves be living behind barbed wire. Facing the Mountain is an unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe. Based on Daniel James Brown's extensive interviews with the families of the protagonists as well as deep archival research, it portrays the kaleidoscopic journey of four Japanese-American families and their sons, who volunteered for 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible. But this is more than a war story. Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to shutter the businesses, surrender their homes, and submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil. Woven throughout is the chronicle of a brave young man, one of a cadre of patriotic resisters who stood up against their government in defense of their own rights. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best—striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduringBy Selma van de Perre. 2021
An international bestseller, this powerful memoir by a ninety-eight-year-old Jewish Resistance fighter and Ravensbrück concentration camp survivor "shows us how…
to find hope in hopelessness and light in the darkness" (Edith Eger, author of The Choice and The Gift ). Selma van de Perre was seventeen when World War II began. She lived with her parents, two older brothers, and a younger sister in Amsterdam, and until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had not presented much of an issue. But by 1941 it had become a matter of life or death. On several occasions, Selma barely avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. While her father was summoned to a work camp and eventually hospitalized in a Dutch transition camp, her mother and sister went into hiding—until they were betrayed in June 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. In an act of defiance and with nowhere else to turn, Selma took on an assumed identity, dyed her hair blond, and joined the Resistance movement, using the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit. For two years "Marga" risked it all. Using a fake ID, and passing as non-Jewish, she traveled around the country and even to Nazi headquarters in Paris, sharing information and delivering papers—doing, as she later explained, what "had to be done." But in July 1944 her luck ran out. She was transported to Ravensbrück women's concentration camp as a political prisoner. Without knowing the fate of her family—her father died in Auschwitz, and her mother and sister were killed in Sobibor—Selma survived by using her alias, pretending to be someone else. It was only after the war ended that she could reclaim her identity and dared to say once again: My name is Selma . "We were ordinary people plunged into extraordinary circumstances," Selma writes. Full of hope and courage, this is her story in her own wordsA general-turned-historian reveals the remarkable battlefield heroics of Major General Maurice Rose, the World War II tank commander whose 3rd…
Armored Division struck fear into the hearts of Hitler's panzer crews. Two months after D-Day, the Allies found themselves in a stalemate in Normandy, having suffered enormous casualties attempting to push through hedgerow country. Troops were spent, and American tankers, lacking the tactics and leadership to deal with the terrain, were losing their spirit. General George Patton and the other top U.S. commanders needed an officer who knew how to break the impasse and roll over the Germans—they needed one man with the grit and the vision to take the war all the way to the Rhine. Patton and his peers selected Maurice Rose. The son of a rabbi, Rose never discussed his Jewish heritage. But his ferocity on the battlefield reflected an inner flame. He led his 3rd Armored Division not from a command post but from the first vehicle in formation, charging headfirst into a fight. He devised innovative tactics, made the most of American weapons, and personally chose the cadre of young officers who drove his division forward. From Normandy to the West Wall, from the Battle of the Bulge to the final charge across Germany, Maurice Rose's deadly division of tanks blasted through enemy lines and pursued the enemy with a remarkable intensity. In The Panzer Killers , Daniel P. Bolger, a retired lieutenant general and Iraq War veteran, offers up a lively, dramatic tale of Rose's heroism. Along the way, Bolger infuses the narrative with fascinating insights that could only come from an author who has commanded tank forces in combat. The result is a unique and masterful story of battlefield leadership, destined to become a classicBy Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard. 2014
Political commentator O'Reilly and historian Dugard, authors of Killing Jesus (DB 77565), examine the last year and the death of…
General George S. Patton Jr. (1885-1945); theorize that Patton's death was not due to complications of injuries sustained in a car accident; and detail possible motives for assassination. Bestseller. 2014By Giles Milton. 2017
By Patrick Bishop. 2021
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.By Joshua Levine. 2017
An account of the 1940 rescue of over 300,000 Allied troops trapped at the French port of Dunkirk through a…
seaborne evacuation. Includes interviews with veterans and survivors, and is told from the viewpoints of land, sea, and air. Violence. Spanish language. 2017Examination of racial and gender civil rights movements in the ranks of the United States Army Nurse Corps. Discusses the…
ways the parallel, yet separate, struggles reached a crossroads that delayed full integration. Discusses the politics of intimate care and the ways race and gender can constrain people. 2015By Anna Andlauer. 2012
By Deborah Baker. 2018
A look at the rivalry between John Auden and Michael Spender, who both vied to participate on an expedition to…
Everest's summit in the midst of Britain's waning power in India. The author portrays a generation, including writers, artists, explorers, spies, nationalists, political rogues, informers, and more. 2018By Javier Cercas. 2018
An account of the investigation into the life of Barcelona resident Enric Marco, who was uncovered as a fraud in…
2005 after a lifetime of claiming to be a Holocaust survivor. Originally published in Spanish as El Impostor. 2014By Keggie Carew. 2016
Keggie Carew grew up in the gravitational field of an unorthodox father who lived on his wits and dazzling charm.…
As his memory begins to fail, she embarks on a quest to unravel his story, and soon finds herself in a far more consuming place than she had bargained for. Tom Carew was a maverick, a left-handed stutterer, a law unto himself. As a member of an elite SOE unit he was parachuted behind enemy lines to raise guerrilla resistance in France, then Burma, in the Second World War. But his wartime exploits are only the start of it... Dadland is a manhunt. Keggie takes us on a spellbinding journey, in peace and war, into surprising and shady corners of history, her rackety English childhood, the poignant breakdown of her family, the corridors of dementia and beyond. As Keggie pieces Tom – and herself – back together again, she celebrates the technicolour life of an impossible, irresistible, unstoppable manBy Tom Clavin. 2021
An American fighter pilot doomed to die in Buchenwald but determined to survive. On August 13, 1944, Joe Moser set…
off on his forty-fourth combat mission over occupied France. Soon, he would join almost 170 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly of Nazi concentration camps. Tom Clavin's Lightning Down tells this largely untold and riveting true story. Moser was just twenty-two years old, a farm boy from Washington State who fell in love with flying. During the War he realized his dream of piloting a P-38 Lightning, one of the most effective weapons the Army Air Corps had against the powerful German Luftwaffe. But on that hot August morning he had to bail out of his damaged, burning plane. Captured immediately, Moser's journey into hell began. Moser and his courageous comrades from England, Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere endured the most horrific conditions during their imprisonment... until the day the orders were issued by Hitler himself to execute them. Only a most desperate plan would save them. The page-turning momentum of Lightning Down is like that of a thriller, but the stories of imprisoned and brutalized airmen are true and told in unforgettable detail, led by the distinctly American voice of Joe Moser, who prays every day to be reunited with his family. Lightning Down is a can't-put-it-down inspiring saga of brave men confronting great evil and great odds against survival. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's PressBy John C. McManus. 2021
From the author of Fire and Fortitude , the continuation of the US Army's epic crusade in the Pacific War,…
from the battle of Saipan to the occupation of Japan John C. McManus's award-winning Fire and Fortitude enthralled readers with an unforgettable and authoritative account of the US Army's evolution during the Pacific War, from the devastation of Pearl Harbor to the bloody battle for Makin Island in 1943. Now, in this second and final volume, he follows the Army as they land on Saipan, Guam, and Okinawa, climaxing with the American return to the Philippines, one of the largest, most complex operations in American history and one that would eventually account for one-third of all American casualties in the Pacific-Asia theater. Brilliantly researched and written, the narrative moves seamlessly from the highest generals to the lowest foot soldiers and in between, capturing the true essence of this horrible conflict. It is a masterful history by one of our finest historians of World War IIBy Susan Ronald. 2019
The world was stunned when eighty-year old Cornelius Gurlitt became an international media superstar in November 2013 on the discovery…
of over 1,400 artworks in his 1,076 square-foot Munich apartment, valued at around $1.35 billion. Gurlitt became known as a man who never was-he didn't have a bank account, never paid tax, never received social security. He simply did not exist. He had been hard-wired into a life of shadows and secrecy by his own father long before he had inherited his art collection built on the spoliation of museums and Jews during Hitler's Third Reich. The ensuing media frenzy unleashed international calls for restitution, unsettled international relations, and rocked the art world. Susan Ronald reveals in this stranger-than-fiction-tale how Hildebrand Gurlitt succeeded in looting in the name of the Third Reich, duping the Monuments Men and the Nazis alike. As an "official dealer" for Hitler and Goebbels, Hildebrand Gurlitt became one of the Third Reich's most prolific art looters. Yet he stole from Hitler too, allegedly to save modern art. Hitler's Art Thief is the untold story of Hildebrand Gurlitt, who stole more than art-he stole lives, tooThe incredible untold story of WWII&’s greatest secret fighting force, as told by our great modern master of wartime intrigue…
Britain&’s Special Air Service—or SAS—was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young, gadabout aristocrat whose aimlessness in early life belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a battlefield map of World War II&’s African theater and saw a protracted struggle with Rommel&’s desert forces, Stirling saw an opportunity: given a small number of elite, well-trained men, he could parachute behind enemy lines and sabotage their airplanes and war material. Paired with his constitutional opposite, the disciplined martinet Jock Lewes, Stirling assembled a revolutionary fighting force that would upend not just the balance of the war, but the nature of combat itself. He faced no little resistance from those who found his tactics ungentlemanly or beyond the pale, but in the SAS&’s remarkable exploits facing the Nazis in the Africa and then on the Continent can be found the seeds of nearly all special forces units that would follow. Bringing his keen eye for psychological detail to a riveting wartime narrative, Ben Macintyre uses his unprecedented access to SAS archives to shine a light inside a legendary unit long shrouded in secrecy. The result is not just a tremendous war story, but a fascinating group portrait of men of whom history and country asked the most