Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 30992 items
To Hell and Back: The Classic Memoir of World War II by America's Most Decorated Soldier
By Audie Murphy. 1949
The classic bestselling war memoir by the most decorated American soldier in World War II. Originally published in 1949, To…
Hell and Back was a smash bestseller for fourteen weeks and later became a major motion picture starring Audie Murphy as himself. Many decades later, this classic wartime memoir is just as gripping as it was then. Desperate to see action but rejected by both the marines and paratroopers because he was too short, Murphy eventually found a home with the infantry. He fought through campaigns in Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany. Although still under twenty-one years old on V-E Day, he was credited with having killed, captured, or wounded 240 Germans. He emerged from the war as America's most decorated soldier, having received twenty-one medals, including our highest military decoration, the Congressional Medal of Honor. To Hell and Back is a powerfully real portrayal of American GI's at war.Climate Change and Socio-political Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Anthropocene: Perspectives from Peace Ecology and Sustainable Development (The Anthropocene: Politik—Economics—Society—Science #37)
By Jean Chrysostome K. Kiyala, Norman Chivasa. 2024
This book explores the theoretical contribution of peace ecology to the understanding and practice of environmental and conventional peacebuilding. It…
integrates environmental questions and factors that drive socio-political violence and climate change-induced violence in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Anthropocene.· It demonstrates how international peace and global security are no longer solely grounded in conventional peacebuilding that has evolved from liberal to democratic peace theories, but rather in the complex, critical and synergic relations between peace studies and environmental studies.· It provides a pluridisciplinary body of knowledge that emphasises the need for food security, social climate, social good, social capital and sustainable development at the age of climate change and climate wars.· It underscores the potential of peace ecology to reduce the Earth systems' vulnerability, to mitigate anthropogenic global warming's consequences on humanity, the ecosystem and biodiversity.· It yields various models of peacebuilding, conflict-sensitive and climate-sensitive adaptation strategies to enhance the African Region’s security and stability.Finally, this volume argues that planetary boundaries framework remains the safer space within which human and sustainable development can be pursued and attained, and future generations to thrive. A comprehensive and international response to socio-political violence and climate-change induced violence should take into account the vulnerability of individual countries, regions and the global world in order to achieve the dreams of a better future; that makes this book a cutting-edge scholarly work.American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow
By Jerrold M. Packard. 2002
For a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, a quarter of all Americans lived under a system…
of legalized segregation called Jim Crow. Together with its rigidly enforced canon of racial "etiquette," these rules governed nearly every aspect of life--and outlined draconian punishments for infractions.The purpose of Jim Crow was to keep African Americans subjugated at a level as close as possible to their former slave status. Exceeding even South Africa's notorious apartheid in the humiliation, degradation, and suffering it brought, Jim Crow left scars on the American psyche that are still felt today. American Nightmare examines and explains Jim Crow from its beginnings to its end: how it came into being, how it was lived, how it was justified, and how, at long last, it was overcome only a few short decades ago. Most importantly, this book reveals how a nation founded on principles of equality and freedom came to enact as law a pervasive system of inequality and virtual slavery.Although America has finally consigned Jim Crow to the historical graveyard, Jerrold Packard shows why it is important that this scourge--and an understanding of how it happened--remain alive in the nation's collective memory.Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy
By Tricia Rose. 2003
The Sexual Lives of Black Women, In Their Own WordsIn a culture driven by sexual and racial imagery, very few…
honest conversations about race, gender, and sexuality actually take place. In their absence, commonly held perceptions of black women as teenage mothers, welfare recipients, mammies, or exotic sexual playthings remain unchanged. For fear that telling their stories will fulfill society's implicit expectations about their sexuality, most black women have retreated into silence. Tricia Rose seeks to break this silence and jump-start a dialogue by presenting, for the first time, the sexual testimonies of black women. Spanning a broad range of ages, levels of education, and socioeconomic backgrounds, twenty women, in their own words, talk with startling honesty about sex, love, family, relationships, and intimacy. Their stories dispel prevailing myths and provide revealing insights into how black women navigate the complex terrain of sexuality. Nuanced, rich, and powerful, Longing to Tell will be required reading for anyone interested in issues of race and gender.Architects of Death: The Family Who Engineered the Death Camps
By Karen Bartlett. 2018
A sobering story of an industrial family’s cold efficiency behind the design of the ovens at AuschwitzArchitects of Death tells…
the astonishing story of how the gas chambers and crematoria that facilitated the murder and incineration of more than one million people in the Holocaust were designed not by the Nazi SS, but by a small respectable family firm of German engineers. Topf and Sons designed and built the crematoria at the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, Belzec, Dachau, Mauthausen, and Gusen. At its height, 66 Topf triple muffle ovens were in operation—46 of which were at Auschwitz. These were not Nazi sadists, but men who were playboys and the sons of train conductors. They were driven not by ideology, but by love affairs, personal ambition, and bitter personal rivalries. Even while their firm created the ultimate human killing and disposal machines, their company sheltered Nazi enemies from the death camps. The intense conflagration of their very ordinary motives created work that surpassed in inhumanity even the demands of the SS. But the company that achieved this spectacularly evil feat of engineering typify the banality of evil. In the 1930s their family firm produced apparatus for all sorts of industries—baking, brewing, the firing of ceramics. Ovens for crematoria accounted for only a small proportion of their business, but it is for these that the Topf brothers became infamous. Their name can still be seen stamped on the iron furnaces of Auschwitz.A powerful and revealing memoir about the pioneers of modern-day feminismPhyllis Chesler was a pioneer of Second Wave Feminism. Chesler…
and the women who came out swinging between 1972-1975 integrated the want ads, brought class action lawsuits on behalf of economic discrimination, opened rape crisis lines and shelters for battered women, held marches and sit-ins for abortion and equal rights, famously took over offices and buildings, and pioneered high profile Speak-outs. They began the first-ever national and international public conversations about birth control and abortion, sexual harassment, violence against women, female orgasm, and a woman’s right to kill in self-defense. Now, Chesler has juicy stories to tell. The feminist movement has changed over the years, but Chesler knew some of its first pioneers, including Gloria Steinem, Kate Millett, Flo Kennedy, and Andrea Dworkin. These women were fierce forces of nature, smoldering figures of sin and soul, rock stars and action heroes in real life. Some had been viewed as whores, witches, and madwomen, but were changing the world and becoming major players in history. In A Politically Incorrect Feminist, Chesler gets chatty while introducing the reader to some of feminism's major players and world-changers.Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany
By James Wyllie. 2019
Nazi Wives is a fascinating look at the personal lives, psychological profiles, and marriages of the wives of officers in…
Hitler's inner circle.Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann—names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Lina, Ilse and Gerda... These are the women behind the infamous men—complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself. Until now, they have been treated as minor characters, their significance ignored, as if they were unaware of their husbands' murderous acts, despite the evidence that was all around them: the stolen art on their walls, the slave labor in their homes, and the produce grown in concentration camps on their tables.James Wyllie's Nazi Wives explores these women in detail for the first time, skillfully interweaving their stories through years of struggle, power, decline and destruction into the post-war twilight of denial and delusion.A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany
By Mark Roseman. 2000
A heart-stopping survivor story and brilliant historical investigation that offers unprecedented insight into daily life in the Third Reich and…
the Holocaust and the powers and pitfalls of memory.At the outbreak of World War II, Marianne Strauss, the sheltered daughter of well-to-do German Jews, was an ordinary girl, concerned with studies, friends, and romance. Almost overnight she was transformed into a woman of spirit and defiance, a fighter who, when the Gestapo came for her family, seized the moment and went underground. On the run for two years, Marianne traveled across Nazi Germany without papers, aided by a remarkable resistance organization, previously unknown and unsung. Drawing on an astonishing cache of documents as well as interviews on three continents, historian Mark Roseman reconstructs Marianne's odyssey and reveals aspects of life in the Third Reich long hidden from view. As Roseman excavates the past, he also puts forward a new and sympathetic interpretation of the troubling discrepancies between fact and recollection that so often cloud survivors' accounts.A detective story, a love story, a story of great courage and survival under the harshest conditions, A Past in Hiding is also a poignant investigation into the nature of memory, authenticity, and truth.The Big Sea: An Autobiography (American Century)
By Langston Hughes. 1940
Introduction by Arnold Rampersad.Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s. In The Big Sea he…
recounts those memorable years in the two great playgrounds of the decade--Harlem and Paris. In Paris he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. He knew the musicians and dancers, the drunks and dope fiends. In Harlem he was a rising young poet--at the center of the "Harlem Renaissance."Arnold Rampersad writes in his incisive new introduction to The Big Sea, an American classic: "This is American writing at its best--simpler than Hemingway; as simple and direct as that of another Missouri-born writer...Mark Twain."Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America
By Cheryl Strayed, Rebecca Solnit. 2017
Twenty-Three Leading Feminist Writers on Protest and SolidarityWhen 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent…
of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump’s America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.Featuring essays by REBECCA SOLNIT on Trump and his “misogyny army,” CHERYL STRAYED on grappling with the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s loss, SARAH HEPOLA on resisting the urge to drink after the election, NICOLE CHUNG on family and friends who support Trump, KATHA POLLITT on the state of reproductive rights and what we do next, JILL FILIPOVIC on Trump’s policies and the life of a young woman in West Africa, SAMANTHA IRBY on racism and living as a queer black woman in rural America, RANDA JARRAR on traveling across the country as a queer Muslim American, SARAH HOLLENBECK on Trump’s cruelty toward the disabled, MEREDITH TALUSAN on feminism and the transgender community, and SARAH JAFFE on the labor movement and active and effective resistance, among others.The True German: The Diary of a World War II Military Judge
By Werner Otto Müller-Hill. 2011
A recently discovered diary held by a German military judge from 1944 to 1945 sheds new light on anti-Hitler sentiments…
inside the German army.Werner Otto Müller-Hill served as a military judge in the Werhmacht during World War II. From March 1944 to the summer of 1945, he kept a diary, recording his impressions of what transpired around him as Germany hurtled into destruction—what he thought about the fate of the Jewish people, the danger from the Bolshevik East once an Allied victory was imminent, his longing for his home and family and, throughout it, a relentless disdain and hatred for the man who dragged his beloved Germany into this cataclysm, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Müller-Hill calls himself a German nationalist, the true Prussian idealist who was there before Hitler and would be there after. Published in Germany and France, Müller-Hill's diary The True German has been hailed as a unique document, praised for its singular candor and uncommon insight into what the German army was like on the inside. It is an extraordinary testament to a part of Germany's people that historians are only now starting to acknowledge and fills a gap in our knowledge of WWII.Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance
By Michael Bart, Laurel Corona. 2008
"This is a powerful tale of the triumph of love under extremely difficult conditions. " - Publishers WeeklyAt Leizer Bart's…
funeral, one of the mourners told his son Michael that the gravestone should include a reference to the Freedom Fighters of Nekamah, to honor his late father's involvement in the Jewish resistance movement in Vilna (now Vilnius), Lithuania, at the end of World War II. Michael had never heard his parents referenced as Freedom Fighters. Following his father's death, and with his mother in failing health, Michael embarked on a ten-year research project to find out more details about his parents' time in the Vilna ghetto, where they met, fell in love, and married, and about their activities as members of the Jewish resistance. Until Our Last Breath is the culmination of his research, and his parents' story of love and survival is seamlessly tied into the collective story of the Vilna ghetto, the partisans of Vilna, and the wider themes of world history. Zenia, Bart's mother, was born and raised in Vilna. Leizer fled there to escape the Nazi invasion of his hometown of Hrubieshov in Poland. They were married by one of the last remaining rabbis ninety days before the liquidation of the ghetto. Leizer was friends with Zionist leader Abba Kovner and became a member of the Vilna ghetto underground. Shortly before the total liquidation of the ghetto, Zenia and Leizer, along with about 120 members of the underground, were able to escape to the Rudnicki forest, about 25 miles away. They became part of the Jewish partisan fighting group led by Abba Kovner—known as the Avengers—which carried out sabotage missions against the Nazi army and eventually participated in the liberation of Vilna.Until Our Last Breath is intensely personal and painstakingly researched, a lasting memorial to the Jews of Vilna, including the resistance fighters and the author's family.#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during…
the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis &“One of [Erik Larson&’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.&”—Time • &“A bravura performance by one of America&’s greatest storytellers.&”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMattersOn Winston Churchill&’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people &“the art of being fearless.&” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it&’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill&’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London&’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents&’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela&’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill&’s &“Secret Circle,&” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today&’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill&’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.Wash Day: Passing on the Legacy, Rituals, and Love of Natural Hair
By Tomesha Faxio. 2024
A visual celebration of natural Black hair that highlights the powerful connection between mothers and their children during their wash…
day rituals. &“A beautiful love letter to natural hair and the rituals Black women have created.&”—Roxane GayIn this stunning book, documentary photographer Tomesha Faxio explores the power of &“wash day,&” a day that Black women dedicate to washing, detangling, conditioning, and styling their natural hair. The significance of wash day goes far beyond hair care—it&’s an opportunity for Black women to pour love into their curly, coily locks and, when they have children, pass on this sacred ritual to the next generation. Wash Day celebrates the unique bonds between Black mothers and their children through intimate photographs of their hair-care routines and insightful stories that detail their natural hair journeys. Faxio brings you into the homes of twenty-six different families, illustrating the many ways that these mothers have used wash day to instill love, acceptance, and confidence in their children about wearing their natural hair. Through hours spent with their children, typically at the kitchen sink, each of these mothers is resisting generations of hair discrimination by creating a space for empowerment, all while finding their own sense of self-acceptance along the way. Capturing the inherent beauty and diversity of natural hair, Wash Day is a visual homage to Black culture, Black rituals, and the generational bonds that strengthen the Black community.In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
By Erik Larson. 2011
Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Devil in the White City, delivers a remarkable story set during Hitler&’s…
rise to power.The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America&’s first ambassador to Hitler&’s Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the &“New Germany,&” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler&’s true character and ruthless ambition. Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.Practical Archaeogaming
By Andrew Reinhard. 2024
As a sequel to Archaeogaming: an Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games, the author focuses on the practical…
and applied side of the discipline, collecting recent digital fieldwork together in one place for the first time to share new methods in treating interactive digital built environments as sites for archaeological investigation. Fully executed examples of practical and applied archaeogaming include the necessity of a rapid archaeology of digital built environments, the creation of a Harris matrix for software stratigraphy, the ethnographic work behind a human civilization trapped in an unstable digital landscape, how to conduct photogrammetry and GIS mapping in procedurally generated space, and how to transform digital artifacts into printed three-dimensional objects. Additionally, the results of the 2014 Atari excavation in Alamogordo, New Mexico are summarized for the first time.African Women’s Liberating Philosophies, Theologies, and Ethics
By Beatrice Okyere-Manu, Léocadie Lushombo. 2024
This volume explores the ethical and philosophical paradigms presented by most of the influential Matriarchs of the Circle of African…
Women Theologians. It critically evaluates the effectiveness of their ethical and philosophical theories, models, and frameworks in pursuing justice and liberation for women in Africa and globally. The authors address critical questions: How have African women theologians reimagined existing ethical paradigms? What original ethical and philosophical ideas have they generated? How have their ethical frameworks influenced the theologies and interpretations they have developed? What purposes do their ethical and philosophical paradigms serve? How do these renderings intersect with various social categories, including gender, race, class, sexuality, capitalism, and colonialism? What liberating frameworks do they propose? The volume further explores the dialogue between distinct African contexts and universal experiences and values. It explores how universal themes such as humanity, human dignity, rights, justice, motherhood, and more can coexist with communal African concepts and themes. It contemplates how embracing African approaches engages these themes more globally, bringing together particular African contexts of women and the universal ethical, philosophical, and theological theories, models, and frameworks to advance the cause of justice and liberation for African women and women worldwide into the future.The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (Vintage International Ser.)
By James Baldwin. 2010
From one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century—a collection of essays, articles, reviews, and…
interviews that have never before been gathered in a single volume.&“An absorbing portrait of Baldwin&’s time—and of him.&” —New York Review of BooksJames Baldwin was an American literary master, renowned for his fierce engagement with issues haunting our common history. In The Cross of Redemption we have Baldwin discoursing on, among other subjects, the possibility of an African-American president and what it might mean; the hypocrisy of American religious fundamentalism; the black church in America; the trials and tribulations of black nationalism; anti-Semitism; the blues and boxing; Russian literary masters; and the role of the writer in our society.Prophetic and bracing, The Cross of Redemption is a welcome and important addition to the works of a cosmopolitan and canonical American writer who still has much to teach us about race, democracy, and personal and national identity. As Michael Ondaatje has remarked, &“If van Gogh was our nineteenth-century artist-saint, Baldwin [was] our twentieth-century one.&”Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze
By M. G. Sheftall. 2005
A revelatory and groundbreaking account of Imperial Japan&’s kamikaze—the suicide pilots of World War II—as told through the eyes of…
the survivorsIn the final year of World War II, a horrific new weapon was unleashed in the Pacific: the kamikaze. Idealistic, young Japanese men had been taught that there was no greater glory than to sacrifice one&’s life to defend the homeland. Now, with the war all but lost, thousands of these determined warriors were hastily trained in the basics of piloting an airplane, then sent out in waves to crash into enemy warships, suicide attacks that killed altogether some seven thousand American sailors. But what of those men who took the sacred oath to die in battle and lived? In the wake of 9/11, ethnographer M. G. Sheftall was given unprecedented access to the cloistered community of Japan&’s last remaining kamikaze survivors. As an American fluent in Japanese, Sheftall was the only westerner to ever sit face-to-face with these men and hear their stories. The result is a fascinating journey into the lives, indoctrination, and mindsets of the kamikaze, through the eyes of participants who are now lost to time.Churchill's Great Escapes: Seven Incredible Escapes Made by WWII Heroes
By Damien Lewis. 2021
From Damien Lewis, bestselling author and award-winning historian and war reporter, comes the thrillingly told stories of seven dramatic and…
epic WWII escapes executed by members of one of the world&’s legendary military fighting forces: the British Special Air Service. No food. No water. Out of ammo. Hunted and on the run. The dreaded certainty of discovery looming between recapture and safe haven. What would you do? Give up? For the seven heroes of Churchill&’s Great Escapes the answer was simple: keep moving against all odds. These are the extraordinary stories of the bravery and endurance of the men of SAS, legendary pioneers of escape and evasion who, through the darkest of days and nights of World War II, endeavored and succeeded in slipping through the clutches of the enemy. Based on in-the-moment personal diaries and notebooks, mission reports, debriefings and letters, Damien Lewis recounts the most terrifying and adrenaline-fueled days and nights in the lives of men for whom survival was the only option. We follow every desperate step, facing unknowable threats and death around every corner, and share in the breathtaking endurance that brought them freedom against the most formidable of threats: the seemingly invincible Nazi war machine.