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Marcel's Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man's Fate
By Carolyn Porter. 2017
Finalist for the 2018 Minnesota Book AwardA graphic designer’s search for inspiration leads to a cache of letters and the…
mystery of one man’s fate during World War II.Seeking inspiration for a new font design in an antique store in small-town Stillwater, Minnesota, graphic designer Carolyn Porter stumbled across a bundle of letters and was immediately drawn to their beautifully expressive pen-and-ink handwriting. She could not read the letters-they were in French-but she noticed all of them had been signed by a man named Marcel and mailed from Berlin to his family in France during the middle of World War II.As Carolyn grappled with designing the font, she decided to have one of Marcel’s letters translated. Reading it opened a portal to a different time, and what began as mere curiosity quickly became an obsession with finding out why the letter writer, Marcel Heuzé, had been in Berlin, how his letters came to be on sale in a store halfway around the world, and, most importantly, whether he ever returned to his beloved wife and daughters after the war.Marcel’s Letters is the incredible story of Carolyn’s increasingly desperate search to uncover the mystery of one man’s fate during WWII, seeking answers across Germany, France, and the United States. Simultaneously, she continues to work on what would become the acclaimed P22 Marcel font, immortalizing the man and his letters that waited almost seventy years to be reunited with his family.A Death in the Islands: The Unwritten Law and the Last Trial of Clarence Darrow
By Mike Farris. 2016
Lies, murder, and a legendary courtroom battle threaten to tear apart the Territory of Hawaii.In September of 1931, Thalia Massie,…
a young naval lieutenant's wife, claims to have been raped by five Hawaiian men in Honolulu. Following a hung jury in the rape trial, Thalia's mother, socialite Grace Fortescue, and husband, along with two sailors, kidnap one of the accused in an attempt to coerce a confession. When they are caught after killing him and trying to dump his body in the ocean, Mrs. Fortescue's society friends raise enough money to hire seventy-four-year-old Clarence Darrow out of retirement to defend the vigilante killers. The result is an epic courtroom battle between Darrow and the Territory of Hawaii's top prosecutor, John C. Kelley, in a case that threatens to touch off a race war in Hawaii and results in one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in American history.Written in the style of a novel, but meticulously following the historical record, A Death in the Islands weaves a story of lies, deception, mental illness, racism, revenge, and murder-a series of events in the Territory of Hawaii that nearly tore apart the peaceful islands, reverberating from the tenements of Honolulu to the hallowed halls of Congress, and right into the Oval Office itself, and left a stain on the legacy of one of the greatest legal minds of all time.The Last Great Cavalryman: The Life of General Sir Richard McCreery GCB KBE DSO MC
By Richard Mead. 2012
Dick McCreery was commissioned into the 12th Royal Lancers in 1915 and served on The Western Front, winning the MC…
and surviving wounds.In 1938 he joined the staff of 1st Division under Alexander before being given command of 2 Armored Brigade. He won the DSO for his leadership during the retreat to Dunkirk Man/June 1940.In North Africa McCreery was sacked by Auchinleck, with whom he had major differences, but, while waiting for a plane home, he was spotted by Alexander who made him his Chief of Staff. He is credited by many (but not Montgomery the two did not get on) for the solution to the El Alamein victory.He was promoted to command X Corps at Salerno which he commanded during the advance to the Gothic Line. He relieved Leese as Commander 8th Army in September 1944 and it was his brilliant plan that seized the Argenta Gap and drove the Germans back across the River Po into Austria.He became British High Commissioner in Austria, C in C British Army of the Rhine and British Military Representative at the UN, retiring in 1949.Although not a public figure, McCreery was key figure in the development of armored warfare, a brilliant tactician and among the most important British fighting generals of the Second World War. This is an overdue acknowledgment of his contribution to victory.Leave It to Abigail!: The Revolutionary Life of Abigail Adams
By Barb Rosenstock. 2020
In this inspiring tribute, award-winning author Barb Rosenstock and New York Times bestselling artist Elizabeth Baddeley tell the true story…
of one of America's greatest founding mothers: Abigail Adams.Everyone knew Abigail was different.Instead of keeping quiet, she blurted out questions. Instead of settling down with a wealthy minister, she married a poor country lawyer named John Adams. Instead of running from the Revolutionary War, she managed a farm and fed hungry soldiers. Instead of leaving the governing to men, she insisted they "Remember the Ladies." Instead of fearing Europe's kings and queens, she boldly crossed the sea to represent her new country. And when John become President of the United States, Abigail became First Lady, and a powerful advisor.Leave it to Abigail--an extraordinary woman who surprised the world.Road to St. Julien: The Letters of a Stretcher-Bearer of the Great War
By John St. Clair. 2004
William St Clair is perhaps the only soldier to have left a continuous account of his experiences day by day…
from the moment of joining up in 1914, through the years of horror in the trenches, to the march into Germany in 1919 and the long aftermath of trying to make sense of what had happened. A private in the medical corps, St Clair wrote daily letters, sometimes more, to his future wife Jane. Often scribbled under fire, and sent in the green envelopes that were exempt from censorship, they tell of the famous battles of Loos, the Somme, and Passchendaele, as they happened, with excruciating vividness. They speak too of aspirations, of conversations, of literature, and of love.Published for the first time, these raw, truthful, and deeply moving. letters give us what we have not properly had before, the voice of an ordinary soldier who is also a wonderful writer. The book takes its title from the village of St Julien in Flanders, where, in a captured German pill box, the mind of young soldier was transformed, an event that he later turned into an award-winning play.Six of Monty's Men
By Adrian Stewart. 2011
Field Marshal Montgomery showed great skill in choosing his subordinates, whether as staff officers or field commanders. To those he…
trusted he gave help and guidance as well as a kindness and concern for which he has rarely received credit. In return, they provided services of immense value not only in his own campaigns but in many others throughout the Second World War, to which they brought the knowledge and experience that they had acquired under his leadership.This account follows the careers of six of these subordinates. Harding, the far-sighted staff officer who could take command of a famous armored division with equal ability. Leese, ranked by Montgomery as his finest Corps Commander, but for whom successes and disappointments would be strangely intermingled. De Guingand, the invaluable Chief of Staff whose devotion to duty ruined his health and brought him to verge of a nervous breakdown. Horrocks, who had hated the thought of serving under Montgomery but did so for almost the whole of the war. Richardson, the versatile planner whose varied duties included coordinating the operations of Army and Air Force, anticipating future events, and deceiving the enemy as to his own commanders intentions. Roberts, the brilliant and charismatic armored division commander who became the youngest major general in the British Army.The varied careers and consequent outlooks of these officers serve to throw new light on events that are famous, on incidents that are surprising, unusual or unappreciated, and in particular on the complicated and controversial character of the man whom they all acknowledged to be their leader and their inspiration.This book tells the tale of the brilliant aerodynamicist Beverley Shenstone MASc, HonFRAes, FAIAA,AFIAS, FCASI, HonOSTIV. As R.J. Mitchells chief…
aerodynamicist, it was Shenstone who designed the Spitfires wing the wing that gave the Spitfire it crucial advantage in the Battle of Britain and beyond. A quiet man, Shenstone never sought glory for his work, yet in recent years he has been credited as the man who persuaded Mitchell to adopt the ellipse a modified ellipse that was unique in its shape and its combined use of two integrated aerofoil sections. Shenstones knife-edge shape reached far back into early aeronautics for its inspiration. This book also names the other forgotten Spitfire design contributors who were Mitchells men Mr Faddy, Mr Fear, Mr Fenner, Mr Shirvall, a Prof Howland and others.Intriguingly, Shenstone had left his native Canada and early training as an RCAF pilot, to study at Junkers and then under the father of the delta wing Alexander Lippisch in Germany in the early 1930s. There, he became immersed in delta wings and flying wings. He also became a glider pilot. The story of how Beverley came to be in the right place at the right time is revealed for the first time. So too are the enigmatic tales of his involvement with the military, the intelligence world, Lord Beaverbrook , the USAF, and Canadian aviation.During the war Shenstone worked at the top secret Wright Patterson air force base and was involved with the Air Ministry and the pro-British movement in America when Shenstone worked for Air Chief Marshal Sir Wilfrid Freeman, the unsung hero behind British defence procurement. Shenstone achieved high office a President of the Royal Aeronautical Society, technical director at BOAC, chief engineer at BEA and a consultant to several aircraft makers. He was courted by Avro, de Havilland and Vickers, and was the force behind the renaissance of human-powered flight.Using exclusive access to his family documents, his unpublished autobiography and many notes and stories, as well as forensic research, this book details for the first time, a new twist to the Spitfires story and the secrets of its advanced science. A tale of design and military intelligence reveals a story of a man whose name should be more widely known in the UK, Canada and the aviation world.Letters from the Horn of Africa, 1923–1942: Sandy Curle, Soldier and Diplomat Extraordinary
By Christian Curle. 1958
After brief service in the Gordon Highlanders as part of the Army of Occupation of the Rhine post Great War,…
Sandy Curle sought more adventurous soldiering and in 1923 was seconded to the Kings African Rifles (KAR). Aged 23 he found himself in remotest Somaliland in sole charge and the only European for miles. At one point delirious with typhoid he was only saved by the surprise visit of an Indian doctor. Later he served in Kenya and undertook numerous military expeditions.In 1929 Curle joined the Colonial Service again in Somaliland and Ethiopia. He witnessed the Italians aggression which led to their invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. A spell in Tanganyika as a District Officer followed and on the outbreak of war he rejoined the KAR and was attached to the Somaliland Camel Corps when the Italians invaded. Hopelessly outnumbered, Sandy and his men withdrew to Kenya by troopship.His next assignment was to raise, train and command a battalion of Ethiopian irregulars (Curles Irregulars) and with these he led the reoccupation of Ethiopia winning the DSO and Ethiopian Military Medal.In 1966 Curle was one of 25 veterans invited by Emperor Haile Selaise to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the liberation from Italian rule.This is a vivid and fascinating collection of correspondence covering some 30 years of war and uncertain peace.Missing Believed Killed: The Royal Air Force and the Search for Missing Aircrew 1939–1952
By Stuart Hadaway. 2008
During the early years of WW2 it soon became apparent that the system for tracing the remains of R.A.F. aircrew…
deemed Missing Believed Killed was totally inadequate. The Missing Research Section (M.R.S.) of the Air Ministry was set up in 1941 to deal with this problem. It collected and collated intelligence reports from a wide variety of official, unofficial and covert sources in an attempt to establish the fate of missing aircrew, using forensic or semi-forensic work to identify personal effects passed on through clandestine channels or bodies washed up on Britains shores. In 1944 the M.R.S. a small team of fourteen men was sent to France to seek the missing men on the ground. With 42,000 men missing, the amount they achieve was limited, although a lot of useful work was carried out through contacts in the French Resistance. The book explains why, men volunteered for the job, and why they worked for so long at such a gruesome task. Facing difficulties in terrain and climate, from the Arctic Circle to the jungles of Burma and Germany and not knowing if the local people would be friendly or hostile. The book also explains how to trace R.A.F. members through both personnel and operational records, where these records are kept and how to access them.The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India
By Supriya Gandhi. 2020
Dara Shukoh was the heir-apparent to the Mughal throne in 1659, when he was executed by his brother Aurangzeb. Today…
Dara is lionized in South Asia, while Aurangzeb, who presided over the beginnings of imperial disintegration, is scorned. Supriya Gandhi’s nuanced biography asks whether the story really would have been different with Dara in power.The Gathering Storm: The Second World War Volume 1 (The Second World War #1)
By Winston Churchill. 2016
The Gathering Storm is the first volume in Winston Churchill’s The Second World War, a history of World War II…
from the end of the First World War to the conclusion of the second in 1945. Though Churchill wrote the history from his own perspective and held back necessary classified information, The Second World War is lauded as a fair and accurate account of war, and has remained one of the most important historical records of the military, political, and diplomatic realities in Britain at that time. Winston Churchill’s work on the six-volume series earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.HarperTorch brings great works of non-fiction and the dramatic arts to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperTorch collection to build your digital library.Edward Said: His Thought as a Novel
By Dominique Edde. 2017
An intimate account of Edward Saïd's life and thoughtEdward Said is a personal, literary portrait of one of the twentieth…
century’s most influential scholars, written by his close friend and confidante. Here, Lebanese novelist and essayist Dominique Eddé offers a fascinating and fresh presentation of his oeuvre from his earliest writings on Joseph Conrad to his most famous texts, Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism. Eddé weaves together accounts of the genesis and content of Said’s work, his intellectual development, and her own reflections and personal recollections of their friendship, which began in 1979 and lasted until Said’s death in 2003. In this intimate and searching portrait of Said’s thought, Eddé continues to maintain their dialogue despite his death, trying to make peace with the loss of a collaborator with whom she still wants to talk and disagree.Bringing together personal reflection and theoretical innovation, reflective mourning and immediate argument, Eddé has written a testament to a great intellectual passion.Both specialists of Said’s work and newcomers will find much to learn in this rich portrait of one of the twentieth century’s most important intellectuals.Too Close to the Sun: The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton
By Sara Wheeler. 2006
Conservationist, scholar, soldier, white hunter and fabled lover, Denys Finch Hatton was an aristocrat of leonine nonchalance. After a dazzling…
career at Eton and Oxford, he sailed in 1910 for British East Africa. There he first had an affair with the glamorous aviatrix Beryl Markham, and then famously with Karen Blixen, a romance immortalised in her memoir Out of Africa.Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity
By Nick Bunker. 2018
In this new account of Franklin's early life, Pulitzer finalist Nick Bunker portrays him as a complex, driven young man…
who elbows his way to success.From his early career as a printer and journalist, to his scientific work and his role as a founder of a new republic, Benjamin Franklin has always seemed the inevitable embodiment of American ingenuity. But in his youth he had to make his way through a harsh colonial world where he fought many battles: with his rivals, but also with his wayward emotions. Taking Franklin to the age of forty-one, when he made his first electrical discoveries, Bunker goes behind the legend to reveal the sources of his passion for knowledge. Always trying to balance virtue against ambition, Franklin emerges as a brilliant but flawed human being, made from the conflicts of an age of slavery as well as reason. With archival material from both sides of the Atlantic, we see Franklin in Boston, London, and Philadelphia, as he develops his formula for greatness. A tale of science, politics, war, and religion, this is also a story about Franklin's forebears: the talented family of English craftsmen who produced America's favorite genius.This is the true story of Colonel Edward Marcus Despard, the character in the fifth series of the BBC's popular…
television drama Poldark. Colonel Despard was the last person to be sentenced to hanging, drawing and quartering in Britain - for high treason, an alleged plot to kill the king. His execution on 21st February 1803 was witnessed by twenty thousand hushed onlookers. Their silence was ominous, for few believed he was guilty. His death would tear apart a Britain still reeling from the impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. But who was Edward Marcus Despard? Was he, as his comrade-in-arms on the Spanish Main Lord Nelson believed, an outstanding British army officer of unimpeachable honour, courage and patriotism? Or, as the white slave-owners of the Caribbean claimed, a traitor not only to his nation but to his race, who had married a local woman and championed the rights of freed slaves?And when Despard returned to London to answer these allegations, did he commit himself to the cause of political reform in Britain's best interest? Or did he join a shadowy international terrorist conspiracy dedicated to the murder of George III and the overthrow of the state? Despard's contested fate marked the sensational climax to a British revolution that never happened, but it also presaged the birth of modern democracy.'Compelling, absorbing and wide-ranging . . . Jay weaves a complex variety of themes, many with overtly topical resonances, into Despard's journey from hero to traitor'Sunday TimesMaria, a Rainha dos Escoceses: O Reino Esquecido
By Laurel A. Rockefeller. 2019
A Rainha Maria Stuart foi uma das mulheres mais amadas e controversas da história da Escócia. Neta do Rei Jaime…
IV e sua esposa Margaret Tudor, o status da Rainha Maria como herdeira-parente do trono da Rainha Isabel na Inglaterra, assim como a violência da Reforma Escocesa preparou o palco para uma das vidas mais dramáticas e mal compreendidas do século XVI. Maria, a Rainha dos Escoceses conta a verdadeira história de Maria, concentrando-se principalmente em seu reinado como rainha da Escócia, celebrando sua vida mais do que sua morte e mostrando-nos porque ela era verdadeiramente uma mulher à frente de seu tempo. Apresenta uma linha do tempo detalhada, uma lista de orações latinas com suas traduções para o Português e as letras de todas as quatro canções do período apresentadas no livro, incluindo "Depairte, Depairte" (1545) escrita em língua Ânglica Escocesa.Rainha Elizabeth Tudor: Tornando-se Gloriana
By Laurel A. Rockefeller. 2019
A Rainha Elizabeth Tudor ainda é conhecida hoje como “Gloriana”, por conta de sua pequena frota de navios ágeis que…
derrotou a Armada Espanhola, que possuía 131 galeões, no Canal da Mancha em 6 de agosto de 1588. Mas como isso aconteceu, e por que a tardia Era Elisabetana ficou conhecida como “A Era do Ouro”? Nesta bela e criativa narrativa biográfica, você conhecerá Elizabeth como nunca antes. Se você é fã da Dinastia Tudor ou se esta é sua primeira vez explorando a história inglesa, você ganhará conhecimentos valiosos sobre a mente da, talvez, mulher mais lendária da história mundial, contada pelos olhos de seu famoso—ou infame—relacionamento com Robert Dudley. A história continua com Mary, rainha dos escoceses (explorada no terceiro volume) e seu julgamento e impacto em Elizabeth. Contém seis músicas medievais e elisabetanas, uma linha do tempo detalhada, e uma longa lista de leituras sugeridas.Bagehot: The Life And Times Of The Greatest Victorian
By James Grant. 2019
The definitive biography of one of the most brilliant and influential financial minds—banker, essayist, and editor of the Economist. During…
the upheavals of 2007–09, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had the name of a Victorian icon on the tip of his tongue: Walter Bagehot. Banker, man of letters, inventor of the Treasury bill, and author of Lombard Street, the still-canonical guide to stopping a run on the banks, Bagehot prescribed the doctrines that—decades later—inspired the radical responses to the world’s worst financial crises. Born in the small market town of Langport, just after the Panic of 1825 swept across England, Bagehot followed in his father’s footsteps and took a position at the local family bank—but his influence on financial matters would soon spread far beyond the county of Somerset. Persuasive and precocious, he came to hold sway in political circles, making high-profile friends, including William Gladstone—and enemies, such as Lord Overstone and Benjamin Disraeli. As a prolific essayist on wide-ranging topics, Bagehot won the admiration of Matthew Arnold and Woodrow Wilson, and delighted in paradox. He was also a misogynist, and while he opposed slavery, he misjudged Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. As editor of the Economist, he offered astute commentary on the financial issues of his day, and his name lives on in an eponymous weekly column. He has been called "the Greatest Victorian." In James Grant’s colorful and groundbreaking biography, Bagehot appears as both an ornament to his own age and a muse to our own. Drawing on a wealth of historical documents, correspondence, and publications, Grant paints a vivid portrait of the banker and his world.The First World War and subsequent peace settlement shaped the course of the twentieth century, and the profound significance of…
these events were not lost on Harold Temperley, whose diaries are presented here. An established scholar, and later one of Britain’s foremost modern and diplomatic historians, Temperley enlisted in the army at the outbreak of the war in August 1914. Invalided home from the Dardanelles campaign in 1915, he spent the remainder of the war and its aftermath as a general staff officer in military intelligence. Here he played a significant role in preparing British strategy for the eventual peace conference and in finalising several post-war boundaries in Eastern Europe. Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, Temperley was to co-edit the British diplomatic documents on the origins of the war; and the vicissitudes of modern Great Power politics were to be his principal preoccupation. Beginning in June 1916, the diary presents a more or less daily record of Temperley’s activities and observations throughout the war and subsequent peace negotiations. As a professional historian he appreciated the significance of eyewitness accounts, and if Temperley was not at the very heart of Allied decision-making during those years, he certainly had a ringside seat. Trained to observe accurately, he recorded the concerns and confusions of wartime, conscious always of the historical significance of what he observed. As a result there are few sources that match Temperley’s diary, which presents a fascinating and unique perspective upon the politics and diplomacy of the First World War and its aftermath.Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner
By Daniel L. Schafer. 2003
Florida Historical Society Charlton Tebeau Award In this revised and expanded edition of Anna Kingsley’s remarkable life story, Daniel Schafer…
draws on new discoveries to prove true the longstanding rumors that Anna Madgigine Jai was originally a princess from the royal family of Jolof in Senegal. Captured from her homeland in 1806, she became first an American slave, later a slaveowner, and eventually a central figure in a free black community. Anna Kingsley’s story adds a dramatic chapter to the history of the South, the state of Florida, and the African diaspora.