Part biography, part history, part love story, A Small Town Rises chronicles the lives of two civil rights activists who met in the tiny cotton of Shaw at the tail end of the Mississippi Summer project, the voting-rights campaign known as Freedom Summer. Shaw was, like countless segregated towns across the South, a pressure cooker of violent white resistance to the growing civil rights movement. The two young freedom fighters--sharecropper Eddie Short and recent college grad Mary Sue Gellatly--joined forces in 1964 with local black activist Andrew Hawkins and a host of courageous townspeople to challenge and disrupt the status quo in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Their struggle brought triumph and tragedy to Shaw in equal measures.
"The history of America is the history of its small towns. For better or worse, small town values, convictions, and attitudes have shaped the psyche of this nation...[This book] chronicles the rise and fall of small towns from the Atlantic to the Pacific and interweaves the story of their development with the main strands of American history..."--inside flap.
The Silesian town of Bedzin lies a mere twenty-five miles from Auschwitz; through the linked ghettos of Bedzin and its neighbouring town, some 85,000 Jews passed on their way to slave labour or the gas chambers. The principal civilian administrator of Bedzin, Udo Klausa, was a happily married family man. He was also responsible for implementing Nazi policies towards the Jews in his area - inhumane processes that were the precursors of genocide. Yet he later claimed, like so many other Germans after the war, that he had 'known nothing about it'; and that he had personally tried to save a Jew before he himself managed to leave for military service. A Small Town Near Auschwitz re-creates Udo Klausa's story. Using a wealth of personal letters, memoirs, testimonies, interviews and other sources, Mary Fulbrook pieces together his role in the unfolding stigmatization and degradation of the Jews under his authoritiy, as well as the heroic attempts at resistance on the part of some of his victims. She also gives us a fascinating insight into the inner conflicts of a Nazi functionary who, throughout, considered himself a 'decent' man. And she explores the conflicting memories and evasions of his life after the war. But the book is much more than a portrayal of an individual man. Udo Klausa's case is so important because it is in many ways so typical. Behind Klausa's story is the larger story of how countless local functionaries across the Third Reich facilitated the murderous plans of a relatively small number among the Nazi elite - and of how those plans could never have been realized, on the same scale, without the diligent cooperation of these generally very ordinary administrators. As Fulbrook shows, men like Klausa 'knew' and yet mostly suppressed this knowledge, performing their day jobs without apparent recognition of their own role in the system, or any sense of personal wrongdoing or remorse - either before or after 1945. This account is no ordinary historical reconstruction. For Fulbrook did not discover Udo Klausa amongst the archives. She has known the Klausa family all her life. She had no inkling of her subject's true role in the Third Reich until a few years ago, a discovery that led directly to this inescapably personal professional history.
British security officer Alan Turner battles radical German students and neo-Nazis after an embassy flack disappears from Bonn with dozens of top secret files.
A famous country music star is shamed by her sister into going home to look after her bedridden mother. The town is dull, her mother gets on her nerves and the "dork" who had a crush on her in high school is once again after her. But with time she gets used to it, even falls in love with the dork.
Clara Olson was a small-town girl from rural Crawford County, Wisconsin who longed for more than the experiences of growing up on a farm in a large Norwegian family. She aspired to see the world and experience the thrills of the Roaring Twenties. A fated meeting with a dashing young man promised just that. Erdman Olson led a fast-paced lifestyle in the underground world of speakeasies and bootlegging amidst the Prohibition era. Erdman introduced a world of excitement that Clara craved, but little did she realize how it would change her life forever. What happened next would shock the world and leave her family searching for answers. This is a fictional account inspired by a true story.
Never bite the hand that feeds you....Unless that hand is trying to kill you.Summertime in the Adirondacks: the fish are biting, the hikers are trekking, the tourists are spending. All is well in Police Chief Frank Bennett's patch of paradise. Until a mysterious guest disappears from Trout Run's Mountain Vista Motel, leaving her bill paid for a month in advance. And an equally mysterious benefactor shows up at the Trout Run Library, tempting the librarian-Frank's wife, Penny-with a huge donation.When Frank and Penny visit the wealthy vacation homeowner at his camp on a remote private lake, they encounter unexpected luxury...and shocking competitiveness. What was supposed to be a relaxing weekend ends in tragedy.Once he returns to Trout Run, Frank realizes that he and the people he cares about are pawns in a game they don't comprehend. Can Frank settle the score? Or is this a contest where everyone loses?
This new edition of Bruce Hunt's popular guide reveals the real, old-time Florida still to be found on the back roads of the Sunshine state in little towns that lure you in with their quaintness and keep you there for a spell with their friendly occupants. The towns featured all have a population of less than 10,000. There is an introduction with each town’s history. Included are museums, galleries, antiques shops, local eateries, local fishing holes, and unusual and endearing local characters. This travelogue and guidebook lets you experience the flavor of Florida's back-road burgs and provides directions, addresses, phone numbers, and websites.
