Christina Schwenkel's absorbing study explores how the "American War" is remembered and commemorated in Vietnam today -- in official and unofficial histories and in everyday life. Schwenkel analyzes visual representations found in monuments and martyrs' cemeteries, museums, photography and art exhibits, battlefield tours, and related sites of "trauma tourism." In these transnational spaces, American and Vietnamese memories of the war intersect in ways profoundly shaped by global economic liberalization and the return of American citizens as tourists, pilgrims, and philanthropists.
Growing up on a poor farm in Missouri and learning how to sing opera from her war-scarred father, young Christina Cross has no idea the powerful forces of good and evil, of music and war, will one day pull her into the maelstrom of the Second World War, compelling her to make life-or-death-decisions about who she is fighting for and the price she is willing to pay. Like a masterful opera, Christina’s War deftly transports the reader to early 1940s Paris where Christina and her sister, Nicollet, are sent by their father to live a better life with their Grandfather, Philippe Pétain. Philippe, eager to please the Nazi regime, envisions Christina’s exquisite voice as a means to entertain Hitler and his officers. Yet, unbeknownst to him, Christina’s heart belongs not just to music but to Laurent Gauvion Saint-Cyr, the charismatic leader of the French Underground who had recruited her into the resistance. When she defiantly refuses to sing, setting Hitler’s fury aflame, Nicollet becomes a pawn in a dangerous game of power and retribution. Now, Laurent must not only fight for their country’s freedom but race against time to save the two sisters from the clutches of a malevolent Nazi officer who revels in torture.
From Christina Lamb, the coauthor of the bestselling I Am Malala and an award-winning journalist—an essential, groundbreaking examination of how women experience war. In Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, longtime intrepid war correspondent Christina Lamb makes us witness to the lives of women in wartime. An award-winning war correspondent for twenty-five years (she’s never had a female editor) Lamb reports two wars—the “bang-bang” war and the story of how the people behind the lines live and survive. At the same time, since men usually act as the fighters, women are rarely interviewed about their experience of wartime, other than as grieving widows and mothers, though their experience is markedly different from that of the men involved in battle. Lamb chronicles extraordinary tragedy and challenges in the lives of women in wartime. And none is more devastating than the increase of the use of rape as a weapon of war. Visiting warzones including the Congo, Rwanda, Nigeria, Bosnia, and Iraq, and spending time with the Rohingya fleeing Myanmar, she records the harrowing stories of survivors, from Yazidi girls kept as sex slaves by ISIS fighters and the beekeeper risking his life to rescue them; to the thousands of schoolgirls abducted across northern Nigeria by Boko Haram, to the Congolese gynecologist who stitches up more rape victims than anyone on earth. Told as a journey, and structured by country, Our Bodies, Their Battlefields gives these women voice. We have made significant progress in international women’s rights, but across the world women are victimized by wartime atrocities that are rarely recorded, much less punished. The first ever prosecution for war rape was in 1997 and there have been remarkably few convictions since, as if rape doesn’t matter in the reckoning of war, only killing. Some courageous women in countries around the world are taking things in their own hands, hunting down the war criminals themselves, trying to trap them through Facebook. In this profoundly important book, Christina Lamb shines a light on some of the darkest parts of the human experience—so that we might find a new way forward. Our Bodies, Their Battlefields is as inspiring and empowering is as it is urgent, a clarion call for necessary change.
This book provides a critical appraisal of the treatment of war in children's reading during the 20th century, covering World War I, World War II and subsequent wars, including Vietnam, the Gulf War and the war in the Balkans.
In the years leading up to the Second World War, amidst an economic depression, a young cabaret dancer from Northern England accepts a job at a modest music hall in Malta, a Mediterranean island. Unbeknownst to her, the outbreak of war following Italy’s declaration against Britain and France in the summer of 1940 would leave her stranded in Malta for the entirety of the conflict. In these challenging times, she finds herself working for the Royal Air Force and embroiled in a passionate love affair with a distinguished RAF pilot. The author, drawing on contemporary eyewitness accounts and historical resources, sets the scene against a backdrop of bravery, resilience, and sacrifice. This period marks the two and a half years when Malta’s population and its defenders valiantly withstood the relentless onslaught of the Italian and German air forces. Christina and the George Cross Island weaves a narrative that blends fact with fiction, infusing both humour and heartbreak into this compelling tale of war, love, and endurance.
In Love Across Wars, a multicultural novel, two historic families connected through WWII find their destinies intertwine again in the aftermath of 9/11 as their scions are caught in the whirlwind of events from Philadelphia to Peshawar and Afghanistan. Christina Gartenley has been having a nightmarish vision signaling 9/11 since she was 10. Her brother David joins the Army after their father's horrifying ordeal at the Twin Towers on 9/11, but goes missing in action during 2006 in Afghanistan. Their Philadelphia family is connected through WWII with North Western sub-continent---now Pakistan--- when a lady of the family was saved in Singapore by a South Asian man at the risk of his own life. In their effort to cross over into Afghanistan to locate David's whereabouts, Christina and Nader ---grandson of the family's benefactor from WWII---get kidnapped by Taliban at Peshawar while Nader's uncle is killed. After a month long captivity in the Tribal Areas, Nader digs himself out of a dungeon, frees Christina, avenges upon Taliban for killing his uncle, and tries to escape out of the region. In the ensuing manhunt by Taliban Nader and Christina fight valiantly and .... It is a story of love across generations and cultures which grapples with the tragic gulf created between cultures by the catastrophic events of 9/11; it unearths diverse mindsets.
