Walt Dierks illuminates the everyday lives and adventures of young kids coming of age in Brooklyn during World War II. The main goal of most of them: get out of the house. The street was where the action was. It could be a stickball game featuring a pink Spaldeen and a broomstick or hooking a ride on a passing trolley car. There were other diversions, some perfectly legal, some bordering or stepping over into forbidden territory. The war years offered an environment of added responsibility alo
The young girl from the Ottawa Valley who served as a nurse in North Africa with only a helmet of fresh water a day, the teenage soldier from Fredericton who stole pig swill to survive in a Hong Kong prisoner of war camp, the English woman who survived the sinking of the Athenia to become a war-bride, and an Alberta airman who crashed off the icy coast of Greenland, these are but only four of the thirty compelling personal accounts of war experiences. Many private photographs from their own albums illustrate these stories, which reflect the world wide aspect of the war from the Indian Ocean to the North Atlantic, from Poland to the Middle East, and the varied activities and duties of these young men and women. Their hardships, their adventures, frustrations, fears, joys and romances are chronicled in a poignant and often humorous manner.
Memoir of a small boy who was separated from his family at the age of three or four-years-old after his father was killed during a round-up of Jews in Latvia, and was sent to the Majdanek death camp where he was discovered by Allied soldiers in 1945.
A World War II marine officer who survived three major campaigns in the Pacific offers an authentic and compelling picture of tank warfare in this chronicle of his experiences. From the grueling combat in the rain forest of Bougainville to the fierce assault on Guam and the vicious struggle for Iwo Jima, Bertram Yaffe balances the realities of combat with personal reflections on the nature of humanity and courage under horrifying circumstances. With wry humor he takes us inside the mind of a young tank officer wrestling with the concept of war and his own need to square rationalism with an intuitive, sometimes mystical, view of reality. As a result, Yaffe shares with us the meditations and avenues of contemplation that helped him survive the grotesque experience of war and cope with the stress that so often follows extreme battlefield ordeals. Central to his ability to deal with these problems, we learn, were his deep feelings for his wife and the important family bonds their marriage helped restore - their Russian-Jewish grandfathers were brothers separated during the Russo-Japanese War.
The deeply moving, Pulitzer Prize–nominated memoir of a young Jewish woman’s imprisonment at the Auschwitz death camp. In 1944, on the morning of her twenty-third birthday, Isabella Leitner and her family were deported to Auschwitz, the Nazi extermination camp. There, she and her siblings relied on one another’s love and support to remain hopeful in the midst of the great evil surrounding them. In Fragments of Isabella, Leitner reveals a glimpse of humanity in a world of darkness. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as “a celebration of the strength of the human spirit as it passes through fire,” this powerful and luminous Pulitzer Prize–nominated memoir, written thirty years after the author’s escape from the Nazis, has become a classic of holocaust literature and human survival. This ebook features rare images from the author’s estate.
An impossible decision in the chaos of D-Day. Ripples that cascade seventy-five years into the present. And two lives transformed by the tenuous resolve to reach out of the darkness toward fragments of light. Cancer stole everything from Ceelie—her peace of mind, her selfimage, perhaps even her twenty-three-year marriage to her college sweetheart, Nate. Without the support of Darlene, her quirky elderly friend, she may not have been able to endure so much loss. So when Darlene’s own prognosis turns dire, Ceelie can’t refuse her seemingly impossible request—to find a WWII paratrooper named Cal, the father who disappeared when Darlene was an infant, leaving a lifetime of desolation in his wake. The search that begins in the farmlands of Missouri eventually leads Ceelie to a small town in Normandy, where she uncovers the harrowing tale of the hero who dropped off-target into occupied France. Alternating between Cal’s D-Day rescue by two French sisters and Ceelie’s present-day journey through trial and heartbreak, Fragments of Light explores a timeless question: When life becomes unbearable, will you surrender to the darkness or dare to press toward a lingering light? Praise for Fragments of Light “Michèle Phoenix skillfully explores the strength and resiliency of the human spirit but also its heartbreaking limits. Brimming with expertly researched wartime details, Fragments of Light abounds with poignancy and insight.” —Susan Meissner, bestselling author of The Last Year of the War “As a D-Day Airborne participant, I recommend this novel with enthusiasm. Everyone should read it.” —Staff Sergeant Thomas Rice, WWII Veteran, 101st Airborne “Michele Phoenix’s Fragments of Light is a luminous portrait of men and women grappling with the past in a brave attempt to forge a different kind of future . . . A story as beautiful as it is heartbreaking. In short, I loved this book!” —Lauren Denton, USA TODAY bestselling author of The Hideaway “Deeply personal and beautifully humane, Phoenix once again asserts her power as one of the most moving and lyrical voices in inspirational fiction.” —Rachel McMillan, author of The London Restoration “Written with depth and understanding, this story offers readers a wonderful journey spanning from war-torn World War II France to a battle for love in our time.” —Katherine Reay, bestselling author of Dear Mr. Knightley “As the title suggests, there are no easy illuminations on the path of healing. Cancer attacks more than the body. War destroys more than flesh and bone. Not all heroes welcome the attention, and not all husbands are up to the challenge. Women find the most unlikely sources of strength, and the best families defy definition.” —Allison Pittman, bestselling author of The Seamstress “It’s not often a story moves me as Fragments of Light has. With a rare and honest voice, Michèle Phoenix weaves a story of heroes from yesteryear and also those from your neighborhood—each with hearts of valor—as they endure the fight of their lives.” —Elizabeth Byler Younts, Carol Award–winning author The Solace of Water
"Scientists Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Joseph Rotblat, Herbert York, Philip Morrison, and Robert Wilson, and philosopher David Hawkins, responded to Palevsky's personal approach in a way that dramatically expands their previously published statements."--BOOK JACKET.
