Railway Memories the Trials and the Triumph

Railway Memories the Trials and the Triumph

Author: Tom Greaves

Publisher:

Published: 2012-03-01

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 9781871233261

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An eye-opening illustrated review in words and pictures of the transition from steam to diesel during the 1950s and 60s as experienced by former British Rail locomotive engineer Tom Greaves, especially the sudden and chaotic changeover that took place on the suburban services out of King's Cross during 1959.


Thief of Glory

Thief of Glory

Author: Sigmund Brouwer

Publisher: WaterBrook

Published: 2014-08-19

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0307446492

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A boy coming of age in a time of war…the love that inspires him to survive. For ten year-old Jeremiah Prins, a life of privilege as the son of a school headmaster in the Dutch East Indies comes crashing to a halt in 1942. When the Japanese Imperialist army invades the Southeast Pacific, and his father and older stepbrothers are separated from the rest of the family, Jeremiah takes on the responsibility of caring for his younger siblings. But he is surprised by what life in the camp reveals about his frail, troubled mother—a woman he barely knows. Amidst starvation, brutality, sacrifice and generosity, Jeremiah draws on all of his courage and cunning to fill in the gap his father and brothers left behind. Life in the camps is made more tolerable as Jeremiah’s boyhood infatuation with his close friend Laura deepens into a friendship from which they both draw strength. When the darkest sides of humanity threaten to overwhelm Jeremiah and Laura, they reach for God’s light and grace, shining through his people. Time and war will test their fortitude and the only thing that will bring them safely to the other side is the most enduring bond of all.


The Medicine Line

The Medicine Line

Author: Beth LaDow

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-18

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1135296081

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Along the border between Montana and Saskatchewan lies one hundred miles of hard and desolate terrain, a remote place where Native and new American nations came together in a contest for land, wealth, and survival. Following explorers Lewis and Clark and Alexander Mackenzie, both Americans and Canadians launched the process of empire along the 49th parallel, disrupting the lives of Native peoples who began to traverse this imaginary line in search of refuge. In this evocative and beautifully rendered portrait, Beth LaDow recreates the unstable world along this harsh frontier, capturing the complex history of a borderland known as "the medicine line" to the Indians who lived there. When Sitting Bull crossed the boundary for the last time in 1881, weary of pursuit by the U.S. cavalry and the constant threat of starvation, the region opened up to railroad men and settlers, determined to make a living. But the unforgiving landscape would resist repeated attempts to subdue it, from the schemes of powerful railroad magnate James J. Hill, to the exploits of Canadian Mountie James Walsh, to the misguided dreams of ranchers and homesteaders, whose difficult existence is best captured in Wallace Stegner's plaintive accounts of a boyhood spent in this stark place. Drawing on little-known diaries, letters, and memories, as well as interviews with the descendants of settlers and native peoples, The Medicine Line reveals how national interests were transformed by the powerful alchemy of mingling peoples and the place they shared. With a historian's insight and a storyteller's gift, LaDow questions some of our deepest assumptions about a nationalist frontier past and finds in this least-known place a new historical and emotional heart-land of the North American West. A colorful history of the most desolate terrain in America, one hundred miles between Canada & Montana, where three nations fought over land, wealth, & ultimately survival