Twilight in Danzig
Twilight in Danzig

Author: Siegfried Kra

Publisher: Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press

Published: 2018-12-15

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 0912887605

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“Twilight in Danzigis based on a true story, told through the childlike, naive, but mature eyes of a young boy whose family, because of their wealth and friendship with the nobility of Danzig, is buffered against the rising power of Hitler. I was immediately drawn into this fascinating story. Youwant to shout out to his proud and misled father ‘Leave Danzig now while your son and wife are still alive.’Jonas is horribly tricked by his governess to join the youth supporters of Hitler because it is much more fun than the Jewish youth group his parents think he is still attending. He discovers, with shame, just how wrong he is. He severs his ties to Hitler and his governess, but because of his age, cannot do much to correct his wrongful involvement. The story of this family is unique due to the great wealth they had and lost.It adds another dimension to the personal hardships and loss suffered by many at the hands of the Third Reich. No Jew was safe during this period. They finally attempt to leave Danzig and their privileged life. It is a very personal story and one that recounts the hopelessness of coping in a world controlled by a treacherous leader. I highly recommend this book. If you don't read it you are missing a treasure.” - Gary A. Wilson, Ph.D.

The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926-1936
The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926-1936

Author: Piotr Stefan Wandycz

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-07-14

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 1400859816

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Although France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia were in jeopardy from a recovery of German power after World War I and from a potential German hegemony in Europe, France failed in her efforts to maintain a system of alliances with her two imperiled neighbors. Focusing on the period from 1926 to 1936, Piotr Wandycz seeks to explain how and why these three nations, with so much at risk, neglected to act in concert. Wandycz is the author of a well-known study on the series of alliances constructed by France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia in the years following the Treaty of Versailles. In this current volume he picks up the story after the Locarno Pact (1925) and follows the progressive disintegration of the alliance system until the time of Hitler's remilitarization of the Rhineland. Through an examination of the political, military, and economic relations among France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, the author provides valuable insights into an era that contained the seeds of the future war and the collapse of the historic European system. By relying on French, Polish, and more selectively Czechoslovak and Western archives, and thanks to his intimate knowledge of Central and East European published sources, he has filled a large gap in the history of prewar diplomacy. He shows how the divergent aims of Czechoslovakia and Poland combined with a decline of French willpower to prevent a real cohesion among the partners. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Far Tribes
The Far Tribes

Author: Richard S. Wheeler

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 1990-03-15

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780812510690

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Elkanah Morse leaves behind his comfortable New England existence to study the ways of the far tribes and enlists the help of the one man who can lead him into their territory and bring him out alive--Barnaby Skye.

Nine Lives
Nine Lives

Author: Dr. Siegfried Kra

Publisher: Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press

Published: 2020-10-21

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1545753326

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NINE LIVES is a sequel to Twilight in Danzig which tells of Siegfried Kra's childhood leading up to WWII, concluding with his family’s escape from the Gestapo. Nine Lives begins when Kra’s family emigrates to NY by boat. A riches to rags story, Kra picked up various ways to help feed his family when his once successful father in the coal industry was unable to find work. A desire to study medicine led Kra to Toulouse, France, where he became enraptured by studying every nerve ending and valve of the human body, which he drew on his chalkboard-painted walls and ceiling, until they became a part of him. Kra completed his education at Yale, where he later became a Professor of Medicine and practicing cardiologist. Within this novel are intriguing, charming and touching stories of romance, brushes with death and medical cases during the ‘Golden Age of Medicine.’ Nine Lives is an enchanting look into an older world that no longer exists and will stick with you long after you put it down. This was then…While some of these stories appear within the short stories of Dancer in the Garden, this book narrates a sequential, comprehensive, and more detailed life story. Kra wanted to save lives so that people could continue to live and love.

Dancer in the Garden: The Complete Collection with 18 Additional True Stories
Dancer in the Garden: The Complete Collection with 18 Additional True Stories

Author: Dr. Siegfried Kra

Publisher: Pleasure Boat Studio: A Nonprofit Literary Press

Published: 2022-11-02

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1545755825

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Kra uses storytelling to connect medicine with the human condition, resulting in tales of love and loss, triumph, and disillusionment. From post-war France and Switzerland to a modern private cardiology practice and the teaching hospitals at Yale, Kra diagnoses rare diseases, falls in love, and even survives a plane crash on a frozen lake. An exploration of the Golden Age of Medicine coupled with vivid moments of unusual, captivating stories with a cast of compelling characters. Now with 18 engaging, delightful, interesting, and surprising additional stories, most never before published. “I take care of people’s hearts so they can go on loving. I can think of no greater privilege.” "Kra came to America in 1938 as a boy when his family fled the Nazis. After working his way through CCNY, he found himself blackballed by U.S. med schools in the 1950s because he’d been marked as an agitator, so he went to Europe to study medicine in France and Switzerland. One of the best and most moving pieces here dates back to his med student days in Switzerland, where he lost his heart to a beautiful young dancer, a tb patient in a sanatorium high in the Swiss Alps (“Gabrielle’s Dance”)…. I suspect Siegfried Kra must have been a damn good doctor. And, after reading DANCER IN THE GARDEN, I know he’s a good storyteller too. Kudos to Pleasure Boat Studio publisher for printing this lively collection. Very highly recommended.” -TimBazzett, Librarything

Dancer in the Garden
Dancer in the Garden

Author: Siegfried Kra

Publisher: Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press

Published: 2020-08-07

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 1545752761

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These collected stories from a doctor's notebook bring together the best writing of Dr. Siegfried Kra, who has published 13 books with W.W. Norton, Warner Books and McGraw Hill, among others. Like the famous Russian literary physician Chekhov, Kra uses storytelling to connect medicine with the human condition, resulting in tales of love and loss, triumph and disillusionment. From post-war France and Switzerland to a modern private cardiology practice and the teaching hospitals at Yale, Kra diagnoses rare diseases, falls in love, and even survives a plane crash on a frozen lake. An exploration of the Golden Age of Medicine coupled with vivid moments of unusual, captivating must read stories. SIEGFRIED KRA emigrated, with his family, from Danzig, Germany to New York in 1939. He attended CCNY, then went to medical school in France and Switzerland before completing his training at Yale. In his practice as a cardiologist, he has treated tens of thousands of patients. Kra has published over a dozen books, both fiction and non-fiction. In addition to medicine and writing, his passions include opera, growing orchids, and tennis, which he still plays weekly at age eighty-six. He also still teaches as an Associate Professor of Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine and Quininipac University Netter School of Medicine. Kra has been an advocate for people, without prejudice for religion, gender, age, race, religion or politics for his entire medical life. He has been interviewed by CNN, ABC & CBS. For eights years, Kra was on NPR every Thursday from 1982 to 1994, He was on The Regis Show, Religious shows like Club 500, The Smithsonian in Washington and more, including lectures at libraries in NY.

Jozef Pilsudski
Jozef Pilsudski

Author: Joshua D. Zimmerman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2022-06-28

Total Pages: 641

ISBN-13: 0674275853

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The story of the enigmatic Jozef Pilsudski, the founding father of modern Poland: a brilliant military leader and high-minded statesman who betrayed his own democratic vision by seizing power in a military coup. In the story of modern Poland, no one stands taller than Jozef Pilsudski. From the age of sixteen he devoted his life to reestablishing the Polish state that had ceased to exist in 1795. Ahead of World War I, he created a clandestine military corps to fight Russia, which held most Polish territory. After the war, his dream of an independent Poland realized, he took the helm of its newly democratic political order. When he died in 1935, he was buried alongside Polish kings. Yet Pilsudski was a complicated figure. Passionately devoted to the idea of democracy, he ceded power on constitutional terms, only to retake it a few years later in a coup when he believed his opponents aimed to dismantle the democratic system. Joshua Zimmerman’s authoritative biography examines a national hero in the thick of a changing Europe, and the legacy that still divides supporters and detractors. The Poland that Pilsudski envisioned was modern, democratic, and pluralistic. Domestically, he championed equality for Jews. Internationally, he positioned Poland as a bulwark against Bolshevism. But in 1926 he seized power violently, then ruled as a strongman for nearly a decade, imprisoning opponents and eroding legislative power. In Zimmerman’s telling, Pilsudski’s faith in the young democracy was shattered after its first elected president was assassinated. Unnerved by Poles brutally turning on one another, the father of the nation came to doubt his fellow citizens’ democratic commitments and thereby betrayed his own. It is a legacy that dogs today’s Poland, caught on the tortured edge between self-government and authoritarianism.