When the Warflowers Bloomed

When the Warflowers Bloomed

Author: Calvin Vraa

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2004-08-09

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 1418402001

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When the Warflowers Bloomed is a story of courage and devotion in the ashes of the aftermath of World War II. Lusty, tough-minded infantry commander, Mark Brayden, still alive because of his instincts, liberates a Nazi concentration camp and discovers a wasted Liese Weissman dying of starvation and brutality, a previously sensuous, pampered Dresden musician, yet alive because of her dreams. Their instincts and dreams touch in a dramatic moment of awakening passions despite the horrors and nightmares of the war and the camps. Mark is forced into a life and death struggle to decide who will live and who will die. Thus, continues a vivid story of desperation and love in the rubble of Germany during the summer and autumn of 1945. They are joined by a coterie of GIs, Germans, and refugees. The ensemble includes ex-Nazis Klaus Trummer and Hannah Grinze, who plot against them, and an unlikely pair of Sergeant "Tork" Torkelson, son of a backcountry preacher, and voluptuous, guilt-ridden Heidi Koenig, a former Hitler Youth. All struggle against the destruction, betrayal, and regulations in the fragile postwar peace.


The Last Pathway Home

The Last Pathway Home

Author: Calvin Vraa

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2013-08-13

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1481768107

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The way out of tragedy can be a long, intense journey, and in the end it may not be successful. The novel sets this journey against one of the most personal and powerful relationships in life, that of parent and child. Jessica is a heart-broken, middle-aged woman whose father was killed in World War II. She never she saw him. She sets out on a path to learn more about him by seeing the World War II battle sites where he fought. Her purpose is to understand him better by learning about his war record and to seek closure of her own lengthy loneliness by finding and walking on the grounds where he fought and to reconcile her thoughts and feelings at the end of her pathway, his gravesite.


British Culture and the First World War

British Culture and the First World War

Author: Toby Thacker

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-09-25

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1441134379

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The First World War has been mythologized since 1918, and many paradigmatic views of it - that it was pointless, that brave soldiers were needlessly sacrificed - are deeply embedded in the British consciousness. More than in any other country, these collective British memories were influenced by the experiences and the work of writers, painters and musicians. This book revisits the British experience of the War through the eyes and ears of a diverse group of carefully selected novelists, poets, composers and painters. It examines how they reacted to and portrayed their experiences in the trenches on the Western Front, in distant theatres of war and on the home front, in words, pictures and music that would have a profound influence on subsequent British perceptions of the war. Rupert Brooke, Vera Brittain, Christopher Nevinson, Paul Nash, Edward Elgar and T. E. Lawrence are amongst the figures discussed in this original exploration of the First World War and British collective memory. The book includes illustrations, maps and a companion website to aid further study and research.


Strange Bright Blooms

Strange Bright Blooms

Author: Randy Malamud

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2021-09-27

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1789144213

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Virginia Woolf famously began one of her greatest novels: “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” Of course she would: why would anyone surrender the best part of the day to someone else? Flowers grace our lives at moments of celebration and despair. “We eat, drink, sing, dance, and flirt with them,” writes Kakuzo Okakura. Flowers brighten our homes, our parties, and our rituals with incomparable notes of natural beauty, but the “nature” in these displays is tamed and conscribed. Randy Malamud seeks to understand the transplanted nature of cut flowers—of our relationship with them and the careful curation of their very existence. It is a picaresque, unpredictable ramble through the world of flowers, but also the world itself, exploring painting, murals, fashion, public art, glass flowers, pressed flowers, flowery church hats, weaponized flowers, deconstructed flowers, flower power, and much more.


The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl

The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl

Author: Jongsoo Lee

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2015-05-22

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0826343384

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Lee offers a more realistic portrait of the legendary Aztec ruler Nezahualcoyotl, derived from examination of original Nahuatl codices and poetry, as well as Spanish chronicles.