In When the World Closed Its Doors, Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman tell the story of how nearly every country in the world shut its borders to respond to an external threat during the COVID-19 pandemic. They detail the consequences of the COVID border restrictions and explain why governments used their harshest containment measures on those coming from outside. A sweeping overview of the re-bordering of the world after 2020, this synthetic, wide-angle view of a singular shock to the international systems of travel and migration will be necessary reading for anyone interested in international migration and border policy.
"[A] memoir of one couple's escape from the Nazis ...[full of] ingenuity and determination." Michael R. Marrus, Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto At the beginning of World War II, the US and other countries erected a "paper wall"-- a bureaucratic maze that prevented all but a small number of Jewish refugees from emigrating from Nazi-Occupied Europe.When the World Closed Its Doors tells the true story of a young couple who, like many European Jews, were caught between the Nazis and the "paper wall". Ida Piller-Greenspan was married in Belgium on May 9, 1940. That night the Nazis invaded Belgium. She and her new husband survived the next four months hitchhiking through occupied territory, hiding in barns and tunnels, dodging bombs near Dunkirk, crossing the Pyrenees on foot, and enduring weeks with little food and no money. Ultimately they arrived in Portugal, certain they would find sanctuary somewhere in the world beyond Europe's borders. But their trials were not over. It took nine anxious months for them to find a country that would let them in -- months spent watching in horror as most refugees were forced back to uncertain lives in their home countries. Forty years later, Ida, an accomplished artist, created a pictorial diary of their journey. Her prints -- lyrical, haunting, and compelling -- are accompanied by a page-turning narrative that bears witness to this treacherous and largely forgotten chapter of World War II history.
In this masterpiece of Holocaust literature, David Clay Large tells the wrenching story of Max Schohl, a German Jew who, in the midst of the Second World War, could not find a government that would allow his family to immigrate, despite wealth, education, and business and family connections. After repeated but fruitless efforts to gain entry first to the United States and then to Britain, Chile, and Brazil, Max died in Auschwitz and his wife and daughters were sent to hard labor in Wiesbaden. Much has been written about the West's unwillingness to attempt the rescue of tens of thousands of European Jews from the hands of the Nazis; now David Clay Large gives a human face to this tragedy of bureaucratic inertia and ill will. The youngest daughter of the Schohl family, today a seventy-four-year-old widow living in Charleston, South Carolina, has opened her family's records to Large: a unique collection of family letters and other documents chronicling the experiences of the Schohls and those who tried to bring them to England and America. From these papers Large has fashioned a gripping and intimate narrative of one family's efforts to escape the Holocaust in Europe and the inadequate response from abroad.
In this revelatory chronicle of World War II, Laurence Rees documents the dramatic and secret deals that helped make the war possible and prompted some of the most crucial decisions made during the conflict. Drawing on material available only since the opening of archives in Eastern Europe and Russia, as well as amazing new testimony from nearly a hundred separate witnesses from the period—Rees reexamines the key choices made by Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt during the war, and presents, in a compelling and fresh way, the reasons why the people of Poland, the Baltic states, and other European countries simply swapped the rule of one tyrant for another. Surprising, incisive, and endlessly intriguing, World War II Behind Closed Doors will change the way we think about the Second World War.
Heedless. Stubborn. Disgraced. Small town Illinois, 1870: "My stepfather was not particularly fond of me to begin with, and now that he'd found out about the baby, he was foaming at the mouth" Desperate to avoid marriage, Nell Lillington refuses to divulge the name of her child's father and accepts her stepfather's decision that the baby be born at a Poor Farm and discreetly adopted. Until an unused padded cell is opened and two small bodies fall out. Nell is the only resident of the Poor Farm who is convinced the unwed mother and her baby were murdered, and rethinks her decision to abandon her own child to fate. But even if she manages to escape the Poor Farm with her baby she may have no safe place to run to.
At a time of climate crisis, isolation and social breakdown, Driving with strangers is a manifesto to alter how we think about our place in the world. Veteran hitchhiker and lifelong aficionado of hitchhiking culture, Purkis journeys through the history of hitchhiking to explore the unique opportunities for cooperation, friendship, sustainability and openness that it represents. Join Purkis on the kerbside, in search of Woody Guthrie as he examines the politics of the travelling song, deep on a Russian hitch-hiking expedition, or considering the politics of travel and risk on the ‘Highway of Tears’ in British Columbia, Canada. The reader is taken on a panoramic road trip through a century of hitchhiking across different decades, countries and continents. Purkis, a self-styled ‘vagabond sociologist’, is the perfect passenger to accompany you on a journey away from isolation, social distancing, closed borders and into a better understanding of why and how strangers can enrich our lives.
In this tense and brilliant tale from the national bestselling author of The Death of Bees, a young boy on a small Scottish island, where everyone knows everything about everyone else, discovers that a secret can be a dangerous thing. Eleven-year-old Michael Murray is the best at two things: hacky sack and keeping secrets. His family thinks he's too young to hear grown-up stuff, but he listens at doors—it's the only way to find out anything. And Michael's heard a secret, one that may explain the bruises on his mother's face. When the whispers at home and on the street become too loud to ignore, Michael begins to wonder if there is an even bigger secret he doesn't know about. Scared of what might happen if anyone finds out, and desperate for life to return to normal, Michael sets out to piece together the truth. But he also has to prepare for the upcoming talent show, keep an eye out for Dirty Alice—his archnemesis from down the street—and avoid eating Granny's watery stew. Closed Doors is the startling new novel from Lisa O'Donnell, the acclaimed author of The Death of Bees. It is a vivid evocation of the fears and freedoms of childhood and a powerful tale of love, of the loss of innocence, and of the importance of family in difficult times.
This book is about where to go and what to do in China’s reform. Its comprehensive overview and economic analysis of China’s reform offers a coverage not found in other English language text. It provides an overview of China’s development and reform practice, an economic analysis of China’s market-oriented reform and a brief introduction to the theoretical origin, practices, and defects of the planned economy. In so doing, this book demonstrates that the key to the success of China’s reform lies in drawing reasonable governance boundaries between government and the market and between government and society. It further discusses the basic elements required for modernizing China’s state governance system and conducts an analysis of China’s reform and development in 13 key fields. The analysis is based on three dimensions—theoretical logic, practical knowledge, and a historical perspective. This book proposes three elements of comprehensive state governance—inclusive economic institutions; the state capacity to plan and implement policies and laws; and an inclusive and transparent civil society with democracy, the rule of law, fairness, and justice. Its analysis also features the novel application of mechanism design theory by employing the two core ideas of information and incentives and a new research methodology consisting of “three dimensions and six natures”. This book reviews and grasps China’s reform through a qualitative analysis of economic theories and an empirical analysis of statistics from a historical perspective spanning over 180 years. It is proposed to be an important reference for understanding the past, present, and future of China’s reform and teaching about the potential economic superpower. It can also serve as an essential resource for those who are interested in China's economic reform and development.
Following the success of Forgotten Voices of the Great War, Lyn Smith visits the oral accounts preserved in the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, to reveal the sheer complexity and horror of one of human history's darkest hours. The great majority of Holocaust survivors suffered considerable physical and psychological wounds, yet even in this dark time of human history, tales of faith, love and courage can be found. As well as revealing the story of the Holocaust as directly experienced by victims, these testimonies also illustrate how, even enduring the most harsh conditions, degrading treatment and suffering massive family losses, hope, the will to survive, and the human spirit still shine through.
