"This extraordinary book . . . is a reminder . . . of the sins of suppression and untruth that have been and can be committed in the name of American journalism . . . One of the last first-person statements from a generation that included Hitler, Nehru, and Mao . . . and Seldes too." --Columbia Journalism Review
This study offers fresh readings of milestones in twentieth-century Chinese fiction, film, and drama and argues that they have questioned the faith in historical progress and in the viability of a sphere of free debate.
The book is the story of a refugee who survived the Nazis and his contributions to the U.S. as a soldier, engineer and citizen. His father interned under Konrad Röntgen when X rays were discovered The author was born in Germany in 1917 during World War I. The story continues with life in the Weimar Republic and under the Nazi regime Though raised Christian, because of his Jewish ancestry, he had to go into hiding and had a harrowing miraculous escape from the Nazis in 1938. During World War II he served in the U .S. Army in Europe as related through his war letters. An Electrical Engineer with Bell Laboratories he contributed to the cutting edge of the technical revolution of our time: Long Distance Communications, the Transistor, Guided Missiles (ICBM’S and Satellite Launchers), Missile Defense, Electromagnetic Nuclear Weapons Effects (EMP) and high speed communications through Millimeter Waveguide. He was granted numerous patents and contributed to technical journals and books. The personal story runs in parallel with the technical story: raising a family, civic affairs, public office, and world travel to Europe, Japan and the Americas. He had a particular interest in Americas civilizations and pre-Columbian archeology.
What is the role of the survivor testimony in Holocaust remembrance? In this book, a concise, rigorously argued, and provocative work of cultural and intellectual history, the author seeks to answer this surpassingly complex question.
A chronological compilation of twentieth-century world events in one volume—from the acclaimed historian and biographer of Winston S. Churchill. The twentieth century has been one of the most unique in human history. It has seen the rise of some of humanity’s most important advances to date, as well as many of its most violent and terrifying wars. This is a condensed version of renowned historian Martin Gilbert’s masterful examination of the century’s history, offering the highlights of a three-volume work that covers more than three thousand pages. From the invention of aviation to the rise of the Internet, and from events and cataclysmic changes in Europe to those in Asia, Africa, and North America, Martin examines art, literature, war, religion, life and death, and celebration and renewal across the globe, and throughout this turbulent and astonishing century.
This definitive biography of Pope John Paul II explores his historic influence on the world stage: “Magnificent. A tremendous achievement” (Washington Post). As head of the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005, John Paul II was one of the world’s most transformational figures. With unprecedented cooperation from the Pope, as well as the people who knew and worked with him throughout his life, George Weigel offers a groundbreaking portrait of him as a man, a thinker, and a leader whose religious convictions defined a new approach to world politics—and changed the course of history. The Pope played a crucial yet underexplored role in some of the most momentous events of his time, including the collapse of European communism, the quest for peace in the Middle East, and the democratic transformation of Latin America. With an updated preface, this edition of Witness to Hope explains how this “man from a far country” did all of that, and much more—and what both his accomplishments and the unfinished business of his pontificate mean for the future of the Church and the world.
A groundbreaking anthology containing the work of poets who have witnessed war, imprisonment, torture, and slavery. A companion volume to Against Forgetting, Poetry of Witness is the first anthology to reveal a tradition that runs through English-language poetry. The 300 poems collected here were composed at an extreme of human endurance—while their authors awaited execution, endured imprisonment, fought on the battlefield, or labored on the brink of breakdown or death. All bear witness to historical events and the irresistibility of their impact. Alongside Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, this volume includes such writers as Anne Askew, tortured and executed for her religious beliefs during the reign of Henry VIII; Phillis Wheatley, abducted by slave traders; Samuel Bamford, present at the Peterloo Massacre in 1819; William Blake, who witnessed the Gordon Riots of 1780; and Samuel Menashe, survivor of the Battle of the Bulge. Poetry of Witness argues that such poets are a perennial feature of human history, and it presents the best of that tradition, proving that their work ranks alongside the greatest in the language.