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1989 the Berlin Wall: My Part in Its Downfall
by Peter MillarFollow Peter Millar on a journey in the heart of Cold War Europe, from the carousing bars of 1970s Fleet Street to the East Berlin corner pub with its eclectic cast of characters who embodied the reality of living on the wrong side of the wall.
1984-George Orwell - Novel: १९८४-जॉर्ज ऑरवेलने - कादंबरी
by George Orwell‘१९८४’ हे पुस्तक अशाचपैकी एक आहे. जॉर्ज ऑरवेलने १९४८ साली हे पुस्तक लिहिले. भविष्यकाळातील सर्वंकष हुकूमशाहीचे चित्रण त्यात केले आहे. या पुस्तकाचा बोलबाला सर्व जगात जसा झाला, तसाच तो महाराष्ट्रातही झाला. ३६ सालात जगातील सुमारे ६२ भाषांत या पुस्तकाची भाषांतरे झाली. मराठीत मात्र मी या पुस्तकाचे केलेले भाषांतर प्रसिद्ध होण्यासाठी ३१ डिसेंबर १९८४ ही तारीख उजाडावी लागली. तेव्हा कुठे मराठी भाषा ही भाषांतराच्या यादीत ६३वी भाषा ठरली. त्या वेळी प्रकाशन समारंभाला श्री. ग. प्र. प्रधान (समाजवादी), श्री. ना. ग. गोरे (समाजवादी), श्री. प्रभाकर उर्ध्वरेषे (कम्युनिस्ट) इत्यादी राजकीय नेते उपस्थित होते. त्यांनी या पुस्तकाची मुक्त कंठाने स्तुती केली. १९८४ सालानंतर २७ वर्षांनी या पुस्तकाची दुसरी आवृत्ती बाजारात येत आहे. जॉर्ज ऑरवेलने म्हणतात की, आणीबाणीत अनेक प्रकाशकांना मी विचारले असता या पुस्तकाचे भाषांतर प्रसिद्ध करण्यास ते कचरले. त्यामागे भीती होती अन् ही भीती हीच हुकूमशहाची शक्ती असते. हुकूमशाही म्हणजे नेमके काय, हे ऑरवेलने यात दाखवले आहे. भीतीचा वापर केल्यावरही हुकूमशहाचे समाधान होत नाही. त्याला जनतेने स्वेच्छेने त्याच्यावर प्रेम करावे, त्याची भक्ती करावी असे वाटत असते. कोणतेही राजकीय तत्त्वज्ञान हा केवळ हुकूमशहा बनण्यासाठी घेतलेला आधार असतो. ‘खरी हुकूमशाही माणसाच्या रक्तातच असते काय?’ असा प्रश्न हे पुस्तक वाचल्यावर वाचकाला नक्की पडेल. तसेच हूकूमशाही अगदी टोकाला गेल्यावर काय काय घडू शकते, हे या पुस्तकात फार चांगले दर्शवले आहे.
1981 - Diario
by Patrick LoiseauIl 1981 fu un anno importante. Importante per me, perché ancora una volta mi liberavo dalle catene dimettendomi dal mio impiego e scrivendo, per mia figlia, che sarebbe nata di lì a poco, o perlomeno così speravo. Anche la Francia tentava di liberarsi dalle sue catene, o almeno la Francia popolare, quella che lavoro e si alza presto. In entrambi i casi, per me e i lavoratori, la posta in gioco era una scommessa sul futuro, la cui parola libertà non era il minimo dei concetti. Scommessa rischiosa. Per quanto mi riguarda, la scommessa era vinta in anticipo; da un lato perché sapevo che questo bambino sarebbe nato anche solo per onorare il papà-gallina rivoluzionario in moto che ero, d'altra parte perché all'inizio non avevo molta illusione su cosa sarebbe stato un governo di collaborazioni di classe..
1978. El año que marchamos a la guerra
by Guillermo ParvexEl mismo autor del exitoso Un veterano de tres guerras entrega este relato que cobra actualidad a 40 años de una guerra que no fue Mientras estudiaba Periodismo en la Universidad de Chile, Guillermo Parvex fue llamado por el Ejército para recibir instrucción militar específica y ser parte de las milicias chilenas que se dirigirían a la frontera con Argentina. Era 1978, Parvex tenía 24 años y la guerra con el país vecino era inminente. Este libro reconstruye la historia personal del autor durante los meses que estuvo en la frontera y el contexto histórico de esos difíciles años, un relato inédito en primera persona que nos habla de aquellos años convulsos en que se ocultaba la movilización de tropas hasta las regiones limítrofes que nos separan del país vecino. Reseña: "Un libro que reconstruye por primera vez la instrucción militar que recibieron en secreto miles de jóvenes chilenos."
1974: A Personal History
by Francine Prose“In this remarkable memoir, the qualities that have long distinguished Francine Prose’s fiction and criticism—uncompromising intelligence, a gratifying aversion to sentiment, the citrus bite of irony—give rigor and, finally, an unexpected poignancy to an emotional, artistic, and political coming-of-age tale set in the 1970s—the decade, as she memorably puts it, when American youth realized that the changes that seemed possible in the ’60s weren’t going to happen. A fascinating and ultimately wrenching book.”—Daniel Mendelsohn, author of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six MillionThe first memoir from critically acclaimed, bestselling author Francine Prose, about the close relationship she developed with activist Anthony Russo, one of the men who leaked the Pentagon Papers--and the year when our country changed.During her twenties, Francine Prose lived in San Francisco, where she began an intense and strange relationship with Tony Russo, who had been indicted and tried for working with Daniel Ellsberg to leak the Pentagon papers. The narrative is framed around the nights she spent with Russo driving manically around San Francisco, listening to his stories--and the disturbing and dramatic end of that relationship in New York.What happens to them mirrors the events and preoccupations of that historical moment: the Vietnam war, drugs, women's liberation, the Patty Hearst kidnapping. At once heartfelt and ironic, funny and sad, personal and political, 1974 provides an insightful look at how Francine Prose became a writer and artist during a time when the country, too, was shaping its identity.
The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany
by Christopher Young Kay SchillerThe 1972 Munich Olympics-remembered almost exclusively for the devastating terrorist attack on the Israeli team-were intended to showcase the New Germany and replace lingering memories of the Third Reich. That hope was all but obliterated in the early hours of September 5, when gun-wielding Palestinians murdered 11 members of the Israeli team. In the first cultural and political history of the Munich Olympics, Kay Schiller and Christopher Young set these Games into both the context of 1972 and the history of the modern Olympiad. Delving into newly available documents, Schiller and Young chronicle the impact of the Munich Games on West German society and deliver the first full account of one of the most significant moments in post-war German history.
1972: The Series That Changed Hockey Forever
by Scott MorrisonThe legacy of the greatest hockey series ever played, fifty years later, with stories from the players that shed new light on those incredible games and times.&“Cournoyer has it on that wing. Here&’s a shot. Henderson made a wild stab for it and fell. Here&’s another shot. Right in front...they score! Henderson has scored for Canada!&” These immortal words, spoken to hockey fans around the world by the legendary broadcaster Foster Hewitt, capture the historic final-seconds goal scored by Paul Henderson that won the 1972 Summit Series against the Soviet Union. Hockey fans know the moment well, but the story of those amazing eight games has never been fully told—until now. The series was the first of its kind, and one of the most dramatic sporting showdowns in history. With the Soviets dominating international hockey, this series was meant to settle the debate, once and for all, of who owned the game. It was Canada&’s best against the Soviets for the first time. And in the shadow of the Cold War, this was about more than eight games of hockey. Expectations were high as the series began. This was supposed to be easy for Team Canada, but after the disappointing first four games on home ice with only one win, victory seemed out of reach. With the final four games in Moscow, Canada got a rare glimpse behind the iron curtain as the team, as well as three thousand raucous fans, arrived in the USSR. Amid the culture shock and strained relations, what followed was a tug-of-war battle that lasted to the dying seconds of game 8. Now, five decades after this historic event, it&’s time to reflect on the greatest hockey series ever played. Veteran journalist and hockey analyst Scott Morrison uses a storyteller&’s voice to reveal what it meant to hockey then, and what it means now. Filled with the memories of the players and others involved with the series, he shows how it changed the game, and challenged a nation&’s sense of identity and place in the world.
1969 and Then Some: A Memoir of Romance, Motorcycles, and Lingering Flashbacks of a Golden Age
by Robert WintnerThe year when everything needed to be experienced and tried, when innocence was tempted, played, and lost.1969 was that pivotal year for the baby boomers. Young and innocent, they were given the ultimate freedoms and were faced with growing up.This touching, hilarious memoir is the true story of a late sixties grand tour of Europe-a life-defining parable, for those who remember and for those who can't. Never before and not since have a handful of seasons so exquisitely defined the difference between right and wrong. With the gift of youth they saw, sensed, and savored the laughably clear distinction between profit motive and greed, between truth and propaganda, between national interest and defense contractors, between a lovely cloud of smoke and the smoke of napalm, and between the phantoms of security and the dangers of complacency and atrophy.Stoned to the gills and then some, these adventurers saw and felt and knew things that no generation before did. Some fully engaged in the counterculture while others merely observed, sticking a left foot in, pulling a left foot out, but not quite jumping to the full hokeypokey.It was an incredible time of self-discovery, of love, and of finding out what you were made of.
1968. Quisimos ser
by Eliseo AlvarezEl periodista Eliseo Alvarez se propuso reunir a sus ex compañeros de laescuela que los vio crecer, la Número 11 de Villa Ballester. La vida decada unosintetiza la historia de los hijos de inmigrantes, de laescuela pública, de la transformación de los barrios y, en definitiva,de la Argentina. «El libro es un conmovedor y peligroso ejercicio de nostalgia. No creoque muchos se atrevan a remover de este modo su memoria. Se parece a unade esas mudanzas que hacemos al cambiar de residencia. Se abren cajones,armarios, maletas y cajas amontonadas en el desván y aparece eltumultuoso pasado y sus encabritadas criaturas olvidadas, impacientes yansiosas por encontrar de nuevo en tu cabeza un lugar en donde existir.Esta multitud habla de un mundo perdido pero impetuoso. Los personajeshablan, sonríen, se entristecen o celebran sus viejas ensoñaciones. Lahistoria es un gratificante fresco sobre la tormenta del tiempo: lo quefuimos, lo que somos, lo que recordamos, lo que perdimos... El relatonos invita a mirar atrás sin que Teseo ni la mujer de Lot cumplan suprofecía: mira atrás, vale, de acuerdo, pero sigue tu camino». BasilioBaltasar
1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left
by Robyn HitchcockThe great eccentric of British psychedelia—beloved by everyone from Led Zeppelin and R.E.M. to the late Jonathan Demme—pens a singularly unique childhood memoir . . . “A bright, nostalgic look at the exhilaration of 1967, this book—illustrated throughout with Hitchcock’s surreal sketches—will appeal to not only the author’s many fans but also anyone interested in the music and culture from the golden age of psychedelia. Wistfully reflective reading.” —Kirkus Reviews “Memoirists rarely begin their work with a stroke of genuine inspiration, and Robyn Hitchcock’s ingenious idea to limit his account of his life to the titular year gives this sharp, funny, finely written book an unusually keen, wistful intensity without sacrificing its sense of the breathtaking sweep of time. I absolutely adored every line of 1967 and every moment I spent reading it.” —Michael Chabon, author of Telegraph Avenue 1967: HOW I GOT THERE AND WHY I NEVER LEFT explores how that pivotal slice of time tastes to a bright, obsessive-compulsive boy who is shipped off to a hothouse academic boarding school as he reaches the age of thirteen—just as Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited starts to bite, and the Beatles’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band explodes. When he arrives in January 1966, Robyn Hitchcock is still a boy pining for the comforts of home and his family’s loving au pair, Teresa. By December 1967, he’s mutated into a 6’2? tall rabid Bob Dylan fan, whose two ambitions in life are to get really high and fly to Nashville. In between—as the hippie revolution blossoms in the world outside—Hitchcock adjusts to the hierarchical, homoerotic world of Winchester, threading a path through teachers with arrested development, some oafish peers, and a sullen old maid—a very English freak show. On the way he befriends a cadre of bat-winged teenage prodigies and meets their local guru, the young Brian Eno. At the end of 1967, all the ingredients are in place that will make Robyn Hitchcock a songwriter for life. But then again, does 1967 ever really end?
1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left
by Robyn HitchcockThe great eccentric of British psychedelia and unsung national treasure - beloved of everyone from Led Zeppelin, R.E.M. to Stewart Lee and the late Jonathan Demme (who directed Storefront Hitchcock, a 1998 concert film conceived as 'a document not a documentary') - pens an idiosyncratic childhood memoir . . .
The 1966 World Cup Final: Minute by Minute (Minute By Minute)
by Jonathan Mayo30th July 1966. For millions it was the greatest day of the greatest decade. They may never have seen the Beatles in the Cavern or danced at Woodstock, but they got to see the finest moment in English sporting history. Everything came together that sunny afternoon. The country was the centre of the world in fashion, film and music - so why shouldn't the World Cup be England's as well? This is the story of that extraordinary 24 hours, told through the eyes of the players, the fans on the terraces, and those watching and listening at home and abroad. Take the young policeman with the tricky task of swapping the real Jules Rimet trophy for a replica; the former German POW on holiday in Wales keeping his nationality secret as he watches the match in a stranger's house; and the Kent firecrew dousing a chimney fire as they watch the final on television. Full of fascinating details, this book evokes a period when football fans wore suits to matches, traffic policemen were invited into homes to watch the game, and the England squad could walk to the cinema undisturbed the evening before the biggest game of their lives.
The 1966 World Cup Final: Minute by Minute (Minute By Minute Ser.)
by Jonathan Mayo30th July 1966. For millions it was the greatest day of the greatest decade. They may never have seen the Beatles in the Cavern or danced at Woodstock, but they got to see the finest moment in English sporting history. Everything came together that sunny afternoon. The country was the centre of the world in fashion, film and music - so why shouldn't the World Cup be England's as well? This is the story of that extraordinary 24 hours, told through the eyes of the players, the fans on the terraces, and those watching and listening at home and abroad. Take the young policeman with the tricky task of swapping the real Jules Rimet trophy for a replica; the former German POW on holiday in Wales keeping his nationality secret as he watches the match in a stranger's house; and the Kent firecrew dousing a chimney fire as they watch the final on television. Full of fascinating details, this book evokes a period when football fans wore suits to matches, traffic policemen were invited into homes to watch the game, and the England squad could walk to the cinema undisturbed the evening before the biggest game of their lives.
1966: My World Cup Story
by Bobby CharltonWembley, 1966. England wins the World Cup to roars of a euphoric home crowd.Sir Bobby Charlton, England’s greatest ever player, was there on the pitch. In 1966, he looks back on the most glorious moment of his life and England's greatest sporting achievement.He takes us through the build-up to the tournament and to the final itself - what he saw, what he heard, what he felt. He tells us what it was like to be part of Sir Alf Ramsey’s team, his memories of his teammates, the matches, the atmosphere; the emotion of being carried on the wave of a nation’s euphoria and how it felt to go toe-to-toe with some of the foremost footballers to ever play the game.His life was forever defined by a single moment: one day when a man stood side-by-side with his best friends, united in a single aim in front of a watching nation. This is his story.‘It’s gripping stuff… This is a mellow book, the product of many years’ contemplation, and emotional in a way that may surprise you…He has a wonderful story to tell’ Daily Mail
The 1964 Election and Its Aftermath: from In Retrospect
by Robert Mcnamara"Can anyone remember a public official with the courage to confess error and explain where he and his country went wrong? This is what Robert McNamara does in this brave, honest, honorable, and altogether compelling book."—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Written twenty years after the end of the Vietnam War, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's controversial memoir answers the lingering questions that surround this disastrous episode in American history, and chronicles the political events and fatal misassumptions that were behind the US involvement in Vietnam.A Vintage Shorts Vietnam Selection. An ebook short.
1964: Eyes of the Storm
by Paul McCartney“Millions of eyes were suddenly upon us, creating a picture I will never forget.” —Paul McCartney. <p><p>Taken with a 35mm camera by Paul McCartney, these largely unseen photographs capture the explosive period, from the end of 1963 through early 1964, in which The Beatles became an international sensation and changed the course of music history. <p><p>Featuring 275 images from the six cities—Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami—of these legendary months, 1964: Eyes of the Storm also includes: <p>• A personal foreword in which McCartney recalls the pandemonium of British concert halls, followed by the hysteria that greeted the band on its first American visit <p>• Candid recollections preceding each city portfolio that form an autobiographical account of the period McCartney remembers as the “Eyes of the Storm,” plus a coda with subsequent events in 1964 <p>• “Beatleland,” an essay by Harvard historian and New Yorker essayist Jill Lepore, describing how The Beatles became the first truly global mass culture phenomenon <p><p>Handsomely designed, 1964: Eyes of the Storm creates an intensely dramatic record of The Beatles’ first transatlantic trip, documenting the radical shift in youth culture that crystallized in 1964. <p><p>“You could hold your camera up to the world, in 1964. But what madness would you capture, what beauty, what joy, what fury?” —Jill Lepore <p> <b>New York Times Bestseller</b>
A 1960s Childhood: From Thunderbirds to Beatlemania
by Paul FeeneyDo you remember Beatlemania? Radio Caroline? Mods and Rockers? The very first miniskirts? Then the chances are you were born in the or around 1960.To the young people of today, the 1960s seems like another age. But for those who grew up in this decade, school life, 'mod' fashions and sixties pop music are still fresh in their minds. From James Bond to Sindy dolls and playing hopscotch in the street, life was very different to how it is now. After the tough and frugal years of the fifties, the sixties was a boom period, a time of changed attitudes and improved lifestyles. With chapters on home and school life, games and hobbies, music and fashion, alongside a selection of charming illustrations, this delightful compendium of memories will appeal to all who grew up in this lively era. Take a nostalgic look at what it was like to grow up during the sixties and recapture all aspects of life back then.
1960s Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime that Rocked the Capital (True Crime)
by Jesse SublettTimmy Overton of Austin and Jerry Ray James of Odessa were football stars who traded athletics for lives of crime. The original rebels without causes, nihilists with Cadillacs and Elvis hair, the Overton gang and their associates formed a ragtag white trash mafia that bedazzled Austin law enforcement for most of the 1960s. Tied into a loose network of crooked lawyers, pimps and used car dealers who became known as the "traveling criminals," they burglarized banks and ran smuggling and prostitution rings all over Texas. Author Jesse Sublett presents a detailed account of these Austin miscreants, who rose to folk hero status despite their violent criminal acts.
1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies
by David PietruszaIt was the election that would ultimately give America "Camelot" and its tragic aftermath, a momentous contest when three giants who each would have a chance to shape the nation battled to win the presidency. Award-winning author David Pietrusza does here for the 1960 presidential race what he did in his previous book, 1920: the Year of the Six Presidents--which Kirkus Reviews selected as one of their Best Books of 2007. Until now, the most authoritative study of the 1960 election was Theodore White's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the President, 1960. But White, as a trusted insider, didn't tell all. Here's the rest of the story, what White could never have known, nor revealed. Finally, it's all out--including JFK's poignant comment on why LBJ's nomination as vice president would be inconsequential: "I'm 43 years old. I'm not going to die in office. " Combining an engaging narrative with exhaustive research, Pietrusza chronicles the pivotal election of 1960, in which issues of civil rights and religion (Kennedy was only the second major-party Roman Catholic candidate ever) converged. The volatile primary clash between Senate Majority leader LBJ and the young JFK culminated in an improbable fusion ticket. The historic, legendary Kennedy-Nixon debates followed in its wake. The first presidential televised debates, they forever altered American politics when an exhausted Nixon was unkempt and tentative in their first showdown. With 80 million viewers passing judgment, Nixon's poll numbers dropped as the charismatic Kennedy's star rose. Nixon learned his lesson--resting before subsequent debates, reluctantly wearing makeup, and challenging JFK with a more aggressive stance--but the damage was done. There's no one better to convey the drama of that tumultuous year than Pietrusza. He has 1,000 secrets to spill; a fascinating cast of characters to introduce (including a rogue's gallery of hangers-on and manipulators); and towering historical events to chronicle. And all of it is built on painstaking research and solid historical scholarship. Pietrusza tracks down every lead to create a winning, engaging, and very readable account. With the 2008 elections approaching, politics will be on everyone's mind, and 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon will transform the way readers see modern American history. A sampling of what Theodore White couldn't chronicle--and David Pietrusza does: · Richard Nixon's tempestuous Iowa backseat blowup, and his bizarre Election Day road trip · The full story of a sympathetic call from JFK to Coretta Scott King · John Ehrlichman's spy missions on the Nelson Rockefeller and Democratic camps · The warnings before Election Day that Chicago's mayor Daley would try to fix the race's outcome · JFK's amphetamine-fueled debate performance
1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever
by Bill Madden1954: Perhaps no single baseball season has so profoundly changed the game forever. In that year#151;the same in which the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education, that segregation of the races be outlawed in America's public schools#151;Larry Doby's Indians won an American League record 111 games, dethroned the five-straight World Series champion Yankees, and went on to play Willie Mays's Giants in the first World Series that featured players of color on both teams. Seven years after Jackie Robinson had broken the baseball color line, 1954 was a triumphant watershed season for black players#151;and, in a larger sense, for baseball and the country as a whole. While Doby was the dominant player in the American League, Mays emerged as the preeminent player in the National League, with a flair and boyish innocence that all fans, black and white, quickly came to embrace. Mays was almost instantly beloved in 1954, much of that due to how seemingly easy it was for him to live up to the effusive buildup from his Giants manager, Leo Durocher, a man more widely known for his ferocious "nice guys finish last" attitude. Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Bill Madden delivers the first major book to fully examine the 1954 baseball season, drawn largely from exclusive recent interviews with the major players themselves, including Mays and Doby as well as New York baseball legends from that era: Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford of the Yankees, Monte Irvin of the Giants, and Carl Erskine of the Dodgers. 1954 transports readers across the baseball landscape of the time#151;from the spring training camps in Florida and Arizona to baseball cities including New York, Baltimore, Chicago, and Cleveland#151;as future superstars such as Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, and others entered the leagues and continued to integrate the sport. Weaving together the narrative of one of baseball's greatest seasons with the racially charged events of that year, 1954 demonstrates how our national pastime#151;with the notable exception of the Yankees, who represented "white supremacy" in the game#151;was actually ahead of the curve in terms of the acceptance of black Americans, while the nation at large continued to struggle with tolerance.
1948
by Yoram Kaniuk Anthony BerrisSixty years after fighting in Israel's War of Independence, Yoram Kaniuk tries to remember what exactly did--and did not--happen in his time as a teenage soldier in the Palmach. The result is a touchingly poignant and hauntingly beautiful memoir that the author himself considers a work of fiction, for what is memory but one's own story about the past? Eschewing self-righteousness in favor of self-criticism, Kaniuk's book, winner of the 2010 Sapir Prize for Literature, is the tale of a younger man told by his older, wiser self--the self who realizes that wars are pointless, and that he and his friends, young men from good homes forming an offbeat band of brothers, were senseless to see glory in the prospect of dying young. But it is also a painful, shocking, and tragically relevant homage to the importance of bearing witness to the follies of the past, even--or especially--when they are one's own.
1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America
by David PietruszaThe behind-the-headline true story of Harry Truman's stunning upset! Everyone knows the iconic news photo of jubilant underdog Harry Truman brandishing a copy of the Chicago Tribune proclaiming "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. " David Pietrusza goes backstage to explain how it happened, placing the brutal political battle in the context of an erupting Cold War and America's exploding storms over civil rights and domestic communism. Pietrusza achieves for 1948's presidential race what he previously did in his acclaimed 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: bringing history to life and intrigue readers with tales of high drama while simultaneously presenting the issues, personalities, and controversies of this pivotal era with laser-like clarity.
1947: Where Now Begins
by Fiona Graham Elisabeth ÅsbrinkAn award-winning writer captures a year that defined the modern world, intertwining historical events around the globe with key moments from her personal history.The year 1947 marks a turning point in the twentieth century. Peace with Germany becomes a tool to fortify the West against the threats of the Cold War. The CIA is created, Israel is about to be born, Simone de Beauvoir experiences the love of her life, an ill George Orwell is writing his last book, and Christian Dior creates the hyper-feminine New Look as women are forced out of jobs and back into the home. In the midst of it all, a ten-year-old Hungarian-Jewish boy resides in a refugee camp for children of parents murdered by the Nazis. This year he has to make the decision of a lifetime, one that will determine his own fate and that of his daughter yet to be born, Elisabeth.
1944 Diary
by Damion Searls Hans Keilson[1944 Diary] is a deeply personal account, made even more remarkable that it was written during World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust . . . A moving and fascinating read." —Library JournalIn 2010, FSG published two novels by the German- Jewish writer Hans Keilson: Comedy in a Minor Key—written in 1944 while Keilson was in hiding in the Netherlands, first published in German in 1947, and never before in English—and The Death of the Adversary, begun in 1944 and published in 1959, also in German. With their Chekhovian sympathy for perpetrators and bystanders as well as for victims and resisters, Keilson’s novels were, as Francine Prose said on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, “masterpieces” by “a genius” on her list of “the world’s very greatest writers.” Keilson was one hundred years old, alive and well and able to enjoy his belated fame.1944 Diary, rediscovered among Keilson’s papers shortly after his death, covers nine months he spent in hiding in Delft with members of a Dutch resistance group, having an affair with a younger Jewish woman in hiding a few blocks away and striving to make a moral and artistic life for himself as the war and the Holocaust raged around him. For readers familiar with Keilson’s novels as well as those new to his work, this diary is an incomparable spiritual X-ray of the mind and heart behind the art: a record of survival and creativity in what Keilson called “the most critical year of my life.”Offering further insight into Keilson are the sonnets he wrote for his lover, Hanna Sanders, which appear in translation at the back of this volume.
1944
by Jay WinikNew York Times bestselling author Jay Winik brings to life in gripping detail the year 1944, which determined the outcome of World War II and put more pressure than any other on an ailing yet determined President Roosevelt.It was not inevitable that World War II would end as it did, or that it would even end well. 1944 was a year that could have stymied the Allies and cemented Hitler's waning power. Instead, it saved those democracies--but with a fateful cost. Now, in a superbly told story, Jay Winik, the acclaimed author of April 1865 and The Great Upheaval, captures the epic images and extraordinary history as never before. 1944 witnessed a series of titanic events: FDR at the pinnacle of his wartime leadership as well as his reelection, the planning of Operation Overlord with Churchill and Stalin, the unprecedented D-Day invasion, the liberation of Paris and the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and the tumultuous conferences that finally shaped the coming peace. But on the way, millions of more lives were still at stake as President Roosevelt was exposed to mounting evidence of the most grotesque crime in history, the Final Solution. Just as the Allies were landing in Normandy, the Nazis were accelerating the killing of millions of European Jews. Winik shows how escalating pressures fell on an all but dying Roosevelt, whose rapidly deteriorating health was a closely guarded secret. Here then, as with D-Day, was a momentous decision for the president. Was winning the war the best way to rescue the Jews? Was a rescue even possible? Or would it get in the way of defeating Hitler? In a year when even the most audacious undertakings were within the world's reach, including the liberation of Europe, one challenge--saving Europe's Jews--seemed to remain beyond Roosevelt's grasp. As he did so brilliantly in April 1865, Winik provides a stunningly fresh look at the twentieth century's most pivotal year. Magisterial, bold, and exquisitely rendered, 1944: FDR and the Year that Changed History is the first book to tell these events with such moral clarity and unprecedented sweep, and a moving appreciation of the extraordinary struggles of the era's outsized figures. 1944 is destined to take its place as one of the great works of World War II.