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Witchfinder General
by Ian CooperWitchfinder General (1968), known as The Conqueror Worm in America, was directed by Michael Reeves and occupies a unique place in British cinema. Equally praised and vilified, the film fictionalizes the exploits of Matthew Hopkins, a prolific, real-life "witch hunter," during the English Civil War. For critic Mark Kermode, the release proved to be "the single most significant horror film produced in the United Kingdom in the 1960s," while playwright Alan Bennett called the work "the most persistently sadistic and rotten film I've ever seen." Steadily gaining a cult reputation, unimpeded by the director's death just months after the film's release, the film is now treated as a landmark, though problematic, accomplishment, as it exists in a number of recut, retitled, and rescored versions. This in-depth study positions the film within the history of horror and discusses its importance as a British and heritage film. It also considers the inheritance of Hopkins, the script's relationship to the novel by Ronald Bassett, and the iconic persona of the film's star, Vincent Price. Ian Cooper conducts close textual readings of specific scenes and explores the film's various contexts, from the creation of the X certificate and the tradition of Hammer gothic, to the influence on Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and the "torture porn" of twenty-first-century horror.
Witchfinder General
by Ian CooperWitchfinder General (1968), known as The Conqueror Worm in America, was directed by Michael Reeves and occupies a unique place in British cinema. Equally praised and vilified, the film fictionalizes the exploits of Matthew Hopkins, a prolific, real-life "witch hunter," during the English Civil War. For critic Mark Kermode, the release proved to be "the single most significant horror film produced in the United Kingdom in the 1960s," while playwright Alan Bennett called the work "the most persistently sadistic and rotten film I've ever seen." Steadily gaining a cult reputation, unimpeded by the director's death just months after the film's release, the film is now treated as a landmark, though problematic, accomplishment, as it exists in a number of recut, retitled, and rescored versions. This in-depth study positions the film within the history of horror and discusses its importance as a British and heritage film. It also considers the inheritance of Hopkins, the script's relationship to the novel by Ronald Bassett, and the iconic persona of the film's star, Vincent Price. Ian Cooper conducts close textual readings of specific scenes and explores the film's various contexts, from the creation of the X certificate and the tradition of Hammer gothic, to the influence on Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and the "torture porn" of twenty-first-century horror.
The Witch's Door: Oddities and Tales from the Esoteric to the Extreme
by Ryan Matthew Cohn Regina M. RossiIn this spellbinding and entertaining memoir, Regina and Ryan Cohn, founders of Oddities Flea Market, take us on a fascinating and specially curated tour of their most macabre and mysterious objects, art, and artifacts, sharing their incredible history and stories.Enter at your own risk … A taxidermied monkey named Mr. Peepers. A rare collection of anatomical wax figures for sale in Munich. A Tibetan Kapala skull decorated with bits of coral. Two Charlie McCarthy dolls that may (or may not) be haunted. The incredible memento mori collection of Richard Harris. An actual witch’s door. That’s all just for starters. Welcome to a world of oddities curated by Regina and Ryan Cohn, trendsetters and tastemakers who have reinvented what the artifact collectors market looks like. Together, they are the founders of Oddities Flea Market, artfully curating a selection of the best artists and collectors at several events across the U.S. throughout the year, with an eye towards expanding globally. In The Witch’s Door, Ryan, who starred in the reality television show Oddities, and Regina, who comes from the world of fashion, give us a rare peek behind the curtain into the business of collecting the strange and unusual and the cast of eccentric characters they meet along the way. Packed with jaw-dropping photographs and unbelievable-but-true stories, The Witch’s Door is a rare combination of visual and narrative entertainment. In these pages, Ryan and Regina take readers all over the world, from Brooklyn to Bavaria, giving them the inside scoop on how they purchase artifacts to sell and those they want to keep. Perfect for fans of Oddities, Atlas Obscura, and Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, this collectible book makes a delightfully lurid gift or self-purchase for those happily inclined toward the dark side.
The Witch's Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense
by Kara KeelingKara Keeling contends that cinema and cinematic processes had a profound significance for twentieth-century anticapitalist Black Liberation movements based in the United States. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's notion of "the cinematic"--not just as a phenomenon confined to moving-image media such as film and television but as a set of processes involved in the production and reproduction of social reality itself --Keeling describes how the cinematic structures racism, homophobia, and misogyny, and, in the process, denies viewers access to certain images and ways of knowing. She theorizes the black femme as a figure who, even when not explicitly represented within hegemonic cinematic formulations of raced and gendered subjectivities, nonetheless haunts those representations, threatening to disrupt them by making alternative social arrangements visible. Keeling draws on the thought of Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis, Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, and others in addition to Deleuze. She pursues the elusive figure of the black femme through Haile Gerima's film Sankofa, images of women in the Black Panther Party, Pam Grier's roles in the blaxploitation films of the early 1970s, F. Gary Gray's film Set It Off, and Kasi Lemmons's Eve's Bayou.
The Witch's Workshop: A Guide to Crafting Your Own Magical Tools
by Melissa MadaraFrom the author of The Witch's Feast, this is the first fully illustrated, comprehensive introduction to the handicrafts of witchcraft. Through over 60 craft projects, learn all the techniques you need to create your personalized magical toolkit.Empower yourself as a self-sufficient witch, and become a master of the natural arts!This in-depth guide, accompanied by step-by-step images, will show you all the craft and design skills you need to make your own, personalized and fully adaptable magical toolkit.Melissa Madara, magical expert, herbalist and witch, shares 60+ unique projects and techniques, many of which revive spells from the history of witches past. Approachable for beginners and stimulating for established practitioners, the crafts are clearly explained through luscious photographs, detailed research, useful charts, and easy-to-follow instructions. Once you are directly in touch with the power of these crafts, understanding deeply the processes and the associations of magical ingredients, you can be inspired to create all your own unique formulations. Chapters include:Incense, including kyphi temple incense, which once billowed from the temples of ancient Egypt, to house blessing incense for cleansing any new home.Inks, including dragon's blood ink and botanical drawing charcoals.Oils, such as flying ointment or the world's first known chemist Tapputi's royal salve.Natural dyes for creating stunning eco-printed ritual gowns or a spring equinox altar tablecloth.Papers, like Japanese knotweed paper or autumn equinox corn husk paper.Powders essential for rituals and spells such as scrying powder and banishing salt.Candles of all shapes and types, including poured, dipped and molded.With all of this knowledge, you can create altars, rituals and spells that are highly specific, personal and in touch with your natural environment.
With a Crooked Stick—The Films of Oscar Micheaux
by J. Ronald GreenWith a "crooked stick," filmmaker Oscar Micheaux (1884–1951) sought to hit a "straight lick" by stressing the strategic importance of class mobility, or "uplift," for African Americans. A theme in all of his more than 40 feature-length, black-produced, black-directed, black-cast, and black-audience films, uplift would allow for the better things in life: fast cars and fancy clothes, freedom of belief, financial security, and an unencumbered intellectual life. Although racism was an impediment to uplift for Micheaux and other African Americans, race as a category was of a secondary order for him in the larger game of class. In With a Crooked Stick, J. Ronald Green pursues this seeming contradiction in a detailed analysis of each of Micheaux's 15 surviving films. He presents critical commentary on each film's plot and action and its contribution to the overall theme of uplift. Readers will also find this an invaluable guide to the preoccupations and features of Micheaux's remarkable career and the insight it provides into the African American experience of the 1920s and 30s.
With and Against: the Situationist International in the Age of Automation
by Dominique RouthierThe little-known story of the Situationist International&’s struggle against the automation of everyday lifeNo other art movement has so profoundly influenced radical politics as the Situationist International. But beyond the clichés about its purported leader Guy Debord, the "society of the spectacle," détournement and dérive, lies a more complex story about key historical shifts in the composition of capital, work, labor, art, and revolutionary theory during the 1950s and 60s.With and Against reframes the history of the Situationist International as a struggle to come to terms with the then-emerging ideologies of cybernetics and automation. Through each of the book's four chapters, Dominique Routhier dissects Situationist pamphlets, documents, artworks, and objects that refract elements of a "cybernetic hypothesis": the theoretically hyperbolic belief that technological progress, computers and automation make class struggle and the idea of revolution obsolete.With equal attention to aesthetic detail and to the broader contours of political economy, this book serves as a critical intervention in art history as well a call to reconsider, more broadly, the contemporary lessons of the most political of all artistic avantgardes.
With Bated Breath
by Bryden MacdonaldWilly, a troubled but charismatic gay kid, flees Cape Breton Island for Montreal with hopes of forgetting a newly broken heart by starting a new life in the big city. There, he retreats into a world of fantasy and anonymity, and soon goes missing without a trace. As rumours fly, he is remembered and reinvented by the play's characters.
With Darkness Came Stars: A Memoir
by Audrey FlackOnly in the darkest moments of our lives do the brightest stars appear.An artist, mother, teacher, and rebel, Audrey Flack is counted among the most important American artists of the twentieth century. In With Darkness Came Stars, she recounts and reflects upon a life fully lived. Flack came up in the New York art scene when the city was fast becoming a world arts center. She had a studio in the Bowery and frequented the Cedar Tavern, where she rubbed elbows with Jackson Pollock, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, and other giants of the Abstract Expressionist movement. After leaving that scene and starting a family, she spearheaded Photorealist painting, alongside the likes of Chuck Close and Richard Estes. Flack has lived a remarkable life, successfully navigating a vibrant and virulently sexist art world, escaping an abusive marriage, and reshaping the rules of art creation in the middle of the twentieth century—all while raising two children, one with severe autism. Her story is full of strife and striving, but as an artist, Flack has always been able to find the beauty in it.
[ ] With Design: Proceedings of the 9th Congress of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR 2021)
by Gerhard Bruyns Huaxin WeiThis collection stems from the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) congress in 2021, promoting the research of design in its many fields of application. Today's design finds itself at a critical moment where the conventional ‘modes’ of doing, thinking and application are increasingly challenged by the troubled ideology of globalisation, climate change, migration patterns and the rapid restructuring of locally driven manufacturing sectors. The volume presents a selection of papers on state-of-the-art design research work. As rapid technological development has been pushing and breaking new ground in society, the broad field of design is facing many unprecedented changes. In combination with the environmental, cultural, technological, and, crucially, pandemic transitions, design at large is called to fundamentally alter its modes of practice. Beyond the conventional models of conducting research, or developing solutions to ‘wicked’ problems, the recoupling of design with different modes should be seen as an expression to embrace other capacities of thinking, criticisms and productions. This selection of proceedings papers delivers the latest insights into design from a multitude of perspectives, as reflected in the eight thematic modes of the congress ; i.e., [social] , [making] , [business] , [critical], [historical/projective], [impact], [pandemic], and [alternative] with design modes. The book benefits design researchers from both academia and industry who are interested in the latest design research results, as well as in innovative design research methods. In presenting an interesting corpus of design case studies as well as studies of design impact, this comprehensive collection is of relevance to design theorists and students, as well as scholars in related fields seeking to understand how design plays a critical role in their respective domains.
With Dogs at the Edge of Life
by Colin DayanIn this original and provocative book, Colin Dayan tackles head-on the inexhaustible world, at once tender and fierce, of dogs and humans. We follow the tracks of dogs in the bayous of Louisiana, the streets of Istanbul, and the humane societies of the United States, and in the memories and myths of the humans who love them. Dayan reorients our ethical and political assumptions through a trans-species engagement that risks as much as it promises. She makes a powerful case for questioning what we think of as our deepest-held beliefs and, with dogs in the lead, unsettles the dubious promises of liberal humanism.Moving seamlessly between memoir, case law, and film, Dayan takes politics and animal studies in a new direction—one that gives us glimpses of how we can think beyond ourselves and with other beings. Her unconventional perspective raises hard questions and renews what it means for any animal or human to live in the twenty-first century. Nothing less than a challenge for us to confront violence and suffering even in the privileged precincts of modernity, this searing and lyrical book calls for another way to think the world. Theoretically sophisticated yet aimed at a broad readership, With Dogs at the Edge of Life illuminates how dogs—and their struggles—take us beyond sentimentality and into a form of thought that can make a difference to our lives.
With A Feather On My Nose (American Autobiography Ser.)
by Billie BurkeThe popular comedienne's account of her theatrical career and her married life with Florenz Ziegfeld.This is the life story of an actress, a beautiful redheaded actress who lived and played in a glittering era now gone but fondly remembered. Although she attained moments of great fame and happiness, she never knew security. Like her father, the well-known clown, she went through life with a feather on her nose.--Print Ed.
With Great Power Comes Great Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning, and Comics
by Susan E. Kirtley, Antero Garcia and Peter E. CarlsonContributions by Bart Beaty, Jenny Blenk, Ben Bolling, Peter E. Carlson, Johnathan Flowers, Antero Garcia, Dale Jacobs, Ebony Flowers Kalir, James Kelley, Susan E. Kirtley, Frederik Byrn Køhlert, John A. Lent, Leah Misemer, Johnny Parker II, Nick Sousanis, Aimee Valentine, and Benjamin J. Villarreal More and more educators are using comics in the classroom. As such, this edited volume sets out the stakes, definitions, and exemplars of recent comics pedagogy, from K-12 contexts to higher education instruction to ongoing communities of scholars working outside of the academy. Building upon interdisciplinary approaches to teaching comics and teaching with comics, this book brings together diverse voices to share key theories and research on comics pedagogy. By gathering scholars, creators, and educators across various fields and in K-12 as well as university settings, editors Susan E. Kirtley, Antero Garcia, and Peter E. Carlson significantly expand scholarship. This valuable resource offers both critical pieces and engaging interviews with key comics professionals who reflect on their own teaching experience and on considerations of the benefits of creating comics in education. Included are interviews with acclaimed comics writers Lynda Barry, Brian Michael Bendis, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and David Walker, as well as essays spanning from studying the use of superhero comics in the classroom to the ways comics can enrich and empower young readers. The inclusion of creators, scholars, and teachers leads to perspectives that make this volume unlike any other currently available. These voices echo the diverse needs of the many stakeholders invested in using comics in education today.
With Love, Mommie Dearest: The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic
by A. Ashley Hoff Bruce VilanchWhen she died in 1977, Joan Crawford was remembered as an icon of Hollywood's Golden Age—until publication the following year of her daughter's memoir, Mommie Dearest. Christina Crawford's book was an immediate bestseller, combining the infrequently discussed topic of child abuse with the draw of Hollywood drama. But when Paramount Pictures released the film version, starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford, it was panned, and it remains one of the most legendary critical bombs in film history. The lavish, big-screen adaptation drew unexpected laughter for its over the top the scenes depicting life in the Crawford household. Rarely have such good intentions been met with such ridicule. Despite this, the movie was a commercial success and remains, four decades later, immensely popular as an unintentional camp classic. Based on new interviews with people connected to the book and the film—from cast and crew members to industry insiders—With Love, Mommie Dearest details the writing and selling of Christina's book and the aftermath of its publication, as well as the filming of the motion picture, whose backstage drama almost surpassed what was viewed on-screen in the film.Hollywood historian A. Ashley Hoff explores the phenomenon, the camp, and the very real social issues addressed by the book and film.
With My Hands: Poems About Making Things
by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater&“From birdhouses to shadow puppets, the variety of projects included are delightful . . . An effective medley of concept, poetry, and artwork.&”—School Library Journal For young makers and artists, brief, lively poems illustrated by a New York Times bestselling duo celebrate the pleasures of working with your hands. Building, baking, folding, drawing, shaping . . . making something with your own hands is a special, personal experience. Taking an idea from your imagination and turning it into something real is satisfying and makes the maker proud. With My Hands is an inspiring invitation to tap into creativity and enjoy the hands-on energy that comes from making things. &“Poetry sparks an irresistible, primal urge to twist, cut, paint, draw, glue, carve, whittle, daub, tie, hammer, to simply make.&”—Kirkus Reviews &“A cheery reminder of the pride of creating something and the many forms art can take.&”—Publishers Weekly &“Whether invoking cooking, sewing, tying knots, or other undertakings, this provides an enjoyable springboard for aspiring makers.&”—Booklist
With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant
by Richard E. GrantThe star of the cult classic Withnail and I offers &“a refreshing combination of comedy, confession, and coruscation&” in this memoir of the movie business (Kirkus Reviews). Richard E. Grant&’s acting career has included memorable roles in some of Hollywood&’s most critically acclaimed films, including Robert Altman&’s Gosford Park and Francis Ford Coppola&’s Dracula. But he attributes his success to his first film role, starring as a flamboyantly pathetic Shakespearean in the underground hit Withnail and I. As Grant explains, &“I had no notion that, almost without exception, every film offered since would be the result of playing an alcoholic out-of-work actor.&” In With Nails, Grant shares his long, maddening, and immensely rewarding journey through the world of film. From the hell of making Hudson Hawk to befriending Steve Martin on the set of L.A. Story; and from eating spaghetti with the Coppolas, to window-shopping with Sharon Stone, and working with and learning from the best actors and directors in the business, Grant&’s unvarnished memoir &“is a biting and wonderfully funny look at the movie business by an actor who is as clear-eyed and observant about himself as he is about the craziness surrounding him&” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
With Needle and Brush: Schoolgirl Embroidery from the Connecticut River Valley, 1740–1840
by Carol Huber Stephen Huber Susan P Schoelwer Amy Kurtz LansingThe Connecticut River Valley was an important center for the teaching and production of embroidered pictures by young women in private academies from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. This book identifies the distinctive styles developed by teachers and students at schools throughout the valley, from Connecticut and Massachusetts to Vermont and New Hampshire. Needlework was a means of instilling the values of citizenship, faith, knowledge, and patriotism into girls who would become mothers in the early republic. This book describes and illustrates how these embroideries provide insight into the nature of women's schooling at this time. Over the course of their education, girls undertook progressively more complex and difficult needlework. Before the age of ten, they stitched elementary samplers on linen. As the culmination of their studies, they executed elaborate samplers, memorials, and silk pictures as evidence of the skills and accomplishments befitting a lady. Proudly displayed as enticements to potential suitors, these pieces affirmed a young woman's mastery of the polite arts, which encompassed knowledge of religious and literary themes as well as art and music.This publication has been made possible through the generous support of The Coby Foundation, Ltd., the Connecticut Humanities Council, the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, and several private donors.
With Pen & Ink: Expanded Edition (Dover Art Instruction)
by James HallEducator and artist James Hall draws upon his extensive teaching experience to demonstrate how to develop a successful approach to the use of pen and ink. His two-part treatment addresses both decorative and pictorial drawing. Starting with outlines, composing, and the use of solids and hatching, Hall progresses to the renderings for more advanced practitioners of still lifes, architecture, and figures. A great companion for beginners, this volume can help develop a casual interest into a rewarding pastime. The clear, well-illustrated directions offer a "work at your own pace" method that builds in complexity with the reader's progress. This expanded edition updates the original publication's century-old materials list, reflecting the currently available products that best support these traditional skills. Also included are additional gallery samples, selected from the author's original list of exemplary sources, for guidance and inspiration to assist in learning from these timeless teachings.
With Powder on My Nose
by Billie Burke Cameron ShippFollowing on from her successful 1949 memoir "With a Feather on My Nose," here we have a further biography, first published in 1959, from famous Broadway and early silent film actress Billie Burke, best known as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz and widow of Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld of Ziegfeld Follies fame.Co-author Cameron Shipp, a ghost writer who had also worked with Mack Sennett and Lionel Barrymore, assisted in assembling Miss Burke's copious notes and transcribed her enthusiastic monologues into this wonderful biography filled with good-humoured advice on marriage, career, exercise, food (included are some delicious recipes!), and even perfecting the art of lying about your age!A most enjoyable trip down a career film star's memory lane.
With Rommel in the Desert: Tripoli to El Alamein (Images of War)
by David Mitchelhill-GreenThis WWII pictorial history illustrates Nazi Germany&’s North African campaign, showing life under Rommel through vivid wartime photographs. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, the German Army had focused exclusively on preparations needed to wage war in continental Europe. The threat of an Italian collapse in North Africa in early 1941, however, prompted Hitler to aid his ally by sending an armored blocking force to Libya. Not content to merely thwart the British from capturing Tripoli, Lieutenant-General Erwin Rommel harried his inexperienced expeditionary force eastward towards the Nile Delta.With Rommel in the Desert presents a pictorial narrative of the unfolding conflict from the arrival of the Deutsches Afrikakorps until Rommel's departure from the battlefield in March 1943. These rare wartime photographs show daily life in the desert war, with its shifting fortunes and unique challenges. Primarily viewed from the perspective of ordinary combatants, this is their personal record of serving with Rommel in the desert.
With Saw, Plane and Chisel: Building Historic American Furniture With Hand Tools
by Roy Underhill Zachary DillingerBuild furniture the way your ancestors did! Do you enjoy the satisfaction of creating things entirely by hand? Immerse yourself in the world of traditional woodworking as period furniture expert Zachary Dillinger walks you through the hand-tool-only construction of six pieces of classic American furniture. From preparing stock by hand to period-correct joinery methods, you'll learn how our forefathers built furniture--and why they did things the way they did. Within these pages you'll find:An overview of the historical development of major furniture styles from the 1960s through to the mid-19th century--and the European influences from which they evolved.Instruction for period-correct woodworking techniques.Six detailed furniture projects covering popular period styles.Traditional approaches to finishing touches including insights into upholstering by renowned teacher Michael Mascelli and advice from Nancy Cogger of Londonderry Brasses for choosing period-accurate hardware.With Saw, Plane & Chisel shows you how period furniture was made, explains how furniture styles developed and in turn helps you build excellent, realistic heirloom pieces.
With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker
by Victor BockrisA trove of intimate conversations between Burroughs and Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, David Bowie, and more icons of &’70s New York and beyond. During the 1970s, William Burroughs, author of Junky and Naked Lunch, lived in a loft on the Bowery in New York City&’s Lower East Side. Christened &“The Bunker,&” his apartment became a modern-day literary salon with people like Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Susan Sontag, and fellow beat poet Allen Ginsberg passing through for a drink or a joint and the promise of stimulating conversation with the ingenious and eccentric Burroughs. Among Burroughs&’s entourage was author Victor Bockris, whose tape recorder was always running to capture meandering dinner party conversations and electric late-night sessions in the Bunker. In these moments, Bockris captures Burroughs&’s desires, anxieties, and thoughts on writing, photography, punk rock, and more. The recordings and recollections in With William Burroughs create an unprecedentedly multidimensional portrait of a man who is often overshadowed by his reputation.
Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision
by David DucheminWhen this book was first published in 2009, it received high praise for both its practical teaching and its humanity. Ten years later, it is a best-selling modern classic and a must-read. Author David duChemins masterful and balanced emphasis on both the head and the heartcraft and technique on the one hand, passion and vision on the othermirror the process of creating compelling, meaningful photographs that convey your vision. <p><p> Filled with engaging photography, thought-provoking text, actionable takeaways, and creative exercises, the books message continues to resonate strongly with readers across the globe. Celebrating a decade since its original publication, this 10th Anniversary Edition of this book has been given a hardcover treatment and an updated, refined design, but retains everything that has made it so well received in over a dozen languages.
Within Walking Distance: Creating Livable Communities for All
by Philip LangdonInWithin Walking Distance, journalist and urban critic Philip Langdon looks at why and how Americans are shifting toward a more human-scale way of building and living. He shows how people are creating, improving, and caring for walkable communities. To draw the most important lessons, Langdon spent time in six communities that differ in size, history, wealth, diversity, and education, yet share crucial traits: compactness, a mix of uses and activities, and human scale. To improve conditions and opportunities for everyone, Langdon argues thatplaces where the best of life is within walking distanceought to be at the core of our thinking. This book is for anyone who wants to understand what can be done to build, rebuild, or improve a community while retaining the things that make it distinctive.
Witness: One of the Great Foreign Correspondents of the Twentieth Century Tells Her Story
by Ruth GruberWith her perfect memory (and plenty of zip), ninety-five-year-old Ruth Gruber--adventurer, international correspondent, photographer, maker of (and witness to) history, responsible for rescuing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees during World War II and after--tells her story in her own words and photographs. Gruber's life has been extraordinary and extraordinarily heroic. She received a B.A. from New York University in three years, a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin a year later, and a Ph.D. from the University of Cologne (magna cum laude) one year after that, becoming at age twenty the youngest Ph.D. in the world (it made headlines in The New York Times; the subject of her thesis: the then little-known Virginia Woolf). At twenty-four, Gruber became an international correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and traveled across the Soviet Arctic, scooping the world and witnessing, firsthand, the building of cities in the Siberian gulag by the pioneers and prisoners Stalin didn't execute... At thirty, she traveled to Alaska for Harold L. Ickes, FDR's secretary of the interior, to look into homesteading for G.I.s after World War II... And when she was thirty-three, Ickes assigned another secret mission to her--one that transformed her life: Gruber escorted 1,000 Holocaust survivors from Italy to America, the only Jews given refuge in this country during the war. "I have a theory," Gruber said, "that even though we're born Jews, there is a moment in our lives when we become Jews. On that ship, I became a Jew." Gruber's role as rescuer of Jews was just beginning. In Witness, Gruber writes about what she saw and shows us, through her haunting and life-affirming photographs-- taken on each of her assignments-- the worlds, the people, the landscapes, the courage, the hope, the life she witnessed up close and firsthand: the Siberian gulag of the 1930s and the new cities being built there (Gruber, then untrained as a photographer, brought her first Rolleicord with her)... the Alaska highway of 1943, built by 11,000 soldiers, mostly black men from the South (the highway went from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, 1,500 miles to Fairbanks)... her thirteen-day voyage on the army-troop transport Henry Gibbins with refugees and wounded American soldiers, escorting and then photographing the refugees as they arrived in Oswego, New York (they arrived in upstate New York as Adolf Eichmann was sending 750,000 Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz). In 1947, Gruber traveled for the Herald Tribune with the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) through the postwar displaced persons camps in Europe, and then to North Africa, Palestine, and the Arab world; the committee's recommendation that Palestine be partitioned into a Jewish state and an Arab state was one of the key factors that led to the founding of Israel. We see Gruber's remarkable photographs of a former American pleasure boat (which had been renamed Exodus 1947) as it limped into Haifa harbor, trying to deliver 4,500 Jewish refugees (including 600 orphans), under attack by five British destroyers and a cruiser that stormed the Exodus with guns, tear gas, and truncheons, while the crew of the Exodus fought back with potatoes, sticks, and cans of kosher meat. In a cable to the Herald Tribune, Gruber reported that "the ship looks like a matchbox splintered by a nutcracker." She was with the people of the Exodus and photographed them when they were herded onto three prison ships. Gruber represented the entire American press aboard the ship Runnymede Park, photographing the prisoners as they defiantly painted a swastika on the Union Jack. During her thirty-two years as a correspondent, Ruth Gruber photographed what she saw and captured the triumph of the human spirit. "Take photographs with your heart," Edward Steichen told her. Witness is a revelation--of a time, a place, a world, a spirit, a belief. It is, above all else, a book of heart.