Until his death in 2005, he taught languages to ghetto kids, heads of industry and movie stars in a matter of days, succeeding even with people who considered themselves hopeless linguists. To those who have been taught by him, he seemed to be a miracle worker with a magical gift for unlocking the secret powers of the mind.This unique understanding was gained under extreme circumstances. Stateless in Vichy France at the beginning of the Second World War, he was incarcerated and starved in a concentration camp at the foot of the Pyrenees. Forced into slave labour in a coal mine in Provence, he avoided being sent to Auschwitz by hiding within the confines of a deportation camp for six weeks.He escaped death to join the Secret Army of the Resistance. He was arrested and interrogated by Klaus Barbie, Butcher of Lyon, whom he deceived into releasing him, and was later re-arrested by the French Gestapo and tortured. He held out by entering a psychological state in which he no longer registered pain and after six hours of torture, his tormentors threw him into a cell and he survived to re-join the Resistance. After the Allies invaded France he joined the American forces, fought his way into Germany and was with the troops who liberated Dachau. He personally interrogated the camp’s hangman and oversaw his handwritten confession.At the end of the war he became a Nazi-hunter. Working for American Counter Intelligence he posed as a Nazi himself to infiltrate and expose underground networks of SS men dedicated to the return of a Fourth Reich.In spite of the fact that his entire family had been murdered in Auschwitz, and many close friends killed in combat, at the very end of the war he staged an elaborate gala evening in Munich which he called a Reconciliation Concert. Using German musicians, and in defiance of strict Allied non-fraternisation laws, he brought friend and foe together in the belief that there had to be a different and better future.Author Christopher Robbins has dug deep to explore and substantiate the details of the Michel Thomas story. He has authenticated every episode through camp records, Vichy documents, Resistance papers, US Army reports and hundreds of hours of interviews with this extraordinary man. The result is one of the most inspirational stories of the 20th century.

    The Germans called it Auschwitz. Auschwitz; a name now synonymous with man's darkest hour. Contrary to widespread belief, Auschwitz was not just a camp for those that the Third Reich deemed 'undesirables' - Jews, homosexuals and communists - hundreds of British Tommies were also incarcerated there and beheld the atrocities meted out by Hitler's brutal SS. This is the true story of one of those witnesses. Forced to do hard labour in an industrial factory, beaten by SS guards, part of a partisan group aiding in the plans for a mass breakout of Jewish prisoners. An escapee, a survivor; Arthur Dodd - a Spectator in Hell.

    "Love in the Tall Grass" takes Cordelia down a coastal road on the last day of the twentieth century to keep a date with her lover that has been nine years in the waiting. "Stay Close to the Water's Edge" tells of a young Harvard student who is pitilessly humiliated by his homophobic stepfather on his birthday. Keegan's writing has a clear vision of unaffected truths and boldly explores a world where dreams, memory, and chance have crippling consequences for those involved. The stories are often dark and enveloped in a palpable atmosphere, and the reader feels that something "big" is going on in each of these carefully sculpted tales. The award-winning Antarctica, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001, and recipient of the prestigious Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the William Trevor Prize, and the Martin Healy Award, is a haunting debut. "These stories are diamonds." -- Emily Robichaud, Esquire "That Keegan has a knack for storytelling is proved many times over...." -- Caitlin Macy, The New York Times Book Review "[These] stories ... show Keegan to be an authentic talent with a gimlet eye and a distinctive voice." -- Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe "Reading these stories is like coming upon work of Ann Beattie or Raymond Carver at the start of their careers." -- Jerry Griswold, Los Angeles Times

    On one side, total darkness and absolute coldness; on the other, a searing desert and eternal day. The survivors live on a thin slice of earth where day and night meet. A territory known as TWILIGHT. Marvin, now old and blind, sensing his end, goes on a long trek to the legendary cemetery of dragons.

    Set in the west of Ireland and Venice, this book features a shy and unconfident schoolteacher and his lovelorn and depressed father whose only desire is to die and join his wife and daughter in heaven.

    In the torn, square hole, as big as an open, blitzed barn, we could see a muddle of bedding, possessions, plumbing, broken pipes, overflowing toilets, half-naked men, women looking for children. Cabins were bashed in; railings were ripped off; the lifesaving rafts were dangling at crazy angles."On July 18, 1947, Ruth Gruber, an American journalist, waited on a wharf in Haifa as the Exodus 1947 limped into harbor. The evening before, Gruber had learned that this unarmed ship, with more than 4,500 Holocaust survivors crammed into a former tourist vessel designed for 400 passengers, had been rammed and boarded by the British Navy, which was determined to keep her desperate human cargo from finding refuge in Palestine. Now, though soldiers blockaded both exit and entry to the weary vessel, Gruber was determined to meet the refugees and hear their tales. For the next several months she pursued the émigrés' stories, from Haifa to the prison camps on Cyprus (where she was misled by the British to believe the DPs would land, though they never did), to southern France, and, appallingly, back to Hamburg, Germany, where they were ultimately sent by the intractable British authorities.  As the lone journalist covering this story, Gruber sent riveting dispatches and vivid photographs back to the New York and Paris Herald Tribune, which in turn sent them out to the rest of the world press. Gruber's relentless reporting and striking photographs shaped perceptions worldwide as to the situation of postwar Jewish refugees and of the British Mandate in Palestine, and arguably influenced the United Nations decision to finally create the State of Israel in 1948. In 1948, Gruber assembled her dispatches and thirty of her pictures into Destination Palestine, the book that became the basis for Leon Uris's bestselling novel Exodus and the film of the same name.  In this revised and expanded edition, Gruber has included a new opening chapter of never-before-published material on the wretched DP camps of Europe, where the refugees were living before boarding the Exodus 1947; updated the fate of many of the passengers, describing how they smuggled themselves into Palestine--despite the myriad obstacles thrown up by the British authorities--even before the State of Israel was born; and selected seventy additional photographs from her personal archives.  Bartley Crum's introduction to the original edition, retained here, likened Gruber's achievement to John Hersey's Hiroshima for its powerful compression of a momentous event, its vivid reportage, and its capacity to change the way people think about contemporary history. Exodus 1947 is an enormously moving account by one of the twentieth century's most remarkable women, stirring and shocking us more than fifty years after that battered ship entered Haifa harbor.

    In Minor Angels Volodine depicts a postcataclysmic world in which the forces of capitalism have begun to reestablish themselves. Sharply opposed to such a trend, a group of crones confined to a nursing home—all of them apparently immortal—resolves to create an avenging grandson fashioned of lint and rags. Though conjured to crush the rebirth of capitalism, the grandson is instead seduced by its charms—only to fall back into the hands of his creators, where he manages to forestall his punishment by reciting one “narract” a day. It is these narracts, or prose poems, that compose the text of Minor Angels.

    Reminiscent of a scrapbook, this extraordinary book chronicles what Michael Collins did, saw, and thought about in space. Through fascinating facts, quotes, checklists, original drawings, and photos taken both in space and on Earth, it also tells how the astronauts prepared for their historic journey, what they brought with them, and what they left behind.

    At its center is a poignant story about the narrator's divorce and the fact that he isn't "the author" of his soon-to-be-ex-wife's pregnancy. Maybe he's suffering from attention deficit disorder; maybe he's just stuck with a skewed if stoic appreciation of life's messy flux. Whatever the cause, his monologue turns into a quirky, compulsively readable book that deftly hints at the emptiness and sadness at its core.(Anderson Tepper, The New York Times)

    At the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann he was described as a ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’, risking his own life to save Jews threatened with death by the Nazis. In fact, his post at the Passport Office was a front for his real role as MI6 head of station. Despite having no diplomatic immunity and being liable to arrest at any time, he went into the concentration camps to get Jews out, he hid them in his home and helped them to get forged passports. One Jewish aid worker estimated that he saved ‘tens of thousands’ of people from the Holocaust.Michael Smith has researched and vividly written one of the greatest unknown heroic stories of the Second World War.Just as we published this remarkable book in Hardback in January 1999, the RIGHTEOUS AMONG NATIONS accolade was bestowed upon Frank Foley by Yad Vasham - Israel's Holocaust Memorial CentreThe evidence collected for the book by Michael Smith proved conclusive enough for the award, also held by Oskar Schindler. now this new edition is made more accessible for those interested in reading Michael Smith's astonishing story of selfless heroism. Sales of the hardback put the book on the edge of the Sunday Times Top Ten non-fiction bestsellers, and soon afterwards the special edition tpk sold out [5k copies].After the award had been announced, Michael Smith, author of FOLEY: THE SPY WHO SAVED l0,000 JEWS, called Frank Foley 'a true British hero who worked not just for his country, but also for justice and the good of humanity. He has saved tens of thousands of lives. No-one could have deserved this award more.'FOLEY tells for the first time the story of Frank Foley's heroism and humanity. He was a spy-a fact that made his efforts on behalf of the Jews even more dangerous. His role as head of the British passport control office in Berlin was cover for his real role as MI6 Head of Station in the German capital. In this position he had no diplomatic immunity and was liable to arrest at any time, but for years he ignored all the rules to help Jews to leave the country.This is one of the greatest untold stories of heroism and humanity from the second world war recounted for the first time. When the Nazis came to power in the early l930s, it was clear that they were intent on obliterating all signs of Jewish influence from Germany and that tens of thousands of Jews would suffer horribly at the hands of Hitler's acolytes. For many of Germany's beleaguered Jews, Frank Foley, a quiet, unobtrusive and determined Englishman was to become their saviour.He was not only a brave and humane man, he was also one of the most brilliant intelligence officers ever to serve in MI6, and deserves recognition as such. It was through his flair for recruiting agents that the allies obtained details of Hitler's secret rocket programme and the progress of its atomic research. He was also the MI6 officer on the Double Cross Committee, masterminding the recruitment of German spies across the world to work as double agents for the British.

    This is a collection of his shorter works. "Death in Venice", later filmed by Lucion Visconti starring Dirk Bogarde, was published in 1911. It is a poetic meditation on art and beauty, where the dying composer Aschenbach (modelled on Gustav Mahler) becomes fixated by the young boy Tadzio. The other stories are: "Tonio Kroger"; the collection entitled "Tristan"; "The Blood of the Walsungs"; "Mario the Magician"; and "The Tables of the Law". A number of essays are also included.

    She never dreamed her youthful research would be the start of a distinguished publishing career and that her life would be the basis for the 1990 Academy Award-nominated film The Nasty Girl.She had lived in Passau, Germany, her entire life, yet she was unaware that the father of Heinrich Himmler had once been a professor at the college-preparatory high school she attended or that Adolf Hitler and other prominent Nazi party members had grown up just across the Danube River in Austria. Since Rosmus had no knowledge of these and other Nazi affiliations and activities in her hometown, she embarked on her essay project confident that the Passau citizenry would be proud of her findings. Rosmus had no inkling she had just begun what would become a lifelong effort to uncover Passau's buried complicity in the crimes of the Nazi state - an effort that would bring overwhelming gratitude from the international Jewish community but contempt and ostracism from the people whom she had known all her life. about her fateful decision to expose her hometown's Nazi past.In this volume Rosmus recounts her determination after years of persecution, threats and physical attacks to immigrate to the United States. Despite the praise she had earned around the world, officials and citizens of Passau continued to obstruct her work. In this memoir, Rosmus relives her turmoil over whether to stay in Passau or to leave; describes the more open-minded world she found in Washington D.C.; and discusses how she has been able to carry on her research from the United States.

    War of the Century focuses on key events and policies such as Hitler’s decision to invade the Soviet Union, the legendary and horrific siege of Stalingrad, the Germans’ barbaric treatment of Soviet civilians and Red Army prisoners of war, and Stalin’s paranoid revenge against real and perceived enemies. With this new evidence, Rees explores the truth behind the war, its ruthless leaders and devastating effects on the military and civilian populations of both sides.