Best of
Non-Fiction

1945

The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery


Witold Pilecki - 1945
    Polish army officer Witold Pilecki volunteered to be arrested by the Germans and reported from inside the camp. His intelligence reports, smuggled out in 1941, were among the first eyewitness accounts of Auschwitz atrocities: the extermination of Soviet POWs, its function as a camp for Polish political prisoners, and the "final solution" for Jews. Pilecki received brutal treatment until he escaped in April 1943; soon after, he wrote a brief report. This book is the first English translation of a 1945 expanded version. In the foreword, Poland's chief rabbi states, "If heeded, Pilecki's early warnings might have changed the course of history." Pilecki's story was suppressed for half a century after his 1948 arrest by the Polish Communist regime as a "Western spy." He was executed and expunged from Polish history. Pilecki writes in staccato style but also interjects his observations on humankind's lack of progress: "We have strayed, my friends, we have strayed dreadfully... we are a whole level of hell worse than animals!" These remarkable revelations are amplified by 40 b&w photos, illus., and maps

We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love


Robert A. Johnson - 1945
    

A History of Western Philosophy


Bertrand Russell - 1945
    In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associated -- Cantor, Frege, and Whitehead, co-author with Russell of the monumental Principia Mathematica.

No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith


Fawn M. Brodie - 1945
    Was he a genuine prophet, or a gifted fabulist who became enthralled by the products of his imagination and ended up being martyred for them? 24 pages of photos. Map.

Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945


Marie Vassiltchikov - 1945
    The secret diaries of a twenty-three-year-old White Russian princess who worked in the German Foreign Office from 1940 to 1944 and then as a nurse, these pages give us a unique picture of wartime life in that sector of German society from which the 20th of July Plot -- the conspiracy to kill Hitler -- was born.Includes index.

Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States


George R. Stewart - 1945
    George R. Stewart's love of the surprising story, and his focus not just on language but on how people interact with their environment, make Names on the Land a unique window into the history and sociology of America. From the first European names in what would later be the United States; Ponce de León's flowery Florída, Cortez' semi-mythical isle of California, and the red river Rio Colorado; to New England, New Amsterdam, and New Sweden; the French and the Russians; border ruffians and Boston Brahmins: Names on the Land is no dry dictionary but a fascinating panorama of language in action, bursting at the seams with revealing details. In lively, passionate writing, Stewart explains where Indian names were likely to be kept, and why; the fad that gave rise to dozens of Troys and to Athens, Georgia, as well as suburban Parksides, Brookmonts, and Woodcrest Manors; why "Brooklyn" is Dutch but looks English and why "Arkansas" is Arkansaw, except of course when it isn't. His book has delighted generations of road-trippers, armchair travelers, and anyone who ever wondered how their hometown, or (more likely) the next town over, could be called that. Stewart's answer is always a story; one of the countless stories that lie behind the rich and strange diversity of America.

John W. Schaum Piano Course: C -- The Purple Book


John W. Schaum - 1945
    Schaum Piano Course has been newly revised with 100 percent new engravings and typesetting, color highlighting for concept emphasis, updated song titles and lyrics, and full-color illustrations.

The Grizzly Bear Family Book


Michio Hoshino - 1945
    They are studied and researched and lived into existence. Each book helps to make the world of nature that much more real, more understandable, and more valuable to children.

John W. Schaum Piano Course: G-The Amber Book- Leading to Mastery of the Instrument


John W. Schaum - 1945
    Schaum Piano Course has been newly revised with 100 percent new engravings and typesetting, color highlighting for concept emphasis, updated song titles and lyrics, and full-color illustrations.

Animal Breeding Plans


Jay L. Lush - 1945
    It aims to furnish the reader with a clear understanding of the means available for improving the heredity of farm animals, especially what each possible method will or will not do well. Highly recommended for modern farmers and animal breeders. Contents include: "Origin and Domestication of Farm Animals", "Consequences of Domestication", "Beginning of Pedigree Breeding Methods in the United States", "History of Animal Breeding Methods in the United States", "Relation of the Breed Association to Breed Improvement", "Genetic Principles in Animal Breeding", "Mendelian Basis of Inheritance", etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new introduction on farming.

John W. Schaum Piano Course: H-The Grey Book : Leading to Mastery of the Instrument


John W. Schaum - 1945
    Schaum Piano Course has been newly revised with 100 percent new engravings and typesetting, color highlighting for concept emphasis, updated song titles and lyrics, and full-color illustrations.

Skippy's Family


Stephen W. Meader - 1945
    We quote Mr. Meader’s own description, as expressed in his foreword: “This is the true history of a small, brown mongrel dog, a wholly unremarkable dog except to the family which knew him best. For seventeen years he was a full-fledged member of that family—as definite a personality as Dad or Mother or any of the four children. He shared our ups and downs, our tribulations and our holiday moods. He was sometimes comical, sometimes exasperating, but always intelligent, lovable, loyal and courageous. His firmness of purpose was a household byword. When, in the fullness of years, the time for parting came, it was a black day for all of us. We miss him still, though many months have passed. But he left with us a host of whimsical recollections, some of which I have set down in this story of his life.“Being adopted by a dog is a serious matter and should not be entered into lightly. Like marriage, it is a relationship that depends for its success on patience and understanding. Sometimes it involves the possibility of heartbreak. Yet the human being who has never known the companionship and devotion of a dog has surely missed a worthwhile part of living.”

This Man from Lebanon


Barbara Young - 1945
    

Eyes of the War: A Photographic Report of World War II


Nat Hyman - 1945
    America's Fighting Forces on All War Fronts.

Memories of Pioneer Life in British Columbia: A Short History of the Agassiz Family


Florence Goodfellow - 1945
    This book follows the journey of the Agassiz family until they settled in Ferny Coombe, now the small town of Agassiz, BC.

Pleasant Valley


Louis Bromfield - 1945
    And Bromfield skillfully portrays that marriage between dream and reality that is so necessary in working the land as he writes, "Wait until Spring comes!" This beautiful new edition of Pleasant VAlley is as useful now, maybe even more so. than when it was first published in the early 1940s.

John W. Schaum Piano Course: F -- The Brown Book


John W. Schaum - 1945
    Schaum Piano Course has been newly revised with 100 percent new engravings and typesetting, color highlighting for concept emphasis, updated song titles and lyrics, and full-color illustrations.

A Rising Wind


Walter Francis White - 1945
    

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The (Volume II, 395 A.D. - 1185 A.D.)


Edward Gobbon - 1945
    

Flowering Dusk


Ella Young - 1945
    Poet, dreamer, singer, she was a member of that brilliant group including Padraic Colum, William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, Dr. Douglas Hyde, Fiona Macleod, George Russell, and James Stephens, which has given such vitality to the Celtic Renaissance in literature.Flowering Dusk is the story of her life in Ireland and in America, but it is not an autobiography in the usual sense; for out of her vivid imagination and in her own inimitable style she weaves a pattern of pictures with half remembered meaning--pictures of her girlhood in the south of Ireland, the world of elves, fairies and ghosts. Later after graduation from the Royal University in Dublin, she began her researches in Celtic mythology. She sought her materials first hand by learning to speak the Gaelic language and by living among the peasants in isolated regions of Ireland, where the lovely old legends and splendid sagas which are the secret of the Irish peasant spirit, are still kept alive.

The Lambs: A Story of Pre-Victorian England


Katharine Anthony - 1945
    The story of Charles and Mary Lamb, writers living during the late 18th & early 19th-century in London.