Best of
Non-Fiction

1953

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary


Marta Hillers - 1953
    The anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject--the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.

The Captive Mind


Czesław Miłosz - 1953
    The second chapter considers the way in which the West was seen at the time by residents of Central and Eastern Europe, while the third outlines the practice of Ketman, the act of paying lip service to authority while concealing personal opposition, describing seven forms applied in the people's democracies of mid-20th century Europe.The four chapters at the heart of the book then follow, each a portrayal of a gifted Polish man who capitulated, in some fashion, to the demands of the Communist state. They are identified only as Alpha, the Moralist; Beta, The Disappointed Lover; Gamma, the Slave of History; and Delta, the Troubadour. However, each of the four portraits were easily identifiable: Alpha is Jerzy Andrzejewski, Beta is Tadeusz Borowski, Gamma is Jerzy Putrament and Delta is Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński.The book moves toward its climax with an elaboration of "enslavement through consciousness" in the penultimate chapter and closes with a pained and personal assessment of the fate of the Baltic nations in particular.

Amazing Love: True Stories of the Power of Forgiveness


Corrie ten Boom - 1953
    Her story has been told in the movie The Hiding Place, and in this wonderful book she shares with us many more amazing encounters with people in camps and jails, with students and actresses, and with the sophisticated and the illiterate. We meet on these pages not Corrie, but Corrie's Christ.

The Silent World


Jacques-Yves Cousteau - 1953
    Cousteau, Philippe Tailliez, and the great civilian diver Frédéric Dumas, plunged into the Mediterranean with the first aqualung, co-invented by Cousteau.In this fascinating report, Cousteau and Dumas tell what it is like to be “menfish” swimming in the deep twilight zone with sharks, mantas, morays, whales, and octopi. They tell of exploring sunken ships and of the treasures they brought up. They describe ventures into an inland water cave that all but claimed their lives, and their crazy human-guinea-pig experiment with underwater explosions. Cousteau writes brilliantly of his audacious 50-fathom dive into the zone of rapture, where divers become like drunken gods; and of the 396-foot dive that took a brave companion's life.Cousteau, Dumas, and their courageous teams of divers have used their new techniques of exploration to make important discoveries in almost every branch of science. In The Silent World they share with us the greatest undersea experience men have ever had.

Angel Unaware: A Touching Story of Love and Loss


Dale Evans Rogers - 1953
    But their excitement turned to concern when they were informed that Robin was born with Down's Syndrome and advised to "put her away." The Rogers ignored such talk and instead kept Robin, and she graced their home for two and a half years. Though Robin's time on earth was short, she changed her parents' lives and even made life better for other children born with special needs in the years to come. Angel Unaware is Robin's account of her life as she looks down from heaven. As she speaks to God about the mission of love she just completed on earth, the reader sees how she brought her parents closer to God and encouraged them to help other children in need. This book, which changed the way America treated children with special needs, is now available to a new generation. It is the perfect gift for parents of special needs children, parents grieving the death of a child, or anyone whose life has been touched by a special child.

A Writer's Diary


Virginia Woolf - 1953
    The first entry included here is dated 1918 and the last, three weeks before her death in 1941. Between these points of time unfolds the private world??—??the anguish, the triumph, the creative vision??—??of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. “A Writer’s Diary . . . is Virginia Woolf . . . The whole vibrates with the ups and downs of a passionate relationship . . . in the intensities, variations, alarms and excursions, panics and exaltations of her relationship to her art.”??—??New York Times Book ReviewEdited and with a Preface by Leonard Woolf.

Selected Diaries


Virginia Woolf - 1953
    Between 1st January 1915 and her death in 1941 she regularly recorded her thoughts with unfailing grace, courage, honesty and wit. The result is one of the greatest diaries in the English language.

Seven Years in Tibet


Heinrich Harrer - 1953
    Recounts how the author, an Austrian, escaped from an English internment camp in India in 1943 and spent the next seven years in Tibet, observing its social practices, religion, politics, and people.

The Rivers Ran East


Leonard F. Clark - 1953
    A former U.S. Army intelligence officer, Clark is joined on his expedition by Inez Pokorny, a gutsy, multilingual female explorer. Their treacherous journey includes encounters with head-hunting Jivaro Indians, man-eating jaguars, 40-foot-long anacondas, poisonous plants, and shamanistic healers. Against the odds, Clark and Pokorny reach their destination, but nearly starve to death trying to transport sacks of gold out of the dense tropical foliage.

The Overloaded Ark


Gerald Durrell - 1953
    It is the chronicle of a six months collecting trip to the West African colony of British Cameroon - now Cameroon - (Dec 1947 - Aug 1948) - that Durrell made with the highly regarded aviculturist and ornithologist John Yealland.Their reasons for going on the trip were twofold: "to collect and bring back alive some of the fascinating animals, birds, and reptiles that inhabit the region," and secondly, for both men to realise a long cherished dream to see Africa.Its combination of comic exaggeration and environmental accuracy, portrayed in Durrell's light, clever prose, made it a great success. It launched Durrell's career as a writer of both non-fiction and fiction, which in turn financed his work as a zookeeper and conservationist.The Bafut Beagles and A Zoo in My Luggage are sequels of sorts, telling of his later returns to the region.

Exploration Fawcett


Percy Harrison Fawcett - 1953
    For 10 years, he had wandered the forests and death-filled rivers in search of a "lost" cities; convinced he knew the location of one, he headed off for the last time--never to be heard from again. The thrilling story of what occurred during that time has now been compiled by his son from manuscripts, letters, and logbooks. What happened to him after remains a mystery. "...should be read by everyone."--Daily Telegraph.

Lost Trails, Lost Cities


Percy Harrison Fawcett - 1953
    In this chronicle, the Colonel detailed his adventures in Mato Grosso, South America, as he searched for the ruins of an ancient lost city ("I call it 'Z' for the sake of convenience," he wrote) between 1906 and 1925. Though his journal ended with his strange disappearance sometime after 29 May 1925, his story continued long after.

A History of France


André Maurois - 1953
    

My Zoo Family


Helen Martini - 1953
    Martini's husband, head keeper of the Lion House at the Bronx Zoo, brought her a new-born lion cub and asked her to save its life. A year or so later three tiger cubs in need of a foster mother's care found refuge in the Martinis' small apartment in the Bronx. A black leopard baby followed--and Mrs. Martini was launched upon a career that was hugely to her liking. My Zoo Family is the story of the quite extraordinary relationship between Mrs. Martini and the dozens of animals she has helped to rear: lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, gorillas, marmosets, deer and many, many more. Seen through her fond eyes, each one is a personality, as individual and fascinating as the members of any more conventional family: quick-witted Bagheera, the black leopard; Ugly, the melancholy howler monkey who required that everyone mourn with him; the clownish lion Zambezi; gentle Dolly, the deer, so affectionate and inquisitive; and lovely Dacca, one of the original tiger cubs who grew to superb maturity and regularly produces offspring which she brings to Mrs. Martini for her blessing. But although this is a story first--a chronicle of personal adventure and achievement in an odd profession--it is also a valuable footnote to scientific inquiry. For Mrs. Martini has demonstrated that even the wildest creatures, judged untamable, will respond to kindness and trust. Largely through her efforts there has been established at the Bronx Zoo a nursery which every year saves the lives of the young and valuable animals. It has been a wonderful laboratory, and the things she has observed of animal behavior and psychology, the problems of rearing wild animals in captivity, make absorbing reading.The book also contains some 50 photographs of the Martinis working with the animals, spread on four pages together in four different places in the book.

Performing Flea


P.G. Wodehouse - 1953
    Wodehouse has long stood in the forefront of contemporary writers. His name and characters have become part of the English language. Yet there are few modern authors about whom less is known or more is speculated. A gentle, unassuming man, he has sidestepped personal publicity where he could, preferring to retire to quiet backwaters where he could devote himself to his two life interests- reading and writing. And much of his writing at such moments took the form of personal letters to friends- gay, self revealing documents that disclosed better than the pen of any biographer the true nature of the man. Bill Townend- a friend of his boyhood days- was among the most regular of his correspondents, and this volume comprises a selection of the letters Wodehouse wrote to him over a period of more than thirty years. Beginning in the days when he was still struggling for recognition, the letters bridge the years to the present day. Shrewd and often deliciously funny, they tell of the people he meets, the books he is reading, and reveal the infinite care which goes into writing, rewriting and polishing of each new work that comes from his pen. The war years, life inside a German prison camp, his release from internment and the repercussions to the broadcasts he made from Germany to America form an important side of the book. Then come the post war years which show him working as prodigiously as ever, in his seventieth year.

Bandoola


J.H. Williams - 1953
    Bandoola and his oozie, Po Toke, are the principal characters in this delightful successor to a famous best-seller. But there are many others whom the author met and knew in the course of his work of extracting timber from the teak forests of Burma; Willie, who preferred wine to women; Millie, who could read the droppings of elephants like books; reckless Gerry Dawson and desperate Rasher; and—among the most intriguing—Molly Mia, the dog which Elephant Bill controlled by telepathy and which helped to select a wife for him.

French Impressionists (Great art of the ages)


Herman J. Wechsler - 1953
    

Don't Call It Frisco


Herb Caen - 1953
    In the San Francisco Chronicle, Herb Caen wrote, "Caress each Spanish syllable, salute our Italian saint. Don't say Frisco..." Another writer compared that kind of assumed familiarity to a lack of respect, akin to shortening the name of the famous composer Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff to Rocky.

The Literature of the Spanish People: From Roman Times to the Present Day


Gerald Brenan - 1953
    First published in paperback in 1976, this book remains a useful study of Spanish literary history.

A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture


Bernard Orchard - 1953
    

Tales Of Moorland And Estuary


Henry Williamson - 1953
    The small villages of Devon, set between the Severn Estuary to the north and the rivers of Dartmoor to the south, provide the well known setting for this collection of tales about birds, animals, fish and the country people who lived there. Written throughout the period when Williamson was at work on TARKA THE OTTER, the tales are harsh, often highlighting the difficulties of rural life. Yet their truth of detail gives an astonishing indication of Williamson’s remarkable attunement with the English countryside and wild life. He can truly be said to have achieved his ‘ambition to bring the sight of water, tree, fish, sky and other life onto paper.’

An Introduction To Anthropology


Ralph Leon Beals - 1953
    

Language and History in Early Britain


Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson - 1953
    An attempt is made here to trace, from all available evidence, their development from the first to the twelfth century, and especially to analyse the chronology of their sound changes. Part I deals with the sources, such as Romano-British and post-Roman inscriptions; names in Classical authors; early Welsh, Cornish and Breton documents; the Latin loanwords in British and Irish; and many British place-names in English, which can only be adequately understood when fitted into such a chronological scheme. Part II sets out in detail the probable dates of the linguistic developments concerned.

Tigrero!


Sasha Siemel - 1953
    For genuine thrills and suspense without equal, this book takes a back seat to none."--The Navy News Review

The Trial of John George Haigh, The Acid Bath Murder


Lord Dunboyne - 1953
    Trial held at the Sussex summer assizes, Lewes, July 18-19, 1949

The Hawaiian Kingdom--Volume 2: Twenty Critical Years, 1854-1874


Ralph S. Kuykendall - 1953
    During the first, Hawaii was a monarchy ruled by native kings and queens. Then came the perilous transition period when new leaders, after failing to secure annexation to the United States, set up a miniature republic. The third period began in 1898 when Hawaii by annexation became American territory.The Hawaiian Kingdom, by Ralph S. Kuykendall, is the detailed story of the island monarchy. In the first volume, Foundation and Transformation, the author gives a brief sketch of old Hawaii before the coming of the Europeans, based on the known and accepted accounts of this early period. He then shows how the arrival of sea rovers, traders, soldiers of forture, whalers, scoundrels, missionaries, and statesmen transformed the native kingdom, and how the foundations of modern Hawaii were laid.In the second volume, Twenty Critical Years, the author deals with the middle period of the kingdom's history, when Hawaii was trying to insure her independence while world powers maneuvered for dominance in the Pacific. It was an important period with distinct and well-marked characteristics, but the noteworthy changes and advances which occurred have received less attention from students of history than they deserve. Much of the material is taken from manuscript sources and appears in print for the first time in the second volume.The third and final volume of this distinguished trilogy, The Kalakaua Dynasty, covers the colorful reign of King Kalakaua, the Merry Monarch, and the brief and tragic rule of his successor, Queen Liliuokalani. This volume is enlivened by such controversial personages as Claus Spreckels, Walter Murray Gibson, and Celso Caesar Moreno. Through it runs the thread of the reciprocity treaty with the United States, its stimulating effect upon the island economy, and the far-reaching consequences of immigration from the Orient to supply plantation labor. The trilogy closes with the events leading to the downfall of the Hawaiian monarchy and the establishment of the Provisional Government in 1893.

The Selected Letters of Lord Byron


Lord Byron - 1953
    They are arranged chronologically and divided into major periods of his life. Among these letters are many to his mother and to his half-sister Augusta. This volume also includes an extensive introduction by the Editor, Jacques Barzun. There is also an index, footnotes, and an appendix entitled "Byron's Friends and Connections."Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-7803

Icebound Summer


Sally Carrighar - 1953
    She has an almost magical ability to bring wild creatures to life with her literary renditions of their world--allowing us to get inside that world and live it briefly. In Icebound Summer, we are taken through a brief and intense arctic summer when seemingly frozen and lifeless tundra comes to life. From the arctic fox to the arctic terns overhead, we suddenly realize this is a place of surprisingly abundant life. Icebound Summer is one of the great outdoor classics of wildlife literature.

Love one another


Fulton J. Sheen - 1953
    

Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (Transaction of the American Philosophical Society) (Transaction of the American Philosophical Society): 43


Adolf Berger - 1953
    An encyclopedic dictionary, with extensive bibliographies, designed for teachers and students of Roman Law in the classroom, for students of legal history who have little or no knowledge of Latin, and for readers of juristic or literary Latin works in translations that may not be reliable when legal terms or problems are involved.

Architecture Through the Ages


Talbot Faulkner Hamlin - 1953
    

Crow Indians: Hunters of the Northern Plains


Sonia Bleeker - 1953