R. R. Tolkien and C. S. LewisThe First World War laid waste to a continent and permanently altered the political and religious landscape of the West. For a generation of men and women, it brought the end of innocence—and the end of faith. Yet for J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian imagination. Had there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbit, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to Christianity by C. S. Lewis.Unlike a generation of young writers who lost faith in the God of the Bible, Tolkien and Lewis produced epic stories infused with the themes of guilt and grace, sorrow and consolation. Giving an unabashedly Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment, the two writers created works that changed the course of literature and shaped the faith of millions. This is the first book to explore their work in light of the spiritual crisis sparked by the conflict.

    We are creatures of intense desire.  We emerge from the womb longing for touch and affection.  Desire pulsates within us every waking moment of our lives.  Our hearts are fueled by hungry yearnings for connection, for relationship, for a sense of belonging.  We plunge into life, giving ourselves away to him or her, to this or that, drinking in every promise of fulfillment.  And yet, we always emerge from the quest for love still feeling a persistent and insatiable desire for something more.  A God Named Desire is about that something more.  There are some books that speak with an unusual level of clarity to the deepest issues that press the human heart.  This is one of those rare books.  You will never see god, or yourself, the same after the insights of A God Named Desire are introduced into your mind.

    This is the wartime memories of a Marine Corpsman who served in Company B, of the 6th Battalion of the 4th Regiment. He saw 100 days of continuous combat during the Battle of Okinawa, including the Battle for Sugar Loaf, and was part of the landing force that was headed to Japan when the atomic bomb dropped. These were recorded after 60 years of reflection, and are presented to honor all veterans.

    

    Army nurses. When the war began, some of them had so little idea of what to expect that they packed party dresses; but the reality of service quickly caught up with them, whether they waded through the water in the historic landings on North African and Normandy beaches, or worked around the clock in hospital tents on the Italian front as bombs fell all around them. For more than half a century these women's experiences remained untold, almost without reference in books, historical societies, or military archives. After years of reasearch and hundreds of hours of interviews, Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee have created a dramatic narrative that at last brings to light the critical role that women played throughout the war. From the North African and Italian Campaigns to the Liberation of France and the Conquest of Germany, U.S. Army nurses rose to the demands of war on the frontlines with grit, humor, and great heroism. A long overdue work of history, And If I Perish is also a powerful tribute to these women and their inspiring legacy.

    Throughout the war, Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored the agents for the SOE's French Section, which sent more than four hundred young men and women into occupied France, at least one hundred of whom never returned and were reported MPD (missing presumed dead) after the war. Twelve of these were women and among Atkins' most cherished spies. When the war ended in 1945, she made it her personal mission to find out what happened to them and the other agents lost behind enemy lines, tracing rigorously their horrific final journeys. But as the woman who carried out this astonishing search appeared quintessentially English, Atkins was nothing of the sort. As we follow her through the devastation of postwar Germany, we learn Atkins herself covered her life in mystery so that even her closest family knew almost nothing of her past.In A Life in Secrets Sarah Helm has stripped away Vera Atkins' many veils. Drawing on recently released sixty-year-old government files and her unprecedented access to the private papers of the Atkins family, Helm vividly reconstructs a complex and extraordinary life.