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    She married a Frenchman, took on all his compatriots, and has been the heroine of a love affair ever since. Her skirmishes with French traffic, French maids, French salesladies, French holidays, French law, French doctors, above all, the French language, are here set forth in a delightful and amusing record. Paraphrasing Caesar, Miss de Havilland says, "I came, I saw, I was conquered."

    It includes a brief introduction describing the evolution of Mark Twain’s ideas about writing his autobiography, as well as a chronology of his life, brief family biographies, and an excerpt from the forthcoming Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2—a controversial but characteristically humorous attack on Christian doctrine.The year 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death. In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain’s works, UC Press published Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1, the first of a projected three-volume edition of the complete, uncensored autobiography. The book became an immediate bestseller and was hailed as the capstone of the life’s work of America’s favorite author.Read an excerpt here: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1:The Complete and Authoritative Edition by Mark Twain by University of California Press

    But who would have thought that the slim and pale looking boy would become one of the most successful fighter pilots of the war? Almost unknown outside the RAF, Sgt. Pilot J.H. Lacey shot down more enemy aircraft in the Battle of Britain than any other fighter pilot. He shot down the Heinkel 111 which had just bombed Buckingham Palace and had the highest score (twenty-three) of enemy aircraft destroyed, as late as 1941. Thereafter commissioned, early in 1941, he was for a time an instructor at an operational training unit, passing on to others the knowledge that he had won in the toughest series of air battles ever fought. Returning to operations, he served under another fabulous air fighter, ‘Paddy’ Finucane; then was posted to rocket (airborne weapons) development, a task almost as dangerous as combat flying. Later he commanded a famous fighter squadron in the Far East. and shot down the first Japanese he encountered. Unorthodox, autocratic in his command but resentful of unreasonable interference from those above him, Ginger Lacey was a boyish-looking figure with a fantastic gift for leadership, and sharp eyes, bravery and an innate sense of timing. He died in 1989, but his amazing story was recorded by an experienced writer who was a fellow officer in the RAF until 1951 and knew him well. It is a memorable and stirring biography. ‘The best all action war story yet produced.’ - Yorkshire Post ‘A top-scoring story.’ - Evening Standard ‘Fast-moving biography.’ - Sunday Times ‘The best biography of a fighter pilot ever written.’ - Yorkshire Evening Post Richard Townsend Bickers volunteered for the RAF on the outbreak of the second world war and served, with a Permanent Commission, for eighteen years. He wrote a range of military fiction and non-fiction books, including ‘Torpedo Attack’, ‘My Enemy Came Nigh’, ‘Bombing Run’, ‘Fighters Up’ and ‘Summer of No Surrender’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

    She was an American school teacher who in 1941 who along with her husband, Foster agreed to teach the Natives on the remote Aleutian island of Attu.  They were both sixty-two years old when they left Alaska's mainland for Attu against the advice of friends and family.   Etta, and her sister moved to the Territory of Alaska in 1922.  She planned to stay only one year as a vacation, but this 40 something year old nurse from back east met Foster Jones and fell in love. She married and for nearly twenty years they taught in remote Alaskan villages including their last posting on  Attu Island at the far end of the Aleutian island chain. Etta's life changed forever on that Sunday morning in June 1942  when almost 2,000 Japanese military men invaded Attu Island and Etta became a prisoner of war. She was taken from American soil to Japan and given up for dead. This is the story of a brave American, a woman of courage and resolve with inextinguishable spirit.

    Along with the story of her triumphant comeback, after being stabbed by a deranged Steffi Graf fan, Seles provides readers with an insider's glimpse of big-time international tennis. of photos.

    Love, anger, danger, estrangement, and emptiness are revealed in the author's recollections of his relationship with his world-famous father, Ernest Hemingway.

    They announce that the logical and important places to begin to examine that history are eye witnesses. Miriam Brysk’s chronicle is among the more exceptional of these works. It reflects her own life: highly accomplished, intelligent, detailed and thoughtful. At age seven, Miriam, her mother Bronka and father, Chaim Miasnik, a renowned surgeon, escaped the Lida ghetto and joined Jewish partisans in the Lipiczany Forest. Before the end of the war, Miriam estimates that her father had saved hundreds of lives and helped build and supervise a partisan hospital in the swamps of the forest. Constantly hunted by German soldiers, she experienced childhood terror that has remained with her. She lost her innocence, her childhood, her youth as she clung to her mother and her prized possession, a pistol. Her head was shaved so she would look like a boy. Her memory of the details of that time—both in the Lida ghetto and in the forest—remains remarkably sharp and distinguishes this memoir from many others. — Sidney Bolkosky, William E. Stirton Professor in the Social Sciences, Professor of History, University of Michigan-Dearborn

    He had an extended family of sixty members, and he lived in a family compound with his parents, his two younger brothers, his baby sister, his paternal grandparents and his uncle and aunt. In the spring of1944--five and a half years after his region had been annexed to Hungary and the morning after the family’s yearly Passover Seder--gendarmes forcibly removed Eisen and his family from their home. They were brought to a brickyard and eventually loaded onto crowded cattle cars bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau. At fifteen years of age, Eisen survived the selection process and he was inducted into the camp as a slave labourer.One day, Eisen received a terrible blow from an SS guard. Severely injured, he was dumped at the hospital where a Polish political prisoner and physician, Tadeusz Orzeszko, operated on him. Despite his significant injury, Orzeszko saved Eisen from certain death in the gas chambers by giving him a job as a cleaner in the operating room. After his liberation and new trials in Communist Czechoslovakia, Eisen immigrated to Canada in 1949, where he has dedicated the last twenty-two years of his life to educating others about the Holocaust across Canada and around the world.The author will be donating a portion of his royalties from this book to institutions promoting tolerance and understanding.

    Unlike other zoos that owe their existence to philanthropists, explorers or big game hunters, Chester Zoo was the brainchild of one working-class man with a dream he had nurtured since he was a boy: to build a zoo without bars.June Mottorshead was four years old when her father, George, moved his family to Upton, two miles out Chester, to begin the process of turning his dream into a reality. With no other children around to play with - her sister Muriel was 10 years older - June's friends became the animals. Her closest companion was an orphaned chimpanzee which her sister hadshe hand reared, and for six years the two were inseparable. June soon became the poster girl for Chester Zoo and photographs of her cuddling lion clubs, head-butting a goat or opening the beak of a pelican soon graced the front pages of British newspapers. She was 13 when war was declared on 1939 and, with the backbone of the staff headed for the front, it fell to June to take over as head keeper. Keeping the zoo running while the war waged was no easy task. Despite rationing the animals had to be fed and all of them - penguins, elephants, leopards, tigers, lions, kangaroos and polar bears - needed to be moved into secure locked quarters inside as soon as the air raid siren sounded.June, now in her eighties, is the guardian of her family's legacy and here in Our Zoo, she tells

    Whether it is Hannibal of Carthage marching elephants across the Alps and attacking the heart of Rome, Khalid ibn al-Walid boasting an undefeated military career and destroying the Persian Empire while subduing the Byzantines, or Russian General Alexander Suvurov and his elevation of the bayonet to a work of art that could cut down any European army, great military leaders have exerted tremendous influence on society. This book will look at the lives of the ten greatest military commanders in history. Some conquered the fullest expanse of the known world, as did Alexander the Great. Still others were master statesmen and capable of translating military victory into long-term political gains, such as Julius Caesar, whose vanquishing of the Gauls and his political opponents laid the groundwork for several centuries of unmatchable Roman imperial might. It will also look at the tactics they used to bring down stronger armies and befuddle them at every turn; whether it is Napoleon, who nearly conquered Europe through his deadly manoeuvre sur les derrieres and marching unexpectedly away from the enemy's main strength and concentrating on a weak but vital enemy point; or Hannibal's double entrapment maneuver, which has been the envy of military strategists for the last 2,000 years. Whatever their background, these rulers show that the right military commander at the right time in history can destroy an empire, change civilization, and alter the course of world history forever.

    Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself. By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, Dr. Baird had been institutionalized multiple times, his medical license revoked, and his wife and daughters estranged. He later received a lobotomy and died from a consequent seizure, his research incomplete, his achievements unrecognized.Mimi Baird grew up never fully knowing this story, as her family went silent about the father who had been absent for most of her childhood. Decades later, a string of extraordinary coincidences led to the recovery of a manuscript which Dr. Baird had worked on throughout his brutal institutionalization, confinement, and escape. This remarkable document, reflecting periods of both manic exhilaration and clear-headed health, presents a startling portrait of a man who was a uniquely astute observer of his own condition, struggling with a disease for which there was no cure, racing against time to unlock the key to treatment before his illness became impossible to manage.Fifty years after being told her father would forever be “ill” and “away,” Mimi Baird set off on a quest to piece together the memoir and the man. In time her fingers became stained with the lead of the pencil he had used to write his manuscript, as she devoted herself to understanding who he was, why he disappeared, and what legacy she had inherited. The result of his extraordinary record and her journey to bring his name to light is He Wanted the Moon, an unforgettable testament to the reaches of the mind and the redeeming power of a determined heart.Soon to be a major motion picture, from Brad Pitt and Tony Kushner

    From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops—including the man who was to become her husband—in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey. Gerda's serene and idyllic childhood is shattered when Nazis march into Poland on September 3, 1939. Although the Weissmanns were permitted to live for a while in the basement of their home, they were eventually separated and sent to German labor camps. Over the next few years Gerda experienced the slow, inexorable stripping away of "all but her life." By the end of the war she had lost her parents, brother, home, possessions, and community; even the dear friends she made in the labor camps, with whom she had shared so many hardships, were dead. Despite her horrifying experiences, Klein conveys great strength of spirit and faith in humanity. In the darkness of the camps, Gerda and her young friends manage to create a community of friendship and love. Although stripped of the essence of life, they were able to survive the barbarity of their captors. Gerda's beautifully written story gives an invaluable message to everyone. It introduces them to last century's terrible history of devastation and prejudice, yet offers them hope that the effects of hatred can be overcome.

    HE HAD TO BECOME ONE HIMSELF.Adapted from Webb's Adult Bestseller The Red Circle for a Young Adult AudienceBrandon Webb's experiences in the world's most elite sniper corps are the stuff of legend. From his grueling years of training in Naval Special Operations to his combat tours in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan, The Making of a Navy SEAL provides a rare and riveting look at the inner workings of the U.S. military through the eyes of a covert operations specialist.Yet it is Webb's distinguished second career as a lead instructor for the shadowy "sniper cell" and Course Manager of the Navy SEAL Sniper Program that trained some of America's finest and deadliest warriors-including Marcus Luttrell and Chris Kyle-that makes his story so compelling. Luttrell credits Webb's training with his own survival during the ill-fated 2005 Operation Redwing in Afghanistan. Kyle went on to become the U.S. military's top marksman, with more than 150 confirmed kills.From a candid chronicle of his student days, going through the sniper course himself, to his hair-raising close calls with Taliban and al Qaeda forces in the northern Afghanistan wilderness, to his vivid account of designing new sniper standards and training some of the most accomplished snipers of the twenty-first century, Webb provides a rare look at the making of the Special Operations warriors who are at the forefront of today's military.Explosive, revealing, and intelligent, The Making of a Navy SEAL provides a uniquely personal glimpse into one of the most challenging and secretive military training courses in the world.

    It's about the man who composed the Koran.Author F. W. Burleigh draws on an academic, investigative, and literary background to bring forth this penetrating look at the man behind it all. Burleigh’s interest in Islam was sparked by the events of 9/11. The questions guiding his studies were, “Why do Muslims do what they do? Why is there so much violence connected with this religion?” After a line-by-line scrutiny of 20,000 pages of the original literature of Islam, the author gives his blunt assessment in the title: It’s All About Muhammad.The book is in three parts. The first 12 chapters explore the epileptic fits that convinced Muhammad that he was in communion with God, explain the Koran and why he composed it the way he did, and show the humble origin of the Kabah, which only attained its cubic shape in the year A.D. 605 with Muhammad as a member of the construction crew. The book shows the magma chamber of hatred that formed in him due to traumatic early-life experience and tracks the emergence of his psychopathic nature. It exposes how he modified ideas he took from Judaism and Christianity to suit his grandiose idea of himself as the "last and final prophet," his intolerance of Meccan polytheistic beliefs, and finally his declaration of war against "all and sundry" who refused to accept him and his religion.In the second part, Muhammad's magma chamber of hatred erupts on the world. The book shows the creation of his al-qaeda--his base of operations in Yathrib (Medina) where he fled after the Meccans decided they had to kill him, his conflict with the Jewish tribes of Yathrib after they refused to accept him as their prophet; his genocide of the Jews including the beheading of the men of an entire tribe; the assassination of his critics; the battles and raids and orgies of rape, plunder, and slaughter; and finally his conquest of Mecca. Like a dramatic arc, these 18 chapters form Act II of a script that is still being played out today.In the final part, Muhammad's ruthless conquest of all of Arabia is presented. This section also gives an account of his numerous wives and the expansion of his wars beyond the confines of the Arabian peninsula. One of the final chapters explores his claim that he will be the first to be resurrected on the day of resurrection and that he will assist Allah in determining who goes to heaven and who stays in hell--part of the "breathtaking nonsense" of what Muhammad claimed about himself, as the author phrases it.What Muhammad created continues to wreak havoc on the world. It follows the script he wrote fourteen centuries ago. It is not sufficient any longer merely to raise the alarm about Islam--an ideology of submission to the will of a psychologically deformed and spiritually grotesque man. What needs to accompany the alarm is a solution, and this book offers a solution: It is a matter of an aggressive, relentless, and unapologetic exposure of the truth about Muhammad in every graphic form possible, from illustrated books to docudramas to full-length feature films. With its 25 illustrations, It's All About Muhammad offers itself as an example of the approach.The truth about Muhammad is a powerful weapon of self-defense that people must take up to oppose and ultimately push back what he created. It is a weapon within the reach of everyone.