Told through the eyes of a young girl, the book shares Gerda’s memories of Hitler’s rise to power and passionately describes the cruel toll that history can have on those who experience it. The book is much more than Gerda’s story. Through letters she received from her parents, who made the heartbreaking decision to send their two daughters to live with foster families in the relative safety of Holland, we learn how a mother and father try to raise a child from far away in times of great distress. Letters from them to Gerda’s foster parents, and desperate notes to an American family they hoped would act as sponsors, reveal their growing despair. The story is both deeply personal and universal as people wrestle with terrible choices to save their children and protect their families. These issues remain as relevant today as they were during the Holocaust. In 1939, while trying to arrange an escape from Germany, her parents sent 12-year-old Gerda and her younger sister to live with separate families in Holland, which was still safe for Jews. What was intended as a temporary move became permanent and Gerda never saw her parents again. Ultimately, she was the only member of her immediate family to survive and also had to bear the loss of the foster family she had come to love as her own. Gerda describes in searing detail her experiences in six concentration camps, her protection as a worker for the Philips Corporation, and her arrival in the U.S. in 1948 as an 18-year-old Holocaust survivor literally alone in the world. The memoir is a testament to the loving family Gerda built in America. Her husband added translations of the letters from her parents, grandparents and sister. After her oldest child and first grandchild were born, Gerda added notes to them. This group effort illustrates the special generational pull of trauma endured by Holocaust survivors.

    His presidency has been pored over minute by minute by historians. They lived their lives in the public eye and under a microscope that magnified all of their flaws, all of their scandals, all of their tragedies. Now Steven Levingston, nonfiction editor at the Washington Post, presents a devastating story in unprecedented detail, about a child John and Jackie Kennedy loved and lost.On August 7, 1963, heavily pregnant Jackie Kennedy collapsed, marking the beginning of a harrowing day and a half. The doctors and family went into full emergency mode, including a helicopter ride to a hospital, a scramble by the President to join her from the White House, and a C-section to deliver a baby boy, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, five and a half weeks early with a severe respiratory ailment. The baby was so frail he was immediately baptized.Over the next thirty nine hours the nation watched and waited. The vigil was spread across the front pages of the newspapers; the country watched the life of Patrick unfold on the evening news. Within the Kennedy family, the drama was transforming the president and his marriage. Both he and Jackie, long known for their cool exteriors, were brought together by a shared sadness and love as they never had been. Although baby Patrick succumbed after 39 hours, his father was born anew through the tragedy.The Kennedy Baby is a vivid drama of a national tragedy and private trauma for the Kennedy family, taking readers through the lead up to the birth, the ordeal in the hospital, and JFK’s personal growth through his hardship and the progress toward a changed marriage – a breakthrough all the more acute in light of the tragedy that loomed only months away.

    For the first time, fans of Cohen’s hit podcast, Mea Culpa, can now read the very best of his essays and political analysis from the show all in once place. This book serves as a snapshot of an incredibly dark 50 days in the run up to the most divisive election in modern history. With his signature wit and New Yawk sensibility, get inside the head of Donald J. Trump from the man who knew him best.

    

    Boss of the Richardson Gang and rival of the Krays, to cross him would result in brutal repercussions. Famously arrested on the day England won the World Cup in 1966, his trial heard he allegedly used iron bars, bolt cutters and electric shocks on his enemies.The Last Gangster is Richardson’s frank account of his largely untold life story, finished just before his death in September 2012. He shares the truth behind the rumours and tells of his feuds with the Krays for supremacy, undercover missions involving politicians, many lost years banged up in prison and reveals shocking secrets about royalty, phone hacking, bent coppers and the infamous black box.Straight up, shocking and downright gripping, this is the ultimate exposé on this legendary gangster and his extraordinary life.

    Kennedy’s assassination has been the subject of public and cultural fascination (a film by Oliver Stone, a novel by Stephen King, endless conspiracy theories) for nearly 50 years. It’s time, this brief biography argues, to give equal consideration to Kennedy’s life.

    Individually interesting, together they were mesmerizing. They were profoundly different -- young and old, black and white, a Muslim and a Jew, Ali barely literate and Cosell an editor of his university's law review. Yet they had in common forces that made them unforgettable: Both were, above all, performers who covered up their deep personal insecurities by demanding -- loudly and often -- public acclaim. Theirs was an extraordinary alliance that produced drama, comedy, controversy, and a mutual respect that helped shape both men's lives. Dave Kindred -- uniquely equipped to tell the Ali-Cosell story after a decades-long intimate working relationship with both men -- re-creates their unlikely connection in ways never before attempted. From their first meeting in 1962 through Ali's controversial conversion to Islam and refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army (the right for him to do both was publicly defended by Cosell), Kindred explores both the heroics that created the men's upward trajectories and the demons that brought them to sadness in their later lives. Kindred draws on his experiences with Ali and Cosell, fresh reporting, and interviews with scores of key personalities -- including the families of both. In the process, Kindred breaks new ground in our understanding of these two unique men. The book presents Ali not as a mythological character but as a man in whole, and it shows Cosell not in caricature but in faithful scale. With vivid scenes, poignant dialogue, and new interpretations of historical events, this is a biography that is novelistically engrossing -- a richly evocative portrait of the friendship that shaped two giants and changed sports and television forever.

    

    This book provides an account of the life of LTTE chief Prabhakaran, who led an armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state to create Eelam, a separate nation for the Sri Lankan Tamils.The book begins from Prabhakaran’s childhood days in the aftermath of India’s and Sri Lanka’s independence from Britain. The Sri Lankan Tamils were following Gandhi’s non-violent methods to fight for their rights as citizens of Sri Lanka. Prabhakaran, an ardent fan of Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose, felt that non-violence would not work against a Sinhala dominated government and began experimenting with violent acts against the Government to send a message. His initial success became the nucleus for the formation of LTTE, which became the quintessential guerrilla organization fighting the State.The book details various incidents of Prabhakaran’s life including terror attacks, assassination of politicians, heads of States and militant leaders; India’s role in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict; Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka; the Eelam wars, negotiations, betrayals and elections; through to his killing in May 2009.

    Free for members. You can download all 6 episodes to your Library now.©2020 Audible, Ltd. (P)2020 Audible, Ltd.

    Anjette Lyle's restaurant was a popular gathering place. It was the place to go for lunch to hear the latest news. Then, one day, Anjette Lyles was charged with the murders of two husbands, her mother-in-law, and her nine-year-old daughter, all committed over the course of seven years. The case was the most sensational Macon had ever seen. The newspaper accounts spiced up the allegations of murder with references to voodoo ceremonies and black magic. The trial attracted record crowds and received worldwide coverage. Anjette Lyles was a glamorous figure and spectators stood in line for hours, hoping for just a glimpse of the defendant. Both lucidly written and emotionally engaging, this is the story of a woman who was called both "cold-blooded" and the "sweetest woman I ever knew," and despite overwhelming evidence and her conviction, many still believe that she was innocent.

    is the number of Royal Air Force Bomber Command aircrew who lost their lives during World War 2. That's more than the total who serve in Britain's RAF today. With a terrifying 46% combat attrition rate, an Avro Lancaster Bomber was one of the most dangerous places to be during the conflict. Yet no one was enlisted to become aircrew: all were volunteers. So, at a time when Britain stood resolute in its fight against tyranny and oppression, young men from across the globe did just that. At just 18 years old, John Henry Meller was one such man.The ordeals and sacrifices endured by John and his generation were crucial to the success of the Allied nations. In the words of Winston Churchill, Great Britain's wartime leader:"Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands ...... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and the Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."As few remain to bear witness to that time, John - together with daughter Caroline Brownbill - have chosen to document his vivid recollections of wartime life. Join him as he shares what it was like to crew a Lancaster over Europe, during the darkest days of the War.

    From different counties in Ireland, Maggie Qualter and Richard Terrett both sail to America as young adults in 1870 after surviving Ireland’s Great Hunger as children. Maggie works as a maid for a wealthy family. Richard finds work in a tannery. After the death of the young wife he loves passionately, Richard marries Maggie with the help of a deceptive go-between who brews trouble in their marriage that never goes away. They raise three children in the midst of Irish American culture, the Catholic Church, and Richard’s battles for the workingman in the Knights of Labor. Their daughter Mary dreams of being a nun, while Josie seeks the freedom of big-city life in Boston. Neither reckons on the future she will face, Mary as a wife and mother of nine children and Josie as a single working woman. Tom escapes factory life by joining the Navy, manages to see the world in the midst of two wars, and comes home to marry his sweetheart and start a new life. Their stories are both remarkable and familiar to everyone whose ancestors made their way to and in America.The events in the Terretts’ lives are as they emerge from the public record. But their inner lives, their thoughts, their relationships, their words are imagined as a route to understanding these five complicated and fascinating people

    An unpopular war. A military and diplomatic team in disarray. Those are the challenges President Obama has faced as he attempts to make a success of U.S involvement in Afghanistan. They are also the challenges President Truman surmounted in the winter of 1950 as he began managing a war in Korea that risked becoming bigger and more costly. It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War: United States troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur came to the aid of the South Koreans after North Korea invaded. When Communist China entered the conflict on the side of the North Koreans, the crisis seemed on the verge of flaring into a world war. Truman was determined not to let that happen. MacArthur kept urging a widening of the war into China itself and ignoring his Commander in Chief. On April 11, 1951, after MacArthur had “shot his mouth off,” as one diplomat put it, one too many times, Truman fired him. The story of their showdown—one of the most dramatic in U.S. history between a Commander in Chief and his top soldier in the field—is captured in all its detail by David McCullough in his biography Truman, and presented here in a e-book called Truman Fires MacArthur (an excerpt of Truman, McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography), which was the headline carried in many newspapers around the country the next day. Truman Fires MacArthur will continue to ride the headlines. It will go on sale as an ebook just as the Rolling Stone profile that exposed General Stanley McChrystal’s insurrection and forced his resignation hits newsstands, and media coverage of the showdown continues to draw historical analogies between Truman and Obama.

    He more or less invented modern politi­cal consulting and helped Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush win their races for the White House. Then he reinvented himself as a master of cable television, first as the head of CNBC and, since 1996, as the creator and leader of Fox News, the most influential news network in the country. To liberals, Ailes is an evil genius who helped polarize the country by breaking the mainstream media’s long monopoly on what constitutes news. To conservatives, he’s a champion of free speech and fair reporting whose values and view of Amer­ica reflect their own. But no one doubts that Ailes has transformed journalism. Barack Obama once called him “the most powerful man in America”— and given that Fox News has changed the way millions understand the world, it may be true. Yet for all that fame and infamy, very few people know the real person behind the headlines. Journalist Zev Chafets received unprecedented access to Ailes and his family, friends, and Fox News colleagues. The result is a candid, compelling portrait of a fascinating man. We see Ailes in action at Fox News and hear him reflect on personal mat­ters he has never before discussed publicly. And we discover the heart of his sometimes surprising political beliefs: his profane piety and his unwav­ering belief in the values of his small-town Ohio boyhood. Ailes loves to fight, but he is a happy warrior who has somehow managed to charm and befriend many of the people he has defeated in political campaigns and television wars. Barbara Walters, Rachel Maddow, Jesse Jackson, the Kennedy clan— all are unexpected Ailes fans. Chafets also gives us an unprecedented look at the inner workings of Fox News and explores Ailes’s relationships with Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Neil Cavuto, Chris Wallace, and the other stars he has nurtured. Ultimately, Ailes is neither villain nor hero but a man full of contradictions and surprises. As Chafets writes, “What will he do next? What stokes his competitive fires and occasional rages? How to reconcile his acts of exceptional loyalty and pri­vate generosity (even to rivals) with his impulse to present himself to the world as a ruthless leg breaker? What makes Roger run—and where, if anywhere, is the finish line? As Ailes himself might say: I report, you decide.”