Book picks similar to
The Gestapo Defied by Martin Niemöller
human-rights-violations
human-thought
memoir
paused
When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis: Life After Death and a Dog Called Boris
Helen Bailey - 2015
Alone and more than three thousand miles from home, she was a wife at breakfast and a widow by lunchtime. With her life as she knew it shattered, Helen began to chronicle living after such devastating and shocking loss in a blog - Planet Grief - and gained a worldwide following from many who had experienced huge loss, whether through death or divorce.And now her blog has become a book. Anecdotal, witty, heartbreaking and utterly grounded, When Bad Things Happen to Good Bikinis covers all the obvious struggles in the aftermath of a loss, as well as many not-so-obvious but just as poignant everyday obstacles. Helen has emerged from her nightmare, and her story will bring wry humour, comfort and hope to a huge number of people, whatever their circumstances.
Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home
Alexander Wolff - 2021
Always bookish, Kurt became a publisher at twenty-three, setting up his own firm and publishing Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, Karl Kraus, and many other authors whose books would soon be burned by the Nazis. Fleeing Germany in 1933, a day after the Reichstag fire, Kurt and his second wife, Helen, sought refuge in France, Italy, and ultimately New York, where in a small Greenwich Village apartment they founded Pantheon Books. Pantheon would soon take its own place in literary history with the publication of Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago, and as the conduit that brought major European works to the States. But Kurt's taciturn son Niko, offspring of his first marriage to Elisabeth Merck, was left behind in Germany, where despite his Jewish heritage he served the Nazis on two fronts. As Alexander Wolff visits dusty archives and meets distant relatives, he discovers secrets that never made it to the land of fresh starts, including the connection between Hitler and the family pharmaceutical firm E. Merck, and the story of a half-brother Niko never knew.With surprising revelations from never-before-published family letters, diaries, and photographs, Endpapers is a moving and intimate family story, weaving a literary tapestry of the perils, triumphs, and secrets of history and exile.
The Way I Was Made: Words and Music for an Unusual Life
Chris Tomlin - 2004
It's all about God, and His glory. That's the purpose of Chris Tomlin's first book--to get you to think of yourself as one of God's fame builders. Through personal stories and his lyrics, Chris takes you on a journey to discover who you are and how you can live a life that tells the story of God.Includes a study guide for small groups or personal use.
I Am the Wolf: Lyrics and Writings
Mark Lanegan - 2017
Lanegan's voice is one of the most distinct and recognizable in rock, but his talents aren't limited to his vocal skills. Lanegan's lyrics are on par with the best of them, exploring with Blake-like insight the stark and scorched emotional terrain that exists somewhere beyond sadness, addiction, trauma, and spiritual longing. With a body of work that now includes seven albums with the Screaming Trees, eleven acclaimed solo albums, three albums of duets with Belle and Sebastian's Isobel Campbell (including the Mercury Prize-shortlisted Ballad of the Broken Seas), and collaborative albums and singles with the likes of Queens of the Stone Age, Moby, Soulsavers, Twilight Singers, and countless others, Mark Lanegan occupies a singular space in rock music. Now, for the first time ever, the reclusive singer presents a comprehensive look at his lyrics, the stories behind them, and the making of his albums. I Am the Wolf is a rare and candid glimpse into the inner workings and creative process of a legend.
Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account
Miklós Nyiszli - 1946
A Jew and a medical doctor, the prisoner Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was spared death for a grimmer fate: to perform "scientific research" on his fellow inmates under the supervision of the man who became known as the infamous "Angel of Death" - Dr. Josef Mengele. Nyiszli was named Mengele's personal research pathologist. In that capactity he also served as physician to the Sonderkommando, the Jewish prisoners who worked exclusively in the crematoriums and were routinely executed after four months. Miraculously, Nyiszli survived to give this horrifying and sobering account.
A Bookshop in Berlin
Françoise Frenkel - 1945
She opens La Maison du Livre, Berlin's first French bookshop, attracting artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets. The shop becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. In 1935, the scene continues to darken. First come the new bureaucratic hurdles, followed by frequent police visits and book confiscations.Françoise's dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht in November 1938, as hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses are destroyed. La Maison du Livre is miraculously spared, but fear of persecution eventually forces Françoise on a desperate, lonely flight to Paris. When the city is bombed, she seeks refuge across southern France, witnessing countless horrors: children torn from their parents, mothers throwing themselves under buses. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Françoise survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her.Published quietly in 1945, then rediscovered nearly sixty years later in an attic.
The Road to Villa Page: A He Said/She Said Memoir of Buying Our Dream Home in France
Cynthia Royce - 2020
Our story begins with falling in love with France, specifically the enchanting Dordogne. We weren’t the first and we won’t be the last. The region was an inspiration to prehistoric man, as the earliest known works of art are to be found in the nearby caves of Lascaux. From the 1000 chateaux perched on towering cliffs overhanging the meandering Dordogne River to the countless plus beaux villages (most beautiful villages) dotting the region, it is truly a magical place.The first book is a roller-coaster ride of the ups and downs of making the dream a reality, beginning with, Oh my God, are we really doing this?! To looking for the home, getting a loan, wading through the red tape of actually moving, and studying French! Finally, the most important part of making “our” dream come true, adopting a baby girl to make the journey complete.
Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany
Marthe Cohn - 2002
Her family sheltered Jews fleeing the Nazis, including Jewish children sent away by their terrified parents. But soon her homeland was also under Nazi rule. As the Nazi occupation escalated, Marthe’s sister was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. The rest of her family was forced to flee to the south of France. Always a fighter, Marthe joined the French Army.As a member of the intelligence service of the French First Army, Marthe fought valiantly to retrieve needed inside information about Nazi troop movements by slipping behind enemy lines, utilizing her perfect German accent and blond hair to pose as a young German nurse who was desperately trying to obtain word of a fictional fiancé. By traveling throughout the countryside and approaching troops sympathetic to her plight, risking death every time she did so, she learned where they were going next and was able to alert Allied commanders.When, at the age of eighty, Marthe Cohn was awarded France’s highest military honor, the Médaille Militaire, not even her children knew to what extent this modest woman had faced death daily while helping defeat the Nazi empire. At its heart, this remarkable memoir is the tale of an ordinary human being who, under extraordinary circumstances, became the hero her country needed her to be.
Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
Madeleine K. Albright - 2012
Drawing on her memory, her parents' written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly available documents, Albright recounts a tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring. Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind and, simultaneously, a journey with universal lessons that is intensely personal.The book takes readers from the Bohemian capital's thousand-year-old castle to the bomb shelters of London, from the desolate prison ghetto of Terezín to the highest councils of European and American government. Albright reflects on her discovery of her family's Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland's tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation. Often relying on eyewitness descriptions, she tells the story of how millions of ordinary citizens were ripped from familiar surroundings and forced into new roles as exiled leaders and freedom fighters, resistance organizers and collaborators, victims and killers. These events of enormous complexity are never-theless shaped by concepts familiar to any growing child: fear, trust, adaptation, the search for identity, the pressure to conform, the quest for independence, and the difference between right and wrong."No one who lived through the years of 1937 to 1948," Albright writes, "was a stranger to profound sadness. Millions of innocents did not survive, and their deaths must never be forgotten. Today we lack the power to reclaim lost lives, but we have a duty to learn all that we can about what happened and why." At once a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history, Prague Winter serves as a guide to the future through the lessons of the past—as seen through the eyes of one of the international community's most respected and fascinating figures.
This Is It: 2 hemispheres, 2 people, and 1 boat
Jackie Sarah Parry - 2016
With their incurable curiosity and desire for adventure, they sold all their belongings and flew to America in search of a boat. The pull of the ocean was too strong to ignore any longer. Four years prior, they circumnavigated the globe on their thirty-three foot boat, Mariah. Now they wanted a new challenge. From the perils at Pitcairn to the grand statues of Easter Island, Jackie and Noel set sail south to the remotest inhabited island in the world. Along the way, they lose a friend and come nail-bitingly close to losing their new boat, but they gained so much more: a voyage that left them breathless from fear and a journey of not only travel but of two truly nomadic gypsies. This is a story of storms of emotions and oceans, travel, love and relationships, and two people figuring out life and fulfilling their need to move and be challenged.
Breaking The Chain: Drugs and Cycling - The True Story
Willy Voet - 2011
In his car were the drugs the team needed if they were to have any chance of playing a competitive part in the 1998 Tour de France. The car was searched, he was immediately arrested and so the story that has been undermining the sport of cycling since the death of Tommy Simpson in 1967, finally broke. Imprisoned for sixteen days, sacked from the Festina team and ostracised from the sport to which he had dedicated his life, Willy Voet at last was able to tell the truth. His sensational story will change cycling forever.Cocaine, amphetamines, EPO, heroin - all these are now considered not optional but necessary, not to win but just to compete in the Tour de France. Details of how these drugs are obtained, mixed together to make cocktails, administered and concealed are all included in this graphic and uninhibited account of how drugs brought cycling to its knees.
The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi: My Journey into the Heart of Scriptural Faith and the Land Where It All Began
Kathie Lee Gifford - 2018
But it wasn’t until she began studying the biblical texts in their original Hebrew and Greek—along with actually hiking the ancient paths of Israel—that she found the fulfillment of those desires.Now you can walk with Kathie on a journey through the spiritual foundations of her faith:The Rock (Jesus Christ): Hear directly from Kathie about her life-changing and ever-deepening connection with Jesus, the Lover of her soul.The Road (Israel): Explore dozens of ancient landmarks and historical sites from Israel, the promised land of God’s covenant.The Rabbi (God’s Word): Go beyond a “Sunday school” approach to the Bible by digging into the original languages and deeper meanings of the Holy Scriptures.As you journey through The Rock, The Road, and The Rabbi, you’ll also find additional content from Messianic Rabbi Jason Sobel throughout the book. Jason’s insight into the Hebrew language, culture, and heritage will open your eyes to the Bible like never before.Come! Begin your journey toward a deeper faith through The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi.
My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
Christian Wiman - 2013
My Bright Abyss, composed in the difficult years since and completed in the wake of a bone marrow transplant, is a moving meditation on what a viable contemporary faith—responsive not only to modern thought and science but also to religious tradition—might look like.Joyful, sorrowful, and beautifully written, My Bright Abyss is destined to become a spiritual classic, useful not only to believers but to anyone whose experience of life and art seems at times to overbrim its boundaries. How do we answer this “burn of being”? Wiman asks. What might it mean for our lives—and for our deaths—if we acknowledge the “insistent, persistent ghost” that some of us call God?
Against the Odds: Survival on the Russian Front 1944-1945
John Stieber - 1995
Caught there by the outbreak of the Second World War, he was unable to return to his parents for seven years. In due course, he was called to serve in an anti-aircraft battery and in the National Labour Service. Just after his eighteenth birthday, he was sent to the Russian Front with the elite Paratrooper and Tank Division, Hermann Göring. He lived through an amazing series of events, escaping death many times and was one of the few survivors of his division when the war ended. In this narrative of his early life, John Stieber describes how he went from a carefree childhood through increasing hardships, until every day of his life became a challenge for survival.
German Short Stories For Beginners: 8 Unconventional Short Stories to Grow Your Vocabulary and Learn German the Fun Way!
Olly Richards - 2015
Instead of pausing to look up every word, you’ll absorb new vocabulary from the context of the story, and have the satisfaction of that moment when you say: “I totally understood that sentence!” Carefully written German, using straightforward grammar that is comprehensible for beginner and intermediate level learners, so that you can enjoy reading and learn new grammatical structures without the feeling of overwhelm and frustration that you get from other books. Plenty of natural dialogues in each story, so that you can learn conversational German whilst you read, and improve your speaking ability at the same time! Regular plot summaries, comprehension questions and word reference lists, so that help is always on hand when you need it. You’ll be able to focus on enjoying reading and having fun, rather than fumbling around with dictionaries and struggling through dense text with no support. A five-step plan for reading the stories in this book the smart way. This detailed introductory chapter gives you specific, step-by-step instructions for effective reading in German, so that you know exactly how to make the most out of the book and maximise your learning! German Short Stories for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level (A2-B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference). The eight captivating stories are designed to give you a sense of achievement and a feeling of progress when reading. You’ll finally be able to enjoy reading in German, grow your vocabulary in a natural way, and improve your comprehension at the same time. Based on extensive research into how people most enjoy and benefit from reading in a new language, this book eliminates all the frustrations you have experienced when trying to read in German: Dull topics that are no fun to read Books so long you never reach the end Endless chapters that make you want to give up Impenetrable grammar that frustrates you at every turn Complex vocabulary that leaves you with your head buried in the dictionary Instead, you can just concentrate on what you came for in the first place - enjoying reading and having fun! If you’re learning German and enjoy reading, this is the book you need to rekindle your passion for the language and take your German to the next level! So what are you waiting for? Scroll up and grab your copy now!
