Download or read book Europe s Last Summer written by David Fromkin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When war broke out in Europe in 1914, it surprised a European population enjoying the most beautiful summer in memory. For nearly a century since, historians have debated the causes of the war. Some have cited the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; others have concluded it was unavoidable. In Europe’s Last Summer, David Fromkin provides a different answer: hostilities were commenced deliberately. In a riveting re-creation of the run-up to war, Fromkin shows how German generals, seeing war as inevitable, manipulated events to precipitate a conflict waged on their own terms. Moving deftly between diplomats, generals, and rulers across Europe, he makes the complex diplomatic negotiations accessible and immediate. Examining the actions of individuals amid larger historical forces, this is a gripping historical narrative and a dramatic reassessment of a key moment in the twentieth-century.
Download or read book The Last Summer of World War II written by Steve Tryk and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2015-08-31 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Summer of World II takes place May through August of 1945 in the small beach community of Dana Strand Village, a suburb of San Pedro, California. The story focuses around a young boy in his daily routine of protecting his small beach neighborhood. The war becomes personal after it takes away his father and causes his mother to become desolate and lose her good nature and stop smiling. With the help of Hank, a wise old veteran of the Old West, to guide him and teach him courage, and the faith of Sissy, a calf-roping country girl, to believe in him. The kid discovers he can end the war, but to do so, he will have to put his own life in peril; to him it will be worth it to see his mother smile again. But will it be enough to bring his father home? For the most part these characters and events actually did take place.
Download or read book The Last Summer at Chelsea Beach written by Pam Jenoff and published by MIRA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan's TaleSummer 1941 Young Adelia Montforte flees fascist Italy for America, where she is whisked away to the shore by her well-meaning aunt and uncle. Here, she meets and falls for Charlie Connally, the eldest of the four Irish-Catholic boys next door. But all hopes for a future together are soon throttled by the war and a tragedy that hits much closer to home. Grief-stricken, Addie flees--first to Washington and then to war-torn London--and finds a position at a prestigious newspaper, as well as a chance to redeem lost time, lost family...and lost love. But the past always nips at her heels, demanding to be reckoned with. And in a final, fateful choice, Addie discovers that the way home may be a path she never suspected.
Download or read book France Summer 1940 written by John Williams and published by London : MacDonald & Company. This book was released on 1970 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Last Great Victory written by Stanley Weintraub and published by Plume Books. This book was released on 1996 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the inner councils of the Japanese to the fateful decisions to atom-bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stanley Weintraub brings to life this watershed month in which empires fell, old orders passed away, and a new age began. "The best account yet of the war's final month".--Newsweek. photos. 3 maps.
Download or read book Summer of 42 written by Levon Thomassian and published by Schiffer Military. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely unknown that at least 18,000 Armenians served under the Third Reich during the Second World War. After the war, these so called collaborators were chastised and indiscriminately labeled traitors by those unable to grasp the complexity of their circumstances. Largely based on archival research, the Summer of '42 attempts to separate fact from fallacy by examining the complex motives, treatment, and history of these Armenians.
Download or read book Last Witnesses written by Svetlana Alexievich and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A masterpiece” (The Guardian) from the Nobel Prize–winning writer, an oral history of children’s experiences in World War II across Russia NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions . . . a history of the soul.” Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Alexievich’s collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. They had sometimes been soldiers as well as witnesses, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded—a trauma that would change the course of the Russian nation. Collectively, this symphony of children’s stories, filled with the everyday details of life in combat, reveals an altogether unprecedented view of the war. Alexievich gives voice to those whose memories have been lost in the official narratives, uncovering a powerful, hidden history from the personal and private experiences of individuals. Translated by the renowned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Last Witnesses is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war. Praise for Last Witnesses “There is a special sort of clear-eyed humility to [Alexievich’s] reporting.”—The Guardian “A bracing reminder of the enduring power of the written word to testify to pain like no other medium. . . . Children survive, they grow up, and they do not forget. They are the first and last witnesses.”—The New Republic “A profound triumph.”—The Big Issue “[Alexievich] excavates and briefly gives prominence to demolished lives and eradicated communities. . . . It is impossible not to turn the page, impossible not to wonder whom we next might meet, impossible not to think differently about children caught in conflict.”—The Washington Post
Download or read book The Summer Before the War written by Helen Simonson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A novel to cure your Downton Abbey withdrawal . . . a delightful story about nontraditional romantic relationships, class snobbery and the everybody-knows-everybody complications of living in a small community.”—The Washington Post The bestselling author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand returns with a breathtaking novel of love on the eve of World War I that reaches far beyond the small English town in which it is set. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND NPR East Sussex, 1914. It is the end of England’s brief Edwardian summer, and everyone agrees that the weather has never been so beautiful. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who lives with her husband in the small, idyllic coastal town of Rye. Agatha’s husband works in the Foreign Office, and she is certain he will ensure that the recent saber rattling over the Balkans won’t come to anything. And Agatha has more immediate concerns; she has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master. When Beatrice Nash arrives with one trunk and several large crates of books, it is clear she is significantly more freethinking—and attractive—than anyone believes a Latin teacher should be. For her part, mourning the death of her beloved father, who has left her penniless, Beatrice simply wants to be left alone to pursue her teaching and writing. But just as Beatrice comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colorful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For despite Agatha’s reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war. Praise for The Summer Before the War “What begins as a study of a small-town society becomes a compelling account of war and its aftermath.”—Woman’s Day “This witty character study of how a small English town reacts to the 1914 arrival of its first female teacher offers gentle humor wrapped in a hauntingly detailed story.”—Good Housekeeping “Perfect for readers in a post–Downton Abbey slump . . . The gently teasing banter between two kindred spirits edging slowly into love is as delicately crafted as a bone-china teacup. . . . More than a high-toned romantic reverie for Anglophiles—though it serves the latter purpose, too.”—The Seattle Times
Download or read book The Last Year of the War written by Susan Meissner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of Secrets of a Charmed Life and As Bright as Heaven comes a novel about a German American teenager whose life changes forever when her immigrant family is sent to an internment camp during World War II. In 1943, Elise Sontag is a typical American teenager from Iowa—aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences. But when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her. In that devastating crucible she must discover if she has the will to rise above prejudice and hatred and re-claim her own destiny, or disappear into the image others have cast upon her. The Last Year of the War tells a little-known story of World War II with great resonance for our own times and challenges the very notion of who we are when who we’ve always been is called into question.
Download or read book Vanished written by Wil S. Hylton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a mesmerizing storyteller, the gripping search for a missing World War II crew, their bomber plane, and their legacy. In the fall of 1944, a massive American bomber carrying eleven men vanished over the Pacific islands of Palau, leaving a trail of mysteries. According to mission reports from the Army Air Forces, the plane crashed in shallow water—but when investigators went to find it, the wreckage wasn’t there. Witnesses saw the crew parachute to safety, yet the airmen were never seen again. Some of their relatives whispered that they had returned to the United States in secret and lived in hiding. But they never explained why. For sixty years, the U.S. government, the children of the missing airmen, and a maverick team of scientists and scuba divers searched the islands for clues. With every clue they found, the mystery only deepened. Now, in a spellbinding narrative, Wil S. Hylton weaves together the true story of the missing men, their final mission, the families they left behind, and the real reason their disappearance remained shrouded in secrecy for so long. This is a story of love, loss, sacrifice, and faith—of the undying hope among the families of the missing, and the relentless determination of scientists, explorers, archaeologists, and deep-sea divers to solve one of the enduring mysteries of World War II.
Download or read book The Last Of Summer written by Kate O'Brien and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2016-07-21 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN AWARD-WINNING AND REMARKABLE IRISH NOVELIST 'This family tale mirrors the history of a country that can never evade its own past' The TIMES 'Rush out for the works of Kate O'Brien. You are in for a treat' VAL HENNESSY 'A fuller appreciation of modern literature and a greater understanding of twentieth century Ireland' IRISH TIMES It is 1939, the last summer before the outbreak of war. French actress Angele Maury abandons a group of friends travelling through Ireland and takes herself to picturesque Drumaninch, birthplace of her dead father. She has come to make sense of her past. Self-conscious with her pale, exotic beauty, Angele braves the idiosyncratic world of the Kernahans: her enigmatic aunt Hannah, her ridiculous but loveable uncle Corney and her three cousins - Martin, charming, intense; Tom, devoted to his mother, and their bright sister Jo, who combines religious faith with a penchant for gambling. But is there some mystery surrounding the past? History threatens to repeat itself as Angele finds herself seduced by the beauty of Ireland, and by the love of two men . . . first published in 1943, The Last of the Summer is a perfectly structured psychological love story.
Download or read book The Last Summer of the Garrett Girls written by Jessica Spotswood and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One summer will challenge everything the Garrett sisters thought they knew about themselves—and each other in this captivating new novel by Jessica Spotswood. As the oldest, Des shoulders a lot of responsibility for her family and their independent bookstore. Except it's hard to dream big when she's so busy taking care of everyone else. Vi has a crush on the girl next door. It makes her happy and nervous, but Cece has a boyfriend...so it's not like her feelings could ever be reciprocated, right? Kat lands the lead in the community theater's summer play, but the drama spills offstage when her ex and his new girlfriend are cast too. Can she get revenge by staging a new romance of her own? Bea and her boyfriend are heading off to college together in the fall, just like they planned when they started dating. But Bea isn't sure she wants the same things as when she was thirteen... Told through four alternating points of view, readers will laugh, cry, and fall in love alongside the Garrett girls.
Download or read book The Last Summer of the Camperdowns written by Elizabeth Kelly and published by Liveright. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cosmopolitan's one of “The 22 Best Books of the Year For Women, by Women" Washington Post Notable Fiction of 2013 Set on Cape Cod during one tumultuous summer, Elizabeth Kelly’s gothic family story will delight readers of The Family Fang and The Giant’s House. The Last Summer of the Camperdowns, from the best-selling author of Apologize, Apologize!, introduces Riddle James Camperdown, the twelve-year-old daughter of the idealistic Camp and his manicured, razor-sharp wife, Greer. It’s 1972, and Riddle’s father is running for office from the family compound in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Between Camp’s desire to toughen her up and Greer’s demand for glamour, Riddle has her hands full juggling her eccentric parents. When she accidentally witnesses a crime close to home, her confusion and fear keep her silent. As the summer unfolds, the consequences of her silence multiply. Another mysterious and powerful family, the Devlins, slowly emerges as the keepers of astonishing secrets that could shatter the Camperdowns. As an old love triangle, bitter war wounds, and the struggle for status spiral out of control, Riddle can only watch, hoping for the courage to reveal the truth. The Last Summer of the Camperdowns is poised to become the summer’s uproarious and dramatic must-read.
Download or read book The Last Summer of Us written by Maggie Harcourt and published by Usborne Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Us. Me, Steffan and Jared. Three best friends on a road trip to anywhere but here, because yesterday was my mother's funeral, Jared's stepdad wants nothing to do with him, and Steffan needs to visit his mum. Because it's the end of summer and because this could be the end of us, of Jared and Steffan and me. This is the story of a road trip. A story of three best friends on a journey that will change their lives for ever. A story of love, lies, grief, friendship and growing up. A story you'll never forget.
Download or read book The Last Summer written by John Hough and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-03-05 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic love story, The Last Summer chronicles a young man on the verge of growing up and an older woman running away from a life out of control. It is the summer of 1968: The world is poised on the cusp of radical change. Politicians question the status quo, blacks react to decades of oppression, and students protest the injustices of war. Change is in the air, too, for 37-year-old single mother Claire Malek. She has just walked out on her rather cushy job in Washington, DC, as "special assistant" to Senator Bob Mallory. DC had become an impossible place for Claire, heavy with regrets and burdened with secrets she knew she could never divulge. Anxious for both escape and change, Claire packs her 15-year-old daughter, April, into her Camaro and heads to a small town on Cape Cod, where Claire takes a job as cub reporter on a twice-weekly newspaper called the Covenant. She knows it's a big risk, but Claire is desperate for a new start and a new life, and the town and all it has to offer seem to be a good beginning. For Lane Hillman, son of the publisher of the Covenant, change is just beyond the horizon. Twenty-two years old and fresh out of Harvard, he's come home to celebrate the last summer of his youth and one final season as a reporter on his father's newspaper. In an effort to avoid the draft, and possible service in Vietnam, Lane has enlisted in VISTA -- the America-based Peace Corps -- and in the fall will begin a four-year stint working in the inner city of Detroit. Claire's first day on the job is the same day Robert Kennedy is shot. Racial tensions around the country continue to erupt into violence and confrontation. But in a few days another more personal tragedy strikes the town as a young girl is found murdered -- the first such death there in more than twenty years -- and on the same day a teenage boy is found drowned under suspicious circumstances. As Claire and Lane work together to try to make sense of the seemingly unrelated deaths, a closeness grows between them, and with it, the stirrings of sexual attraction. At first Claire resists, knowing that the fifteen years separating them is an unbridgeable gap, but before either of them realizes what's happening, she and Lane are swept up in a romantic passion that threatens to overwhelm them both. As the summer progresses, so does their affair, and soon the whole town knows about it, including Lane's parents, who are not at all pleased with this turn of events, and April, Claire's daughter, who feels both awe and resentment at the changes the affair brings in her mother. Before the summer ends, however, Claire and Lane will have to contend with more than the opinions of family and townsfolk. A shadowy figure responsible for the death of the young woman begins to fixate on someone new -- and the lovers find themselves in a race to save their own lives. A work of great tenderness, taut suspense, and historical immediacy, The Last Summer is a captivating portrait of love and sacrifice.
Download or read book That Summer in Berlin written by Lecia Cornwall and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1936, while the Nazis make secret plans for World War II, a courageous and daring young woman struggles to expose the lies behind the dazzling spectacle of the Berlin Olympics. German power is rising again, threatening a war that will be even worse than the last one. The English aristocracy turns to an age-old institution to stave off war and strengthen political bonds—marriage. Debutantes flock to Germany, including Viviane Alden. On holiday with her sister during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Viviane’s true purpose is more clandestine. While many in England want to appease Hitler, others seek to prove Germany is rearming. But they need evidence, photographs to tell the tale, and Viviane is a genius with her trusty Leica. And who would suspect a pretty, young tourist taking holiday snaps of being a spy? Viviane expects to find hatred and injustice, but during the Olympics, with the world watching, Germany is on its best behavior, graciously welcoming tourists to a festival of peace and goodwill. But first impressions can be deceiving, and it’s up to Viviane and the journalist she’s paired with—a daring man with a guarded heart—to reveal the truth. But others have their own reasons for befriending Viviane, and her adventure takes a darker turn. Suddenly Viviane finds herself caught in a web of far more deadly games—and closer than she ever imagined to the brink of war.
Download or read book Savage Continent written by Keith Lowe and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another ten years... The end of the Second World War in Europe is one of the twentieth century's most iconic moments. It is fondly remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, danced, drank and made love until the small hours. These images of victory and celebration are so strong in our minds that the period of anarchy and civil war that followed has been forgotten. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted - such as the police, the media, transport, local and national government - were either entirely absent or hopelessly compromised. Crime rates were soaring, economies collapsing, and the European population was hovering on the brink of starvation. In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. Individuals, communities and sometimes whole nations sought vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them during the war. Germans and collaborators everywhere were rounded up, tormented and summarily executed. Concentration camps were reopened and filled with new victims who were tortured and starved. Violent anti-Semitism was reborn, sparking murders and new pogroms across Europe. Massacres were an integral part of the chaos and in some places – particularly Greece, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as parts of Italy and France – they led to brutal civil wars. In some of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands, often with the implicit blessing of the Allied authorities. Savage Continent is the story of post WWII Europe, in all its ugly detail, from the end of the war right up until the establishment of an uneasy stability across Europe towards the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is a frightening and thrilling chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post WWII Europe for years to come.
