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› Find signed collectible books: 'At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor'
The surprise Japanese dawn air raid on the American naval fleet at Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 was one of the major turning points in history. It caused massive devastation, caught the United States unaware and plunged them into the Second World War, turning it into a truly global conflict. This gripping study scrupulously reconstructs the attack, from its meticulously planned conception, to its lightning execution and the bitter political controversy that followed. It is a story of Japan's daring, tactical brilliance and fanatical dedication, and of America's blind disbelief in a threat from the Far East that led it to ignore advance warnings from its own intelligence sources. Based on years of research, and countless interviews with survivors from both sides of the Pacific, "At Dawn We Slept" brings the human players in this epic drama to life. Demolishing many of the myths and conspiracy theories that surround Pearl Harbour, it is an unbiased, authoritative and monumental work. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Atonement: A Novel'
Ian McEwan's Booker Prize-nominated Atonement is his first novel since Amsterdam took home the prize in 1998. But while Amsterdam was a slim, sleek piece, Atonement is a more sturdy, more ambitious work, allowing McEwan more room to play, think, and experiment.
We meet 13-year-old Briony Tallis in the summer of 1935, as she attempts to stage a production of her new drama "The Trials of Arabella" to welcome home her older, idolized brother Leon. But she soon discovers that her cousins, the glamorous Lola and the twin boys Jackson and Pierrot, aren't up to the task, and directorial ambitions are abandoned as more interesting prospects of preoccupation come onto the scene. The charlady's son, Robbie Turner, appears to be forcing Briony's sister Cecilia to strip in the fountain and sends her obscene letters; Leon has brought home a dim chocolate magnate keen for a war to promote his new "Army Ammo" chocolate bar; and upstairs, Briony's migraine-stricken mother Emily keeps tabs on the house from her bed. Soon, secrets emerge that change the lives of everyone present....
The interwar, upper-middle-class setting of the book's long, masterfully sustained opening section might recall Virginia Woolf or Henry Green, but as we move forward--eventually to the turn of the 21st century--the novel's central concerns emerge, and McEwan's voice becomes clear, even personal. For at heart, Atonement is about the pleasures, pains, and dangers of writing, and perhaps even more, about the challenge of controlling what readers make of your writing. McEwan shouldn't have any doubts about readers of Atonement: this is a thoughtful, provocative, and at times moving book that will have readers applauding. --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book Thief'
'It's just a small story, really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery ...' This work is narrated in the all-knowing matter-of-fact voice of Death, witnessing the story of the citizens of Himmel Street: When nine-year-old Liesel arrives outside the boxlike house of her new foster parents, she refuses to get out of the car. Liesel has been separated from her parents - 'Kommunists' - for ever, and at the burial of her little brother, she steals a gravedigger's instruction manual which she can't read. It is the beginning of her illustrious career. In the care of the Hubermans, Liesel befriends blond-haired Rudy Steiner, her neighbour obsessed with Jesse Owens. She also befriends the mayor's wife, who hides from despair in her library. Together Liesel and Rudy steal books - from Nazi book burning piles, from the mayor's library, from the richer people of Molching. In time, the family hide a Jewish boxer, Max, who reads with Liesel in the basement.. By 1943, the Allied bombs are falling, and the sirens begin to wail. Liesel shares out her books in the air-raid shelters. But one day in the life of Himmel street, the wail of the sirens comes too late...A life-changing tale of the cruel twists of fate and the coincidences on which all our lives hinge, this is also a joyous look at the power of book to nourish the soul. Its uplifting ending will make all readers weep. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Corelli's Mandolin'
Fictional Novel, Literary Fiction [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Day of Infamy'
There may not be a better book on what happened at Pearl Harbor than Day of Infamy--and it's not as if the Pearl Harbor story has lacked chroniclers. Walter Lord is best known for A Night to Remember, his book on the voyage of the Titanic. Day of Infamy deserves to stand beside that classic as a gripping narrative, and the subject matter, of course, is infinitely more important.
Lord begins by showing how Japanese admirals, three months before their notorious sneak attack, "tested the idea on the game board at the Naval War College." (It didn't go nearly as well there as it did in real life.) Then he proceeds briskly through the preparations for the assault and delivers a minute-by-minute account about those fateful hours in Oahu. The detail is incredible. The Japanese scan Hawaiian radio stations to see if their moves have been detected; a U.S. naval officer on "his first night on his first patrol on his first command" spots a Japanese submarine just hours before the strike; when the surprise attack finally does arrive, an excited Japanese commander shouts "Tora! Tora! Tora!" ("Victory!") before even the first bombs have fallen. The whole assault lasted about two hours. Thousands of Americans were killed or wounded. The Navy lost the U.S.S. Arizona, which blew up about 15 minutes into the raid, and 17 other ships were either sunk or crippled. Hundreds of planes were destroyed or damaged. The Japanese, by contrast, lost only 29 planes. It must be considered one of the most lopsided battles in all history--and "battle" probably isn't the best word to describe it. Pearl Harbor was closer to a massacre. Whatever the label, Pearl Harbor was a turning-point moment in American history, and it gave rise, the very next day, to some of the most famous words ever spoken by an American president: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked...." If you intend to read only a single book on Pearl Harbor, this is the one for you. --John J. Miller [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Paciente Ingles'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Empire of the Sun'
Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him.
Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.
Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The English Patient'
Haunting and harrowing, as beautiful as it is disturbing, The English Patient tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian monastery as World War II ends. The exhausted nurse, Hana; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burn victim who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning. In lyrical prose informed by a poetic consciousness, Michael Ondaatje weaves these characters together, pulls them tight, then unravels the threads with unsettling acumen.
A book that binds readers of great literature, The English Patient garnered the Booker Prize for author Ondaatje. The poet and novelist has also written In the Skin of a Lion, Coming Through Slaughter and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid; two collections of poems, The Cinnamon Peeler and There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do; and a memoir, Running in the Family. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Flags of Our Fathers'
The Battle of Iwo Jima, fought in the winter of 1945 on a rocky island south of Japan, brought a ferocious slice of hell to earth: in a month's time, more than 22,000 Japanese soldiers would die defending a patch of ground a third the size of Manhattan, while nearly 26,000 Americans fell taking it from them. The battle was a turning point in the war in the Pacific, and it produced one of World War II's enduring images: a photograph of six soldiers raising an American flag on the flank of Mount Suribachi, the island's commanding high point.
One of those young Americans was John Bradley, a Navy corpsman who a few days before had braved enemy mortar and machine-gun fire to administer first aid to a wounded Marine and then drag him to safety. For this act of heroism Bradley would receive the Navy Cross, an award second only to the Medal of Honor.
Bradley, who died in 1994, never mentioned his feat to his family. Only after his death did Bradley's son James begin to piece together the facts of his father's heroism, which was but one of countless acts of sacrifice made by the young men who fought at Iwo Jima. Flags of Our Fathers recounts the sometimes tragic life stories of the six men who raised the flag that February day--one an Arizona Indian who would die following an alcohol-soaked brawl, another a Kentucky hillbilly, still another a Pennsylvania steel-mill worker--and who became reluctant heroes in the bargain. A strongly felt and well-written entry in a spate of recent books on World War II, Flags gives a you-are-there depiction of that conflict's horrible arenas--and a moving homage to the men whom fate brought there. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Flags of Our Fathers : Heroes of Iwo Jima'
In the winter of 1945, on the tiny island of Iwo Jima, a ferocious, epic battle was fought, resulting in the loss of more than 48,000 lives and producing what was to become one of the most recognizable symbols of World War II: a photograph of six soldiers raising an American flag on the peak of Mount Suribachi. One of the six, Navy corpsman John Bradley, came away from this historical moment with a deep and mysterious silence about his role in the flag raising. Even his wife heard him speak of it only once in their 47-year marriage. After Bradley's death, his son James began to piece together the facts of his father's heroism, as well as that of the other five men, all of whom became reluctant heroes because of their presence during that fateful instant when the shutter clicked and created a wartime icon.
Based on James Bradley's Flags of Our Fathers for adults, this abridged version for younger readers retains the somewhat terse drama, intense heartbreak, and bittersweet triumph of the original narrative. Through his research on the event and the soldiers (three of the men were killed in combat within days of the flag raising), Bradley explores the dubious nature of heroism and the devastating effects of war. (Ages 14 and older) --Emilie Coulter [via]
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604pages. poche. broché. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hiding Place'
During the Nazi invasion and occupation of Holland, Corrie ten Boom and her family became leaders in the Dutch underground, hiding Jewish people in their home in a specially built room and aiding their escape from the Nazis. For their pains, all but Corrie found death in a concentration camp. Listeners will experience all the fear and tension associated with hiding from the Nazis during World War II. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Hiding Place'
A Chosen Books commemorative edition of Corrie ten Booms wondrous story. Love overcomes inhumanity in the concentration camp and heals lives in the wars aftermath. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Hiding Place'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'If This Is a Man and the Truce: And, the Truce'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Last Battle'
THE CLASSIC ACCOUNT OF THE FINAL OFFENSIVE AGAINST HITLER'S THIRD REICH
The Battle for Berlin was the culminating struggle of World War II in the European theater, the last offensive against Hitler's Third Reich, which devastated one of Europe's historic capitals and marked the final defeat of Nazi Germany. It was also one of the war's bloodiest and most pivotal battles, whose outcome would shape international politics for decades to come.
The Last Battle is Cornelius Ryan's compelling account of this final battle, a story of brutal extremes, of stunning military triumph alongside the stark conditions that the civilians of Berlin experienced in the face of the Allied assault. As always, Ryan delves beneath the military and political forces that were dictating events to explore the more immediate imperatives of survival, where, as the author describes it, "to eat had become more important than to love, to burrow more dignified than to fight, to exist more militarily correct than to win."
The Last Battle is the story of ordinary people, both soldiers and civilians, caught up in the despair, frustration, and terror of defeat. It is history at its best, a masterful illumination of the effects of war on the lives of individuals, and one of the enduring works on World War II.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Longest Day'
A true classic of World War II history, The Longest Day tells the story of the massive Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Journalist Cornelius Ryan began working on the book in the mid-1950s, while the memories of the D-day participants were still fresh, and he spent three years interviewing D-day survivors in the United States and Europe. When his book was first published in 1959, it was tremendously successful, establishing many of the legends of D-day that endure in the public's mind. Ryan was enormously skillful at weaving small personal stories into the overall narrative, and he would later use the same technique to depict the airborne invasion of Holland in A Bridge Too Far. Not only is The Longest Day a pleasure to read, but subsequent historians, dutifully noting its accuracy, have relied heavily on Ryan's research for their own accounts. In short, the book is a "must read" for anyone interested in the D-day invasion. --Robert McNamara [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Maus a Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History'
Some historical events simply beggar any attempt at description--the Holocaust is one of these. Therefore, as it recedes and the people able to bear witness die, it becomes more and more essential that novel, vigorous methods are used to describe the indescribable. Examined in these terms, Art Spiegelman's Maus is a tremendous achievement, from a historical perspective as well as an artistic one.
Spiegelman, a stalwart of the underground comics scene of the 1960s and '70s, interviewed his father, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor living outside New York City, about his experiences. The artist then deftly translated that story into a graphic novel. By portraying a true story of the Holocaust in comic form--the Jews are mice, the Germans cats, the Poles pigs, the French frogs, and the Americans dogs--Spiegelman compels the reader to imagine the action, to fill in the blanks that are so often shied away from. Reading Maus, you are forced to examine the Holocaust anew.
This is neither easy nor pleasant. However, Vladek Spiegelman and his wife Anna are resourceful heroes, and enough acts of kindness and decency appear in the tale to spur the reader onward (we also know that the protagonists survive, else reading would be too painful). This first volume introduces Vladek as a happy young man on the make in pre-war Poland. With outside events growing ever more ominous, we watch his marriage to Anna, his enlistment in the Polish army after the outbreak of hostilities, his and Anna's life in the ghetto, and then their flight into hiding as the Final Solution is put into effect. The ending is stark and terrible, but the worst is yet to come--in the second volume of this Pulitzer Prize-winning set. --Michael Gerber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Maus: A Survivor's Tale My Father Bleeds History/Her My Troubles Began/Boxed'
A boxed edition of the two paperback volumed of this 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrated narrative of Holocaust survival. Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in "drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust" ( The New York Times ). Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century's grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Maus a Survivors Tale: And Here My Troubles Begin'
Acclaimed as a "quiet triumph"* and a "brutally moving work of art,"** the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus introduced readers to Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive. As the New York Times Book Review commented," [it is] a remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness...an unfolding literary event."
This long-awaited sequel, subtitled And Here My Troubles Began, moves us from the barracks of Auschwitz to the bungalows of the Catskills. Genuinely tragic and comic by turns, it attains a complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium. Maus ties together two powerful stories: Vladek's harrowing tale of survival against all odds, delineating the paradox of daily life in the death camps, and the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father.
Vladek's troubled remarriage, minor arguments between father and son, and life's everyday disappointments are all set against a backdrop of history too large to pacify. At every level this is the ultimate survivor's tale -- and that too of the children who somehow survive even the survivors. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memoirs of a Geisha'
A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup, and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it. In Memoirs of a Geisha , we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction-at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful-and completely unforgettable. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memoirs of a Geisha: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack, Piano Solo'
(Piano Solo Songbook). Six instrumental themes by John Williams from this Oscar-winning film, arranged for piano solo. Includes: As the Water * Becoming a Geisha * The Chairman's Waltz * Going to School * Sayuri's Theme * Sayuri's Theme and End Credits. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha'
En Memorias de una geisha, Arthur Golden abre una ventana al misterioso mundo del erotismo en Japón y describe con fidelidad la delicada fortaleza de la cultura de las geishas de Kioto a lo largo del siglo. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Night'
Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's wrenching attempt to find meaning in the horror of the Holocaust is technically a novel, but it's based so closely on his own experiences in Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald that it's generally--and not inaccurately--read as an autobiography. Like Wiesel himself, the protagonist of Night is a scholarly, pious teenager racked with guilt at having survived the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rape of Nanking'
China has endured much hardship in its history, as Iris Chang shows in her ably researched The Rape of Nanking, a book that recounts the horrible events in that eastern Chinese city under Japanese occupation in the late 1930s. Nanking, she writes, served as a kind of laboratory in which Japanese soldiers were taught to slaughter unarmed, unresisting civilians, as they would later do throughout Asia. Likening their victims to insects and animals, the Japanese commanders orchestrated a campaign in which several hundred thousand--no one is sure just how many--Chinese soldiers and noncombatants alike were killed. Chang turns up an unlikely hero in German businessman John Rabe, a devoted member of the Nazi party who importuned Adolf Hitler to intervene and stop the slaughter, and who personally saved the lives of countless residents of Nanking. She also suggests that the Japanese government pay reparations and apologize for its army's horrific acts of 60 years ago. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rape of Nanking : The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II'
China has endured much hardship in its history, as Iris Chang shows in her ably researched The Rape of Nanking, a book that recounts the horrible events in that eastern Chinese city under Japanese occupation in the late 1930s. Nanking, she writes, served as a kind of laboratory in which Japanese soldiers were taught to slaughter unarmed, unresisting civilians, as they would later do throughout Asia. Likening their victims to insects and animals, the Japanese commanders orchestrated a campaign in which several hundred thousand--no one is sure just how many--Chinese soldiers and noncombatants alike were killed. Chang turns up an unlikely hero in German businessman John Rabe, a devoted member of the Nazi party who importuned Adolf Hitler to intervene and stop the slaughter, and who personally saved the lives of countless residents of Nanking. She also suggests that the Japanese government pay reparations and apologize for its army's horrific acts of 60 years ago. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Separate Peace'
Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.
A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowless crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sparknotes a Separate Peace'
Get your "A" in gear!
They're today's most popular study guides-with everything you need to succeed in school. Written by Harvard students for students, since its inception SparkNotes" has developed a loyal community of dedicated users and become a major education brand. Consumer demand has been so strong that the guides have expanded to over 150 titles. SparkNotes'" motto is Smarter, Better, Faster because:
· They feature the most current ideas and themes, written by experts.
· They're easier to understand, because the same people who use them have also written them.
· The clear writing style and edited content enables students to read through the material quickly, saving valuable time.
And with everything covered--context; plot overview; character lists; themes, motifs, and symbols; summary and analysis, key facts; study questions and essay topics; and reviews and resources--you don't have to go anywhere else!
[via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stalingrad'
Hitler made two fundamental and crippling mistakes during the Second World War. The first was his whimsical belief that the United Kingdom would eventually become his ally, which delayed his decision to launch a major invasion of Britain, whose army was unprepared for the force of blitzkrieg warfare. The second was the ill-conceived Operation Barbarossa--an invasion of Russia that was supposed to take the German army to the gates of Moscow. Antony Beevor's thoughtfully researched compendium recalls this epic struggle for Stalingrad. No-one, least of all the Germans, could foretell the deep well of Soviet resolve that would become the foundation of the Red Army; Russia, the Germans believed, would fall as swiftly as France and Poland. The ill-prepared Nazi forces were trapped in a bloody war of attrition against the Russian behemoth, which held them in the pit of Stalingrad for nearly two years. Beevor points out that the Russians were by no means ready for the war either, making their stand even more remarkable; Soviet intelligence spent as much time spying on its own forces--in fear of desertion, treachery and incompetence--as they did on the Nazis. Due attention is also given to the points of view of the soldiers and generals of both forces, from the sickening battles to life in the gulags.
Many believe Stalingrad to be the turning point of the war. The Nazi war machine proved to be fallible as it spread itself too thin for a cause that was born more from arrogance than practicality. The Germans never recovered, and its weakened defences were no match for the Allied invasion of 1944. We know little of what took place in Stalingrad or its overall significance, leading Beevor to humbly admit that "[t]he Battle of Stalingrad remains such an ideologically charged and symbolically important subject that the last word will not be heard for many years". This is true. But this gripping account should become the standard work against which all others should measure themselves. --Jeremy Storey [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942-1943'
Hitler made two fundamental and crippling mistakes during the Second World War. The first was his whimsical belief that the United Kingdom would eventually become his ally, which delayed his decision to launch a major invasion of Britain, whose army was unprepared for the force of blitzkrieg warfare. The second was the ill-conceived Operation Barbarossa--an invasion of Russia that was supposed to take the German army to the gates of Moscow. Antony Beevor's thoughtfully researched compendium recalls this epic struggle for Stalingrad. No one, least of all the Germans, could foretell the deep well of Soviet resolve that would become the foundation of the Red Army; Russia, the Germans believed, would fall as swiftly as France and Poland. The ill-prepared Nazi forces were trapped in a bloody war of attrition against the Russian behemoth, which held them in the pit of Stalingrad for nearly two years. Beevor points out that the Russians were by no means ready for the war either, making their stand even more remarkable; Soviet intelligence spent as much time spying on its own forces--in fear of desertion, treachery and incompetence--as they did on the Nazis. Due attention is also given to the points of view of the soldiers and generals of both forces, from the sickening battles to life in the gulags.
Many believe Stalingrad to be the turning point of the war. The Nazi war machine proved to be fallible as it spread itself too thin for a cause that was born more from arrogance than practicality. The Germans never recovered, and its weakened defences were no match for the Allied invasion of 1944. We know little of what took place in Stalingrad or its overall significance, leading Beevor to humbly admit that "[t]he Battle of Stalingrad remains such an ideologically charged and symbolically important subject that the last word will not be heard for many years". This is true. But this gripping account should become the standard work against which all others should measure themselves. --Jeremy Storey [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Suite Francaise'
By the early l940s, when Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky began working on what would become Suite Françaisethe first two parts of a planned five-part novelshe was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz: a month later she was dead at the age of thirty-nine. Two years earlier, living in a small village in central Francewhere she, her husband, and their two small daughters had fled in a vain attempt to elude the Nazisshed begun her novel, a luminous portrayal of a human drama in which she herself would become a victim. When she was arrested, she had completed two parts of the epic, the handwritten manuscripts of which were hidden in a suitcase that her daughters would take with them into hiding and eventually into freedom. Sixty-four years later, at long last, we can read Némirovskys literary masterpiece
The first part, A Storm in June, opens in the chaos of the massive 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion during which several families and individuals are thrown together under circumstances beyond their control. They share nothing but the harsh demands of survivalsome trying to maintain lives of privilege, others struggling simply to preserve their livesbut soon, all together, they will be forced to face the awful exigencies of physical and emotional displacement, and the annihilation of the world they know. In the second part, Dolce, we enter the increasingly complex life of a German-occupied provincial village. Coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them, the villagersfrom aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasantscope as best they can. Some choose resistance, others collaboration, and as their community is transformed by these acts, the lives of these these men and women reveal nothing less than the very essence of humanity.
Suite Française is a singularly piercing evocationat once subtle and severe, deeply compassionate and fiercely ironicof life and death in occupied France, and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Survival in Auschwitz'
Survival in Auschwitz is a mostly straightforward narrative, beginning with Primo Levi's deportation from Turin, Italy, to the concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland in 1943. Levi, then a 25-year-old chemist, spent 10 months in the camp. Even Levi's most graphic descriptions of the horrors he witnessed and endured there are marked by a restraint and wit that not only gives readers access to his experience, but confronts them with it in stark ethical and emotional terms: "[A]t dawn the barbed wire was full of children's washing hung out in the wind to dry. Nor did they forget the diapers, the toys, the cushions and the hundred other small things which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the same? If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him something to eat today?" --Michael Joseph Gross [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Survival in Auschwitz and the Reawakening: Two Memoirs'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity'
Survival in Auschwitz is a mostly straightforward narrative, beginning with Primo Levi's deportation from Turin, Italy, to the concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland in 1943. Levi, then a 25-year-old chemist, spent 10 months in the camp. Even Levi's most graphic descriptions of the horrors he witnessed and endured there are marked by a restraint and wit that not only gives readers access to his experience, but confronts them with it in stark ethical and emotional terms: "[A]t dawn the barbed wire was full of children's washing hung out in the wind to dry. Nor did they forget the diapers, the toys, the cushions and the hundred other small things which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the same? If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him something to eat today?" --Michael Joseph Gross [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s over Germany'
Long before he entered politics, when he was just in his early 20s, South Dakotan George McGovern flew 35 bomber missions over Nazi-occupied Europe, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery under fire. Stephen Ambrose, the industrious historian, focuses on McGovern and the young crew of his B-24 bomber, volunteers all, in this vivid study of the air war in Europe.
Manufactured by a consortium of companies that included Ford Motor and Douglas Aircraft, the B-24 bomber, dubbed the Liberator, was designed to drop high explosives on enemy positions well behind the front lines--and especially on the German capital, Berlin. Unheated, drafty, and only lightly armored, the planes were dangerous places to be, and indeed, only 50 percent of their crews survived to the war's end. Dangerous or not, they did their job, delivering thousand- pound bombs to targets deep within Germany and Austria.
In his fast-paced narrative, Ambrose follows many other flyers (including the Tuskegee Airmen, the African American pilots who gave the B-24s essential fighter support on some of their most dangerous missions) as they brave the long odds against them, facing moments of glory and terror alike. "It would be an exaggeration to say that the B-24 won the war for the Allies," Ambrose writes. "But don't ask how they could have won the war without it." --Gregory McNamee [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B24s over Germany 1944-45'
Long before he entered politics, when he was just in his early 20s, South Dakotan George McGovern flew 35 bomber missions over Nazi-occupied Europe, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery under fire. Stephen Ambrose, the industrious historian, focuses on McGovern and the young crew of his B-24 bomber, volunteers all, in this vivid study of the air war in Europe.
Manufactured by a consortium of companies that included Ford Motor and Douglas Aircraft, the B-24 bomber, dubbed the Liberator, was designed to drop high explosives on enemy positions well behind the front lines--and especially on the German capital, Berlin. Unheated, drafty, and only lightly armored, the planes were dangerous places to be, and indeed, only 50 percent of their crews survived to the war's end. Dangerous or not, they did their job, delivering thousand- pound bombs to targets deep within Germany and Austria.
In his fast-paced narrative, Ambrose follows many other flyers (including the Tuskegee Airmen, the African American pilots who gave the B-24s essential fighter support on some of their most dangerous missions) as they brave the long odds against them, facing moments of glory and terror alike. "It would be an exaggeration to say that the B-24 won the war for the Allies," Ambrose writes. "But don't ask how they could have won the war without it." --Gregory McNamee [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa'
This powerful memoir of an enlisted Marine involved in some of the bloodiest fighting in the Pacific in World War II has been called "the best combat memoir of any war." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Las asombrosas aventuras de Kavalier Y Clay/ The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Berlin La Caida 1945'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Expiacion / Atonement'
La trama de esta fascinante y perfecta novela, sucede en la gran casa de campo de la familia Tallis. El padre está en Londres, la madre con migraña encerrada en su habitación, la hija menor desesperada por ser adulta y ya herida por la literatura, el hermano que finalizó sus estudios y regresa con un amigo, la hermana mayor que tambien ha regresado con notas no tan altas, una prima nínfula quinceañera y seductora que ha venido a vivir para la casa, y el brillante hijo de la criada, protegido de la familia, que finaliza con excelentes notas sus estudios. La precoz escritora y menor de los Tallis, cambia irremediablemente el curso de varias vidas cuando acusa al amante de su hermana mayor de haber cometido un crimen en el que no tuvo nada que ver. Todos ellos conforman una novela que va abriéndose a distintas novelas de géneros diferentes: una intensa novela de amor, una durísima novela de guerra, y la novela de una novela, la narración de esta Expiación de la cual la hija menor escribió varias versiones en su vida.Considerada la mejor novela de McEwan, ha sido llevada al cine por Joe Wright, con un estruendoso éxito de taquilla y crítica. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha'
Poco antes de su muerte, Sayuri, una anciana japonesa afincada en Nueva York, cuenta la historia de su vida a un joven amigo americano. El poder de seducción de la voz narrativa de esta geisha legendaria transporta al lector a un Japón de entre guerras, lleno todavía de ecos feudales, y a una de las tradiciones japonesas que más curiosidad inspiran en el mundo occidental: la de la geisha, una peculiar práctica cultural a la que están ligadas artes tales como la seducción, la danza, la pintura o la clásica ceremonia del té. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Si Esto Es un Hombre'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Suite Francesa'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Geisha'
574pages. poche. broché. A neuf ans, dans le Japon d'avant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Sayuri est vendue par son père, un modeste pêcheur, à une maison de plaisir de Kyoto. Dotée d'extraordinaires yeux bleus, la petite fille comprend vite qu'il faut mettre à profit la chance qui est la sienne. Elle se plie avec docilité à l'initiation difficile qui en fera une vraie geisha. Art de la toilette et de la coiffure, rituel du thé, science du chant, de la danse et de l'amour: Sayuri va peu à peu se hisser au rang des geishas les plus convoitées de la ville. Les riches, les puissants se disputeront ses faveurs. Elle triomphera des pièges que lui tend la haine d'une rivale. Elle rencontrera finalement l'amour. Ecrit sous la forme de mémoires, ce récit a la véracité d'un exceptionnel document et le souffle d'un grand roman. Il nous entraîne au coeur d'un univers exotique où se mêlent érotisme et perversité, cruauté et raffinement, séduction et mystère. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Le Patient Anglais (L'Homme Flambe)/ The English Patient'
C'est un étrange huis clos à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale dans une villa italienne transformée en hôpital de campagne. Hanna, une jeune infirmière, a refusé d'évacuer les lieux pour rester veiller sur son unique patient, un aviateur anglais grièvement brûlé. Pour toute compagnie, elle a une sorte d'aventurier qui a travaillé dans les renseignements et un jeune sikh, enrôlé dans l'armée britannique en qualité de démineur, et qui est venu planter sa tente dans le jardin. Dans cette atmosphère de fin du monde où la mort rôde omniprésente, chacun se raconte et lève le voile sur son passé. Mais le plus mystérieux de tous reste cet homme flambé, lié à son infirmière par une étrange relation et dont on ne sait pas très bien s'il est un véritable héros de l'aviation britannique, un simple aventurier ou un espion à la solde des Allemands. Michael Ondaatje, qui est né au Sri Lanka et a fait ses études en Angleterre avant de s'établir à Toronto, a obtenu le Booker Prize en 1992 pour ce roman qui a été adapté avec succès à l'écran par Anthony Minghella. --Gérard Meudal [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Suite Francaise'
434pages. in8. broché jaquette. Ecrit dans le feu de l'Histoire, Suite fran?se d?int presque en direct l'Exode de juin 1940, qui brassa dans un d?rdre tragique des familles fran?ses de toute sorte, des plus hupp? aux plus modestes. Avec bonheur, Ir? N?rovsky traque les innombrables petites l?et?et les fragiles ?ns de solidarit?'une population en d?ute. Cocottes largu? par leur amant, grands bourgeois d?? par la populace, bless?abandonn?dans des fermes engorgent les routes de France bombard? au hasard. Peu ?eu l'ennemi prend possession d'un pays inerte et apeur? Comme tant d'autres, le village de Bussy est pays alors contraint d'accueillir des troupes allemandes. Exacerb? par la pr?nce de l'occupant, les tensions sociales et frustrations des habitants se r?illent. Roman bouleversant, intimiste, implacable, d?ilant avec une extraordinaire lucidit?'? de chaque Fran?s pendant l'Occupation (enrichi des notes et de la correspondance d'Ir? N?rovsky), Suite fran?se ressuscite d'une plume brillante et intuitive un pan ?if de notre m?ire. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Se Questo e Un Uomo: La Tregua'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Die Geisha'
Nach dem Tod ihrer Mutter wird Chiyo in ein Geisha-Haus verkauft. Nachleidvollen Lehrjahren wird sie die begehrteste und mächtigste von allenGeishas. Doch ihr Traum vom privaten Glück erfüllt sich erst nach dem Untergangder alten Geisha-Kultur. [via]
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