by Michael D. Haydock (1999)
"Focusing on the experiences of airmen, politicians, and ordinary citizens, Michael D. Haydock tells the human story of an aviation and logistical accomplishment that has had lasting geopolitical significance.". "At the close of World War II, the Soviet Union controlled all of eastern Germany except the Allied sectors of Berlin. In June 1948, Soviet authorities halted the West's land access to the city, apparently dooming the inhabitants of its Western sectors to starvation. Allied planes - mostly American but some British - immediately began a massive supply airlift that lasted fifteen months. Flying 276,926 dangerous missions, often in bad weather, and bringing in 2.3 million tons of food and coal, the Berlin Airlift cost the lives of 75 U.S. and British airmen but saved the besieged enclave." "Haydock's sources include recently declassified documents and previously unpublished diaries of participants. In City Under Siege, he has united the political, military, and personal aspects of the story."--BOOK JACKET.
James I. Clark
Describes the successful Communist takeover of Russia, the establishment of the Soviet Union, and the contributions of subsequent regimes, with particular attention given to foreign relations after World War II.
Christopher Kelly and Stuart Laycock
Offers a global tour of Italian military history, arranged by country, from the Roman Legionnaires to George Custer's 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Big Horn to modern Italian Eurofighter Typhoons, including Italian Americans fighting in WWII.--Publisher.
Elizabeth R. Escobedo
"During World War II, unprecedented employment avenues opened up for women and minorities in U.S. defense industries at the same time that massive population shifts and the war challenged Americans to rethink notions of race. At this extraordinary historical moment, Mexican American women found new means to exercise control over their lives in the home, workplace, and nation. In From Coveralls to Zoot Suits, Elizabeth R. Escobedo explores how, as war workers and volunteers, dance hostesses and zoot suiters, respectable young ladies and rebellious daughters, these young women used wartime conditions to serve the United States in its time of need and to pursue their own desires. But even after the war, as Escobedo shows, Mexican American women had to continue challenging workplace inequities and confronting family and communal resistance to their broadening public presence. Highlighting seldom heard voices of the "Greatest Generation," Escobedo examines these contradictions within Mexican families and their communities, exploring the impact of youth culture, outside employment, and family relations on the lives of women whose home-front experiences and everyday life choices would fundamentally alter the history of a generation."--Book jacket.
Vicki Halper and Diane Douglas
"Choosing Craft explores the history and practice of American craft through the words of influential artists whose lives, work, and ideas have shaped the field. Editors Vicki Halper and Diane Douglas construct an anecdotal narrative that examines the post World War II development of modern craft, which came of age alongside modernist painting and sculpture and was greatly influenced by them as well as by traditional and industrial practices." "The anthology is organized according to four activities that ground a professional life in craft-inspiration, training, economics, and philosophy. Halper and Douglas mined a wide variety of sources for their material, including artists' published writings, letters, journal entries, exhibition statements, lecture notes, and oral histories. The detailed record they amassed reveals craft's dynamic relationships with painting, sculpture, design, industry, folk and ethnic traditions, hobby craft, and political and social movements. Collectively, these reflections form a social history of craft." "Choosing Craft ultimately offers artists' writings and recollections as vital and vivid data that deserve widespread study as a primary resource for those interested in the American art form."--Jacket.