Letters from Belsen 1945

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Jenifer Glynn

"Living in Palestine as the wife of the British Attorney-General, Helen Bentwich was immersed in the politics and society of the early years of the British Mandate. Despite her connections she remained in some ways an outsider - a critical observer, writing candid weekly letters to her mother that give insight into the cauldron of races and traditions, the intolerance and the idealism, that lie behind the history of 20th-century Palestine and the foundation of the state of Israel. The selection of her letters in this book mixes political comment with details of personal life and gossip. The gossip reveals a society that has gone, but the political and religious problems are familiar today. Her family were well aware of the situation in Palestine, and she wanted to amuse rather than alarm them, but the frustrations and worries break through the letters' superficial cheerfulness to provide a picture of the period."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

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Laura Leedy Gansler

Resurrecting a lost hero of the Civil War, the author tells the remarkable story of one heroic woman who defied convention in nineteenth-century America to live, work, and defend her country at a time of war, when most women were restricted to home and hearth. Sarah Emma Edmonds was a young Canadian woman who adopted the guise of a man to escape an arranged marriage at seventeen. For two years, living as Franklin Thompson, she enjoyed freedoms that men enjoyed, traveling the country at will as a successful book salesman. In 1861 she enlisted in the Second Michigan Infantry at nineteen years old. The author uncovers the courageous life of the only woman ever awarded a full soldier's pension for her service during the Civil War. Drawing on Emma's journals and those of the men she served with, Gansler recreates Edmonds' experience through some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War - including both the First and Second Battles of Bull Run, the Peninsula Campaign, and the Battle of Fredericksburg - during which she served with distinction in combat as a "male" nurse, and braved enemy fire as a mail carrier. A cinematic narrative of one brave soldier's experience of the Civil War, this intimate portrait is, above all, a personal drama about the lengths one daring woman was willing to go to chart her own destiny. --from inside jacket flap.

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Richard Greene

Cassis reveals the private side of Greene - an opinionated, charming, articulate, controversial, complex person who was always at odds with conventional wisdom. The fifty-seven excerpts included in this book contain interviews with Greene as well as personal impressions, diary entries, articles, essays, literary pieces, and recollections by friends and contemporaries that span fifty years. Topics range from Greene's conversion to Catholicism to the writer's role in society. Contributors include such well-known writers as Anthony Burgess, John Mortimer, V. S. Pritchett, Kathleen Raine, A. L. Rowse, Israel Shenker, Kenneth Tynan, and Evelyn Waugh. In this collection of essays, A. F. Cassis sheds light on the mystery of Graham Greene. Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, journalist, and playwright, Greene (1904-91) is considered one of the finest literary talents of the twentieth century. He combined his abilities as a wonderful storyteller and a master craftsman to bring respectability to the thriller genre, or what the author himself called "entertainments." In his writings, Greene expressed serious and controversial views on religious, political, and social issues.

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Angela Bull

A biography of the beautiful, wealthy English woman who devoted her life to caring for the sick and creating a great nursing tradition.