The man who tried to save the world

Sample

Flory A. Van Beek

In 1939, as the Nazi occupation grew from threat to reality, the Jewish population throughout Europe faced heart-wrenching decisions—to flee and lose their homes or to go into hiding, hoping against all odds to avoid the fate of being discovered. Holocaust survivor Flory A. Van Beek faced this terrible choice, and in this poignant testament of hope she takes us on her personal journey into one of history's darkest hours.Only a teenage girl when the Nazis invaded her neutral homeland of Holland, Flory watched the only life she had ever known disappear. Tearfully leaving her family, Flory tried to escape on the infamous SS Simon Bolivar passenger ship with Felix, the young Jewish man from Germany who would later become her husband. Their voyage brought not safety but more peril as their ship was blown up by Nazi planted mines, one of the first passenger ships destroyed by the Germans during World War II, sending nearly all of its passengers to a watery end. Miraculously, both Flory and Felix survived.After recovering from their injuries in England, they returned to their homeland, overjoyed to be reunited with their families yet shocked to discover their beloved Holland a much-changed place. As the Nazi grip tightened, they were forced into hiding. Sheltered by compassionate strangers in confined quarters, cut off from the outside world and their relatives, they faced hunger and the stress of daily life shadowed by the ever-present threat of certain death. Yet they also discovered, with the remarkable and brave families who sacrificed their own safety to help keep Flory and Felix alive, a set of friends that remain as close as family to this day.A tribute to family, faith, and the power of good in the face of disparate evil, this gripping account captures the terror of the Holocaust, the courage of those who risked their lives to protect their fellow compatriots, and the faith of those who, against all odds, managed to survive.

Sample

Anne Bernays and Justin Kaplan

"Novelist Anne Bernays, born in 1930, and biographer Justin Kaplan, born in 1925, both natives of New York, came of age in the 1950s, when the pent-up energies of the Depression years and World War II were at flood tide. Back Then, written in two separate voices, is the candid, anecdotal account of two children of privilege, one from New York's East Side, the other from the West Side, pursuing careers in publishing and eventually leaving to write their own books. They both sought self-knowledge and realization through years of psychoanalysis. They brushed shoulders with celebrities like William Faulkner, Somerset Maugham, Marlene Dietrich, and Anatole Broyard.". "Before Bernays and Kaplan met and married, each had enjoyed the sexual and social freedom that, along with the dark shadow of McCarthyism and the Cold War, was among the distinguishing marks of the 1950s. In many other respects, the story they tell could almost as well be about an earlier era."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

Erich Gimpel

The spellbinding autobiography of one of the only Nazi spies to reach American soil. September 1944. Germany is burning at both ends and the Reich is crumbling. Word has drifted back to Berlin that the Americans are testing a secret weapon of unbelievable destruction. A weapon that will win the war. The Fuhrer himself calls upon Agent 146 in a last ditch effort to sabotage America's atomic program. Two months later, a German U-boat surfaces off the coast of Maine. Agent 146 and an American turncoat named William Collepaugh sneak ashore. Down the coast they go, ending up in New York. Once there, a fascinating game of cat and mouse begins as the FBI attempts to close in on the elusive Nazi spy. Never before published in the U. S., Agent 146 is an intriguing tale of espionage under the Reich. Within these pages are fascinating accounts of the Nazis' plans to sabotage the Allies--from sending in commandos to capture Gibraltar to blowing up the Panama Canal. Agent 146 is a must read memoir for any World War II history buff.

Sample

Joan Peyser

Explores the post-World War II modern music movement through the life of Pierre Boulez, the influential and provacative composer and controversial conductor of the New York Philharmonic.