Primary Sources - World History
Primary Source - World History
Partial list of source materials available at Madison College Libraries
1989 : democratic revolutions at the Cold War's end : a brief history with documents by
A series of democratic transformations in the 1980s ended the cold war and ushered in the present era. This volume by Padraic Kenney uses six case studies from this period -- Poland, the Philippines, Chile, South Africa, Ukraine, and China -- to explore common characteristics of global political change while highlighting the differing strategies and perspectives of the people who sought to free themselves from dictatorship. A general introduction to the volume examines key trends in the decades leading up to the changes, tracing the paths that dictatorships and opposition movements took in their fateful confrontations. The first chapter with documents surveys the central ideas of this age of democratic, nonviolent revolution, and sets a framework for considering the case studies in the chapters that follow. The documents in each case study give voice to celebrated and uncelebrated participants alike -- from Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev to Chinese hunger strikers and an ordinary Filipino activist -- and provide students with an opportunity to compare histories. Photographs, document headnotes, a chronology, questions to consider, and a selected bibliography aid students' understanding of this transformative period.
ISBN: 9780312487669Publication Date: 2009-12-08
At Napoleon's Side in Russia by
The memoirs of his foreign minister as Napoleon left his retreating armies and returned to Paris in the dead of winter, this is by far the most vivid and realistic portrait of the famous emperor during the most disastrous campaign of his military career.
ISBN: 1929631170
Auschwitz : a doctor's eyewitness account by
Auschwitz was one of the first books to bring the full horror of the Nazi death camps to the American public; this is, as the New York Review of Books said, "the best brief account of the Auschwitz experience available."
ISBN: 1559702028
Auschwitz : a Doctor's Story by
"A taut, terse Holocaust narrative that is all the more powerful for its ironic reserve." -- Kirkus Reviews
ISBN: 9781555536596
The cat from Hue : a Vietnam war story by
An evocative, detailed memoir of the madness and miracles of the Vietnam War by a reporter whose experiences in combat - and whose relationship with a Vietnamese cat named Meo - have haunted and inspired him for more than 25 years. John Laurence covered the Vietnam War for CBS News from 1965 to 1970 and was judged by his colleagues to be the best television reporter of the war. He lived with a squad of American soldiers in the jungles of War Zone C to produce an unforgettable documentary, The World of Charlie Company, which won every major award for broadcast journalism and also the George Polk memorial award for best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad. Despite the professional acclaim, the traumatic stories Laurence covered became a personal burden that he brought home and carried long after the war was over. The result is this passionate memoir about what he witnessed there, laced with humour, anger, love, and the unforgettable story of a very idiosyncratic cat who was determined to play his part in the Vietnam revolution.
ISBN: 1891620312
The Coldest War by
America's "forgotten war" lasted just thirty-seven months, yet 54,246 Americans died in that time -- nearly as many as died in ten years in Vietnam. On the fiftieth anniversary of this devastating conflict, James Brady tells the story of his life as a young marine lieutenant in Korea. In 1947, seeking to avoid the draft, nineteen-year-old Jim Brady volunteered for a Marine Corps program that made him a lieutenant in the reserves on the day he graduated college. He didn't plan to find himself in command of a rifle platoon three years later facing a real enemy, but that is exactly what happened after the Chinese turned a so-called police action into a war. The Coldest Warvividly describes Brady's rapid education in the realities of war and the pressures of command. Opportunities for bold offensives sink in the miasma of trench warfare; death comes in fits and starts as too-accurate artillery on both sides seeks out men in their bunkers; constant alertness is crucial for survival, while brutal cold and a seductive silence conspire to lull soldiers into an often fatal stupor. The Korean War affected the lives of all Americans, yet is little known beyond the antics of "M*A*S*H." Here is the inside story that deserves to be told, and James Brady is a powerful witness to a vital chapter of our history.
ISBN: 0312265115
Colors of the Mountain by
"I was born in southern China in 1962, in the tiny town of Yellow Stone. They called it the Year of Great Starvation." In 1962, as millions of Chinese citizens were gripped by Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards enforced a brutal regime of communism, a boy was born to a poor family in southern China. This family—the Chens—had once been respected landlords in the village of Yellow Stone, but now they were among the least fortunate families in the country, despised for their "capitalist" past. Grandpa Chen couldn't leave the house for fear of being beaten to death; the children were spit upon in the street; and their father was regularly hauled off to labor camps, leaving the family of eight without a breadwinner. Da Chen, the youngest child, seemed destined for a life of poverty, shame, and hunger. But winning humor and an indomitable spirit can be found in the most unexpected places.Colors of the Mountainis a story of triumph, a memoir of a boyhood full of spunk, mischief, and love. The young Da Chen is part Horatio Alger, part Holden Caul-field; he befriends a gang of young hoodlums as well as the elegant, elderly Chinese Baptist woman who teaches him English and opens the door to a new life. Chen's remarkable story is full of unforgettable scenes of rural Chinese life: feasting on oysters and fried peanuts on New Year's Day, studying alongside classmates who wear red armbands and quote Mao, and playing and working in the peaceful rice fields near his village. Da Chen's story is both captivating and endearing, filled with the universal human quality that distinguishes the very best memoirs. It proves once again that the concerns of childhood transcend time and place.
ISBN: 0375502882
Commandant of Auschwitz : the autobiography of Rudolf Hoess by
An extraordinary and unique document: Hoess was in charge of the huge extermination camp in Poland where the Nazis murdered some three million Jews, from the time of its creation (he was responsible for building it) in 1940 until late in 1943, by which time the mass exterminations were half completed. Before this he had worked in other concentration camps, and afterwards he was at the Inspectorate in Berlin. He thus knew more, both at first-hand and as an administrator, about Nazi Germany's greatest crime than did any save two or three other men. Taken prisoner by the British, he was handed over to the Poles, tried, sentenced to death, and taken back to Auschwitz and there hanged. During the period between his trial and his execution, he was ordered to write his autobiography. This is it. Hoess repeatedly says he was glad to write the book. He enjoyed the work. And finally the most careful checking has shown that he took great pains to tell the truth. Here we have, painted by his own hand, a vivid and unforgettable self-portrait of one of the great monsters of all time. To this are added portraits of some of his more spectacular fellow-criminals. The royalties from this macabre but historically important book go to the fund set up to help the few survivors from the Auschwitz camps.
ISBN: 1842120247
The dawn of hope : a memoir of Ravensbruck by
The author shares her journey from the Ravensbruck concentration camp to the French Resistance and eventually a life led helping the poorest of the poor.
ISBN: 1559704985
The Diary of a Young Girl by
The diary as Anne Frank wrote it. At last, in a new translation, this definitive edition contains entries about Anne's burgeoning sexuality and confrontations with her mother that were cut from previous editions. Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is among the most enduring documents of the twentieth century. Since its publication in 1947, it has been a beloved and deeply admired monument to the indestructible nature of the human spirit, read by millions of people and translated into more than fifty-five languages. Doubleday, which published the first English translation of the diary in 1952, now offers a new translation that captures Anne's youthful spirit and restores the original material omitted by Anne's father, Otto--approximately thirty percent of the diary. The elder Frank excised details about Anne's emerging sexuality, and about the often-stormy relations between Anne and her mother. Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the horrors of Nazi occupation forces, hid in the back of an Amsterdam office building for two years. This is Anne's record of that time. She was thirteen when the family went into the "Secret Annex," and in these pages, she grows to be a young woman and proves to be an insightful observer of human nature as well. A timeless story discovered by each new generation, The Diary of a Young Girl stands without peer. For young readers and adults, it continues to bring to life this young woman, who for a time survived the worst horrors the modern world had seen--and who remained triumphantly and heartbreakingly human throughout her ordeal.
ISBN: 0385473788
Don't let's go to the dogs tonight : an African childhood by
When the ship veered into the Cape of Good Hope, Mum caught the spicy, heady scent of Africa on the changing wind. She smelled the people: raw onions and salt, the smell of people who are not afraid to eat meat, and who smoke fish over open fires on the beach and who pound maize into meal and who work out-of-doors. She held me up to face the earthy air, so that the fingers of warmth pushed back my black curls of hair, and her pale green eyes went clear-glassy. “Smell that,” she whispered, “that’s home.” Vanessa was running up and down the deck, unaccountably wild for a child usually so placid. Intoxicated already. I took in a faceful of African air and fell instantly into a fever. In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with visceral authenticity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time. From 1972 to 1990, Alexandra Fuller–known to friends and family as Bobo–grew up on several farms in southern and central Africa. Her father joined up on the side of the white government in the Rhodesian civil war, and was often away fighting against the powerful black guerilla factions. Her mother, in turn, flung herself at their African life and its rugged farm work with the same passion and maniacal energy she brought to everything else. Though she loved her children, she was no hand-holder and had little tolerance for neediness. She nurtured her daughters in other ways: She taught them, by example, to be resilient and self-sufficient, to have strong wills and strong opinions, and to embrace life wholeheartedly, despite and because of difficult circumstances. And she instilled in Bobo, particularly, a love of reading and of storytelling that proved to be her salvation. A worthy heir to Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, Alexandra Fuller writes poignantly about a girl becoming a woman and a writer against a backdrop of unrest, not just in her country but in her home. But Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is more than a survivor’s story. It is the story of one woman’s unbreakable bond with a continent and the people who inhabit it, a portrait lovingly realized and deeply felt.
ISBN: 0375507507
Frauen : German women recall the Third Reich by
What were the women of Germany doing during the Third Reich? What were they thinking? And what do they have to say a half century later? In Frauen we hear their voices - most for the first time. Alison Owings interviewed and here records the words of twenty-nine German women who were there: Working for the Resistance. Joining the Nazi Party. Outsmarting the Gestapo. Disliking a Jewish neighbor. Hiding a Jewish friend. Witnessing Kristallnacht. Witnessing the firebombing of Dresden. Shooting at Allied planes. Welcoming Allied troops. Being a prisoner. And being a guard. The women recall their own and others' enthusiasm, doubt, fear, fury, cowardice, guilt, and anguish. Alison Owings, in her pursuit of such memories, was invited into the homes of these women. Because she is neither Jewish nor German, and because she speaks fluent colloquial German, many of the women she interviewed felt comfortable enough with her to unlock the past. What they have to say will surprise Americans, just as it surprised the women themselves. Not since Marcel Ophuls's controversial film The Sorrow and the Pity have we been on such intimate terms with the enemy. In this case, the story is that of the women, those who did not make policy but who lived with its effects and witnessed its results. What they did and did not do is not just a reflection on them and their country - it also leads us to question what actions we might have taken in their place. The interviews do not allow for easy, smug answers.
ISBN: 0813519926
Heart of War by
Heart of War is an oral history compiled from thoughtful and thought-provoking interviews with 18 veterans of the current war in Iraq. The author focuses on the human story, allowing the subjects to speak frankly and honestly.
ISBN: 0806528141
If I Die in a Combat Zone by
A CLASSIC FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE THINGS THEY CARRIED Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre. Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader's guide and bonus content
ISBN: 0767904435
In deadly combat : a German soldier's memoir of the Eastern Front by
Firsthand perspectives of German WWII infantrymen are rare, as respected historian Dennis Showalter (Tannenberg: Clash of Empires) points out in his excellent introduction. Bidermann, who is an 18-year-old private in the 132d Infantry Division at the beginning of this memoir, takes us through the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, passage across the Dnieper and southern steppes, battles in the Crimea, engagements in northern Russia and retreat through Riga to the Baltic. He retrospectively reviews historical records and sketches the daily happenings and ambience of his unit in a matter-of-fact and unpretentious -- yet invariably proud -- tone. The translation is direct and generally graceful, sometimes lyrical. Retired Navy SEAL Zumbro, who has translated German accounts for the Eisenhower Center of the University of New Orleans, has translated and expanded Bidermann's 1964 private German publication, utilizing the same preserved documents and retrospective interviews from other members of the 132d. Before war's end, the unit was cut off in Courland, though Bidermann claims it was "never defeated in open battle". After surrender in
ISBN: 0700610162
Inside the Third Reich by
Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production under Hitler, the man who had kept Germany armed and the war machine running even after Hitler's mystique had faded, takes a brutally honest look at his role in the war effort, giving readers a complete view of the inside of the Nazi state. Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production under Hitler, the man who had kept Germany armed and the war machine running even after Hitler's mystique had faded, takes a brutally honest look at his role in the war effort, giving readers a complete view of the inside of the Nazi state.
ISBN: 0684829495
In the Beginning Was the Ghetto by
From February 1942 to July 1944, Oskar Rosenfeld served in the statistics department of the Lodz ghetto. A playwright and journalist, he kept his own notes on life and conditions in the ghetto for a fictionalized account he hoped to write one day. Though Rosenfeld eventually perished at Auschwitz, In the Beginning Was the Ghetto projects his voice at last to the wider world.
ISBN: 0810114887
The Iraq Papers by
The Iraq Papers will be the most comprehensive and best-organized document collection of America's misadventure in Iraq. The editors have organized the book around the concept of pre-emption, a policy that represented a significant break with past American foreign policy. The editors locatethe intellectual origins of pre-emption in neoconservative writings from the early 1990s, and then trace how the logic of pre-emption played out across a number of arenas in the first decade of the twenty first century: the war itself, America's relationship with its allies and the UN, itsdealings with Iraqi society and successive Iraqi governments after 2003, and domestic policy in the Bush-era United States. They close with a chapter on the limits of American policy as it moves into the Obama era. There are eleven chapters in total, and ten will feature a representative selectionof the most important documents relating to the origins of the war - including prominent writings by early neoconservative advocates for invasion - and the war's impact on Iraq, America, and the world. Covering more than a decade, The Iraq Papers will be a definitive source for anyone interested inunderstanding this enormously complicated and difficult conflict.
ISBN: 9780195398595
Jewish Displaced Persons in Camp Bergen-Belsen 1945-1950 by
"Jewish Displaced Persons in Camp Bergen-Belsen, 1945-1950 is based on a photo album that includes more than 1,100 pictures taken in the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the years following the end of World War II, when it served as the largest c"
ISBN: 0295984201
Journal 1935-1944 by
"Mihail Sebastian's diary of the fascist years in Romania, written half a century ago, was at last published only recently, and is here translated into English for the first time. Sebastian was a promising your Jewish writer in prewar Bucharest - a novelist, playwright, poet, and journalist who counted among his friends the leading intellectuals and social luminaries of a sophisticated Eastern European culture. Because of Romania's opportunistic treatment of Jews, he survived the war and the Holocaust, only to be killed in early 1945 in an automobile accident." "The book offers not only a chronicle of the dark years of Nazism but a lucid and finely shaded analysis of erotic and social life, a Jew's diary, a reader's notebook, and a music lover's journal. Above all, it is a measured but blistering account of the "rhinocerization" of major Romanian intellectuals who were Sebastian's friends, including Mircea Elaide and E.M. Cioran, writers and thinkers who were mesmerized by the Nazi-fascist delirium of Europe's "reactionary revolution." In poignant and memorable sequences, Sebastian touches on the progression of the machinery of brutalization and on the historical context that lay behind it."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 1566633265
The Journal of Hélène Berr by
Following in the tradition of timeless Holocaust literature such as Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl and Suite Francaise, this important literary contribution by a young writer presents an account of war-time Paris that is profoundly affecting and devastatingly lucid.
ISBN: 9781602860643
Journey to a revolution : a personal memoir and history of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 by
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was not just an extraordinary and dramatic event--perhaps the most dramatic single event of the Cold War--but, as we can now see fifty years later, a major turning point in history. Here is an eyewitness account, in the tradition of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. The spontaneous rising of Hungarian people against the Hungarian communist party and the Soviet forces in Hungary in the wake of Stalin's death, while ending unsuccessfully, demonstrated to the world at large the failure of Communism. The Russians were obliged to use force on a vast scale against armed students, factory workers, and intellectuals in the streets of a major European capital to restore the Hungarian communist party to power. For two weeks, students, women, and teenagers fought tanks in the streets of Budapest, in full view of the Western media--and therefore the world--and for a time they actually won, deeply humiliating the men who succeeded Stalin. The Russians eventually managed to extinguish the revolution with brute force and overwhelming numbers, but never again would they attempt to use military force on a large scale to suppress dissent in their Eastern European empire. Told with brilliant detail, suspense, occasional humor, and sustained anger, Journey to a Revolution is at once history and a compelling memoir--the amazing story of four young Oxford undergraduates, including the author, who took off for Budapest in a beat-up old Volkswagen convertible in October 1956 to bring badly needed medicine to Budapest hospitals and to participate, at street level, in one of the great battles of postwar history. Michael Korda paints a vivid and richly detailed picture of the events and the people; explores such major issues as the extent to which the British and American intelligence services were involved in the uprising, making the Hungarians feel they could expect military support from the West; and describes, day by day, the course of the revolution, from its heroic beginnings to the sad martyrdom of its end. Journey to a Revolution delivers "a harrowing and horrifying tale told in spare and poignant prose--sometimes bitter, sometimes ironic, always powerful."* * Kirkus Reviews (starred)
ISBN: 0060772611
Kaffir Boy by ISBN: 0452264715
Last night I dreamed of peace : the diary of Dang Thuy Tram by
At the age of twenty-four, Dang Thuy Tram volunteered to serve as a doctor in a National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) battlefield hospital in the Quang Ngai Province. Two years later she was killed by American forces not far from where she worked. Written between 1968 and 1970, her diary speaks poignantly of her devotion to family and friends, the horrors of war, her yearning for her high school sweetheart, and her struggle to prove her loyalty to her country. At times raw, at times lyrical and youthfully sentimental, her voice transcends cultures to speak of her dignity and compassion and of her challenges in the face of the war’s ceaseless fury. The American officer who discovered the diary soon after Dr. Tram’s death was under standing orders to destroy all documents without military value. As he was about to toss it into the flames, his Vietnamese translator said to him, “Don’t burn this one. . . . It has fire in it already.” Against regulations, the officer preserved the diary and kept it for thirty-five years. In the spring of 2005, a copy made its way to Dr. Tram’s elderly mother in Hanoi. The diary was soon published in Vietnam, causing a national sensation. Never before had there been such a vivid and personal account of the long ordeal that had consumed the nation’s previous generations. Translated by Andrew X. Pham and with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Frances FitzGerald,Last Night I Dreamed of Peaceis an extraordinary document that narrates one woman’s personal and political struggles. Above all, it is a story of hope in the most dire of circumstances—told from the perspective of our historic enemy but universal in its power to celebrate and mourn the fragility of human life.
ISBN: 9780307347374
Leaves from an autumn of emergencies : selections from the wartime diaries of ordinary Japanese by
The fall of Singapore and the brilliant victories achieved since the start of the war mean we are protected, but I don't know just how grateful I should be. --Takahashi Aiko, housewife, February 1942 This is my final departure from the home islands. I have paid my respects to those who have helped me. I have no regrets. --Itabashi Yasuo, navy kamikaze pilot, February 1944 We had rice gruel for lunch again. There was no tofu in it, but there were potatoes.... We went through with the closing ceremony and received our report cards. Everyone was there. From now on, I'll persevere and not fail. --Manabe Ichiro, primary school student, July 1944 This collection of diaries gives readers a powerful, firsthand look at the effects of the Pacific War on eight ordinary Japanese. Immediate, vivid, and at times surprisingly frank, the diaries chronicle the last years of the war and its aftermath as experienced by a navy kamikaze pilot, an army straggler on Okinawa, an elderly Kyoto businessman, a Tokyo housewife, a young working woman in Tokyo, a teenage girl mobilized for war work, and two schoolchildren evacuated to the countryside. Samuel Yamashita's introduction provides a helpful overview of the historiography on wartime Japan and offers valuable insights into the important, everyday issues that concerned Japanese during a different and disastrously difficult time.
ISBN: 0824829360
The Letters of the Rozmberk Sisters by
The letters of the Rozmberk sisters, Perchta and Anézka, give a vivid insight into how medieval women viewed themselves. Perchta's letters inform her father that his choice of a husband for her has caused her desperate sadness and sorrow in which death seems a better alternative. Despite her unhappiness and her almost total dependence on others, however, Perchta undertook to take control of her own fate and to improve the circumstances of her life. Her letters were the means whereby she informed her father and brothers of her misery and persuaded them to take action, and in the process they tell us about her expectations of respect and companionship in marriage. The letters of both sisters show them to be women with a vigorous sense of their own dignity and offer insights into the hopes and disappointments, joys and vexations of fifteenth-century women. The letters also introduce theenvironment and the activities of daily castle life, and offer an intimate picture of family life in the fifteenth century.JOHN M. KLASSEN is Professor of History at Trinity Western University, Canada. He was assisted in the translations by EVA DOLEZALOVA, Historical Institue, Prague, and LYNN SZABO, Trinity Western University.
ISBN: 085991612X
A Life of Her Own by
First published in France in 1977, this autobiography vivifies the captivating Carles from her peasant origins in a tiny Alpine village through her work as a teacher, farmer, mother, feminist and political activist.
ISBN: 0140169652
Long Walk to Freedom by
The book that inspired the major new motion picture Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality. LONG WALK TO FREEDOM is his moving and exhilarating autobiography, destined to take its place among the finest memoirs of history's greatest figures. Here for the first time, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela tells the extraordinary story of his life--an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph.
ISBN: 0316548189
A long way gone : memoirs of a boy soldier by
My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life. "Why did you leave Sierra Leone?" "Because there is a war." "You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?" "Yes, all the time." "Cool." I smile a little. "You should tell us about it sometime." "Yes, sometime." This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.
ISBN: 0374105235
Love & war in London : a woman's diary, 1939-1942 by ISBN: 9780889204584
Love Thy Neighbor by
What Michael Herr's Dispatches was to the Vietnam War, Love Thy Neighbor is to the Bosnian War--a brilliantly observed and deeply felt evocation of war by a writer who witnessed it. The work immediately calls to mind Heller's Catch-22 for its grasp of the absurdity of war, and, for its accurate presentation of the events, Neil Sheehan's A Bright, Shining Lie.
ISBN: 0679444335
The Magic lantern : the revolution of '89 witnessed in Warsaw,Budapest, Berlin, and by
"[Garton Ash's] own involvement in these events, intellectual and emotional, is of such intensity that he can speak...from the inside as well as from the outside. Yet the sense of historic dimension...is never lost. And the quality of the writing places it clearly in the category of good literature." -- George Kennan The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that define a historic moment, written by a brilliant witness who was also a participant in epochal events. Whether covering Poland's first free parliamentary elections -- in which Solidarity found itself in the position of trying to limit the scope of its victory -- or sitting in at the meetings of an unlikely coalition of bohemian intellectuals and Catholic clerics orchestrating the liberation of Czechoslovakia, Garton Ash writes with enormous sympathy and power. In this book -- now with a new Afterword by the author -- Garton Ash creates a stunningly evocative portrait of the revolutions that swept Communism from Eastern Europe in 1989 and whose after-effects will resonate for years to come. "Along with the historian's long view, Gatton Ash has an eye and an ear for the telling detail." -- Washington Past Book World From the Trade Paperback edition.
ISBN: 0394588843
My Life with the Taliban by
My Life with the Talibanis the autobiography of Abdul Salam Zaeef, a former senior member of Afghanistan's Taliban and a principal actor in its domestic and foreign affairs. Translated for the first time from the Pashto, Zaeef's words share more than a personal history of an unusual life. They supply a counternarrative to standard accounts of Afghanistan since 1979. Zaeef shares his experiences as a poor youth in rural Kandahar. Both his parents died when he was young, and Russia's invasion in 1979 forced Zaeef to flee to Pakistan. In 1983, Zaeef joined the jihad against the Soviets, fighting alongside several major figures of the anti-Soviet resistance, including current Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. After the war, he returned to his quiet life in Helmand, but factional conflicts soon broke out, and Zaeef, disgusted by the ensuing lawlessness, joined with other former mujahidin to form the Taliban, which assumed power in 1994. Zaeef recounts his time with the organization, first as a civil servant and then as a minister who negotiated with foreign oil companies and Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Afghani resistance. Zaeef served as ambassador to Pakistan at the time of 9/11, and his testimony sheds light on the "phoney war" that preceeded the U.S.-led intervention. In 2002, Zaeef was delivered to the American forces operating in Pakistan and spent four and a half years in prison, including several years in Guantanamo, before being released without trial or charge. His reflections offer a privileged look at the communities that form the bedrock of the Taliban and the forces that motivate men like Zaeef to fight. They also provide an illuminating perspective on life in Guantanamo.
ISBN: 9780231701488
My War Gone by, I Miss It So by
An extraordinary, personal look at modern war by a young correspondent who saw its horrors firsthand, My War Gone By, I Miss It So is already being compared to the classics of war literature. Born into a distinguished family steeped in military tradition, from his youth Anthony Loyd longed to experience the fury of war from the front lines. Driven by suicidal despair and drug dependence, the former soldier left his native England at the age of twenty-six to cover the bloodiest conflict that Europe had seen since the Second World War -- the war in Bosnia. Nothing can prepare you for the account of war that Loyd gives. His harrowing stories from the battlefields show humanity at its worst and best, witnessed through the grim tragedies played out daily in the city, streets, and mountain villages of Bosnia and Chechnya. Profoundly shocking, violent, poetic, and ultimately redemptive, My War Gone By, I Miss It So is an uncompromising look at the terrifying brutality of war. It is a breathtaking, soul-shattering book, an intense and moving piece of reportage that you won't put down and will never be able to forget.
ISBN: 0871137690
Nadia, Captive of Hope by
A rare feminist perspective on a people and a culture in one of the most tumultuous regions in the world, Nadia, Captive of Hope is the autobiography of Fay Afaf Kanafani, an Arab Muslim woman born in Beirut in 1918.
ISBN: 0765603128
The Nazi State and German Society by ISBN: 9780312454685
The Nazi State and German Society by
The Nazi State and German Society invites students to view the history of the twentieth century's most infamous totalitarian regime through the voices of people who experienced it. Robert Moeller's comprehensive introduction presents an overview of the Nazi regime, from Weimar to the end of the war, explaining the factors that led millions of ordinary Germans to sacrifice individual rights in the interest of collective goals and national security. The effects of Nazi rule on Aryans, Jews, and other "undesirables" are explored, along with a discussion of why so few people organized against the regime. Over 50 documents from a broad range of perspectives -- including speeches, memoirs, letters, diaries, and propaganda posters -- bring this history to life and illustrate the effect of Nazi rule on German society. Document headnotes, a chronology, questions for consideration, and a selected bibliography provide pedagogical support.
ISBN: 0312454686
Night by
Night-- A terrifying account  of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young  Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of  his family...the death of his innocence...and the  death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as  personal asThe Diary Of Anne  Frank,Nightawakens the shocking  memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it  the unforgettable message that this horror must  never be allowed to happen again.
ISBN: 0553272535
No place like home : echoes from Kosovo by
Explores the recent history of Kosovo through photgraphic portraits and landscapes integrated with a wide range of Kosovo's civilians. The book challenges current media representation of both refugees and Kosovars. Melanie Friend's prize-winning work has appeared in Granta, th Guardian, Time Magazine, The Independent, and Marie Claire among other publications. Her photographs of Kosovar Albanian refugees have been exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London as well as in galleries internationally, including the US.
ISBN: 1573441198
The power of solitude : my life in the German resistance by
"Dearly beloved Child of my Heart, we are probably standing at the end of our beautiful and rich life together. Because tomorrow the People's Court intends to sit in judgment on me and others. I hear that we have been expelled from the army. They can take the uniform from us, but not the spirit in which we acted."--Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, in a letter to his wife. Marion Yorck von Wartenburg was involved in the Nazi resistance group known as the Kreisau Circle, whose cofounder was her husband, Peter. The Kreisau Circle participated in the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944. Peter's cousin Claus Stauffen-berg and other members of the military resistance carried out the attempt. When they failed, hundreds of people were arrested, tried, and executed, including Peter. Marion and other members of the conspirators' families were also arrested and spent months jailed under miserable conditions. In this memoir Marion recreates the terrifying reality of her life as the wife of a resistance fighter and at the same time conveys the depth of the bond that existed between her and her husband.
ISBN: 0803249152
Reporting Vietnam by
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
ISBN: 1883011582 v2- Reporting Vietnam v1 by
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
ISBN: 1883011582
Ride Out the Dark by ISBN: 0839828535
A Rumor of War by
The classic Vietnam memoir, as relevant today as it was almost thirty years ago. In March of 1965, Marine Lieutenent Philip J. Caputo landed at Da Nang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home-- physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone. "A Rumor of War" is more than one soldier's story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered America's indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. In the years since then, it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also a renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as Caputo explains, of " the things men do in war and the things war does to men." " A singular and marvelous work." -- "The New York Times"
ISBN: 003017631X
Salvaged pages : young writers' diaries of the Holocaust by
This collection of diaries, written by young people during the Holocaust, reflects a vast and diverse range of experiences - some of the writers were refugees, others were hiding or passing as non-Jews, and some were imprisoned in ghettos. The volume contains extensive excerpts from 15 diaries, ten of which have never before been translated and published in English. The diarists ranged in age from 12 to 22; some survived the Holocaust, but most perished. Taken together, their accounts of daily events and their often unexpected thoughts, ideas and feelings serve to deepen and complicate our understanding of life during the Holocaust.
ISBN: 0300092431
Servants of Evil by
These first-hand accounts of war from the other side, make fascinating reading and throw new light on the key areas of conflict, the tactics of both sides and the causes for which ordinary Germans believed they were fighting.
ISBN: 1842222376
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by
In his classic book, T.E. Lawrence--forever known as Lawrence of Arabia--recounts his role in the origin of the modern Arab world. At first a shy Oxford scholar and archaeologist with a facility for languages, he joined and went on to lead the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks while the rest of the world was enmeshed in World War I. With its richly detailed evocation of the land and the people Lawrence passionately believed in, its incisive portraits of key players, from Faisal ibn Hussein, the future Hashemite king of Syria and Iraq, to General Sir Edmund Allenby and other members of the British imperial forces, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom is an indispensible primary historical source. It helps us to understand today's Middle East, while giving us thrilling accounts of military exploits (including thenbsp; liberation of Aqaba and Damascus), clandestine activities, and human foibles.
ISBN: 0385418957
Soviet Culture and Power by
Leaders of the Soviet Union, Stalin chief among them, well understood the power of art, and their response was to attempt to control and direct it in every way possible. This book examines Soviet cultural politics from the Revolution to Stalin’s death in 1953. Drawing on a wealth of newly released documents from the archives of the former Soviet Union, the book provides remarkable insight on relations between Gorky, Pasternak, Babel, Meyerhold, Shostakovich, Eisenstein, and many other intellectuals, and the Soviet leadership. Stalin’s role in directing these relations, and his literary judgments and personal biases, will astonish many. The documents presented in this volume reflect the progression of Party control in the arts. They include decisions of the Politburo, Stalin’s correspondence with individual intellectuals, his responses to particular plays, novels, and movie scripts, petitions to leaders from intellectuals, and secret police reports on intellectuals under surveillance. Introductions, explanatory materials, and a biographical indexnbsp;accompany the documents.nbsp;
ISBN: 9780300106466
The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre by
A riveting account of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, its origins, and its aftermath, this volume by Barbara B. Diefendorf introduces students to the most notorious episode in France's sixteenth century civil and religious wars and an event of lasting historical importance. The murder of thousands of French Protestants by Catholics in August 1572 influenced not only the subsequent course of France's civil wars and state building, but also patterns of international alliance and long-standing cultural values across Europe. The book begins with an introduction that explores the political and religious context for the massacre and traces the course of the massacre and its aftermath. The featured documents offer a rich array of sources on the conflict -- including royal edicts, popular songs, polemics, eyewitness accounts, memoirs, paintings, and engravings -- to enable students to explore the massacre, the nature of church-state relations, the moral responsibility of secular and religious authorities, and the origins and consequences of religious persecution and intolerance in this period. Useful pedagogic aids include headnotes and gloss notes to the documents, a list of major figures, a chronology of key events, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and an index.
ISBN: 0312413602
A stranger to myself : the inhumanity of war : Russia, 1941-1944 by
A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War, Russia 1941-44 is the haunting memoir of a young German soldier on the Russian front during World War II. Willy Peter Reese was only twenty years old when he found himself marching through Russia with orders to take no prisoners. Three years later he was dead. Bearing witness to--and participating in--the atrocities of war, Reese recorded his reflections in his diary, leaving behind an intelligent, touching, and illuminating perspective on life on the eastern front. He documented the carnage perpetrated by both sides, the destruction which was exacerbated by the young soldiers' hunger, frostbite, exhaustion, and their daily struggle to survive. And he wrestled with his own sins, with the realization that what he and his fellow soldiers had done to civilians and enemies alike was unforgivable, with his growing awareness of the Nazi policies toward Jews, and with his deep disillusionment with himself and his fellow men. An international sensation, A Stranger to Myself is an unforgettable account of men at war.
ISBN: 0374139784
Testimony of a Bosnian by
Surrounded by terror and genocide, Naza Tanovic-Miller and her family witnessed starvation, rape, and murder during the horrible war in Bosnia and the tense days and nights that led up to it. Now in Testimony of a Bosnian, Tanovic-Miller gives a personal, riveting account of these dreadful events, a testimony that tells more than the news accounts Americans watched at the time. Seeking refuge in her husband's home country of the United States in October, 1992, Tanovic-Miller and her husband, Harry Miller, immediately began efforts to raise the awareness of Americans about the ethnic cleansing taking place in Bosnia. The couple conducted an intense letter-writing campaign to prominent politicians and officials and organized gatherings and lectures to expose the truth about the desperate situation, hoping that some commitment would be made in defending Bosnia. Their efforts fell largely on deaf ears, and they were sorely disappointed by the lack of response from prominent officials. Tanovic-Miller unflinchingly identifies the actual perpetrators of the Bosnian crisis, and she also unapologetically calls to task those who had the power to prevent the worst of the atrocities but did not. Historic and demographic maps supplement this survey of Bosnian history, and family photographs add a human dimension. By recounting her own experiences during this nightmare, Tanovic-Miller marshals documentary evidence to support her claims of the world's inactivity in the face of mounting destruction.
ISBN: 1585441139
To what end : report from Vietnam by
"As a young man, Ward Just spent eighteen months in Vietnam as a correspondent for the Washington Post. The experience would earn him both a citation from the Overseas Press Club and a Combat Infantrym"
ISBN: 1891620770
The Trial of Joan of Arc by
No account is more critical to our understanding of Joan of Arc than the contemporary record of her trial in 1431. Convened at Rouen and directed by bishop Pierre Cauchon, the trial culminated in Joan's public execution for heresy. The trial record, which sometimes preserves Joan's very words, unveils her life, character, visions, and motives in fascinating detail. Here is one of our richest sources for the life of a medieval woman. This new translation, the first in fifty years, is based on the full record of the trial proceedings in Latin. Recent scholarship dates this text to the year of the trial itself, thereby lending it a greater claim to authority than had traditionally been assumed. Contemporary documents copied into the trial furnish a guide to political developments in Joan's career-from her capture to the attempts to control public opinion following her execution. Daniel Hobbins sets the trial in its legal and historical context. In exploring Joan's place in fifteenth-century society, he suggests that her claims to divine revelation conformed to a recognizable profile of holy women in her culture, yet Joan broke this mold by embracing a military lifestyle. By combining the roles of visionary and of military leader, Joan astonished contemporaries and still fascinates us today. Obscured by the passing of centuries and distorted by the lens of modern cinema, the story of the historical Joan of Arc comes vividly to life once again.
ISBN: 0674024052
The Unwanted by
When Saigon fell to the Viet Cong in April, 1975, Kien Nguyen was there. He watched the last US Army helicopter leave without him, without his brother, his mother or his grandparents. More risk than most in the decimated country, with his odd blond hair and light eyes, he was the most unwanted - an American. This is a memoir by an Amerasian who stayed behind in Vietnam and is now living in America. Told with stark and poetic honesty, it is a story of survival, a story of hope, and a moving, personal record of this tumultuous time in history.
ISBN: 0316286648
Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto by ISBN: 0805235787
A Vietnam War Reader by
An essential new resource for students and teachers of the Vietnam War, this concise collection of primary sources opens a valuable window on an extraordinarily complex conflict. The materials gathered here, from both the American and Vietnamese sides, remind readers that the conflict touched the lives of many people in a wide range of social and political situations and spanned a good deal more time than the decade of direct U.S. combat. Indeed, the U.S. war was but one phase in a string of conflicts that varied significantly in character and geography. Michael Hunt brings together the views of the conflict's disparate players--from Communist leaders, Vietnamese peasants, Saigon loyalists, and North Vietnamese soldiers to U.S. policymakers, soldiers, and critics of the war. By allowing the participants to speak, this volume encourages readers to formulate their own historically grounded understanding of a still controversial struggle.
ISBN: 9780807859919
The Voices of Glasnost by
An inside account of the events unfolding in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. In a series of interviews, 14 leaders of Gorbachev's reforms talk about their personal and political struggles to change the Soviet Union.
ISBN: 0393307352
Voices of Revolution, 1917 by
"Although much has been written about the political history of the Russian revolution, the human story of what the revolution meant to ordinary people has rarely been told. This book gives voice to the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of the Russian people - workers, peasants, soldiers - as expressed in their own words during the vast political, social, and economic upheavals of 1917." "The documents in the volume include letters from individuals to newspapers, institutions, or leaders; collective resolutions and appeals; and even poetry. Selected from the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow, nearly all the texts are published here for the first time."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 0300090161
Walking with the Comrades by ISBN: 9780143120599
What I saw : reports from Berlin, 1920-1933 by
The Joseph Roth revival has finally gone mainstream with the thunderous reception for What I Saw, a book that has become a classic with five hardcover printings. Glowingly reviewed, What I Saw introduces a new generation to the genius of this tortured author with its "nonstop brilliance, irresistible charm and continuing relevance" (Jeffrey Eugenides, The New York Times Book Review). As if anticipating Christopher Isherwood, the book re-creates the tragicomic world of 1920s Berlin as seen by its greatest journalistic eyewitness. In 1920, Joseph Roth, the most renowned German correspondent of his age, arrived in Berlin, the capital of the Weimar Republic. He produced a series of impressionistic and political essays that influenced an entire generation of writers, including Thomas Mann and the young Christopher Isherwood. Translated and collected here for the first time, these pieces record the violent social and political paroxysms that constantly threatened to undo the fragile democracy that was the Weimar Republic. Roth, like no other German writer of his time, ventured beyond Berlin's official veneer to the heart of the city, chronicling the lives of its forgotten inhabitants: the war cripples, the Jewish immigrants from the Pale, the criminals, the bathhouse denizens, and the nameless dead who filled the morgues. Warning early on of the dangers posed by the Nazis, Roth evoked a landscape of moral bankruptcy and debauched beauty; a memorable portrait of a city and a time of commingled hope and chaos. What I Saw, like no other existing work, records the violent social and political paroxysms that compromised and ultimately destroyed the precarious democracy that was the Weimar Republic.
ISBN: 0393051676
A witness to genocide : the 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning dispatches on the "ethnic cleansing" of Bosnia by
"Straight from today's front-page headlines comes this shocking firsthand account of the current genocide perpetrated by Bosnia's Serbs against that country's Muslims. A Witness to Genocide is a compilation of Newsday foreign correspondent Roy Gutman's reports from Bosnia, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting." "Gutman and photographer Andree Kaiser (whose photos illustrate this book) were the first Western journalists to visit the death camps, and Gutman was the first to interview the survivors and report on the atrocities that were taking place there. His articles were partly responsible for the United Nations' condemnation of the camps and insistence that the International Red Cross be allowed to inspect them." "The articles include survivors' accounts of being transported to the camps in cattle cars in which many died of starvation or suffocation, the systematic murder of prisoners, the government-ordered rape of all Muslim girls and women, and the destruction of the six-hundred-year-old Muslim cultural heritage, including over half of all mosques, historical sites, and libraries. Not since the Holocaust have such widespread, blatant, and unrestrained atrocities been committed against a defenseless minority." "The articles are framed by a comprehensive prologue in which the recent history and breakup of Yugoslavia are explained, and an epilogue in which Gutman gives his recommendations on how to put a stop to this ongoing tragedy, and prevent others in its wake."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 0025467506
Words to outlive us : voices from the Warsaw ghetto by
The story of the Warsaw Ghetto told through twenty-eight never-before-published accounts-a precious and historic find. In the history of the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto stands as the enduring symbol of Jewish suffering and heroism. This collective memoir-a mosaic of individual diaries, journals, and accounts-follows the fate of the Warsaw Jews from the first bombardments of the Polish capital to the razing of the Jewish district. The life of the ghetto appears here in striking detail: the frantic exchange of apartments as the walls first go up; the daily battle against starvation and disease; the moral ambiguities confronting Jewish bureaucracies under Nazi rule; the ingenuity of smugglers; and the acts of resistance. Written inside the ghetto or in hiding outside its walls, these extraordinary testimonies preserve voices otherwise consigned to oblivion: a woman doctor whose four-year-old son is deemed a threat to the hideout; a painter determined to complete his mural of Job and his trials; a ten-year-old girl barely eluding blackmailers on the Aryan side of the city. Stunning in their immediacy, the urgent accounts recorded here provide much more than invaluable historical detail: they challenge us to imagine the unimaginable.
ISBN: 0805058338
World War I by
Offering a comprehensive account of the war as more than a purely military phenomenon, World War I: A History in Documents, Second Edition, also addresses its profound social, cultural, and economic implications. Authors Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee and Frans Coetzee use editorials, memoirs, newspaper articles, poems, and letters to re-create the many facets of the war. Technological developments such as the machine gun and barbed wire brought the world trench warfare, which is vividly depicted here in a firsthand account of then-soldier Benito Mussolini. An Atlantic Monthly essay by the African-American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois draws attention to the conflict's origins in imperialist greed in Africa. A poor French girl's thank-you note to a charitable American demonstrates the plight of Europe's children. And a photo essay of poster art reveals the passion and propaganda aroused on every side. This second edition includes an updated introduction with a note on sources and interpretation, more than forty new documents and images, and updated further reading and website lists. The new documents offer additional material on colonialism in Africa and on specific military aspects of the war, including an excerpt on the coming of war in Germany from Stefan Zweig's autobiography; a description of the Brusilov offensive; the diary of a German deserter; an account of the Christmas truce; soldiers' poetry; a diary from the Gallipoli campaign; Jan Smuts's report on fighting in east Africa; and a report from the battle of Jutland. Several new literary sources, including a poem by Anna Akhmatova, are also included. The new images of satirical German postcards and a broadside of the Proclamation of a Provisional Government of the Irish Republic allow readers to see rare ephemera and build a more textured historical understanding of the war.
ISBN: 9780199731510
Writing Revolution / Diaries of an unfinished revolution : voices from Tunis to DamascusISBN: 9780143125150collection of personal testimony from participants in the Arab Spring
Writing the Siege of Leningrad by
From September 1941 until January 1944, the city of Leningrad suffered under one of the worst sieges in the history of warfare. At least one million civilians died, many during the first terribly cold winter. Bearing the brunt of this hardship - and keeping the city alive through their daily toil and sacrifice - were the women of Leningrad. Because the Stalinist purges in the late 1930s and the manpower needs of the Soviet army following the Nazi invasion, women easily constituted more than half of the city's population - and workforce - when the German and Finnish armies cut them off from the outside world. This volume uses recently opened archives of letters and diaries from the period of the siege and the immediate post-war years, conducted interviews with some of the remaining survivors and recovered poetry, fiction and retrospective memoirs written by blokadnitsy (women survivors) in order to present a truer picture of the city under siege.
ISBN: 082294183X
Zlata's Diary by
The personal journal of an accomplished 11-year-old Sarajevan girl whose world was shattered by the chaos and terror of war.
Call Number: 949.7024092 F48 (Closed Reserve)ISBN: 0670857246Publication Date: 1994
Zoya's story : an Afghan woman's struggle for freedom by
Zoya's Story is a young woman's searing account of her clandestine war of resistance against the Taliban and religious fanaticism at the risk of her own life. An epic tale of fear and suffering, courage and hope, Zoya's Story is a powerful testament to the ongoing battle to claim human rights for the women of Afghanistan. Though she is only twenty-three, Zoya has witnessed and endured more tragedy and terror than most people do in a lifetime. Zoya grew up during the wars that ravaged Afghanistan and was robbed of her mother and father when they were murdered by Muslim fundamentalists. Devastated by so much death and destruction, she fled Kabul with her grandmother and started a new life in exile in Pakistan. She joined the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, which challenged the crushing edicts of the Taliban government, and she made dangerous journeys back to her homeland to help the women oppressed by a system that forced them to wear the stifling burqa, condoned public stoning or whipping if they ventured out without a male chaperon, and forbade them from working. Zoya is our guide, our witness to the horrors perpetrated by the Taliban and the Mujahideen "holy warriors" who had defeated the Russian occupiers. She helped to secretly film a public cutting of hands in a Kabul stadium and to organize covert literacy classes, as schooling-branded a "gateway to Hell" -- was forbidden to girls. At an Afghan refugee camp she heard tales of heartrending suffering and worked to provide a future for families who had lost everything. The spotlight focused on Afghanistan after the New York and Washington terrorist attacks highlights the conditions of repression and fear in which Afghan women live and makes Zoya's Story utterly compelling. This is a memoir that speaks louder than the images of devastation and outrage; it is a moving message of optimism as Zoya struggles to bring the plight of Afghan women to the world's attention.
ISBN: 0060097825
Primary Sources: World History Online - 20th Century
General History
- Internet Modern History Sourcebook - Fordham UniversityLook further on the page for links related to 20th Century topics.
Cold War
- The Avalon Project: Cold War - Yale University Cold War from 1940-1990s
- Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System Online The digital collection consists chiefly of summary transcripts of 705 interviews conducted with refugees from the USSR during the early years of the Cold War. A unique source for the study of Soviet society between 1917 and the mid-1940s.
World War I
- Imperial War Museum - Search the Digital Collection Try a search for 'Great War' or 'World War I"