I’ve lived with the example of Claus von Stauffenberg and other members of the German resistance for most of my adult life. Their clarity of purpose – when most around them clamoured in support of the Führer and his regime – is a recurring source of inspiration. This impelled me into ever deeper research into the topic, including accessing archives in several countries and using my legal training to weigh evidence. Today we face different challenges, but we can draw strength from the courage of these men and women. They failed, and many died, but there is life in a struggle for a just cause.
On 21 March 1943 Gersdorff, a German colonel, showed Hitler around a display of captured weapons in Berlin. He set off the timer for a bomb secreted in his capacious army pocket, but Hitler suddenly left the building: Gersdorff was unable to follow, and had to race to a toilet cubicle to tear the fuse from his bomb. Gersdorff was a committed opponent of the Nazis, and his account traces the highs and lows of the German opposition.
To his close associate, Baron Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff, Henning von Tresckow said, "The world has to be set free from the biggest criminal of all time. He must be struck down dead like a mad dog who threatens all mankind!"
Gersdorff and Tresckow were among the men whose moral courage drove them to resist the National Socialist movement and to attempt the ultimate - the assassination of its leader, Adolf Hitler. Gersdorff recounts the discreet recruitment of resistance members and his own failed attempt on Hitler s life on 21 March 1943.
I’ve been reading romance since my grandmother would sneak me “approved” books when I was twelve. I’ve always felt like I was born in the wrong century, so it makes sense that historicals would be my favorites. After experiencing some autoimmune issues, I relate to characters dealing with physical or mental challenges, and those are the books that tend to draw me in. I believe many people read to escape “real life” and its accompanying stress (I know I do!). As a writer, my goal is to bring a bit of laughter and light into someone’s life for the few hours they spend with my characters.
I debated over whether or not to include this book. But ultimately, books I consider “favorites” or “bests” are the ones that stick with me through the years. Even decades after I read them, they are the ones that still nudge my memory and my heart. Bliss is one such book.
The hero struggles, mightily, through much of the book with his addiction. But the eloquent writing of Cuevas cannot be denied, nor can the sophisticated layers she weaves between her characters.
Initially, Nardi de Saint Vallier, a disillusioned young Frenchman who has abandoned his passion for sculpting, thinks Hannah Van Evan is merely a naive young American, but during a summer in Normandy, he is won over by her spirit. Original.
I have a Ph.D. in English from Lehigh University, where I studied and published articles on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, one of the greatest short fiction collections. I have written and published a number of short stories myself. I even won a contest for one of them. The tale told around the campfire is probably the oldest literary form there is, much older than the novel. The best short fiction, I believe, can “pack everything that a novel can hold into a story,” as Jorge Luis Borges said, and this is the kind of short fiction I believe I have found.
I like how de Maupassant, in this collection (like Balzac, only more succinctly), runs the gamut of society: two vagrants who live in a rowboat, milkmaids, nuns, soldiers, clerks, seamstresses, shop-owners, the elegant and fashionable, counts and countesses. Likewise he runs the gamut of tone from tragedy to romance to slapstick to farce to sophisticated wit. Each story is so different, one might suspect multiple authors, but for that unmistakable, to-the-point style ̶ and that perfect kicker at the end. De Maupassant is the wizard, some say the originator, of the modern short story. This is real literature in miniature.
A beautiful hardcover selection of the best works by one of the greatest short story writers in world literature
During his most productive decade, the 1880s, the French writer Guy de Maupassant wrote more than three hundred stories, notably including "The Necklace," "Boule de Suif," "The Horla," and "Mademoiselle Fifi." Marked by the psychological realism that he famously pioneered, the stories selected here take us on a tour of the human experience—lust and love, revenge and ridicule, terror and madness. Many take place in the author's native Normandy, but the settings range farther abroad as well, from Brittany and Paris…
I’ve been reading and making comics since I was a young kid. I’m very interested in the history of comics, and I love to see new combinations of content and form. My own graphic novels, such as Constitution Illustrated and Masterpiece Comics, use parody and pastiche to comment on and reinterpret historical and contemporary texts. I’m charmed by the earnest retelling of literature in old comic book series like Classics Illustrated, but I’m much more excited to see graphic novels that dig deep into texts and reinvent them in idiosyncratic ways.
This satiric, beautifully drawn update of Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary brings the story to the 1990s. Simmonds’ writing is witty and well-observed, with blocks of prose interspersed among the flowing panel sequences. It’s a rich, layered reading experience, deeper than those graphic novels which only emphasize the visuals. Simmonds writes as elegantly as she draws, with subtlety and style.
Gemma is the bored, pretty second wife of Charlie Bovery, the reluctant stepmother of his children and the bete-noire of his ex-wife. Gemma's sudden windfall and distaste for London take them across the Channel to Normandy, where the charms of French country living soon wear off. Is it a coincidence that Gemma Bovery has a name rather like Flaubert's notorious heroine? Is it by chance that, like Madame Bovary, Gemma is bored, adulterous, and a bad credit risk? is she inevitably doomed? These questions consume Gemma's neighbour, the intellectual baker, Joubert. Denying voyeurism, but nevertheless noting every change in the…
Flint Whitlock spent five years on active duty as an officer in the U.S. Army (1965-1970, including tours in West Germany and Vietnam), and is a qualified parachutist (Fort Benning, 1965). He has been an award-winning, full-time military historian since 2003, and has 14 books (mostly about WWII) to his credit. He has also been the editor of WWII Quarterly magazine since 2010 and gives battlefield tours for the Smithsonian, National Geographic, and other organizations.
Published in time for the 50th anniversary of D-Day (Operation Overlord) in 1994, Ambrose’s 656-page tome covers the broad scope of the massive, history-changing operation, with special attention paid to the parachute and glider operations. The author details the overall planning of the air-and-sea operation—and analyzes why the most carefully planned invasion in history nearly went terribly wrong. This is the ultimate history of the battle that changed the outcome of World War II.
Chronicles the events, politics, and personalities of this pivotal day in World War II, shedding light on the strategies of commanders on both sides and the ramifications of the battle.
Since the mid-1990s, I’ve written thirteen volumes in The Canadian Battles Series—more than a million words on the battles, campaigns, and experiences of my nation’s army during World War II. I started this because Canadians were usually no more than a footnote in the WWII histories written by American and British historians, despite having been the third-largest army serving alongside their armies in Italy and Northwest Europe. Realizing that the Canadian story would only be told if we wrote it ourselves, I embraced the task and continue to do so thirty years later.
On June 6, 1944, Charles (Charlie) Martin was twenty-four and one of the youngest Company Sergeant Majors in the Queen’s Own Rifles. He was also one of the first Canadian soldiers to pile out of a landing craft onto Juno Beach in the face of heavy German machine-gun fire. From that day on the beach to when he was finally wounded for the first time on April 16, 1945, Martin was always at the forefront of the battle. While an excellent account of his combat experience, Martin also deeply examines the role of a Company Sergeant Major in leading and running an infantry company during the war. And he provides detailed descriptions of how such a company conducted itself during specific types of combat from patrols, to set-piece assaults, to setting up defensive positions. For anyone wanting to understand the experience of soldiers in World War II, Battle Diary is…
A fast-paced account by a soldier who was twice decorated. Charlie Martin, company sergeant-major in the Queen's Own, was with his beloved A Company in all of the significant Normandy actions.
I love history as did my mother and her family. I am English by birth and, so, it is English history I am most interested in. To know who you are and where you are from is, to me, very important. At school history was the subject I excelled at. In my mature years I worked as a Business Unit Manager at a University and took history papers for amusement, but I never continued with a degree as BA papers were too basic and an MA and PhD too expensive. I did, however, write academic peer-reviewed papers that were published.
Harold is one of my heroes. I have many books about him, texts and novels, but this novel I feel captures him best. King Harold was a very complex man and a very competent man. Most remember him for losing at the Battle of Hastings and do not know just what a good organiser and general he actually was and how his previous actions prove this. Harold was a political man who knew when to push and when to stand back, when to compromise and when not to.
I can point you to textbooks and academic papers on Harold, as a man, an Earl, and as King, but Helen Hollick’s book is very well researched, and I am someone who has also done his homework on this period, and indeed produced an educational DD-ROM on the period. But why not let Hollick take all that research and information and weave…
An epic retelling of the tide of events that led to the Norman conquest of England. This saga weaves together the history of a powerful family of noblemen with that of the aggressive bastard of Normandy, culminating in the fierce and tragic battle which changed the course of England's history.
I’ve been an artist all my life. In childhood, I was always drawing and after graduating from university I became an illustrator doing hundreds of drawings for major newspapers and publishers in the United States for over 25 years. It was my mission, no matter what was going on in the world, to find some humor and lightness to share through my drawings. About 15 years ago, I also began to teach drawing to adults and was amazed to discover that everyone can draw. When I saw how people seemed to become happier and bolder making art I became passionate about sharing how we can grow our creativity by developing an art practice. It makes for a beautiful life and quite possibly a more beautiful world.
I adore David Hockney. He draws so beautifully, and in so many different ways, and is always inventive in his art-making. He makes me see more through his art and was a major inspiration for me when I was starting out as an editorial illustrator years ago. This book is a 2020 pandemic conversation between Hockney, now living in Normandy, and his good friend, the art critic Martin Gayford in the UK. It really speaks to the devotion that artists have to observing life and creating something beautiful from it. I love the joy Hockney brings to his work and see that as a powerful energy to create from.
'We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned?... The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like [for] our little dog Ruby... and the source of art is love. I love life.'
DAVID HOCKNEY
Praise for Spring Cannot be Cancelled:
'This book is not so much a celebration of spring as a springboard for ideas about art, space, time and light. It is scholarly, thoughtful and provoking'…
I read my first book on WWII when I was 8 years old. It was about the Battle of Britain and I’ve never looked back. I began specializing in 20th Century Canadian military history in very literally all its facets. Discussing the war with hundreds of Canadian veterans over the last half century has been immensely inspirational to me. I’ve obtained a Ph.D. in Canadian military history from McGill University, visited Canadian battlefields in Europe at least 15 times, worked as the WWII historian at the Canadian War Museum, and have published on many aspects of Canadian military history. For more than 30 years I have been able to teach these subjects to students.
Terry Copp is one of Canada’s foremost military historians and his towering knowledge is on full display in this brilliant study of Canada’s role in the 1944 Normandy Campaign. Copp interviewed dozens of veterans and visited Normandy some 20 times to walk the ground and see the unfolding of the battle through the men’s eyes.
Fields of Fire redresses an imbalance in our understanding of Canada’s battlefield performance in Normandy that several leading international and some Canadian scholars feel was underwhelming. But not Copp.
He minutely and compellingly re-examines and convincingly contextualizes Canadian generalship, the terrain over which the men fought, the nature of German defences, Canadian casualties of 18,000 in just ten weeks, including psychological casualties due to battle exhaustion, and other factors that oblige us to assess the Canadians’ performance more positively.
He is palpably proud of these men’s achievements and deeply sensitive to the cruel fates of…
Fields of Fire offers a stunning reversal of accepted military history. Terry Copp challenges and refutes the conventional view that the Canadian contribution to the Battle of Normandy was a 'failure': that the allies won only through the use of 'brute force,' and that the Canadian soldiers and commanding officers were essentially incompetent. His detailed and impeccably researched analysis of what actually happened on the battlefield portrays a flexible, innovative army that made a major, and successful, contribution to the defeat of the German forces in just seventy-six days. Challenging both existing interpretations of the campaign and current approaches to…
Listening to my father’s stories about flying for the U.S. 15th Air Force in the Second World War kindled my love for military history at a young age. He brought to life the individual experiences and strategic context of bombing targets like Ploesti and Brenner Pass. Later, I pursued my doctorate in history and focused on U.S. Marine Corps history. More recently, my interests shifted to writing about broader topics like American military history, grand strategy, and race and gender in warfare. Even so, my father left me with an enduring desire to understand human interests and emotions, whether among common soldiers or senior generals. This desire affected my work as a teacher and author.
First published in 1959, some 15 years after the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day, Cornelius Ryan’s book stands as a classic narrative of that amphibious assault. Writing in the vivid prose of an experienced journalist, Ryan also conducted research like a seasoned historian. He interviewed combatants of every nation and rank and sent questionnaires to many others. I feel like I am in the thick of the fight alongside Allied soldiers in the landing craft approaching the beach and with Germans hunkered down in the fortifications trying to stop their amphibious assault. Throughout his narrative, Ryan blends analyses of the good and bad decisions made by both sides.
Cornelius Ryan tells the story of the hours that preceded and followed H-Hour of D-Day ? June 6, 1944, when as dawn approached, as paratroopers fought in the hedgerows of Normandy, the greatest armada the world had ever known assembled off the beach -- almost 5000 ships carrying more than 200,000 soldiers. a military This is the story of people: the men of the Allied forces, the enemy and the civilians caught up in the confusion of battle. 700 D-Day survivors were interviewed for the book.
