"Blending elements of memoir, history, and biography," the son of a Holocaust survivor "portrays the horrifying reality of the . . . concentration camps" ( Midwest Book Review).In June 1944, the Nazis locked eighteen-year-old Dave Hersch into a railroad boxcar and shipped him from his hometown of Dej, Hungary, to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, the harshest, cruelest camp in the Reich. After ten months in the granite mines of Mauthausen's nearby sub-camp, Gu...

The award-winning journalist delves "into the confluence of modern airplane technology and pilot behavior to probe how and why flight disasters happen" ( BookTrib).Aviation automation has been pushed to its limits, with pilots increasingly relying on it. Autopilot, autothrottle, autoland, flight management systems, air data systems, inertial guidance systems. All these systems are only as good as their inputs which, incredibly, can go rogue. Even the automa...

Winner, 2019 Spirit of Anne Frank Human Writes Award "This deeply personal and extremely informative portrait of a man of indomitable will to live, as Hersch emphasizes, reminds us of why we must never forget nor trivialize the full, shocking truth about the Holocaust." — BooklistHersch effectively uses his father’s unusual story to convey the horrors of the Holocaust. A valuable addition to Holocaust literature. - Publishers WeeklyHersch's amazing tale is ...

Very few British soldiers could lay claim to such a full war as Leslie Young. Having survived the retreat to and evacuation from Dunkirk, he volunteered for the newly formed Commandos and took part in their first operation, the raid on the Lofoten Islands. He fought and was captured in Tunisia. He went on the run before his POW camp at Fontanellato was taken over by the Nazis after the September 1943 Italian armistice. He spent six months on the run in the Apennine mountains aided by brave...

After the fall of France in the mid-1940s, Adolf Hitler faced a British Empire that refused to negotiate for peace. With total war looming, he ordered the Abwehr, Germany's defense and intelligence organization, to carry out Operation Lena—a program to place information-gathering spies within Britain.Quickly, a network of secret agents spread within the United Kingdom and across the British Empire. A master of disguises, a professional safecracker, a scrubwoman, a diplomat's daught...

The acclaimed sweeping history of a nation at war with itself, told here for the first time by the people who lived it.Historian David Williams has written the first account of the American Civil War as viewed though the eyes of ordinary people—foot soldiers, slaves, women, prisoners of war, draft resisters, Native Americans, and others. Richly illustrated with little-known anecdotes and firsthand testimony, this path-breaking narrative moves beyond presidents and ...

From the bestselling author of Day of Infamy: In the bloodiest island combat of WWII, one group of men kept watch from behind Japanese lines.The Solomon Islands was where the Allied war machine finally broke the Japanese empire. As pilots, marines, and sailors fought for supremacy in Guadalcanal, Bougainville, and the Slot, a lonely group of radio operators occupied the Solomon Islands’ highest points. Sometimes encamped in comfort, sometimes exposed to th...

November 1944: Army airmen set out in a B-24 bomber on what should have been an easy mission off the Borneo coast. Instead they found themselves unexpectedly facing a Japanese fleet—and were shot down. When they cut themselves loose from their parachutes, they were scattered across the island's mountainous interior. Then a group of loincloth-wearing natives silently materialized out of the jungle. Would these Dayak tribesmen turn the starving airmen over to the hostile Japanese occupiers? ...

On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia. Filled with a sense of adventure and national pride, they left their parents' homes wearing their best clothes and confidently waving good-bye. Believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months, they were eager to report for government service. Instead, the young women—many of them teenagers—were sent to Auschwitz. Their government paid 500 Reich Marks (about $200) apiece f...

Riding a wave of success that lasted more than sixty years, Don Rickles is best known as the "insult" comic who skewered presidents, royalty, celebrities, and friends and fans alike. But there was more to "Mr. Warmth" than a devilish ear-to-ear grin and lightning-fast put-downs. Rickles was a loving husband, an adoring father who suffered a devastating loss, and a loyal friend to the likes of Bob Newhart and Frank Sinatra. Sex, race, religion, nationality, physical appearance, political le...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The “compelling and intimate” (Chicago Tribune) true story of the early days of the civil rights movement and the young people who led the revolution, including John Lewis, Diane Nash, and Bernard Lafayette“A remarkable and rewarding testament to the bravery and idealism of people who forever changed relations between blacks and whites in America.”—PeopleMagisterial in scope, Th...

In the winter of 1941, as Britain faced defeat on all fronts, an RAF reconnaissance pilot photographed an alien-looking object on the French coast near Le Havre. The mysterious device—a “Wurzburg Dish”—appeared to be a new form of radar technology: ultra-compact, highly precise, and pointed directly across the English Channel. Britain's experts found it hard to believe the Germans had mastered such groundbreaking technology. But one young technician convinced Winston Churchill that the dis...