Under Siege is Rashid Khalidi's firsthand account of the 1982 Lebanon War and the complex negotiations for the evacuation of the P.L.O. from Beirut. Utilizing unconventional sources and interviews with key officials and diplomats, Khalidi paints a detailed portrait of the siege and ensuing massacres, providing insight into the military pressure experienced by the P.L.O., the war's impact on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, and diplomatic efforts by the United States. A new preface by Khalidi considers developments across the Middle East in the thirty years since the conflict. The preface also cites recently declassified Israeli documents to offer surprising new revelations about the roles and responsibilities of both Israeli leaders and American diplomats in the tragic coda to the war, the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

Meet Lucy McRae and two other young people, Willie Lord and Frederick Grant, all survivors of the Civil War's Battle for Vicksburg. In 1863, Union troops intend to silence the cannons guarding the Mississippi River at Vicksburg – even if they have to take the city by siege. To hasten surrender, they are shelling Vicksburg night and day. Terrified townspeople, including Lucy and Willie, take shelter in caves – enduring heat, snakes, and near suffocation. On the Union side, twelve-year-old Frederick Grant has come to visit his father, General Ulysses S. Grant, only to find himself in the midst of battle, experiencing firsthand the horrors of war. "Living in a cave under the ground for six weeks . . . I do not think a child could have passed through what I did and have forgotten it." – Lucy McRae, age 10, 1863 Period photographs, engravings, and maps extend this dramatic story as award-winning author Andrea Warren re-creates one of the most important Civil War battles through the eyes of ordinary townspeople, officers and enlisted men from both sides, and, above all, three brave children who were there.

A vivid recreation of how the governors and governed of early seventeenth-century Florence confronted, suffered, and survived a major epidemic of plague Plague remains the paradigm against which reactions to many epidemics are often judged. Here, John Henderson examines how a major city fought, suffered, and survived the impact of plague. Going beyond traditional oppositions between rich and poor, this book provides a nuanced and more compassionate interpretation of government policies in practice, by recreating the very human reactions and survival strategies of families and individuals. From the evocation of the overcrowded conditions in isolation hospitals to the splendor of religious processions, Henderson analyzes Florentine reactions within a wider European context to assess the effect of state policies on the city, street, and family. Writing in a vivid and approachable way, this book unearths the forgotten stories of doctors and administrators struggling to cope with the sick and dying, and of those who were left bereft and confused by the sudden loss of relatives.

Studies on the First World War are plentiful but most tend to focus on the combatants. This volume offers a new and highly original perspective that shows the reader the civilian side of this protracted and destructive war through a succession of "snapshots": 130 excerpts from leading American and Canadian newspapers provide a collective portrait of life behind the battle lines, what is often called the "second" front. Written principally by Paris-based journalists, and intended for popular reading audiences, these articles depict ordinary people in a way that still touches the reader of today. They record eye-witness testimony of Paris under aerial bombardment, the gutted cathedrals at Reims and Arras, the cemeteries around Compiègne, the subterranean living quarters at Cambrai, and the heart-breaking orphanages at Chambly. Introduced and concluded by the editor, the volume also offers biographical notes on some of the leadingjournalist contributors, maps to familiarize readers with the geography of northern France, and detailed subject and geographical indices. The volume ends with a select bibliography of works on the subject of French civilian life during the Great War.

Charles Roland, a physician and historian, provides the first history of the medical disaster that took place in the Warsaw ghetto.

In Souls under Siege, Nicole Archambeau explores how the inhabitants of southern France made sense of the ravages of successive waves of plague, the depredations of mercenary warfare, and the violence of royal succession during the fourteenth century. Many people, she finds, understood both plague and war as the symptoms of spiritual sicknesses caused by excessive sin, and they sought cures in confession. Archambeau draws on a rich evidentiary base of sixty-eight narrative testimonials from the canonization inquest for Countess Delphine de Puimichel, which was held in the market town of Apt in 1363. Each witness in the proceedings had lived through the outbreaks of plague in 1348 and 1361, as well as the violence inflicted by mercenaries unemployed during truces in the Hundred Years' War. Consequently, their testimonies unexpectedly reveal the importance of faith and the role of affect in the healing of body and soul alike. Faced with an unprecedented cascade of crises, the inhabitants of Provence relied on saints and healers, their worldview connecting earthly disease and disaster to the struggle for their eternal souls. Souls under Siege illustrates how medieval people approached sickness and uncertainty by using a variety of remedies, making clear that "healing" had multiple overlapping meanings in this historical moment.

The U.S. history curriculum is under attack. Politicians, political analysts, and ideologues seek to wipe clean the slate of the American past and replace it with one of their own invention. The basis for this new narrative comes from political beliefs of the present, rather than any systematic examination of the past. These anti-historians campaign to insert their version of American history into the nation’s classrooms, hoping to begin a process that will forever transform our understanding of America’s past. The Memory Hole examines five central topics in the US history curriculum, showing how anti-historians of both the left and right seek to distort these topics and insert a refashioned story in America’s classrooms. Ignoring facts, refashioning other facts and pretending that there are no rules in the telling of history, these re-interpreters of the past place the minds of America’s young people in danger. The beleaguered hero of this book is the discipline of History, and The Memory Hole shows how the history curriculum should adhere to history’s habits of mind that require complex, sophisticated and subtle thinking about the past. History and social studies teachers, students of history and all those who care about the deep and enduring value of history will value this book and its conclusions.