"At sunrise on the first of April 1928, an ordinary young man of eighteen years left his home town, a village in the Thuringian hills of Germany, and went to Hamburg." Thus begins a departure from the ageless myth of initiation: an adventuring April fool discovers life, loss, and love, by way of the sea. The lad stumbles into the employ of Worldmate Shipping, an unusual company of sea captains who put their oars in troubled waters. Along the way the lad becomes a scullion, a murder suspect, a waiter in ships, a stowaway and a seaman. The story unfolds in the years from 1928 to 1935, in the Germany of the Nazi seizure of power and in the America (and Europe) of the Great Depression. It is a tale of ships and seaports, of smuggling, shipwreck, and daring rescues of the persecuted; and to borrow from "Tristram Shandy," a tale at the same time digressive and progressive, with excursions into German history and geography as well as into questions of life as literature, and the ways of words.

North America faces a transportation crisis. Gas-guzzling SUVs clog the highways and air travelers face delays, cancellations, and uncertainty in the wake of unprecedented terrorist attacks. New Departures closely examines the options for improving intercity passenger trains' capacity to move North Americans where they want to go. While Amtrak and VIA Rail Canada face intense pressure to transform themselves into successful commercial enterprises, Anthony Perl demonstrates how public policy changes lie behind the triumphs of European and Japanese high-speed rail passenger innovations. Perl goes beyond merely describing these achievements, translating their implications into a North American institutional and political context and diagnosing the obstacles that have made renewing passenger trains so much more difficult in North America than elsewhere. New Departures links the lessons behind rail passenger revitalization abroad with the opportunity to recast the policies that constrain Amtrak and VIA Rail from providing efficient and effective intercity transportation.

An American-born boy grew up in a small village on the Greek island of Crete. In his last years in high school, he witnessed the German invasion of Crete, in May of 1941, during the early years of WW II. At the age of eighteen, he joined a resistance group headed by his brother, and supplied crucial information to the SOE, the arm of the English Intelligence Service. This resistance group is uncovered, resulting in their hasty evacuation by the SOE, to Cairo, Egypt. In Cairo, the author and his brother were asked to join the English Intelligence Service, but rather, pursued the American OSS, or Office of Strategic Services, the newly formed American intelligence counterpart. They were enlisted into the US Army, and attached to the OSS, where the author was trained in the SI, or Secret Intelligence sector, which included parachute jumping, wireless/Morse code training, commando/defense training, locks/safe-cracking techniques, escape methods, and environment assimilation techniques. After being transformed into a skilled "spy", the author was sent back to Greece undercover, and along with a Greek naval intelligence officer, set up a communications cell in Salonica, Greece's second largest city, whereby daily coded messages to OSS Headquarters in Cairo were sent. One such message describes the course of events surrounding the bombing of the main railroad yard in Salonica, and the loss of thousands of German troops, as well as recalling the near-capture encounters with the German Gestapo and the Greek police. The author also recounts his personal experiences of his escape from Crete through the mountains, the evacuations by an English torpedo boat, his OSS training, the return mission to Greece, and his final return to the United States. For more information, visit http://iwastrainedtobeaspy.com Review "...Doundoulakis is able to evoke the suspense and thrilling detail of his many narrow escapes and also convey his youthful sense of excitement and adventure. His intimate rendering of the adversity Greek civilians faced during the war is particularly moving...." "...no matter how exceptional his post-war experience, it shrinks in comparison to tales of avoiding the Gestapo behind enemy lines and practicing the arts of intelligence..." "...Exciting, first-hand account of a World War II spy." - Kirkus Discoveries, A review service from Kirkus Reviews - Xlibris Podcast Part 1 - http://www.xlibrispodcasts.com/i-was-trained-to-be-a-spy-1/ - Xlibris Podcast Part 2 - http://www.xlibrispodcasts.com/i-was-trained-to-be-a-spy-2/ - Xlibris Podcast Part 3 - http://www.xlibrispodcasts.com/i-was-trained-to-be-a-spy-3/ - Xlibris Podcast Part 4 - http://www.xlibrispodcasts.com/i-was-trained-to-be-a-spy-4/ - Xlibris Podcast Part 5 - http://www.xlibrispodcasts.com/i-was-trained-to-be-a-spy-5/

This book uses story-telling to recreate the history of German veteran migration after the First World War. German veterans of the Great War were among Europe’s most volatile population when they returned to a defeated nation in 1918, after great expectations of victory and personal heroism. Some ex-servicemen chose to flee the nation for which they had fought, and begin their lives afresh in the nation against which they had fought: the United States.

How do judges influence the development of law in Germany and should their behaviour set a precedent for others to follow? This book explores whether or not German judicial methods should serve as a model for the development of European law, both by the European courts and by the courts of other European member states.

The last few decades have witnessed substantial liberalization trends in various industries and countries. Starting with the deregulation of the US airline industry in 1978, regulatory restructuring took place in further network industries such as telecommunications, electricity or railways in various countries around the world. Although most of the liberalization movements were initially triggered by the worrying performances of the respective regulatory frameworks, increases in competition and corresponding improvements in allocative and productive efficiency were typically associated with the respective liberalization efforts. From an academic perspective, the transition from regulated industries to liberalized industries has attracted a substantial amount of research reflected in many books and research articles which can be distilled to three main questions: (1) What are the forces that have given rise to regulatory reform? (2) What is the structure of the regulatory change which has occurred to date and is likely to occur in the immediate future? (3) What have been the effects on industry efficiency, prices and profits of the reforms which have occurred to date? Liberalization in Aviation brings together renowned academics and practitioners from around the world to address all three questions and draw policy conclusions. The book is divided into five sections, in turn dealing with aspects of competition in various liberalized markets, the emergence and growth of low-cost carriers, horizontal mergers and alliances, infrastructures, and concluding with economic assessments of liberalization steps so far and proposed steps in the future.