Felicia, gifted with her knowledge of European languages, flees with her toddler son from Warsaw as war rages. Her physician husband is sent to the war front as part of the Polish army. Her neutral haven is soon taken over by Russian military. They arrest her and put her and her son on a cattle car train that ends up in Kazakhstan, Central Asia, at a Russian-run prison camp. After Russia is invaded by Hitler, an amnesty is declared. The prisoners fortunes change for the better. In an astonishing twist, Felicia and her camp friends are all eventually allowed to return to Poland on a fascinating train ride. Concerned about her prospects, she seeks refuge elsewhere, for a time in France and, eventually, in America.

Monografie over de laatste maanden in het leven van Stalin en de periode daarna.

At the age of forty-five, Deborah Tobola returns to her birthplace, San Luis Obispo, to work in the very prison her father worked in when he was a student at Cal Poly. But she’s not wearing a uniform as he did; she’s there to teach creative writing and manage the prison’s arts program—a dream job. As she creates a theatre program for prisoners, Tobola finds plenty of drama off the stage as well. Inside the razor wire she finds a world frozen in the ’50s, with no contact with the outside except by telephone; officers who think prisoners don’t deserve programs; bureaucrats who want to cut arts funding; and inmates who steal, or worse. But she loves engaging prisoners in the arts and helping them discover their voices: men like Opie, the gentleman robber; Razor, the roughneck who subscribes to The New Yorker; charismatic Green Eyes, who really has blue eyes; Doo Wop, a singer known for the desserts he creates from prison fare. Alternating between tales of creating drama in prison and Tobola’s own story, Hummingbird in Underworld takes readers on an unforgettable literary journey—one that is frank, funny, and fascinating.

Focusing on urban areas in the 1930s, this college professor illuminates the ways that Soviet city-dwellers coped with this world, examining such diverse activities as shopping, landing a job, and other acts.

Explores Jackie Robinson’s compelling and complicated legacy Before the United States Supreme Court ruled against segregation in public schools, and before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, Jackie Robinson walked onto the diamond on April 15, 1947, as first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, making history as the first African American to integrate Major League Baseball in the twentieth century. Today a national icon, Robinson was a complicated man who navigated an even more complicated world that both celebrated and despised him. Many are familiar with Robinson as a baseball hero. Few, however, know of the inner turmoil that came with his historic status. Featuring piercing essays from a range of distinguished sportswriters, cultural critics, and scholars, this book explores Robinson’s perspectives and legacies on civil rights, sports, faith, youth, and nonviolence, while providing rare glimpses into the struggles and strength of one of the nation’s most athletically gifted and politically significant citizens. Featuring a foreword by celebrated directors and producers Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, this volume recasts Jackie Robinson’s legacy and establishes how he set a precedent for future civil rights activism, from Black Lives Matter to Colin Kaepernick.

After her father's untimely death, Theresa faced a rocky and unstable childhood. But there was one place she felt safe: her grandmother's house in Mason, a depressed former copper mining town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Gram's passing leaves Theresa once again at the mercy of the lasting, sometimes destructive grief of her Ojibwe mother and white stepfather. As the family travels back and forth across the country in search of a better life, one thing becomes clear: if they want to find peace, they will need to return to their roots. The Mason House is at once an elegy for lost loved ones and a tale of growing up amid hardship and hope, exploring how time and the support of a community can at last begin to heal even the deepest wounds.

An American girl of Japanese ancestry is exiled in her own country after Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, little Marie Mitsui, who considers herself a typical American girl, sees her life of school and playing with friends in San Francisco totally upended. Her family and 120,000 others of Japanese ancestry are forcibly relocated to internment camps far from home. Living conditions in the camps are harsh, life after camp is similarly harsh, but in the end, as she and her family make their way back to San Francisco, Marie sees hope for the future. Told from a child’s perspective, The Little Exile deftly conveys Marie’s innocence, wonder, fear, and outrage. Though names and some details have been altered, this is the author's own life story. She believes that underlying everyone's experience, no matter how varied, are threads of humanity that bind us all. It is her hope that readers of all ages are able to find those threads in her story.