The astonishing biography of Josef Ganz, a Jewish designer from Frankfurt, who in May 1931 created a revolutionary small car: the Maika¤fer (German for May bug). Seven years later Hitler introduced the Volkswagen. He not only 'took' the concept of Ganz's family car, he even used the same nickname. To this day the VW Beetle or Bug is considered one of the most important of all automobile designs. It incorporated many of the features of Ganz's original Maika¤fer, yet until recently Ganz received no recognition for his pioneering work. The Nazis did all they could to keep the Jewish godfather of the German compact car out of the history books. Now Paul Schilperoord sets the record straight. In a biography that reads like a spy thriller, he tells how Ganz was imprisoned by the Gestapo, until an influential friend with connections to Gaoring helped secure his release. Soon afterwards he was forced to flee Germany while Porsche created the Volkswagen for Hitler using many of his groundbreaking ideas. Ganz was hunted by the Nazis even beyond Germany's borders and narrowly escaped assassination. After the war he moved to Australia, where he died in 1967. This biography is a great read for anyone interested in World War II, Jewish history, the evolution of car design or simply the life stories of extraordinary individuals.

The astonishing biography of Josef Ganz, a Jewish designer from Frankfurt, who in May 1931 created a revolutionary small car: the Maika¤fer (German for "May bug"). Seven years later, Hitler introduced the Volkswagen. The Nazis not only "took" the concept of Ganz's family car-their production model even ended up bearing the same nickname. The Beetle incorporated many of the features of Ganz's original Maika¤fer, yet until recently Ganz received no recognition for his pioneering work. The Nazis did all they could to keep the Jewish godfather of the German compact car out of the history books. Now Paul Schilperoord sets the record straight. Josef Ganz was hunted by the Nazis, even beyond Germany's borders, and narrowly escaped assassination. He was imprisoned by the Gestapo until an influential friend with connections to Gaoring helped secure his release. Soon afterward, he was forced to flee Germany, while Porsche, using many of his groundbreaking ideas, created the Volkswagen for Hitler. After the war, Ganz moved to Australia, where he died in 1967.

Originally published in 1955, this must be one of the most dramatic adventures of our time. Clemens Forell, a German soldier, was sentenced to 25 years of forced labour in a Siberian lead mine after the Second World War. Rebelling against the brutality of the camp, Forell staged a daring escape, enduring an 8000-mile journey across the trackless wastes of Siberia, in some of the most treacherous and inhospitable conditions on earth. Bauer's writing brilliantly evokes Forell's desperation in the prison camp, and his struggle for survival and terror of recapture as he makes his way towards the Persian frontier and freedom.

Sometimes achieving big things requires the ability to think small. This simple concept was the driving force that propelled the Volkswagen Beetle to become an avatar of American-style freedom, a household brand, and a global icon. The VW Bug inspired the ad men of Madison Avenue, beguiled Woodstock Nation, and has recently been re-imagined for the hipster generation. And while today it is surely one of the most recognizable cars in the world, few of us know the compelling details of this car’s story. In Thinking Small, journalist and cultural historian Andrea Hiott retraces the improbable journey of this little car that changed the world. Andrea Hiott’s wide-ranging narrative stretches from the factory floors of Weimar Germany to the executive suites of today’s automotive innovators, showing how a succession of artists and engineers shepherded the Beetle to market through periods of privation and war, reconstruction and recovery. Henry Ford’s Model T may have revolutionized the American auto industry, but for years Europe remained a place where only the elite drove cars. That all changed with the advent of the Volkswagen, the product of a Nazi initiative to bring driving to the masses. But Hitler’s concept of “the people’s car” would soon take on new meaning. As Germany rebuilt from the rubble of World War II, a whole generation succumbed to the charms of the world’s most huggable automobile. Indeed, the story of the Volkswagen is a story about people, and Hiott introduces us to the men who believed in it, built it, and sold it: Ferdinand Porsche, the visionary Austrian automobile designer whose futuristic dream of an affordable family vehicle was fatally compromised by his patron Adolf Hitler’s monomaniacal drive toward war; Heinrich Nordhoff, the forward-thinking German industrialist whose management innovations made mass production of the Beetle a reality; and Bill Bernbach, the Jewish American advertising executive whose team of Madison Avenue mavericks dreamed up the legendary ad campaign that transformed the quintessential German compact into an outsize worldwide phenomenon. Thinking Small is the remarkable story of an automobile and an idea. Hatched in an age of darkness, the Beetle emerged into the light of a new era as a symbol of individuality and personal mobility—a triumph not of the will but of the imagination.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle • Newsweek/The Daily Beast • The Seattle Times • The Economist • Kansas City Star • BookPage On February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran.” So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. He was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton. How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech. He talks about the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom. It is a book of exceptional frankness and honesty, compelling, provocative, moving, and of vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day. Praise for Joseph Anton “A harrowing, deeply felt and revealing document: an autobiographical mirror of the big, philosophical preoccupations that have animated Mr. Rushdie’s work throughout his career.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “A splendid book, the finest . . . memoir to cross my desk in many a year.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post “Thoughtful and astute . . . an important book.”—USA Today “Compelling, affecting . . . demonstrates Mr. Rushdie’s ability as a stylist and storytelle. . . . [He] reacted with great bravery and even heroism.”—The Wall Street Journal “Gripping, moving and entertaining . . . nothing like it has ever been written.”—The Independent (UK) “A thriller, an epic, a political essay, a love story, an ode to liberty.”—Le Point (France) “Action-packed . . . in a literary class by itself . . . Like Isherwood, Rushdie’s eye is a camera lens —firmly placed in one perspective and never out of focus.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Unflinchingly honest . . . an engrossing, exciting, revealing and often shocking book.”—de Volkskrant (The Netherlands) “One of the best memoirs you may ever read.”—DNA (India) “Extraordinary . . . Joseph Anton beautifully modulates between . . . moments of accidental hilarity, and the higher purpose Rushdie saw in opposing—at all costs—any curtailment on a writer’s freedom.”—The Boston Globe

The author’s masterpiece, an epic saga of a family and an empire in decline, is “full of psychological penetration and tragic force” (The New Yorker). The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth’s classic novel of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, follows three generations of the privileged von Trotta family as Europe advances inexorably toward World War I. With a breadth and richness that draws comparison to Tolstoy, it encompasses the entire social fabric of Austro-Hungarian society. Shot through with dark humor and tragic irony, The Radetzky March is an unparalleled portrait of a civilization in decline, and as such a universal story for our times. “A masterpiece . . . The totality of Joseph Roth’s work is no less than a tragédie humaine achieved in the techniques of modern fiction. No other contemporary writer, not excepting Thomas Mann, has come close to achieving the wholeness . . . that Lukács cites as our impossible aim.” —Nadine Gordimer

Garden of Bliss begins on the French Riviera, where Moffitt, despite her glamorous European lifestyle, feels empty. Realizing that financial success doesn't necessarily equate to happiness, she looks inside herself and decides to make some changes. The message of her journey is simple: bliss is a destination that exists within all of us. Using the metaphor of a secret garden, Moffitt encourages her readers to manifest this space in the physical world and connect with the divine feminine through nature.