Axis Sally
Title | Axis Sally PDF eBook |
Author | Richard Lucas |
Publisher | Open Road Media |
Pages | 300 |
Release | 2013-05-07 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 1480406600 |
A “fascinating, well-researched account” of Mildred Gillars, the failed actress who turned on her country and became a Nazi propagandist during WWII (Publishers Weekly). One of the most notorious Americans of the twentieth century was a failed Broadway actress turned radio announcer named Mildred Gillars (1900–1988), better known to American GIs as “Axis Sally.” Despite the richness of her life story, there has never been a full-length biography of the ambitious, star-struck Ohio girl who evolved into a reviled disseminator of Nazi propaganda. At the outbreak of war in September 1939, Gillars had been living in Germany for five years. Hoping to marry, she chose to remain in the Nazi-run state even as the last Americans departed for home. In 1940, she was hired by the German overseas radio, where she evolved from a simple disc jockey and announcer to a master propagandist. Under the tutelage of her married lover, Max Otto Koischwitz, Gillars became the personification of Nazi propaganda to the American GI. Spicing her broadcasts with music, Gillars’s used her soothing voice to taunt Allied troops about the supposed infidelities of their wives and girlfriends back home, as well as the horrible deaths they were likely to meet on the battlefield. Supported by German military intelligence, she was able to convey personal greetings to individual US units, creating an eerie foreboding among troops who realized the Germans knew who and where they were. After broadcasting for Berlin up to the very end of the war, Gillars tried but failed to pose as a refugee, and was captured by US authorities. Her 1949 trial for treason captured the attention and raw emotion of a nation fresh from the horrors of the Second World War. Gillars’s twelve-year imprisonment and life on parole, including a stay in a convent, is a remarkable story of a woman who attempts to rebuild her life in the country she betrayed.
All the Lights Above Us
Title | All the Lights Above Us PDF eBook |
Author | M. B. Henry |
Publisher | National Geographic Books |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2022-05-10 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 1643859625 |
Across Europe, on what history will call D-Day, five unforgettable women from all walks of life strive to survive the most terrifying night of their lives. Told in alternating viewpoints, this unforgettable debut is perfect for fans of Kate Quinn and Pam Jenoff. June 6, 1944. Allied forces hit the beaches of Nazi-occupied France. Among the countless lives shattered are those of five spirited women with starkly different lives. As the war reaches its tipping point, each of the women fight for the survival of themselves, their countries, and their way of life during one of the most pivotal days in history. American expatriate Mildred, better known as Axis Sally, has a thriving career as a Nazi radio propagandist, but her conscience haunts her. Meanwhile, across the English Channel, young medical volunteer Theda is pushed to her limit as shiploads of casualties dock in Portsmouth. Closer to the front, intrepid Flora aids the French resistance, while she seeks out her vanished parents. Iron-willed Emilia has climbed the Gestapo ranks, but she is now bent on betraying them. Finally, dignified Adelaide’s faith is shaken when she is forced to quarter German soldiers. Now, during the most perilous twenty-four hours of their lives, all five women must summon courage they never knew they had, as they confront the physical dangers of war, alongside treacherous family secrets, heartbreak, and the ability to trust themselves. For these women, their inner strength is their only hope. But is it enough? How far can one person go for the things they believe in?
Moonglow
Title | Moonglow PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Chabon |
Publisher | HarperCollins |
Pages | 414 |
Release | 2016-11-22 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 006222557X |
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Winner of the Sophie Brody Medal • An NBCC Finalist for 2016 Award for Fiction • ALA Carnegie Medal Finalist for Excellence in Fiction • Wall Street Journal’s Best Novel of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • A Washington Post Best Book of the Year • An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Slate Best Book of the Year • A Christian Science Monitor Top 15 Fiction Book of the Year • A New York Magazine Best Book of the Year • A San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year • A Buzzfeed Best Book of the Year • A New York Post Best Book of the Year iBooks Novel of the Year • An Amazon Editors' Top 20 Book of the Year • #1 Indie Next Pick • #1 Amazon Spotlight Pick • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A BookPage Top Fiction Pick of the Month • An Indie Next Bestseller "This book is beautiful.” — A.O. Scott, New York Times Book Review, cover review Following on the heels of his New York Times bestselling novel Telegraph Avenue, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon delivers another literary masterpiece: a novel of truth and lies, family legends, and existential adventure—and the forces that work to destroy us. In 1989, fresh from the publication of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother’s home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather. Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon’s grandfather shared recollections and told stories the younger man had never heard before, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried and forgotten. That dreamlike week of revelations forms the basis for the novel Moonglow, the latest feat of legerdemain from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon. Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather.” It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and marriage and desire, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of keeping secrets and telling lies. It is a portrait of the difficult but passionate love between the narrator’s grandfather and his grandmother, an enigmatic woman broken by her experience growing up in war-torn France. It is also a tour de force of speculative autobiography in which Chabon devises and reveals a secret history of his own imagination. From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York’s Wallkill prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the “American Century,” the novel revisits an entire era through a single life and collapses a lifetime into a single week. A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most moving and inventive.
The Last Chinese Chef
Title | The Last Chinese Chef PDF eBook |
Author | Nicole Mones |
Publisher | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
Pages | 308 |
Release | 2008 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 9780547053738 |
This exhilarating story is the transporting tale of how the sensual, romantic elements of haute Chinese cuisine become the perfect ingredients to lift the troubled soul of a grieving American woman.
The Plots Against the President
Title | The Plots Against the President PDF eBook |
Author | Sally Denton |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing USA |
Pages | 285 |
Release | 2012-01-03 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1608190897 |
An assessment of the political and physical dangers faced by the newly elected President Roosevelt in 1933 profiles such adversaries as would-be assassin Giuseppe Zangara and populist demagogues Huey Long and Charles Coughlin.
Restless
Title | Restless PDF eBook |
Author | William Boyd |
Publisher | A&C Black |
Pages | 337 |
Release | 2012-12-01 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 1408835185 |
It is 1939. Eva Delectorskaya is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian émigrée living in Paris. As war breaks out she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious Englishman, and under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one, including those she loves most. Since the war, Eva has carefully rebuilt her life as a typically English wife and mother. But once a spy, always a spy. Now she must complete one final assignment, and this time Eva can't do it alone: she needs her daughter's help.
Draftee Division
Title | Draftee Division PDF eBook |
Author | John Sloan Brown |
Publisher | University Press of Kentucky |
Pages | 376 |
Release | 2021-10-21 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0813185882 |
The involuntary soldiers of an unmilitary people such were the forces that American military planners had to pit against hardened Axis veterans, yet prewar unpreparedness dictated that whole divisions of such men would go to war under the supervision of tiny professional cadres. Much to his surprise and delight, Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall found that the 88th Infantry Division, his first draftee division, "fought like wildcats" and readily outclassed its German adversaries while measuring up to the best Regular Army divisions. Draftee Division is at once a history of the 88th Division, an analysis of American unit mobilization during World War II, and an insight into the savage Italian Campaign. After an introduction placing the division in historical context, separate chapters address personnel, training, logistics, and overseas deployment. Another chapter focuses upon preliminary adjustments to the realities of combat, after which two chapters trace the 88th's climactic drive through the Gustav Line into Rome itself. A final chapter takes the veteran 88th to final victory. Of particular interest are observations concerning differences connected with mobilization between the 88th and less successful divisions and discussions of the contemporary relevance of the 88th's experiences. Draftee Division is especially rich in its sources. John Sloan Brown, with close ties to the division, has secured extensive and candid contributions from veterans. To these he has added a full array of archival and secondary sources. The result is a definitive study of American cadremen creating a division out of raw draftees and leading them on to creditable victories. Its findings will be important for military and social historians and for students of defense policy