Penelope Prior, the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries, grew up in an Armenian community in northern Persia. During the Great War, she and her family returned to the US. But as soon as the war ended, a call was issued for volunteers with the languages and experience required to bring life-saving food and medical aid to the vast numbers of war victims and refugees who had fled to the Armenian Caucasus. Hungry, sick, homeless, and desperate, the children needed every kind of help. A new type of humanitarian enterprise was formed to rescue them, on a scale never attempted before. This innovative collaboration of churches, government, agriculture and industry, charities, voluntary organizations, and the media was created by the Near East Relief. Penny and her father respond to the call and soon find themselves in a city of orphans—children left alone or stranded by war and deportation. All of her ability and strength must be summoned to help establish a haven for these young survivors. As they face the struggles together, trauma and loss begin to make way for a bit of recovery and hope.

Penelope Prior, the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries, grew up in an Armenian community in northern Persia. During the Great War, she and her family returned to the US. But as soon as the war ended, a call was issued for volunteers with the languages and experience required to bring life-saving food and medical aid to the vast numbers of war victims and refugees who had fled to the Armenian Caucasus. Hungry, sick, homeless, and desperate, the children needed every kind of help. A new type of humanitarian enterprise was formed to rescue them, on a scale never attempted before. This innovative collaboration of churches, government, agriculture and industry, charities, voluntary organizations, and the media was created by the Near East Relief. Penny and her father respond to the call and soon find themselves in a city of orphans--children left alone or stranded by war and deportation. All of her ability and strength must be summoned to help establish a haven for these young survivors. As they face the struggles together, trauma and loss begin to make way for a bit of recovery and hope.

This memoir describes a long and unusual life that started in eastern Turkey in 1896 in a house with an earthen floor, and ended in middle-class comfort in suburban Toronto nearly a century later. The author was an eyewitness to the first genocide of the 20th century, a horror in which most of his family was lost. He lived through the first World War and the Bolshevik Revolution that led to the creation of the Soviet Union. He fled from Soviet Armenia, first to Moscow and then to London. From there he went with wife and baby daughter to Toronto, where he faced the task of earning a living during the Great Depression. Caught up in this swirl of historical forces he describes in fascinating detail his remarkable story of survival. And, perhaps not the least remarkable fact of this life, he was over 80 years of age when he began writing his life story. There is much here to stimulate and educate, not only those who wish to know more about the Armenian Diaspora, but everyone with an interest in the human condition as it was experienced in other places and in another time.

This memoir describes a long and unusual life that started in eastern Turkey in 1896 in a house with an earthen floor, and ended in middle-class comfort in suburban Toronto nearly a century later. The author was an eyewitness to the first genocide of the 20th century, a horror in which most of his family was lost. He lived through the first World War and the Bolshevik Revolution that led to the creation of the Soviet Union. He fled from Soviet Armenia, first to Moscow and then to London. From there he went with wife and baby daughter to Toronto, where he faced the task of earning a living during the Great Depression. Caught up in this swirl of historical forces he describes in fascinating detail his remarkable story of survival. And, perhaps not the least remarkable fact of this life, he was over 80 years of age when he began writing his life story. There is much here to stimulate and educate, not only those who wish to know more about the Armenian Diaspora, but everyone with an interest in the human condition as it was experienced in other places and in another time.

Night on Earth is a broad-ranging account of international humanitarian programs in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Near East from 1918 to 1930. Davide Rodogno shows that international 'relief' and 'development' were intertwined long before the birth of the United Nations with humanitarians operating in a region devastated by war and famine and in which state sovereignty was deficient. Influenced by colonial motivations and ideologies these humanitarians attempted to reshape entire communities and nations through reconstruction and rehabilitation programmes. The book draws on the activities of a wide range of secular and religious organisations and philanthropic foundations in the US and Europe including the American Relief Administration, the American Red Cross, the Quakers, Save the Children, the Near East Relief, the American Women's Hospitals, the League of Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.