The life, theological contribution, and mysterious disappearance of one of the more important New Testament scholars in the twentieth century On February 15, 1946, the Soviet NKVD raided the home of Ernst Lohmeyer just hours before his inauguration as the president of Greifswald University in Germany. Lohmeyer had survived active duty in both World War I and World War II. A New Testament scholar and theologian, he resisted the rise of Nazi fascism as a member of the Confessing Church. But the Soviet occupation of Germany was even more repressive than Nazi domination. With the exception of correspondence from prison, Lohmeyer was never heard from again. In Between the Swastika and the Sickle, James R. Edwards recounts the story of Lohmeyer's life, his theological achievements, his courageous resistance to the forces of political repression, and the events surrounding his death. But the book also includes Edwards's intrepid search for the legacy of this brilliant and courageous scholar, whose story is made even more compelling by the tumultuous interplay of faith and politics in twenty-first-century America.

Despite the enormous amount of material about Nazism, there has been no substantial work on its emblem, the swastika. This original contribution examines the popular appeal of the archaic image of the swastika: the tradition of the symbol.

Tell me some more about your nice friends in the army. You always seem to have adventures. Graphic artist by profession and avid motorcycle enthusiast, young Hans Schaefer is conscripted into Hitler's war as a soldier in the Signal Corps. Thus the reluctant yet courageous soldier bears witness to the horrors of war on the infamous Eastern Front. An articulate opponent of Hitler and his Nazi regime, Hans is relentlessly torn between loyalty to his fellow soldiers as they fight for the Führer's megalomaniac ideas and his own conscience. As a soldier he suffers extreme hardships under the German command and later, as a prisoner of war, he is both victim of and eyewitness to the Red Army's particular brand of cruelty and punishment. Yet Hans is a survivor, living by his wits and by his art. Wily and talented, he draws portraits for both the Nazis and the Russians, gaining admiration and respect from high-ranking German officers and from his Russian enemies alike. Throughout, this tenacious man never loses his moral compass. He survives the Soviet labour camps to return safely home to his family in Kiel when war finally ends in 1945. Moving to Canada to make a fresh start in a new world, Hans lives to chronicle his harrowing adventures during some of the darkest and bloodiest years in Europe's history. The collaboration of Mr. Spezzano's writing and Hans Schaefer's war experiences has produced an epic account of a German soldier's flight from the pathological Nazi regime. This novel echoes the reservations of the many Germans who harboured conflicting loyalties during the ascendancy of the Third Reich. It's also a very human story about love and loss. A courageous masterpiece and a testament to one man's struggle to retain his dignity and individuality in a world torn apart by tyrants. Jack Baret Screenwriter

Your relationships with your "smart" products are about to get a lot more personal. Think how commonplace it is now for people to ask Siri for the weather forecast, deploy Roomba to clean their homes, or summon Alexa to turn on the lights. The "smart home" market will reach well over $100 billion in the next five years on the promise of products that are truly integrated with our cooking, cleaning, entertainment, security, and hygiene habits. But the reality is, these first-generation "smart" products aren't very smart—yet. We're clearly seeing only the tip of the iceberg in terms of capability and how such products can enhance our lives. How do we take it to the next level? In a word, design—and more specifically, social design. In this fascinating and instructive book, leading product design expert Carla Diana describes how new technology is allowing designers to humanize consumer products in delightfully subtle ways. Showcasing vivid examples of social design principles such as "product presence," "object expression," and "interaction intelligence," we see how inventive uses of light, sound, and movement can evoke human responses to even the most mundane products. Diana offers clear guidelines and takeaways for conceptualizing, building, and optimizing products using such methods as bodystorming, scenario storyboarding, video prototyping, behavior charting, and more. My Robot Gets Me provides keen insights and practical advice to anyone interested or involved in the burgeoning smart marketplace, from product designers and developers to managers and venture capitalists.

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • This magisterial and acclaimed history offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost. “A tragic testimony to how evil ideologically inspired dictatorships can be.” –The New York Times The Gulag—a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners—was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. Applebaum intimately re-creates what life was like in the camps and links them to the larger history of the Soviet Union. Immediately recognized as a landmark and long-overdue work of scholarship, Gulag is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand the history of the twentieth century.

These drawings were produced between 1976 and 1977, during the Cold War, when the hammer and sickle was the best known symbol for the enemy, the USSR. By using this symbol of communism as an object for sale in a capitalist economy, the drawings were seenas an ironic commentary on the war.

The Mitford sisters were the great wits and beauties of their time. Immoderate in their passions for ideas and people, they counted among their diverse friends Adolf Hitler and Queen Elizabeth II, Cecil Beaton and President Kennedy, Evelyn Waugh and Givenchy. The Mitfords offers an unparalleled look at these privileged siblings through their own unabashed correspondence. Spanning the twentieth century, the magically vivid letters of the legendary Mitfords constitute a superb social and historical chronicle and an intimate portrait of the stormy but enduring relationships between six beautiful, gifted, and radically different women.