This book transports the reader to the very beginnings of the Nazi regime, as seen through the eyes of a young boy -- the only Jew in a school of Hitler Youths in a small medieval German town. It is his life journey -- his traumatic experience of Kristallnacht . . . the destruction of his home . . . separation from his parents . . . exile . . . post-war reconciliation with his ex-classmates . . . forgiveness . . . and ultimate grant of honorary citizenship -- that provides the reader with a rich, inspiring you-are-there experience seldom encountered in the Holocaust canon.

In The Odyssey of an Apple Thief, Moishe Rozenbaumas (1922–2016) recounts his fascinating life, from his Lithuanian boyhood, to the fraught experiences that take him across Europe and Central Asia and back again, to his daring escape from Soviet Russia to build a new life in Paris. Along the way, we get a rarely seen portrait of the lives of working-class Jewish youth in Telz/Telsiai, a religious town renowned for its yeshiva. We hear of the games children played, the theft of apples from a Catholic orchard, and Rozenbaumas’s early apprenticeship as a tailor once his father leaves the country. The war breaks out and the teenaged Rozenbaumas flees Lithuania alone, unable to convince his mother and sibling to go with him. We learn of his life as a starved refugee in an Uzbek kolkhoz, his escape into the Red Army, and his unlikely work in the reconnaissance unit of the Soviet Army. After the war, Rozenbaumas is drafted into the Marxist-Leninist university and as a cadre of the Communist Party, ultimately escaping in 1956 with his family to Paris, where he and his wife give an openly Jewish education to their children. In the vast literature of memory written by Jewish witnesses before, during, and after WWII, Rozenbaumas’s account stands out for the singularity of his experience and for his deft narration of events of mythological dimension from a personal perspective. The Odyssey of an Apple Thief offers not only invaluable testimony of this historical moment but also an illuminating and original portrait of Lithuanian Jews in the twentieth century.

Provides insight into two of Homer's epic poems along with a short history of the man and his life.

An extraordinary biography that spans global events from the Holocaust to the Cold War, the Free Speech Movement to the women's movement, international incidents to hyper-local political battles.

A catastrophic, unexplainable plane crash leaves three hundred and thirty dead -- no survivors. Among the victims are the wife and two daughters of Joe Carpenter, a Los Angeles Post crime reporter. A year after the crash, still gripped by an almost paralyzing grief, Joe encounters a woman named Rose, who claims to have survived the crash. She holds out the possibility of a secret that will bring Joe peace of mind. But before he can ask any questions, she slips away. Driven now by rage (have the authorities withheld information?) and a hope almost as unbearable as his grief (if there is one survivor, are there others?), Joe sets out to find the mysterious woman. His search immediately leads him into the path of a powerful and shadowy organization hell-bent on stopping Rose before she can reveal what she knows about the crash. Sole Survivor unfolds at a heart-stopping pace, as a desperate chase and a shattering emotional odyssey lead Joe to a truth that will force him to reassess everything he thought he knew about life and death -- a truth that, given the chance, will rock the world and redefine the destiny of humanity. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Dean Koontz's The City.

For decades the author did not realize the symptoms of PTSD and ADHD she was experiencing were due to the childhood trauma she was subjected to while a member of the Church of Scientology's Sea Organization. At the age of 17, as one of the first residents of the "Big Blue" (the landmark building in Los Angeles), she not only witnessed the largest FBI raid in history, she was also a member of the infamous 1977 PAC RPF (Rehabilitation Project Force) where she pulled 18-hour shifts performing heavy labor to renovate the new headquarters. What followed were years of sleepless nights as a member of the United States Guardian's Office while the Church battled the government to keep L. Ron Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, out of jail for her role in illegal government break-ins known as Operation Snow White. Sandra left in the 80's only to find herself haunted by the ghosts of the Church for decades. She found solidarity through her work with refugees from Cambodia and Africa and healing through her work as a photographer. She has bonded with her fellow cohorts known as the Children of Scientology, breaking the stigma of isolation so many second-generation cult survivors have struggled with. Her memoir shines the way for the children of the world who have experienced similar trauma (through genocide and war), by advancing the conversation on Adverse Childhood Experiences and how this universal crisis affects over 34 million people in the U.S. alone, transcending all racial boundaries. Her journey spans over five decades and 30 countries culminating in a truth-to-power indictment against Scientology, one of the most powerful cults in existence today, known for their celebrity followers and their well-documented attacks against their victims and critics to keep the truth from coming out. Never once has the Church taken any responsibility for their actions.

A portrait of the American recon platoon of the 101st Airborne Division describes their sixty-day fight for survival during the 1968 Tet Offensive, tracing their postwar difficulties with acclimating into a peacetime America that did not want to hear their story.