"It was a battle that would change the course of World War II ... Eleven-year-old Paul's French village has been under Nazi control for years. His Jewish best friend has disappeared. Food is scarce. And there doesn't seem to be anything Paul can do to make things better. Then Paul finds an American paratrooper in a tree near his home. The soldier says the Allies have a plan to crush the Nazis once and for all, but the soldier needs Paul's help. This is Paul's chance to make a difference. Soon he finds himself in the midst of the largest invasion in history. Can he do his part to turn horror into hope?"--Back cover

The Russian writer Isaac Babel (1894-1940) is widely acknowledged to be one of the great masters of twentieth-century literature, hailed as a genius by such critics as Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe. The work for which he is best known is a cycle of stories called Red Cavalry, which depicts the exploits of the Cossack cavalry during the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920 and is based on Babel's experiences as he rode with the Cossacks during the campaign. Throughout this period Babel kept a diary, in which he recorded the devastation of the war, the extreme cruelty of the Polish and Red armies alike toward the Jewish population in Ukraine and eastern Poland, and his own conflicted role as both Soviet revolutionary and Jew. The 1920 Diary, a vital source for Red Cavalry as well as a compelling narrative, is now published in English for the first time

A collection of articles, excerpts from books and articles, and review essays published previously, revised and updated for this edition. Partial contents:

When Britain was compelled to introduce conscription in 1916, the question arose of what to do with its 'friendly aliens'-its 30,000 Russian-Jewish refugees of military age. The Tsar didn't want them back to serve in his army, and they had no desire to help his war effort. But when sections of the British press commented that as asylum seekers they should show gratitude and join up, a campaign with strong anti-Semitic overtones took off and became Parliamentary business. Then the Tsar was overthrown, and by the summer of 1917 the question was settled with the new regime: Russian Jews of military age had to choose either to join the British Army or to return to Russia to serve there. MI5 and Special Branch kept watch on the Communist Club in the West End, where Russian revolutionaries agitated tailors, cobblers and cabinet-makers who agonised over what to do. Many ended up in the British Army or were exempted for war work, but nearly 4,000 chose to go back to Russia-for a variety of reasons. Arriving there via the Arctic within weeks and days of the Bolshevik revolution, they found a vacuum of authority, which soon turned into the chaos and dangers of civil war. How they fared and how they struggled to return to their families in Britain is the story of War or Revolution. With the help of personal documents, official British and Russian archives, and interviews of survivors and their families, the author illuminates an unknown corner of the First World War and sets it against the background of the period.

A new translation of a forgotten masterpiece of German World War I literature, based on the author's own first-hand experiences of combat The war, an operation instigated by men, still felt to him like a storm decreed by fate, an unleashing of powerful elements, unaccountable and beyond criticism. Arnold Zweig's novel was first published in 1933 and is based on his own experiences in the German army during World War I. Following the unlawful killing of his younger brother by his own superiors, Lieutenant Kroysing swears revenge, using his influence to arrange for his brother's unit, normally safely behind the lines, to be reassigned to the fortress at Douaument, in the very heart of the battle for France. Bertin, a lowly but educated Jewish sapper through whose eyes the story unfolds, is the innocent man caught in the cross-fire. The book not only explores the heart-breaking tragedy of one individual trapped in a nightmare of industrialized warfare but also reveals the iniquities of German society in microcosm, with all its injustice, brutality, anti-Semitism, and incompetence. A brilliant translation captures all the subtleties, cadences, and detachment of Zweig's masterful prose.