10 results for "Memoir"

Near Normal Man Survival with Courage, Kindness and Hope

Ben Stern,Charlene Stern
In this memoir, Ben Stern tells his own, unforgettable story as a Holocaust camp survivor who by the age of 24 impossibly survived two ghettos, nine concentration camps, and two death marches. In story after story of near impossible survival, he lives with singular courage and unshakable kindness and hope - his only weapons against the Nazis' determination to destroy everyone and everything Jewish in Europe. Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1921, Ben is seventeen years old when the Nazis invade his town of Mogielnica. His parents and grandmother beg him to flee: Whatever you do, you save yourself! We hold our breaths and our hearts as we watch Ben's on-the-fly decisions that in a mix of resourcefulness, canniness, and plain luck manage to save him from the brink of annihilation via slavery, starvation, beatings, shootings, whippings, and a certain death sentence from Dr. Mengele himself. Liberated on May 8, 1945, Ben finds he can be free only when he chooses to let go of hatred. Thirty years later, he sparks and leads the resistance when Nazis in America plan to rally in his adopted hometown of Skokie, Illinois. Standing up against tremendous opposition, Ben builds national support, prompting the Nazis to cancel at the last minute. Then, again for a third time, Nazis arrive in Berkeley, California, after the notorious 2017 hate march in Charlottesville, Virginia. Ben refuses to follow city officials' orders to stay home and defies them with a rally of thousands against hatred, once more. As a fierce defender of human rights, Ben inspires students and adults everywhere. His story inspires us to stand up and speak out to change our world for the better.
Redwood Publishing, LLC 2022-09 316 pages

The Corrosion of Conservatism Why I Left the Right

Max Boot
A “must read” (Joe Scarborough) by a New York Times – best- selling author, The Corrosion of Conservatism presents a necessary defense of American democracy. Praised on publication as “one of the most impressive and unfl inching diagnoses of the pathologies in Republican politics that led to Trump’s rise” (Jonathan Chait, New York ), The Corrosion of Conservatism documents a president who has traduced every norm and the rise of a nascent centrist movement to counter his assault on democracy. In this “admirably succinct and trenchant” (Charles Reichman, San Francisco Chronicle ) exhumation of conservatism, Max Boot tells the story of an ideological dislocation so shattering that it caused his courageous transformation from Republican foreign policy advisor to celebrated anti- Trump columnist. From recording his political coming- of- age as a young émigré from the Soviet Union to describing the vitriol he endured from his erstwhile conservative colleagues, Boot mixes “lively memoir with sharp analysis” (William Kristol) from its Reagan-era apogee to its corrosion under Donald Trump.
National Geographic Books 2019-12-17 288 pages

I Am Spartacus!

Kirk. Douglas
A "lively" memoir by the Hollywood legend about the making of Spartacus , with a foreword by George Clooney ( Los Angeles Times ). One of the world's most iconic movie stars, Kirk Douglas has distinguished himself as a producer, philanthropist, and author of ten works of fiction and memoir. Now, more than fifty years after the release of his enduring epic Spartacus , Douglas reveals the riveting drama behind the making of the legendary gladiator film. Douglas began producing the movie in the midst of the politically charged era when Hollywood's moguls refused to hire anyone accused of Communist sympathies. In a risky move, Douglas chose Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted screenwriter, to write Spartacus . Trumbo was one of the "Unfriendly Ten," men who had gone to prison rather than testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee about their political affiliations. Douglas's source material was already a hot property, as the novel Spartacus was written by Howard Fast while he was in jail for defying HUAC. With the financial future of his young family at stake, Douglas plunged into a tumultuous production both on- and off-screen. As both producer and star of the film, he faced explosive moments with young director Stanley Kubrick, struggles with a leading lady, and negotiations with giant personalities, including Sir Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, and Lew Wasserman. Writing from his heart and from his own meticulously researched archives, Kirk Douglas, at ninety-five, looks back at his audacious decisions. He made the most expensive film of its era--but more importantly, his moral courage in giving public credit to Trumbo effectively ended the notorious Hollywood blacklist. A master storyteller, Douglas paints a vivid and often humorous portrait in I Am Spartacus! The book is enhanced by newly discovered period photography of the stars and filmmakers both on and off the set.
Open Road Integrated Media, Incorporated 2014-01-21 220 pages

Hand of God A Journey from Death to Life by The Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind

Bernard Nathanson
As the former director of the world's largest abortion clinic and the nation's most prominent abortionist, Dr. Bernard Nathanson presided over 61,000 abortions. As co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League he helped make abortion legal. Then, in a conversion that made headlines and astonished both sides of the abortion debate, he renounced his profession to become a pro-life advocate. But Dr. Nathanson's journey was not over. In this deeply personal memoir, he reveals what led a lifelong atheist and abortion crusader first to the pro-life cause, and finally to Christianity. The Hand of God is more than one of the most dramatic autobiographies of our time. It is also a definitive explanation of the pro-life positions not only on abortion, but on related issues such as fetal tissue research and doctor-assisted suicide. "I know the abortion issue as perhaps no one else does," writes Nathanson. Even those as committed to legal abortion as he once was will find his arguments challenging and his story unforgettable. Now in paperback, this book features and introduction by Reverend C.J. McCloskey, III.
Regnery Publishing 2013-02-25 206 pages

Guardian Angel My Story, My Britain

Melanie Phillips
From being the darling of the left, the British journalist Melanie Phillips has became Britain's most controversial champion of national and cultural identity. This updated memoir charts her journey, beginning with a solitary childhood in London. It took her years to understand her parents' emotional frailties and even longer to escape from them. But she was left with strong Jewish moral values and a passionate commitment to freedom from oppression. These turned her against the warped and tyrannical attitudes of the left and required her to break away not only from her parents but from the people she had seen as her wider political family. Her poignant story of transformation and separation also helps to explain the political uproar that has now engulfed the west. Britain's vote to leave the EU, the rise of far-right parties in Europe and the near-implosion of the campaign to elect a successor to President Barack Obama all involve a revolt against the elites by millions of people. It is these disdained masses who have been championed by Melanie Phillips, in a career as prescient as it has been provocative. Guardian Angel is not only an affecting personal story; in joining up the dots, it provides a vital explanation of why the west is at a crossroads today.
Createspace Independent Publishing Platform 2016-08-24 196 pages

Commies A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left (Large Print 16pt)

Ronald Radosh
Ronald Radosh's earliest memory is of being trundled off to May Day celebrations by his communist parents with a Soviet flag stuck in his baby carriage. Then came education at New York's ''little red schoolhouse.'' Summers at ''commie camp.'' And college at the University of Wisconsin where he became a founding father of the New Left. Commies is a brilliant memoir of growing up in the culture of radicalism. But it also about the hard decisions faced by those professing a radical faith. For Radosh himself, the crisis came when he concluded in his authoritative book on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg that the couple (on whose behalf he had demonstrated as a boy) had indeed been guilty of spying. Attacked as a ''traitor,'' Radosh began to question his political commitments. His disillusionment climaxed in the 1980s when he traveled through Central America as a journalist and historian and ran into his old comrades there still searching for the revolution. One journalist calls Ronald Radosh ''the Zelig of the American Left, seen everywhere and knowing everyone.'' Humorous and tragic, filled with anecdote and personality, Commies is a trip log of his journey, the most intimate look yet at the experience of a radical generation.
ReadHowYouWant.com 2010-06 332 pages

Voices in a Revolution: The Collapse of East German Communism

Lasky, Melvin J.
Afeatured article in Die Zeit, the leading German weekly, begins with "Melvin, du hast gewonnen"--Mel, you have won! In his extraordinary account of the final days of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) we see the reckoning of a regime, and also the vindication of a life-long devotee of European democracy. It is unlikely that any comparable memoir will be written, since Lasky's career spanned the entire history of wartime and postwar Germany, especially in divided and Wall-torn Berlin.Voices in a Revolution, now in paperback, offers an in-depth portrayal of the Communist police state before the breakdown, followed by a blow-by-blow account of the drama of breakdown and regime transformation. Characters in the everyday cultural world of Germany come alive as harbingers and heralds of the end of the old and the necessity of the new.Lasky understands the role of accident as well as of necessity. The West Germans had all but abandoned the slogan of One People, One Nation when they were faced with the immense task of supervising just such a reintegration. The work ends with the awakening conscience at the very point that the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. This is a memorable work--one likely to sear the conscience of lovers of freedom and analysts of tyranny alike.
[distributor] Taylor & Francis, c/o Bookpoint 2017-10-30 124 pages

History in My Life A Memoir of Three Eras

Ivan T. Berend
Ivan T. Berend is Distinguished Professor at the University of California Los Angeles, Director of the European Studies Program. He was one of the masterminds of regime change in Hungary. He made a career in Hungary as a university professor, Rector of the University of Economics (1973–79), and President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1985–90). He was President of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (1995–2000), and Vice-President of the International Economic History Association (1986–1994). His research interests are the complex economic, social, ideological, and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th–20th century; economic modernization; problems of European backwardness; transition from state socialism to capitalism. He published and 26 books and more than 120 studies. Before he became a professor at UCLA, Ivan Berend had survived five regime changes and two revolutions in Hungary, had been in prison and German concentration camp in 1944–45. His memoir offers an interesting case study, a subjective addition to the "objective" historical works on Central and Eastern European state socialism. It describes the hard choices of intellectuals in a dictatorial state: 1. remain in isolation, concentrate on scholarly works, and exclude politics in your personal life; 2. be in opposition, criticize and unveil the regime, accept discrimination and exclusion; 3. remain within the establishment and work for reforming the country using legal possibilities to criticize the regime and to achieve changes from within. Berend’s book raises basic historical questions and debates, compares East European and American higher education systems, and presents an eyewitness’ insights on life in the United States.
Central European University Press 2023-09-15 286 pages

Paradoxes of power: reflections on the Thatcher interlude

Sherman, Alfred.
Thumb through the index of almost any study of the Thatcher years -- biographical, scholarly or journalistic -- and you will come across the name of Sir Alfred Sherman. In her memoirs Lady Thatcher herself pays tribute to Sherman's 'brilliance', the 'force and clarity of his mind', his 'breadth of reading and his skills as a ruthless polemicist'. She credits him with a central role in her achievements, especially as Leader of the Opposition but also after she became Prime Minister. Born in 1919 in London's East End, until 1948 Sherman was a Communist and fought in the Spanish Civil War. But he ended up an indefatigable free-market crusader. The book describes his early relationship with Sir Keith Joseph and his own role in the formation of the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974. Sherman examines the origins and development of 'Thatcherism', but concludes that the Conservative administrations of the 1980s were, for the most part, an 'interlude' and that the post-war consensus remains largely unscathed -- 'we are back to where we started'.
Imprint Academic 2005 200 pages