Set against the backdrop of the early 1980s, a young boy named Finn grapples with his father's rare blood disease, which faith alone cannot heal. As his father seeks treatment on the AIDS wing of the National Institutes of Health, Finn is sent to live with strangers in rural South. With his red fireman's bag symbolizing his father's struggle, he navigates complex emotions about good and evil, questioning why a loving God fails to provide miracles, warmth, sustenance, or maternal love.
"For decades after 1945, it was generally believed that the German army, professional and morally decent, had largely stood apart from the SS, Gestapo, and other corps of the Nazi machine. Ben Shepherd draws on a wealth of primary sources and recent scholarship to convey a much darker, more complex picture. For the first time, the German army is examined throughout the Second World War, across all combat theaters and occupied regions, and from multiple perspectives: its battle performance, social composition, relationship with the Nazi state, and involvement in war crimes and military occupation. This was a true people's army, drawn from across German society and reflecting that society as it existed under the Nazis. Without the army and its conquests abroad, Shepherd explains, the Nazi regime could not have perpetrated its crimes against Jews, prisoners of war, and civilians in occupied countries. The author examines how the army was complicit in these crimes and why some soldiers, units, and higher commands were more complicit than others. Shepherd also reveals the reasons for the army's early battlefield successes and its mounting defeats up to 1945, the latter due not only to Allied superiority and Hitler's mismanagement as commander-in-chief, but also to the failings--moral, political, economic, strategic, and operational--of the army's own leadership"--
The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know takes readers on a tour of the
issues that Americans debate when they talk about guns. The volume includes
information on gun control pertaining to U.S. history, jurisprudence, cultural
beliefs, political agendas, epidemiologcal data, criminology, law and
regulation, and policy effectiveness.
Leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 and onwards, the shortcomings of traditional models of regional economic and environmental development had become increasingly evident. Rooted in the idea that ' policy' is an encumbrance to free markets, the stress on supply-side smoothing measures such as clusters and an over reliance on venture capital, the inadequacy of existing orthodoxies has come to be replaced by the notion of transversality. This approach has three strong characteristics that differentiate it from its
Germany’s 1941 seizure of Yugoslavia sparked a violent insurgency, prompting a brutal counter-insurgency campaign by the Wehrmacht. By 1943, German troops were engaged in some of the largest operations of the European war, employing massive reprisals, village destructions, and extensive mobile operations against both insurgents and civilians suspected of supporting them. This study delves into the motivations behind the Wehrmacht’s extreme measures in southern and eastern Europe, shifting the focus from high-ranking generals to lower-level units and their officers, many of whom were of Austrian descent. Utilizing Austro-Hungarian army records, the author examines how the personal experiences of these Austrian officers during World War I influenced their brutal conduct in Yugoslavia. By comparing Wehrmacht counter-insurgency divisions, the author analyzes the behavior of various midlevel commanders and their units across different regions of Yugoslavia. The findings reveal that the campaign’s violence stemmed not only from National Socialist ideology but also from the historical context of ethnic conflict, on-the-ground conditions, and military doctrines that shaped German and Austrian mindsets since the late nineteenth century. The study also explores the varying degrees of ruthlessness and restraint exhibited by different Wehrmacht units during the campaign.
Why does the top one per cent of the population capture such a
disproportionate amount of the wealth? Why do top athletes win dozens of
sponsorship deals, yet competitors who finish just moments behind struggle to
attract a single deal? This title shows how in business, as in sport,
thousands are competing for only a handful of top prizes.
Comprises a collection of archive texts about one of the more controversial
periods in modern Italian history. The extracts are from a wide variety of
different genres, including novels, memoirs, short stories, historical works
and songs.
