The Extraordinary Story of Mary Elmes

The Extraordinary Story of Mary Elmes PDF Author: Paddy Butler
Publisher: Orpen Press
ISBN: 1786050455
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Mary Elmes is the great unsung heroine of modern Ireland. Risking her life to save Jewish children during the Holocaust, she turned her back on a promising academic career to help others. She is the only Irish person to be honoured as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel for this work. In 1937 she travelled to Spain as an aid worker, where she ran children’s hospitals, moving from one bombed-out building to the next in the midst of a horrific civil war. Moving to France after Franco’s victory, she continued to work in the wretched refugee camps hastily thrown together by the French authorities for 500,000 escaping Spanish Republicans. Soon, Jews fleeing the Nazis were also imprisoned in the internment camps. Mary initially sought to relieve the suffering of all the inmates but when the deportations to the east began she worked to save hundreds of Jewish children from the death camps, going so far as to smuggle children out of the camp in her own car. Eventually her actions came to the notice of the collaborationist Vichy government and in 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo and jailed for six months. The Extraordinary Story of Mary Elmes tells the gripping story of one woman’s heroism during two of the twentieth century’s bloodiest conflicts. It includes a number of interviews with some of those who owe their lives to Mary Elmes, as well as photographs and a wealth of archival material.

A Time to Risk All

A Time to Risk All PDF Author: Clodagh Finn
Publisher: Gill & Macmillan Ltd
ISBN: 071717560X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Clodagh Finn has travelled throughout Europe to piece together the story of this remarkable, unknown Irish woman, meeting many of those children Mary Elmes saved. Here, in a book packed with courage, heroism, adventure and tragedy, her story is finally remembered. The children called her 'Miss Mary', and they remember her kindness still. She gave them food and shelter and later risked her life to help them escape the convoys bound for Auschwitz. Turning her back on a brilliant academic career, Mary Elmes ventured into a war zone to help children in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, she fled Franco's forces but continued to work with refugees in France when the Second World War broke out. In 1942, when it became evident that Jews were being deported to their deaths, she smuggled children to safety in the boot of her car. She was arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo, but went straight back to work after her release. When the war was over, Mary married and settled down, never speaking about what she had done. Her story was forgotten. In A Time to Risk All her remarkable story is finally remembered as it should be. 'A compelling portrait of an unsung Irish heroine of two wars' Madeleine Keane, Literary Editor, Sunday Independent 'Brings to light the life of Mary Elmes, showing a remarkable, independent and courageous woman whose compassion knew no borders.' Yvonne Altman O'Connor, Culture and Education Director, Irish Jewish Museum

For Love of Insects

For Love of Insects PDF Author: Thomas Eisner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674736443
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Imagine beetles ejecting defensive sprays as hot as boiling water; female moths holding their mates for ransom; caterpillars disguising themselves as flowers by fastening petals to their bodies; termites emitting a viscous glue to rally fellow soldiers--and you will have entered an insect world once beyond imagining, a world observed and described down to its tiniest astonishing detail by Thomas Eisner. The story of a lifetime of such minute explorations, For Love of Insects celebrates the small creatures that have emerged triumphant on the planet, the beneficiaries of extraordinary evolutionary inventiveness and unparalleled reproductive capacity. To understand the success of insects is to appreciate our own shortcomings, Eisner tells us, but never has a reckoning been such a pleasure. Recounting exploits and discoveries in his lab at Cornell and in the field in Uruguay, Australia, Panama, Europe, and North America, Eisner time and again demonstrates how inquiry into the survival strategies of an insect leads to clarifications beyond the expected; insects are revealed as masters of achievement, forms of life worthy of study and respect from even the most recalcitrant entomophobe. Filled with descriptions of his ingenious experiments and illustrated with photographs unmatched for their combination of scientific content and delicate beauty, Eisner's book makes readers participants in the grand adventure of discovery on a scale infinitesimally small, and infinitely surprising.

Brave Girls

Brave Girls PDF Author: Stacey Radin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451699328
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
“A solid resource for parents and educators” (Kirkus Reviews), Brave Girls is an empowering guide to cultivating confident, passionate, and powerful young leaders during the most formative stage of life: the middle school years. After years of research as a psychologist and consultant for women struggling in the professional world, Stacey Radin made a groundbreaking realization: women who become successful leaders learn how to do so in the middle grades—the most formative stage in a girl’s development and self-identification. Drawing on her own experience with Unleashed, an after-school program dedicated to empowering girls through puppy rescue, Radin has written Brave Girls­—the ultimate guidebook for anyone who wants to help girls become confident, passionate, and powerful leaders. At a pivotal time in their lives, girls learn to advocate for others, think critically, and, most importantly, gain confidence in their ability to create change. Perfect for “anyone concerned with girls and women’s lives” (New York Times bestselling author Michael Gurian), Brave Girls shows how contributing to one cause can shape a leader for life while reducing the hazards of middle school—bullying, excessive competition, fear of speaking out—and identifying the patterns that truly make a difference. If we take initiative early enough, we can inspire today’s girls to become the next generation of strong, enthusiastic, and fulfilled leaders in all areas of society.

Waiting for Eden

Waiting for Eden PDF Author: Elliot Ackerman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101947403
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
“Patiently, and unflinchingly, Ackerman is becoming one of the great poet laureates of America’s tragic adventurism across the globe.” —Pico Iyer Eden lies in a hospital bed, unable to move or speak. His wife Mary spends every day on the sofa in his room. We see them through the eyes of Eden’s best friend, a fellow Marine who didn’t make it back home—and who must relive the secrets held between all three of them as he waits for Eden to finally, mercifully die and join him in whatever comes after. A breathtakingly spare and shattering novel that explores the unseen aftereffects—and unacknowledged casualties—of war, Waiting for Eden is a piercingly insightful, deeply felt meditation on loyalty, friendship, betrayal, and love. “The Tim O’Brien of our era.” —Vogue “Devastating.” —The Wall Street Journal “Haunting. . . . Daring.” —The Boston Globe “Heart-wrenching.” —NPR

Slave Portraiture in the Atlantic World

Slave Portraiture in the Atlantic World PDF Author: Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107354781
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
Slave Portraiture in the Atlantic World is the first book to focus on the individualized portrayal of enslaved people from the time of Europe's full engagement with plantation slavery in the late sixteenth century to its final official abolition in Brazil in 1888. While this period saw the emergence of portraiture as a major field of representation in Western art, 'slave' and 'portraiture' as categories appear to be mutually exclusive. On the one hand, the logic of chattel slavery sought to render the slave's body as an instrument for production, as the site of a non-subject. Portraiture, on the contrary, privileged the face as the primary visual matrix for the representation of a distinct individuality. Essays address this apparent paradox of 'slave portraits' from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, probing the historical conditions that made the creation of such rare and enigmatic objects possible and exploring their implications for a more complex understanding of power relations under slavery.

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose PDF Author: Henry Cabot Lodge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description


Metropolitan Art and Literature, 1810-1840

Metropolitan Art and Literature, 1810-1840 PDF Author: Gregory Dart
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107024927
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
This book examines the Cockney phenomenon of the late Romantic period - the new metropolitan art and literature of the 1820s and 1830s.

The Complete Story of the Grail

The Complete Story of the Grail PDF Author: Chrétien (de Troyes)
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 1843844001
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Book Description
The mysterious and haunting Grail makes its first appearance in literature in Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval at the end of the twelfth century. But Chrétien never finished his poem, leaving an unresolved story and an incomplete picture of the Grail. It was, however, far too attractive an idea to leave. Not only did it inspire quite separate works; his own unfinished poem was continued and finally completed by no fewer than four other writers. The Complete Story of the Grail is the first ever translation of the whole of the rich and compelling body of tales contained in Chrétien's poem and its four Continuations, which are finally attracting the scholarly attention they deserve. Besides Chrétien's original text, there are the anonymous First Continuation (translated here in its fullest version), the Second Continuation attributed to Wauchier de Denain, and the intriguing Third and Fourth Continuations - probably written simultaneously, with no knowledge of each other's work - by Manessier and Gerbert de Montreuil. Two other poets were drawn to create preludes explaining the background to Chrétien's story, and translated here also are their works: The Elucidation Prologue and Bliocadran. Only in this, The Story of the Grail's complete form, can the reader appreciate the narrative skill and invention of the medieval poets and their surprising responses to Chrétien's theme - not least their crucial focus on the knight as a crusader. Equally, Chrétien's original poem was almost always copied in conjunction withone or more of the Continuations, so this translation represents how most medieval readers would have encountered it. Nigel Bryant's previous translations from Medieval French include Perlesvaus - the High Bookof the Grail, Robert de Boron's trilogy Merlin and the Grail, the Medieval Romance of Alexander, The True Chronicles of Jean le Bel and Perceforest.

Spanish Republicans and the Second World War

Spanish Republicans and the Second World War PDF Author: Jonathan Whitehead
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1399004549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Spanish Republicans and the Second World War tells the stories of the 500,000 Spanish Republicans that fled across the Pyrenees in 1939 as Catalonia fell to Franco’s victorious army in the final weeks of the Civil War. Many of the exiles played an active part in the Second World War. Some joined the French and British armed forces and saw action in various theatres including Africa and Europe (both in 1940 and after D-Day). In August 1944, Spanish Republicans in the La Nueve Company of General Leclerc’s Deuxième Blindée were the first Allied troops into Paris during the liberation of the French capital. Those that had remained in Vichy France were active in the early days of the French Resistance, and Republican Maquis also played a significant part in the liberation of the south-west of France in 1944. Those who fought the Axis troops in Spain during the Civil War and then again in France assumed that once the Allies had defeated the Nazis, they would launch a military campaign to overthrow Franco’s government in Spain. In October 1944, a force of thousands of Spanish Maquis took part in Operación Reconquista, the invasion of the Valley of Aran on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. Their declared aim was to trigger a popular uprising and force the Allies to intervene against Franco’s dictatorship. Whitehead also examines the role of the Spanish volunteers of the División Azul who swore an oath of allegiance to Hitler and fought with the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front; the role of the master double-agent Garbo, who played a crucial part in the success of D-Day; the strategic importance of Gibraltar; and the activities of the British diplomatic corps and secret services in resisting Hitler’s plans to invade the Iberian Peninsula.