Titres dans 20th Century

The civil war that tore Spain apart between 1936 and 1939 and attracted liberals and socialists from across the world to support the cause against Franco was one of the most hard-fought and bitterest conflicts of the 20th century: a war of atrocities and political genocide and a military testing ground before WWII for the Russians, Italians and Germans, whose Condor Legion so notoriously destroyed Guernica.

This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans.

As a child, Meryl Frank was the chosen inheritor of family remembrance. Her aunt Mollie, a formidable and cultured woman, insisted that Meryl never forget who they were, where they came from, and the hate that nearly destroyed them. Over long afternoons, Mollie told her about the city, the theater, and, above all else, Meryl’s cousin, the radiant Franya Winter. Franya was the leading light of Vilna’s Yiddish theater, a remarkable and precocious woman who cast off the restrictions of her Hasidic famiy. Yet there was one thing her aunt Mollie would never tell Meryl: how Franya died.

En esta novela, Julia Álvarez recrea magistralmente la historia real de tres hermanas que fueron brutalmente asesinadas por oponerse a la dictadura de Rafael Trujillo en República Dominicana. Treinta años después del crimen, la autora dio voz a cada una de ellas en un sentido homenaje a su valentía. Incluyo también a Dedé, la hermana sobreviviente que cuenta un capítulo muy oscuro de la historia con ternura y bondad.

The rags-to-riches story of one of America's wealthiest and least-known financial giants, self-made billionaire Kirk Kerkorian - the daring aviator, movie mogul, risk taker, and business tycoon who transformed Las Vegas and Hollywood to become one of the leading financiers in American business. Kerkorian combined the courage of a World War II pilot, the fortitude of a scrappy boxer, the cunning of an inscrutable poker player, and an unmatched genius for making deals.

As the Holocaust is memorialized worldwide through education programs and commemoration days, the common perception is that after survivors arrived and settled in their new homes they continued on a successful journey from rags to riches. A closer look at the experience of Holocaust survivors in North America shows it to be untrue. Drawing on more than 60 interviews with survivors, hundreds of case files from Jewish Immigrant Aid Services, and other archival documents, The Montreal Shtetl presents a portrait of the daily struggles of Holocaust survivors who settled in Montreal.

From 1933 to 1945, the Gestapo was Nazi Germany's chief instrument of counter-espionage, political suppression, and terror. Jacques Delarue, a saboteur arrested by the Nazis in occupied France, chronicles how the land of Beethoven elevated sadism to a fine art. The Gestapo: A History of Horror draws upon Delarue's interviews with ex-Gestapo agents to deliver a multi-layered history of the force whose work included killing student resisters, establishing Aryan eugenic unions, and implementing the Final Solution.

Her name is Alicia. She was 13 when she began saving the lives of people she did not know - while fleeing the Nazis through war-ravaged Poland. Her family cruelly wrenched from her, Alicia rescued other Jews from the Gestapo, led them to safe hideouts, and lent them her courage and hope. Even the sight of her mother’s brutal murder could not quash this remarkable child’s faith in human goodness - or her determination to prevail against overwhelming odds. After the war, Alicia continued to risk her life, leading Polish Jews on an underground route to freedom in Palestine.

Anne Frank is the most well-known victim of the Holocaust. In 1945, at the age of 15, she died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, becoming one of the six million Jews who were murdered in Europe under the Nazi regime. But through her writing, her memory lives on. Jemma Saunders goes beyond Anne Frank's diary to fill in the gaps about her family history, her life before she went into hiding, and her final months at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. A sobering tale, Anne Frank's story is one that will continue to inspire for decades to come.

An audio dramatisation of July 1914 Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin.

Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia were captivated by each other from the moment they first exchanged glances across the work floor. It was the beginning of a love story that could have happened anywhere. Except for one difference: this romance was unfolding in history’s most notorious death camp, between two young prisoners whose budding intimacy risked dooming them if they were caught.

Keith Jeffery’s fascinating and revealing account draws on a wealth of archival materials never before seen by any outsider to unveil the inner workings of the world’s first spy agency. Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service—or MI6—was born a century ago amid rising fears of foreign military powers, especially Germany. The next 40 years saw MI6 taking an increasingly important—and, until now, largely hidden—role in shaping the history of Europe and the world.

Polls reveal that 85 percent of Americans believe there was a conspiracy behind Lee Harvey Oswald. Some even believe Oswald was entirely innocent. In this encyclopedic, absorbing audiobook, Vincent Bugliosi shows how the public has come to believe such lies about the day that changed the course of history. Bugliosi has devoted almost 20 years of his life to this project, and is determined to show that, despite the overwhelming popular perception, Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone.

A journalist writing in the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm, John Reed gives a gripping record of the events in Petrograd in November 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally seized power. Containing verbatim reports both of speeches by leaders and the chance comments of bystanders, set against an idealized backcloth of the proletariat, soldiers, sailors, and peasants uniting to throw off oppression, Reed's account is the product of passionate involvement and remains a classic of reporting.

In the early 1920s, cowboy and dry-range farmer Ralph Moody finds himself with mountainous debts through the collapse of the livestock market and the dealings of a crooked partner. Ralph never surrenders, but finds a way to turn tragedy into opportunity.

Maxwell Smart was eleven years old when his entire family was killed before his eyes. He might have died along with them, but his mother selflessly ordered him to save himself. Alone in the forest, he dug a hole in the ground for shelter and foraged for food in farmers’ fields. His clothes in rags and close to starvation, he repeatedly escaped death at the hands of Nazis and Ukrainian thugs.

On December 16, 1944, Hitler launched his "last gamble" in the snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes in Belgium, believing he could split the Allies by driving all the way to Antwerp and forcing the Canadians and the British out of the war. Although his generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and NCOs were desperate to believe that their homes and families could be saved from the vengeful Red Army approaching from the east. Many were exultant at the prospect of striking back.

In this last book of a three-volume series, William L. Shirer recounts his return to Berlin after the Third Reich’s defeat. Having fled Berlin and imminent arrest by the Gestapo in 1940, Shirer returned to Europe in October 1945 to verify the facts of the Fuhrer’s death, thus bringing to a close - or so he thought - his involvement with the Third Reich. He describes his return to his homeland and his ensuing careers as a broadcast journalist and author. He describes the McCarthy years and how the blacklist affected his own network, CBS.

From the streets of Petrograd during the heady autumn of 1917, to Mao's stunning victory in October 1949, and Fidel's triumphant arrival in Havana, in January 1959, the history of the twentieth century was transformed in dramatic and profound ways by the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions. Here, the stories of these epoch-defining events are told together for the first time. At the heart of each revolution was an epic journey: Lenin's 1917 return to Russia from exile in Switzerland; Mao's 'Long March' of 1934-35, covering some 6,000 miles across China; and Fidel Castro's return to Cuba.

For the first time ever Roland Huntford presents each man's account of the race to the South Pole in their own words. In 1910, Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen set sail for Antarctica, each from his own starting point, and the epic race for the South Pole was on. 2010 marks the centenary of the last great race of terrestrial discovery. For the first time Scott's unedited diary entries run alongside those of Amundsen and Bjaaland, never before translated into English.