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  A Month by the Sea - Encounters...

  Dervla Murphy

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  Over the summer of 2011, Dervla Murphy spent a month in the Gaza Strip. She met liberals and Islamists, Hamas and Fatah supporters, rich and poor. Through reported conversations she creates a vivid picture of life in this coastal fragment of self-governing Palestine. Bombed and cut-off from normal contact with the rest of the world, life in Gaza is beset with structural, medical and mental health problems, yet it is also bursting with political engagement and underwritten by an intense enjoyment of family life. During her month by the sea, Dervla develops an acute eye for the way in which isolation has shaped this society. Time and again she meets men who have returned to the Strip as an act of presence. Yet the mosque is often their only daily activity, as difficulties obtaining supplies mean few opportunities for creative work. This acts as a recruiting sergeant for the Islamist Qassam brigades and a pressure cooker for the creation of domestic tyrants. In this situation, Dervla becomes a shameless supporter of women's rights -acting as agony aunt and feminist mentor by turn. The ironies of Western and Israeli attitudes to the Strip are ever present: most notably the championing of democracy yet the refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Hamas; and the way in which violent attempts to eradicate terrorism breathe life into the very monster they aspire to destroy. Even so, there is a still, small note of hope. For underlying the book is Dervla's determination to try to understand how Arab Palestinians and Israeli Jews might forge a solution and ultimately live in peace.

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  The War Outside My Window - The...

  Janet Elizabeth Croon

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  A remarkable account of the collapse of the Old South and the final years of a young boy’s privileged but afflicted life. 
   
  LeRoy Wiley Gresham was born in 1847 to an affluent slave-holding family in Macon, Georgia. After a horrific leg injury left him an invalid, the educated, inquisitive, perceptive, and exceptionally witty twelve-year-old began keeping a diary in 1860—just as secession and the Civil War began tearing the country and his world apart. He continued to write even as his health deteriorated until both the war and his life ended in 1865. His unique manuscript of the demise of the Old South is published here for the first time in The War Outside My Window. 
   
  LeRoy read books, devoured newspapers and magazines, listened to gossip, and discussed and debated important social and military issues with his parents and others. He wrote daily for five years, putting pen to paper with a vim and tongue-in-cheek vigor that impresses even now, more than 150 years later. His practical, philosophical, and occasionally Twain-like hilarious observations cover politics and the secession movement, the long and increasingly destructive Civil War, family pets, a wide variety of hobbies and interests, and what life was like at the center of a socially prominent wealthy family in the important Confederate manufacturing center of Macon. The young scribe often voiced concern about the family’s pair of plantations outside town, and recorded his interactions and relationships with servants as he pondered the fate of human bondage and his family’s declining fortunes. 
   
  Unbeknownst to LeRoy, he was chronicling his own slow and painful descent toward death in tandem with the demise of the Southern Confederacy. He recorded—often in horrific detail—an increasingly painful and debilitating disease that robbed him of his childhood. The teenager’s declining health is a consistent thread coursing through his fascinating journals. “I feel more discouraged [and] less hopeful about getting well than I ever did before,” he wrote on March 17, 1863. “I am weaker and more helpless than I ever was.” Morphine and a score of other “remedies” did little to ease his suffering. Abscesses developed; nagging coughs and pain consumed him. Alternating between bouts of euphoria and despondency, he often wrote, “Saw off my leg.” 
   
  The War Outside My Window, edited and annotated by Janet Croon with helpful footnotes and a detailed family biographical chart, captures the spirit and the character of a young privileged white teenager witnessing the demise of his world even as his own body slowly failed him. Just as Anne Frank has come down to us as the adolescent voice of World War II, LeRoy Gresham will now be remembered as the young voice of the Civil War South. 
   
  Winner, 2018, The Douglas Southall Freeman Award

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  You Met Your Father at Vyazma 1

  Neil Hewitt

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  Part1 Major Etienne Bonnaire marches with Napoleon in to Russia in 1812, with his murderously ambitious subordinate, Captain Fabrice Delacroix. On the way to Moscow, they encounter a mysterious Russian gipsy woman, Katya. Etienne’s pregnant wife Maria shares a dark secret with Delacroix and undertakes a desperate journey to find her husband. Napoleon abandons the campaign and the three are caught up in the retreat from Moscow. Freezing and starving in the snows of Russia, Katya finds their fate in her hands, but the couple's indomitable spirit will prevail only if love can survive.

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  Bones of Belonging - Finding...

  Annahid Dashtgard

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  In this exceptional book, inclusion leader Annahid Dashtgard shares her experiences looking for and teaching about belonging in our divided world. Through moving and deft interlocking stories, Dashtgard examines what it means to belong—to a country, in a marriage, and in our skin—and the price we pay when that belonging is absent.

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  Lazarus Rising - A Personal and...

  John Howard

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  John Howard spent decades under media scrutiny, and while his credentials as a political leader, devoted family man and sports tragic are beyond dispute, in this autobiography he reveals much more about himself. In Lazarus Rising, Howard traces his personal and political journey, from childhood in the post-World War II era through to the present day, painting a fascinating picture of a changing Australia. We see the youngster who had to overcome serious deafness and who latched onto the family passion for current affairs and politics. From school debating, to a legal career, to the Liberal Party and life with Janette, it all seemed such a natural progression. Yet no one would say that Howard had it easy; not when his own colleagues sidelined him . . . twice. An economic radical and social conservative, John Howard's ideology united many Australians and divided just as many others. Long before he attained the role of prime minister, he first had to convince his fellow Liberals that he was the man they needed. To do that, he had to tough it out; it took several attempts and many years biding his time. When he finally got his turn to take on the ALP, he proved wrong all his doubters, and showed a whole nation that it had been a mistake ever to underestimate John Howard. He led the Liberal Party to victory in four elections and became the second-longest-serving PM in the nation's history.Lazarus Rising is history seen through the eyes of the ultimate insider; an account of a 30-year political career. No prime minister of modern times has reshaped Australia and its place in the world as forcefully as John Howard. As part of his reform agenda he privatized Telstra, dismantled excessive union power and compulsory trade union membership, instituted the unpopular Goods and Services Tax, and established the ‘work for the dole' scheme. Then there are the insights into political leadership and character, the stuff that drives history. Without his deep reserves of resilience - and the support of a strong wife and loving family - there would have been no Prime Minister John Howard walking the world stage. He tells us how he responded on issues vital to Australia, such as gun control, the aftermath of 9/11, Iraq and the rising tide of asylum-seekers. He also shares his thoughts on his former Treasurer and leadership aspirant, Peter Costello, and the Rudd-Gillard debate.Lazarus Rising takes us through the life and motivations of John Howard and through the forces which have changed and shaped both him and the country he led for 11 years.

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  Steve & Me

  Terri Irwin

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  When Terri Raines was twenty-seven years old, she took a vacation that changed her life. Leaving behind her wildlife rescue work in Oregon, Terri traveled to Australia, and there, at a small wildlife park, she met and fell in love with a tall, blond force of nature named Steve Irwin. They were married in less than a year, and Terri eagerly joined in Steve's conservation work. The footage filmed on their crocodile-trapping honeymoon became the first episode of The Crocodile Hunter, and together, Steve and Terri began to change the world.  In Steve & Me, Terri recounts the unforgettable adventures they shared -- wrangling venomous snakes, saving deadly crocodiles from poachers, swimming among humpback whales. A uniquely gifted naturalist, Steve was first and foremost a wildlife warrior dedicated to rescuing endangered animals -- especially his beloved crocs -- and educating everyone he could reach about the importance of conservation. In the hit TV shows that continue to be broadcast worldwide, Steve's enthusiasm lives on, bringing little-known and often-feared species to light as he reveals and revels in the wonders of our planet.  With grace, wit, and candor, Terri Irwin portrays her husband as he really was -- a devoted family man, a fervently dedicated environmentalist, a modest bloke who spoke to millions on behalf of those who could not speak for themselves. Steve & Me is a nonstop adventure, a real-life love story, and a fitting tribute to a man adored by all those whose lives he touched, written by the woman who knew and loved him best of all.

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