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The Jedburghs
Will Irwin
The first full history of the pioneering Special Forces units of World War II-dropped behind German lines into France to assist with the D-Day landings-told by a former U.S. Special Forces colonel with unique access to surviving veterans The story of the Special Forces in World War II has never fully been told before. Information about them began to be declassified only in the 1980s. Known as the Jedburghs, these Special Forces were selected from members of the British, American, and Free French armies to be dropped in teams of three deep behind German lines. There, in preparation for D-Day, they carried out what we now know as unconventional warfare: supporting the French Resistance in guerrilla attacks, supply-route disruption, and the harassment and obstruction of German reinforcements. Always, they operated against extraordinary odds. They had to be prepared to survive pitched battles with German troops and Gestapo manhunts for weeks and months while awaiting the arrival of Allied ground forces. They were, in short, heroes. The Jedburghs finally tells their story and offers a new perspective on D-Day itself. Will Irwin has selected seven of the Jedburgh teams and told their stories as gripping personal narratives. He has gathered archival documents, diaries, and correspondence, and interviewed Jed veterans and family members in order to present this portrait of their crucial role--a role recognized by Churchill and Eisenhower-in the struggle to liberate Europe in 1944-45. This is narrative history at its most compelling; a vivid drama of the battle for France from deep behind enemy lines.
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The Outskirts of Hope - A Memoir...
Jo Ivester
“A sensitive and powerful memoir of racial change in the South in the 1960s.”―BooklistIn 1967, when Jo Ivester was ten years old, her father transplanted his young family from a suburb of Boston to a small town in the heart of the Mississippi cotton fields, where he became the medical director of a clinic that served the poor population for miles around. But ultimately it was not Ivester’s father but her mother—a stay-at-home mother of four who became a high school English teacher when the family moved to the South—who made the most enduring mark on the town.
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Still Hunting - A Memoir
Martin Hunter
In the 1960s, Toronto was a city of shifting societal dynamics, and this engrossing memoir perfectly captures the essence of this exhilarating and tumultuous time. It begins with Martin Hunter returning to his birthplace, where he marries his teenage sweetheart, goes to work for the family paper company, fathers three children, and settles into a conventional life. But this comfortable bourgeois existence is disrupted with the arrival of the Swinging Sixties and the wild parties and flamboyant characters that accompanied the famously iconoclastic decade. After writing a racy, award-winning play about the city's changing social climate, the University of Toronto offers him a position as playwright-in-residence, thus plunging him into Toronto's vibrant theatre scene and setting the stage for many adventures to follow. Skillfully written and full of unforgettable characters, this book chronicles Hunter's adventures in Europe and the Middle East, reveals his stories of working in the theatre, and shares tales of his spirited friends, colleagues, and loved ones.
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Open Secret An - The Family...
Nicholas L. Syrett
In 1922 Robert Allerton—described by the Chicago Tribune as the “richest bachelor in Chicago”—met a twenty-two-year-old University of Illinois architecture student named John Gregg, who was twenty-six years his junior. Virtually inseparable from then on, they began publicly referring to one another as father and son within a couple years of meeting. In 1960, after nearly four decades together, and with Robert Allerton nearing ninety, they embarked on a daringly nonconformist move: Allerton legally adopted the sixty-year-old Gregg as his son, the first such adoption of an adult in Illinois history. An Open Secret tells the striking story of these two iconoclasts, locating them among their queer contemporaries and exploring why becoming father and son made a surprising kind of sense for a twentieth-century couple who had every monetary advantage but one glaring problem: they wanted to be together publicly in a society that did not tolerate their love. Deftly exploring the nature of their design, domestic, and philanthropic projects, Nicholas L. Syrett illuminates how viewing the Allertons as both a same-sex couple and an adopted family is crucial to understanding their relationship’s profound queerness. By digging deep into the lives of two men who operated largely as ciphers in their own time, he opens up provocative new lanes to consider the diversity of kinship ties in modern US history.
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The Magic City (Golden Deer...
Edith Nesbit
After Philip's older sister and sole family member Helen marries, he goes off to live with his new step sister Lucy. He has trouble adjusting at first, thrown into the world different from his previous life and abandoned by his sister while she is on her honeymoon. To entertain himself he builds a giant model city from things around the house: game pieces, books, blocks, bowls, etc. Then through some magic, he finds himself inside the city, and it is alive with the people he has populated it with. Some soldiers find him and tell him that two outsiders have been foretold to be coming: a Deliverer and a Destroyer. Mr. Noah, from a Noah's Ark playset, tells Philip that there are seven great deeds to be performed if he wants to prove himself the Deliverer. Lucy, too, has found her way into the city and joins Philip as a co-Deliverer, much to his chagrin.
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Twenty-two Provocative Canadians
Kerry Longpre, Margaret Dickson
Contributors include Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler,David Suzuki, Andy Russell, John Ralston Saul, W.O. Mitchell, Carol Shields and others. These essays are to honour the spirit of Bob Edwards, the irascible editor of 'The Calgary Eye Opener' from 1902 to 1922.
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