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  Great Escapes of World War I...

  Editors Charles River

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  In the first half of the 20th century, war was fought on a global and industrial scale. Millions of men were flung into the grinder of World War I and World War II, leading to commensurately huge numbers of prisoners of war (POWs). Camps were built to hold thousands of captives, with their own barracks blocks, parade grounds, and even farms. In World War I, there were several fronts in the war - Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany faced each other on the Western Front, fought mostly in northeast France and Belgium, while Germany and Austria Hungary faced Russia on the Eastern Front, where much of the war was fought in East Prussia and what is now Poland. The Italians and Austrians fought in the region of northeast Italy, and the Austrians and Bulgarians faced Serbia and then later an Allied army based in Salonica in the Balkans. The Ottomans faced Russia in northeast Anatolia, the British and Allied forces in the Mesopotamian campaign (mainly in today’s Iraq), the British in Palestine, and the Allies at Gallipoli.  
  	Regardless of rank, throughout the war, many of these men did not sit idle. Many spent their time preparing elaborate escape plans in the hopes of returning to their home nations and back to the fight. Following World War I, several books were published giving romantic accounts of successful escapes. For example, the wildly popular film The Great Escape (1963), has been a main factor in how the public views prisoners of war, and while that film was based on a book that details a mass escape of British and Allied prisoners from a World War II German prison camp for aviators, Stalag Luft III, a real escape from a German prisoner camp in World War I inspired the 1944 great escape from Stalag Luft III. 

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  Masters or Slaves? - AI and the...

  Jeremy Peckham

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  Artificial Intelligence (AI) pervades much of our lives. We use facial recognition to open our phones, and the state uses it to track us—so what’s the problem? Decisions are made using machine learning on our private and personal data, from shopping habits to medical history—have we lost control? We order our digital world in conversation with chatbots—how convenient, but is it changing our relationships with people? The prospect of a self-driving vehicle lies just around the corner—should we care that it might run over a child to save the passenger’s life?Jeremy Peckham shows us how we have become seduced by progress, embracing AI applications for their convenience, yet unwittingly diminishing our ability to be God’s image-bearers and losing moral responsibility. Rooted in the biblical truth that humanity is created in God’s image, Masters or Slaves? explores six ways in which AI has an impact today. We are challenged where, and how, to set boundaries, both privately and as a society, in order not to fall into addiction, slavery, and idolatry.

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  Alcibiades: The Life and Legacy...

  Charles River Editors

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  The Peloponnesian War, as the great historian Thucydides wrote in the introduction to his eponymous book, which has become one of the greatest historical treatises of antiquity, was an event of such calamitous magnitude that Greece had never witnessed its like in all of recorded history. Not the Trojan War, not the Dorian Invasion, not even the recent Persian invasions – which had devastated mainland Greece and seen Athens herself evacuated and put to the flame, the buildings on her Acropolis razed into dust – could compare to the scale of the devastation that engulfed all of Greece for almost three decades, causing tens of thousands of deaths, if not hundreds of thousands.  
  	No individual was in the center of the maelstrom more than Alcibiades, and few people in history walked a finer line between brilliance and instability. Born around 450 BCE into an elite family in Athens, just as the city-state reached its zenith, he came of age at a time when ambition could elevate a man to greatness or destroy him just as easily. If the age of his guardian, Pericles, represented the height of Athenian confidence, then the life of Alcibiades symbolized its unpredictable and restless spirit.  
  	Throughout his life, Alcibiades donned many masks. To some, he was a fearless general, and for others he was an effective diplomat. But to those who knew him the longest, he was a political chameleon who would stop at nothing to get what he desired, and this particular form of reckless ambition and ego ultimately endangered the very city that gave him so many opportunities and an affluent life. Alcibiades was a figure who thrived on risk and reinvention, seen through his decisions in the Peloponnesian War, where he not only fought for his native Athens, but also for its enemy, Sparta. His shifting loyalties not only shocked contemporaries, but continue to fascinate modern historians. 

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  Mayflower - Its History...

  Kelly Mass

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  In 1620, a group of English families, known now as the Pilgrims, were carried from England to the New World on the Mayflower. When the Mayflower finally showed up in America on November twenty-first, 1620, it had 102 guests and a team of around 30 on board and was anchored off Cape Cod. 
  The Pilgrims, as opposed to their Puritan coworkers, chose to break away from the Church of England because of its Roman Catholic heritage and the church's hesitation to reform, requiring them to pray in personal instead of in the church. In 1608, a group of English families left England for the Netherlands, where they could practice their faith without fear of persecution. As early as 1620, the Plymouth Group population had determined to cross the Atlantic to the New World, which they viewed as a "new Promised Land." 
  Due to hold-ups and challenges, the Pilgrims were only able to take one ship, the Mayflower, to reach America in early October. It was a pretty hard winter season when they showed up in November, and they were unprepared. Consequently, hardly half of the original Pilgrims made it through the first winter season at Plymouth, Massachusetts. All of the settlers may have died if near Native tribes had not taught them how to collect food and other survival methods. On that first fall harvest, they gathered with Native Americans to celebrate what would end up being referred to as the first Thanksgiving in America.

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  Ramesses the Great - Egypt's...

  Toby Wilkinson

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  The life, dramatic reign, and enduring legacy of the pharaoh Ramesses the Great, with lessons for the present, from internationally acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson 
   
  Ramesses II ruled the Nile Valley and the wider Egyptian empire from 1279 to 1213 B.C., one of the longest reigns in pharaonic history. He was a cultural innovator, a relentless self-promoter, and an astute diplomat—the peace treaty signed after the Battle of Kadesh was the first in recorded history. He outbuilt every other Egyptian pharaoh, leaving behind the temples of Abu Simbel; the great hypostyle hall of Karnak; the tomb for his wife Nefertari; and his own memorial, the Ramesseum. 
   
  His reputation eclipsed that of all other pharaohs as well: he was decried in the Bible as a despot, famed in literature as Ozymandias, and lauded by early antiquarians as the Younger Memnon. His rule coincided with the peak of ancient Egypt’s power and prosperity, the New Kingdom (1539–1069 B.C.). 
   
  In this authoritative biography, Toby Wilkinson considers Ramesses’ preoccupations and preferences, uncovering the methods and motivations of a megalomaniac ruler, with lessons for our own time.

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  The Founding of America - The...

  Alexander Hamilton, James...

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  This anthology brings together 20 texts which were vital in forging the United States and its constitution as we know it. 
  Since the founding of the republic, great thinkers and politicians have set out their visions for America through formal documents, impassioned speeches and momentous treaties. This collection includes some of the most important works that helped define the country that America was to become. 
  Politicians like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton helped define the founding values of the United States of America. Their bold and revolutionary ideas did not come about unopposed, and they found themselves called upon to explain their reasoning to the wider public. The words of these incredible individuals ring just as true today as when they were first made and provided a firm foundation for the country that is the America we know and love today. 
  This volume features documents such as: 
  The Declaration of IndependenceBenjamin Franklin's Final Speech to the Constitutional ConventionThe Constitution and the AmendmentsThe Federalist PapersPresident George Washington's Farewell AddressThe Emancipation Proclamation

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