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  Nazi Invasion of Eastern Europe...

  Charles River Editors

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  Europe’s attempts to appease him, most notably at Munich in 1938, failed, as Nazi Germany swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia by 1939. Italy was on the march as well, invading Albania in April of 1939. The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1 of that year. Two days later, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany, and World War II had begun in earnest. Of course, as most people now know, the invasion of Poland was merely the preface to the Nazi blitzkrieg of most of Europe, which included smashing successes in Denmark, Belgium, and France by the summer of 1940.  
  	In the warm predawn darkness of June 22, 1941, 3 million men waited along a front hundreds of miles long, stretching from the Baltic coast of Poland to the Balkans. Ahead of them in the darkness lay the Soviet Union, its border guarded by millions of Red Army troops echeloned deep throughout the huge spaces of Russia. This massive gathering of Wehrmacht soldiers from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and his allied states – notably Hungary and Romania – stood poised to carry out Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's surprise attack against the country of his putative ally, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.  
  	The Soviets were so caught by surprise at the start of the attack that the Germans were able to push several hundred miles into Russia across a front that stretched dozens of miles long, reaching the major cities of Leningrad and Sevastopol in just three months. The first major Russian city in their path was Minsk, which fell in only six days. In order to make clear his determination to win at all costs, Stalin had the three men in charge of the troops defending Minsk executed for their failure to hold their position. This move, along with unspeakable atrocities by the German soldiers against the people of Minsk, solidified the Soviet will. In the future, Russian soldiers would fight to the death rather than surrender.

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  Taking Courage - A New Look at...

  Elizabeth D. Samet

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  Courage has long been a favorite theme of philosophers, generals, and poets alike. A fundamental virtue since ancient times, courage is perhaps most readily identified with military exploits. But what does courage mean beyond the battlefield? And what do traditional ideals of bravery, dedication, and self-sacrifice look like in our daily lives today? These are among the questions Elizabeth Samet asks in this original and deeply stirring work of criticism that rediscovers courage for a polarized age.Like many Americans, Samet first learned about courage from the WWII generation: watching war movies with her father, a veteran of that war, and reading stories of physical feats and derring-do. But as an educator of cadets at West Point she began to formulate a deeper understanding of courage as she tried to explain it to herself and her students by studying literature, film, culture, history, and the physical monuments that dominate the landscape in which they work. Providing the necessary reminder that true courage is sustained by knowledge and judgment, Samet argues that this virtue lies at the heart of democracy. It is the audacity to work toward a better future in a world characterized by technological revolution, social and economic upheaval, and persistent conflict. Through anecdote and analysis, Taking Courage draws throughlines from the classroom to the world beyond, from Virgil’s Aeneid to the Marvel Universe, from the conversations between the great French film director Jean Renoir and his father, the Impressionist master Pierre-Auguste, to the brilliant and undervalued fiction of the Austro-Hungarian Joseph Roth. Using spirited interactions with her students as a springboard, Samet paves the way toward a more unified future by advocating for a new understanding of courage, one that is recognized by boldness, curiosity, and humor as much as by physical valor.

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  We Wanted Workers - Unraveling...

  George J. Borjas

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  We are a nation of immigrants, and we have always been concerned about immigration. As early as 1645, the Massachusetts Bay Colony began to prohibit the entry of "paupers." Today, however, the notion that immigration is universally beneficial has become pervasive. To many modern economists, immigrants are a trove of much-needed workers who can fill predetermined slots along the proverbial assembly line. 
   
   
   
  But this view of immigration's impact is overly simplified, explains George J. Borjas, a Cuban American, Harvard labor economist. Immigrants are more than just workers—they're people who have lives outside of the factory gates and who may or may not fit the ideal of the country to which they've come to live and work. Like the rest of us, they're protected by social insurance programs, and the choices they make are affected by their social environments. 
   
   
   
  In We Wanted Workers, Borjas shows that, in the grand scheme, immigration has not affected the average American all that much. But it has created winners and losers. The losers tend to be nonmigrant workers who compete for the same jobs as immigrants. And somebody's lower wage is somebody else's higher profit, so those who employ immigrants benefit handsomely. In the end, immigration is mainly just another government redistribution program.

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  The History of Nazi Germany’s...

  Charles River Editors

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  One of his biographers called him “a complex man: a born leader, a brilliant soldier, a devoted husband, a proud father; intelligent, instinctive, brave, compassionate, vain, egotistical, and arrogant.” As that description suggests, every account of Erwin Rommel’s life must address what appears to be its inherent contradictions. Fittingly, and in the same vein, he remains one of the best remembered generals of World War II and history at large, despite the fact he was on the losing side, and he was defeated at the most famous battle of his career, the decisive Battle of El Alamein. Nonetheless, the Desert Fox has been a legend on both sides of the Atlantic for over 70 years, thanks to the crucial role he played in history’s deadliest conflict.  While there is a great division when it comes to historical opinion with respect to Rommel’s merits as a general as well as the moral choices he made, both historians and the public continue to be intrigued by this man who has been dead for over 80 years. People at large continue to consider Rommel one of the greatest generals of the 20th century, an opinion shared by many of his contemporaries on both sides of World War II.  
  Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was one of the most respected commanders and theoreticians of World War II. An innovative tank commander, he was a pioneer of German Blitzkrieg tactics and therefore, a hugely influential figure in the way the war was fought. Guderian's profile was not always what might have been expected for a man of his abilities and influence warrant due to the shape of his career. As a German commander during the war, Guderian fought for one of the most appalling regimes in history, so while his skills are respected, it is hard to celebrate a man who led the troops of the Reich, especially to such success. 

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  The Grounds of Political Legitimacy

  Fabienne Peter

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  Political decisions have the potential to greatly impact our lives. Think of decisions in relation to abortion or climate change, for example. This makes political legitimacy an important normative concern. But what makes political decisions legitimate? Are they legitimate in virtue of having support from the citizens? Democratic conceptions of political legitimacy answer in the affirmative. Such conceptions rightly highlight that legitimate political decision-making must be sensitive to disagreements among the citizens. 
   
   
   
  Peter argues that the legitimacy of political decisions doesn't just depend on respect for the citizens' will; and defends a novel hybrid conception of political legitimacy, called the Epistemic Accountability conception. According to this conception, political legitimacy also depends on how political decision-making responds to evidence for what there is most reason to do. The Grounds of Political Legitimacy starts with an overview of the main ways in which philosophers have thought about political legitimacy, and identifies the epistemic accountability conception as an overlooked alternative. Considering the norms that should govern political debate, it examines the role of experts in politics, and probes the responsibilities of democratically elected political leaders and as well as of citizens.

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  This Is a True War Story - My...

  Robert K. Brigham

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  A personal account by a war historian and adoptee who discovers his biological father was a famous Marine combat photographer in Vietnam. 
    
  Robert K. Brigham has had a substantial career as a historian of the Vietnam War, with a hand in nine books, a documentary, public history projects, and more. While many a historian has felt compelled at some point to write about a subject close to them personally, Brigham did not think he was doing that. But, at age fifty-eight, Brigham, who had long known he was adopted, discovered that he’d improbably and unknowingly been studying and talking about his biological father for decades. That man, Bruce Atwell, was a Marine Corps photographer who took some of that war’s most indelible and widely reproduced pictures. Brigham had used those images over and over again in decades’ worth of classes and public lectures, never knowing the truth. 
    
  Both Brigham and Atwell were products of the American foster care and adoption system, and both were defined professionally by Vietnam. In a story shot through with echoes and shadows, Brigham not only reveals his own history as an adoptee but opens a startlingly fresh vantage on the fragility of American families; the power of social norms and taboos to shape lives; and the forces that inequitably disrupt families, not least of them war. The result is an accessible and moving book that is at once both a powerful personal story and an illuminating social critique. 

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