If You're Reading This . . .

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Publisher : Frontline Books
ISBN 13 : 1783030852
Total Pages : 538 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (83 download)

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Book Synopsis If You're Reading This . . . by : Siân Price

Download or read book If You're Reading This . . . written by Siân Price and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three centuries of war. Three centuries of sacrifice. “Tales of love and heroism from conflicts such as the Napoleonic Wars and Afghanistan today.” —The Mirror In this brilliant and profoundly moving collection of farewell letters written by servicemen and women to their loved ones, Siân Price offers a remarkable insight into the hearts and minds of some of the soldiers, sailors and airmen of the past three hundred years. Each letter provides an enduring snapshot of an impossible moment in time when an individual stares death squarely in the face. Some were written or dictated as the person lay mortally wounded; many were written on the eve of a great charge or battle; others were written by soldiers who experienced premonitions of their death, or by kamikaze pilots and condemned prisoners. They write of the grim realities of battle, of daily hardships, of unquestioning patriotism or bitter regrets, of religious fervor or political disillusionment, of unrelenting optimism or sinking morale and above all, they write of their love for their family and the desire to return to them one day. Be it an epitaph dictated on a Napoleonic battlefield, a staunch, unsentimental letter written by a Victorian officer, or an email from a soldier in modern day Afghanistan, these voices speak eloquently and forcefully of the tragedy of war and answer that fundamental human need to say goodbye. “The poignant farewells encapsulate the final words of servicemen to their loved ones before they were killed in action.” —The Telegraph “A timely reminder of the tremendous sacrifices made by fighting men and women of all countries in all ages.” —Military History Monthly

Letters from the Trenches

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Author :
Publisher : Pen and Sword
ISBN 13 : 1781592845
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (815 download)

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Book Synopsis Letters from the Trenches by : Jacqueline Wadsworth

Download or read book Letters from the Trenches written by Jacqueline Wadsworth and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-11-30 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the First World War told through the letters exchanged by ordinary British soldiers and their families.??Letters from the Trenches reveals how people really thought and felt during the conflict and covers all social classes and groups Ð from officers to conscripts and women at home to conscientious objectors.??Voices within the book include Sergeant John Adams, 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers, who wrote in May 1917:'For the day we get our letter from home is a red Letter day in the history of the soldier out here. It is the only way we can hear what is going on. The slender thread between us and the homeland.'??Private Stanley Goodhead, who served with one of the Manchester Pals battalion, wrote home in 1916: 'I came out of the trenches last night after being in 4 days. You have no idea what 4 days in the trenches means...The whole time I was in I had only about 2 hours sleep and that was in snatches on the firing step. What dugouts there are, are flooded with mud and water up to the knees and the rats hold swimming galas in them...We are literally caked with brown mud and it is in all?our food, tea etc.'??Jacqueline Wadsworth skilfully uses these letters to tell the human story of the First World War Ð what mattered to Britain's servicemen and their feelings about the war; how the conflict changed people; and how life continued on the Home Front.

War Letters

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439107319
Total Pages : 518 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis War Letters by : Andrew Carroll

Download or read book War Letters written by Andrew Carroll and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-23 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1998, Andrew Carroll founded the Legacy Project, with the goal of remembering Americans who have served their nation and preserving their letters for posterity. Since then, over 50,000 letters have poured in from around the country. Nearly two hundred of them comprise this amazing collection -- including never-before-published letters that appear in the new afterword. Here are letters from the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf war, Somalia, and Bosnia -- dramatic eyewitness accounts from the front lines, poignant expressions of love for family and country, insightful reflections on the nature of warfare. Amid the voices of common soldiers, marines, airmen, sailors, nurses, journalists, spies, and chaplains are letters by such legendary figures as Gen. William T. Sherman, Clara Barton, Theodore Roosevelt, Ernie Pyle, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Julia Child, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Sr. Collected in War Letters, they are an astonishing historical record, a powerful tribute to those who fought, and a celebration of the enduring power of letters.

Letters from the Front

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472808177
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (728 download)

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Book Synopsis Letters from the Front by : Andrew Roberts

Download or read book Letters from the Front written by Andrew Roberts and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A legacy of an empire and a nation at war, Letters from the Front is a collection of correspondence sent by British and Commonwealth troops from the front line of war to their loved ones at home. Poignant expressions of love, hope and fear sit alongside amusing anecdotes, grumbles about rations and thoughtful reflections, eloquently revealing how, despite the passage of time, the experiences of the fighting man are shared in countless wars and battles across history. From the muddy trenches of the Somme through the frozen ground of the Falklands to the heat and dust of Afghanistan today, these letters are the ordinary soldier's testament to life on the front line.

First World War Poems from the Front

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Author :
Publisher : Imperial War Museum
ISBN 13 : 1912423324
Total Pages : 177 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (124 download)

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Book Synopsis First World War Poems from the Front by : Paul O'Prey

Download or read book First World War Poems from the Front written by Paul O'Prey and published by Imperial War Museum. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the worst horrors of modern trench warfare a small handful of soldiers and nurses created a body of poetry that is so vivid and intense that one hundred years later it has engraved itself on our national consciousness. This anthology focuses on those poets who were on the front line, from the famous Sassoon, Owens and Graves, to nurses like Vera Brittain. The poems are accompanied by a brief and accessible introduction, which sets the context for a reader new to the poems, as well as short biographical profiles of the poets.

World War II Letters

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Author :
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780312304317
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis World War II Letters by : Bill Adler

Download or read book World War II Letters written by Bill Adler and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-11-29 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of letters from the Allied soldiers who fought and won World War II reveals the horror, humor, and boredom of this great conflict.

Reluctant Accomplice

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400836328
Total Pages : 413 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Reluctant Accomplice by : Konrad H. Jarausch

Download or read book Reluctant Accomplice written by Konrad H. Jarausch and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-03 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ordinary German soldier’s letters home from Poland and Russia during World War II Reluctant Accomplice is a volume of the wartime letters of Dr. Konrad Jarausch, a German high-school teacher of religion and history who served in a reserve battalion of Hitler's army in Poland and Russia, where he died of typhoid in 1942. He wrote most of these letters to his wife, Elisabeth. His son, acclaimed German historian Konrad H. Jarausch, brings them together here to tell the gripping story of a patriotic soldier of the Third Reich who, through witnessing its atrocities in the East, begins to doubt the war's moral legitimacy. These letters grow increasingly critical, and their vivid descriptions of the mass deaths of Russian POWs are chilling. They reveal the inner conflicts of ordinary Germans who became reluctant accomplices in Hitler's merciless war of annihilation, yet sometimes managed to discover a shared humanity with its suffering victims, a bond that could transcend race, nationalism, and the enmity of war. Reluctant Accomplice is also the powerful story of the son, who for decades refused to come to grips with these letters because he abhorred his father's nationalist politics. Only now, late in his life, is he able to cope with their contents—and he is by no means alone. This book provides rare insight into the so-called children of the war, an entire generation of postwar Germans who grew up resenting their past, but who today must finally face the painful legacy of their parents' complicity in National Socialism.

Letters From A Lost Generation

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Author :
Publisher : Hachette UK
ISBN 13 : 0349007713
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (49 download)

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Book Synopsis Letters From A Lost Generation by : Mark Bostridge

Download or read book Letters From A Lost Generation written by Mark Bostridge and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nothing in the papers, not the most vivid and heart-rending descriptions, have made me realise war like your letters' Vera Brittain to Roland Leighton, 17 April 1915. This selection of letters, written between 1913 & 1918, between Vera Brittain and four young men - her fiance Roland Leighton, her brother Edward and their close friends Victor Richardson & Geoffrey Thurlow present a remarkable and profoundly moving portrait of five young people caught up in the cataclysm of total war. Roland, 'Monseigneur', is the 'leader' & his letters most clearly trace the path leading from idealism to disillusionment. Edward, ' Immaculate of the Trenches', was orderly & controlled, down even to his attire. Geoffrey, the 'non-militarist at heart' had not rushed to enlist but put aside his objections to the war for patriotism's sake. Victor on the other hand, possessed a very sweet character and was known as 'Father Confessor'. An important historical testimony telling a powerful story of idealism, disillusionment and personal tragedy.

Caroline Quarlls and the Underground Railroad

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Publisher : Wisconsin Historical Society
ISBN 13 : 0870203886
Total Pages : 121 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (72 download)

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Book Synopsis Caroline Quarlls and the Underground Railroad by : Julia Pferdehirt

Download or read book Caroline Quarlls and the Underground Railroad written by Julia Pferdehirt and published by Wisconsin Historical Society. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A portrait of a young teenage slave from St. Louis who, with help from the Underground Railroad, made her way to Canada and freedom.

Voices of D-Day

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807120811
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Voices of D-Day by : Ronald J. Drez

Download or read book Voices of D-Day written by Ronald J. Drez and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1996-05-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1983 the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans began a project to record the recollections of as many people as possible -- civilians as well as soldiers -- who were involved in one of the most pivotal events of the century. Skillfully edited by Ronald J. Drez and first published on the fifty-year anniversary of D-Day, the award-winning Voices of D-Day tells the story of that momentous operation almost entirely through the words of the people who were there.

A Letter Marked Free

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Publisher : Dog Ear Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1608444198
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis A Letter Marked Free by : Robert Lynch

Download or read book A Letter Marked Free written by Robert Lynch and published by Dog Ear Publishing. This book was released on 2010-05 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Letter Marked Free is the true story of a young combat soldier on the battlefield in World War II as told through his letters home to his family. The letters powerfully portray life on the front lines and the vivid accounts reveal the intense hardships endured for the cause of freedom. Bob Lynch was nineteen and living in Rye, NY, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in the 3rd Infantry Division as a combat rifleman, light machine-gunner, and mortarman. Bob was wounded and missing in action (MIA) behind enemy lines for over 10 days. He received the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Combat Infantryman Badge, along with many other honors. He participated in first-wave amphibious assault landings on Anzio, Italy, and St. Tropez, France, and accumulated an incredible 350 days in frontline combat. Bob was awarded the French Legion of Honor in January 2007 in recognition and gratitude for his role in the liberation of France. He received France's highest decoration "for outstanding valor and service during WWII." Previously, he had been awarded the French Croix de Guerre with Palm twice and coveted fourragere. Experience living conditions in a foxhole, go on patrol behind enemy lines, cross minefields, hold your buddy as his life ebbs away, wade through icy water in the dead of winter, and crawl on your belly directly into machine-gun fire. Witness the pent-up emotions as U.S. soldiers free one French town after another. Hear church bells chime their message of freedom and watch people pour into the streets. Drink wine, laugh, dance, hug, and cry with them. Realize that you probably won't make it home alive and pray to God and your guardian angel every day that you do. Read the chilling letters of a combat infantryman soldier in WWII who continuously faced death and survived. This is Bob's courageous story.

Since You Went Away

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780700607143
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Since You Went Away by : Judy Barrett Litoff

Download or read book Since You Went Away written by Judy Barrett Litoff and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Last night Mel and I were talking about some of the adjustments we'll have to make to our husbands' return. I must admit I'm not exactly the same girl you left-I'm twice as independent as I used to be and to top it off, I sometimes think I've become 'hard as nails'. . . . Also--more and more I've been living exactly as I want to . . . I do as I damn please." [These tough words from the wife of a soldier show that World War Ii changed much more than just international politics.] "From a fascinating collection of letters, filled with wonderfully distinctive human stories, Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith have shpaed a rare and brilliant book that transports the reader back in time to an unforgettable era."--Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. "This is a wonderful volume, full of admirable women struggling in a difficult situation, doing their best for their families and their country. Ah, the memories it brings back! Highly recommended for those who lived through the war, and for those who want to understand it."--Stephen E. Ambrose, author of Eisenhower and D-Day, June 6, 1944 "Offering a remarkable view into the lives of ordinary women during wartime, this book will enlighten and catch at the hearts of general readers and cause historians to reconsider how women experienced World War II."-Susan M. Hartmann, author of The Home Front and Beyond. "From among 25,000 of an estimated six billion letters sent overseas during World War II, Litoff and Smith have culled and skillfully edited a sampling by 400 American women. These letters, starting with one to a seaman wounded at Pearl Harbor, are compelling documents of home-front life in varied ethnic, cultural, and financial milieus. Tragic, touching, and funny, the correspondence is full of prosaic news and gossip about jobs and neighbors, along with accounts of births and intimate allusions to love-making. The stress of separation was intensified for women whose loved ones were hospitalized, or imprisoned as either conscientious objectors or security risks. Some women wrote General MacArthur and others for news of missing men or to obtain details of their deaths. Many of these heartrending documents also express acceptance-and even pride-in the sacrifices required by war."--Publishers Weekly. "Other scholars of WW II have published letters written home by servicemen, but this is the first collection sampling the letters written by sisters, sweethearts, wives, and mothers, saved by thousands of servicemen. Chapters are organized around themes that were important to these women: courtship, marriage, motherhood, work, sacrifices. . . . What women tell readers in these letters about their concerns and their wartime feelings will cause historians [readers?] to rethink what has been written about the homefront."--Choice. "Despite the popular appeal of Rosie the Riveter, nine out of ten mothers with children under six were not in the labor force, which helps to account for the vast outpouring of mail from the home front to 'our boys' in the European and Pacific theaters. Some couples wrote every day for four years. This is the rich historic documentation that the authors have drawn upon to create a panoramic pastiche of indefatigable, energetic, patriotic female letter writers in the war years. . . . One is struck by the hard-headed practicality of many of the letters-stories of plucky, sometimes even grumpy, coping. There are letters of growing independence, with strong and at times explicit indication that the boyfriend or husband will be facing a very different woman upon his return from the one he 'knew' when he disembarked for his own, often terrible, venture. . . . Every war leaves mothers with broken hearts. What this volume most remarkably demonstrates is just how prepared American women on the home front were for that dread eventuality."--Jean Bethke Elshtain in the Journal of American History. "Fascinating and often heartbreaking letters. . . . The letters illuminate a time when sex roles were first showing the changes that would culminate in the women's movement. 'I must admit I'm not exactly the same girl you left,' Edith Speert wrote to her husband, Victor, in 1945. 'I'm twice as independent as I used t be, and I sometimes think I've become hard as nails. I don't think my changes will affect our relationship.'. . . In the end, it is the small human dramas in these letters that stand out. Anne Gudis, miffed to distraction by her soldier-swain Sam Kramer, writes what may be the shortest Dear John on record: 'Mr. Kramer: Go to hell! With love, Anne Gudis.' A woman working at a Honolulu nightclub assures a pilot that she'll wait for him-until she's 20. The wife of an Air Corps navigator reads in a news story that only 15 of 1,500 Allied bombers were lost in a raid over Europe and later learns that her husband died in one of the 15. And a grieving mother whose son died in the Pacific asks Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in desperation, 'Please general he was a good boy, wasn't he? Did he die a hard death?'"--Smithsonian. "'They made it possible for me to retain my sanity in an insane world,' wrote one pilot about the letters his wife sent him throughout World War II. The letters contained in this collection explain the soldier's sentiments. Whether full of passionate longing for a missing sweetheart or merely detailing domestic gossip, the letters offer a rich introduction to how American women experienced the war. Since military authorities ordered soldiers not to keep any letters written them by their loved ones, the authors have done a magnificent service in obtaining letters that soldiers either surreptitiously hid or whose authors copied them before sending them on."--Library Journal.

Letters from the Front

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Letters from the Front by : Brian Lawrence

Download or read book Letters from the Front written by Brian Lawrence and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Letters from Rifka

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Author :
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company (BYR)
ISBN 13 : 1466801328
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis Letters from Rifka by : Karen Hesse

Download or read book Letters from Rifka written by Karen Hesse and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Newbery media winner Karen Hesse comes an unforgettable story of an immigrant family's journey to America. "America," the girl repeated. "What will you do there?" I was silent for a little time. "I will do everything there," I answered. Rifka knows nothing about America when she flees from Russia with her family in 1919. But she dreams that in the new country she will at last be safe from the Russian soldiers and their harsh treatment of the Jews. Throughout her journey, Rifka carries with her a cherished volume of poetry by Alexander Pushkin. In it, she records her observations and experiences in the form of letters to Tovah, the beloved cousin she has left behind. Strong-hearted and determined, Rifka must endure a great deal: humiliating examinations by doctors and soldiers, deadly typhus, separation from all she has ever known and loved, murderous storms at sea, detainment on Ellis Island--and is if this is not enough, the loss of her glorious golden hair. Based on a true story from the author's family, Letters from Rifka presents a real-life heroine with an uncommon courage and unsinkable spirit.

Letters from the Front, 1914-1918

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 154 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Letters from the Front, 1914-1918 by : John Laffin

Download or read book Letters from the Front, 1914-1918 written by John Laffin and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Letters From Berlin

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0762789743
Total Pages : 389 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (627 download)

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Book Synopsis Letters From Berlin by : Kerstin Lieff

Download or read book Letters From Berlin written by Kerstin Lieff and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Margarete Dos moved with her family to Berlin on the eve of World War II, she and her younger brother were blindly ushered into a generation of Hitler Youth. Like countless citizens under Hitler’s regime, Margarete struggled to understand what was happening to her country. Later, as a nurse for the German Red Cross, she treated countless young soldiers—recruited in the eleventh hour to fight a losing battle—they would die before her eyes as Allied bombs racked her beloved city. Yet, her deep humanity, intelligence, and passion for life—which sparkles in every sentence of her memoir—carried Margarete through to war’s end. But just when she thought the worst was over, and she and her mother were on a train headed to Sweden, they were suddenly rerouted deep into Russia… This powerful account draws back the curtain on a piece of history that has been largely overlooked—the nightmare that millions of German civilians suffered, simply because they were German. That Margarete survived to tell her tale so vividly and courageously is a gift to us all.

Written in History

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Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 1984898175
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (848 download)

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Book Synopsis Written in History by : Simon Sebag Montefiore

Download or read book Written in History written by Simon Sebag Montefiore and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanovs—and one of our pre-eminent historians and a prizewinning writer—an outstanding selection of great letters from ancient times to the 21st century, touching on power, love, art, sex, faith, and war. Written in History: Letters that Changed the World celebrates the great letters of world history, and cultural and personal life. Bestselling, prizewinning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore selects letters that have changed the course of global events or touched a timeless emotion—whether passion, rage, humor—from ancient times to the twenty-first century. Some are noble and inspiring, some despicable and unsettling, some are exquisite works of literature, others brutal, coarse, and frankly outrageous, many are erotic, others heartbreaking. It is a surprising and eclectic selection, from the four corners of the world, filled with extraordinary women and men, from ancient times to now. Truly a choice of letters for our own times encompassing love letters to calls for liberation to declarations of war to reflections on life and death. The writers vary from Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great to Mandela, Stalin and Picasso, Fanny Burney and Emily Pankhurst to Ada Lovelace and Rosa Parks, Oscar Wilde, Chekhov and Pushkin to Balzac, Mozart and Michelangelo, Hitler, Rameses the Great and Alexander Hamilton to Augustus and Churchill, Lincoln, Donald Trump and Suleiman the Magnificent. In a book that is a perfect gift, here is a window on astonishing characters, seminal events, and unforgettable words. In the colorful, accessible style of a master storyteller, Montefiore shows why these letters are essential reading and how they can unveil and enlighten the past—and enrich the way we live now.