Showing results for "Girls" in Historical

‘Remarkable and haunting . . . a revelation’ Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes ‘A dazzling achievement, heartbreaking, glamourous, elegiac, revelatory and utterly gripping’ Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World: A Family History of Humanity ‘Truly beautiful and...

Brought to you by Penguin. *Narrated by Helena Bonham Carter* THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK IS 'A MONUMENT TO THE HUMAN SPIRIT' One of the most famous accounts of living under the Nazi regime comes from the diary of a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl, Anne Frank. Edited by her father Otto H. Frank and...

Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinating in her own right, together contributed to one of the most covert and successful military campaigns in WWII.

Diana Nammi became a fighter with the Peshmerga when she was only 17. Originally known as Galavezh, she grew up in the Kurdish region of Iran in the 1960s and 70s. She became involved in politics as a teenager and, like many students, played a part in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. But the new Islamic regime tolerated no opposition, and after Kurdistan was brutally attacked, Galavezh found that she had no choice but to become a soldier in the famed military force.

Bright, attractive and well-connected, in any other family the Churchill sisters - Diana, Sarah, Marigold and Mary - would have shone. But they were not in any other family; they were Churchills, and neither they nor anyone else could ever forget it. From their father - ‘the greatest Englishman’ - to their brother, golden boy Randolph, to their eccentric and exciting cousins, the Mitford Girls, they were surrounded by a clan of larger-than-life characters which often saw them overlooked.

At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, consuming more electricity than New York City. But to most of the world, the town did not exist. Thousands of civilians - many of them young women from small towns across the South - were recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise of war-ending work. Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.

Jackie Moggridge was just nineteen when World War Two broke out. Determined to do her bit, she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary. Ferrying aircraft from factory to frontline was dangerous work, but there was also fun, friendship and even love in the air. At last the world was opening up to women... or at least it seemed to be.

In 1943, with Lvov's 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of Polish Jews daringly sought refuge in the city's sewer system. The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, shares one of the most intimate, harrowing, and ultimately triumphant tales of survival to emerge from the Holocaust. The Girl in the Green Sweater is Chiger's harrowing first-person account of the 14 months she spent with her family in the fetid, underground sewers of Lvov. 

THE DEFINITIVE EDITION Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, the remarkable diary that has become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. Updated for the 75th Anniversary of the Diary’s...

Anne Frank, it has been said, gave a face and a name to the horror of the Holocaust. This is her story. It relates how Anne, her family, and their friends hid in secret rooms - "the Annex" - in an Amsterdam warehouse for 25 months. Anne, just 13 when the family moved in and only 15 when the Gestapo at last broke down the doors of her secret world, found hope where there was only fear and the first blush of love when outside and all around there washed a sea of hate.

At least a dozen or so young women at large in Blitz-era London have a claim to this title. But Lost Girls concentrates on just four: Lys Lubbock, Sonia Brownell, Barbara Skelton and Janetta Parlade. Chic, glamorous and bohemian, as likely to be found living in a rat-haunted maisonette as dining at the Ritz, they cut a swath through English literary and artistic life in the 1940s.

A memoir of a child's forced relocation to Siberia under Stalin's Gulag system reveals the potential for true human kindness in the face of extraordinary hardship. In April of 1940, six-year-old Ida woke to the sound of pounding on her door. Soviet soldiers forcibly packed her and her mother onto a train with thousands of their neighbors and deported them to remote Siberia, leaving them stranded to survive the brutal winter in subhuman conditions.

Luliia was a dedicated member of the Komsomol (the Soviet communist youth organization) and her parents worked for the NKVD. She started at the sniper school and eventually became a valued member of her battalion during operations against Prussia. She persevered through eight months of training before leaving for the Front on 24th November 1944 just days after qualifying. Joining the third Belorussian Front her battalion endured rounds of German mortar as well as loudspeaker announcements beckoning them to come over to the German side.

A Young Girl's Diary is the real diary of a teenage girl that begins on Anne’s 13th birthday (12 June 1942) when she gets a diary. It tells the story of her family who live in Frankfurt, Germany and suddenly have to go into hiding as a result of Hitler and the Nazi Party’s treatment of Jews in Europe during the second world war. They escape to Amsterdam where they go into hiding with other Jews. The diary ends suddenly on 1 August 1944.

Barbara Tate was 17 when she heard the whispered word that would change her life: Soho. It would take four years, but when she finally made it to the forbidden streets of Soho - just as London was recovering from the Second World War - things would never be the same. There, Barbara meets the beautiful and capricious Mae. When she takes a job as Mae's maid, Barbara imagines she'll be housekeeping. But down a shabby backstreet, she discovers the secret lives of Soho's working girls....

A pair of silver Regency candlesticks. Pieces of well-worn family jewelry. More than a thousand documents, letters, and photographs. Lotte Meyerhoff's best friends risked their lives in Nazi Germany to safeguard these and other treasured heirlooms and mementos from her family and return them to her after the war. The Holocaust had left Lotte the lone survivor of her family, and these precious objects gave her back a crucial piece of her past. Four Girls from Berlin vividly recreates that past and tells the story of Lotte and her courageous non-Jewish friends.

"I dragged my heels all the way to the mill. ‘I can’t do it!’ I sulked. Mother sighed and shook her head. My heart sank. Of course, I’d seen the mill hundreds of times before, but now it was different - now, I was going in. I’d never seen a place so depressing; I wanted to cry." With tales from hardworking Audrey and mischievous Maureen to high-spirited Doris and dedicated Marjorie, The Mill Girls is an evocative story of hardship and friendship from when cotton was still king.

In the roaring '20s, adventurous young Sonora Webster sees an exciting act that will change her life forever. Hooves pound as a horse gallops up the ramp of a 40-foot-tall tower. A girl in a sparkly swimsuit waits at the top, and at the last possible second, leaps on its back as they dive through the air, falling to a tank of water far below with thunderous applause. Sonora is hooked. From that moment on, she is determined to BE that girl, despite the danger, and endeavors to join the diving horse troupe. This memoir follows her exciting career and life on the road as a traveling performer.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by herself is an autobiography by Harriet Ann Jacobs, a young mother and fugitive slave, published in 1861 by L. Maria Child, who edited the book for its author. Jacobs used the pseudonym Linda Brent. The book documents Jacobs's life as a slave and how she gained freedom for herself and for her children. Jacobs contributed to the genre of slave narrative by using the techniques of sentimental novels "to address race and gender issues.

Mirrors on Fire is a powerful coming-of-age memoir that captures the passionate search for purpose in the midst of revolution. At sixteen, Guita Sazan defied her family’s expectations and the traditions of Iran’s ancient Jewish community by joining the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Inspired by the promise of a just society and a newfound spiritual vision, she chose a path that profoundly affected her relationship with her faith, family, and homeland.