No Ordinary Time


Book Description

Examines the distinct leadership roles of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during the war years and discusses the dynamics of their marriage.




No Ordinary Men


Book Description

The fascinating story of two courageous opponents in Hitler’s Germany who both bravely resisted the Nazis—for World War II history buffs and fans of little-known histories. “A story that needs to be heard.” —Library Journal During the twelve years of Hitler’s Third Reich, very few Germans took the risk of actively opposing his tyranny and terror, and fewer still did so to protect the sanctity of law and faith. In No Ordinary Men, Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern focus on two remarkable, courageous men who did—the pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his close friend and brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi—and offer new insights into the fearsome difficulties that resistance entailed. (Not forgotten is Christine Bonhoeffer Dohnanyi, Hans’s wife and Dietrich’s sister, who was indispensable to them both.) From the start Bonhoeffer opposed the Nazi efforts to bend Germany’s Protestant churches to Hitler’s will, while Dohnanyi, a lawyer in the Justice Ministry and then in the Wehrmacht’s counterintelligence section, helped victims, kept records of Nazi crimes to be used as evidence once the regime fell, and was an important figure in the various conspiracies to assassinate Hitler. The strength of their shared commitment to these undertakings—and to the people they were helping—endured even after their arrest in April 1943 and until, after great suffering, they were executed on Hitler’s express orders in April 1945, just weeks before the Third Reich collapsed. Bonhoeffer’s posthumously published Letters and Papers from Prison and other writings found a wide international audience, but Dohnanyi’s work is scarcely known, though it was crucial to the resistance and he was the one who drew Bonhoeffer into the anti-Hitler plots. Sifton and Stern offer dramatic new details and interpretations in their account of the extraordinary efforts in which the two jointly engaged. No Ordinary Men honors both Bonhoeffer’s human decency and his theological legacy, as well as Dohnanyi’s preservation of the highest standard of civic virtue in an utterly corrupted state.




No Ordinary War


Book Description

U-604 was a standard Type VIIC of which over 600 were built, and at first glance her six war patrols might seem typical - but they were far from ordinary. Using the official war diary and the eyewitness testimony of survivors this book weaves a detailed but vivid tapestry of life and action during some of the fiercest convoy battles of the Atlantic war. Often counter-attacked, but seeming to bear a charmed life, U-604 had her successes, including inflicting the largest single loss of US mercantile personnel in one attack. However, the drama of her career pales alongside the epic story of her loss. After repeated bombing by American aircraft, Höltring, the boat's CO, organised an amazing rescue attempt by two other U-boats and finally scuttled U-604. This rescue itself went badly wrong, leading to the loss of one more U-boat and Höltring's suicide in controversial circumstances. Based on interviews with survivors and illustrated with previously unpublished photos, it is simply an extraordinary story.




No Ordinary Joes


Book Description

On April 23, 1943, the seventy-man crew of the USS Grenadier scrambled to save their submarine—and themselves—after a Japanese aerial torpedo sent it crashing to the ocean floor. Miraculously, the men were able to bring the sub back to the surface, only to be captured by the Japanese. No Ordinary Joes tells the harrowing story of four of the Grenadier’s crew: Bob Palmer of Medford, Oregon; Chuck Vervalin of Dundee, New York; Tim McCoy of Dallas, Texas; and Gordy Cox of Yakima, Washington. All were enlistees from families that struggled through the Great Depression. The lure of service and duty to country were not their primary motivations—they were more compelled by the promise of a job that provided “three hots and a cot” and a steady paycheck. On the day they were captured, all four were still teenagers. Together, the men faced unimaginable brutality at the hands of their captors in a prisoner of war camp. With no training in how to respond in the face of relentless interrogations and with less than a cup of rice per day for sustenance, each man created his own strategy for survival. When the liberation finally came, all four anticipated a triumphant homecoming to waiting families, loved ones, and wives, but instead were forced to find a new kind of strength as they struggled to resume their lives in a world that had given them up for dead, and with the aftershocks of an experience that haunted and colored the rest of their days. Author Larry Colton brings the lives of these four “ordinary” heroes into brilliant focus. Theirs is a story of tragedy and courage, romance and war, loss and endurance, failure and redemption. With a scope both panoramic and disarmingly intimate, No Ordinary Joes is a powerful look at the atrocities of war, the reality of its aftermath, and the restorative power of love.




General John A. Rawlins


Book Description

No one succeeds alone, and Ulysses S. Grant was no exception. From the earliest days of the Civil War to the heights of Grant's power in the White House, John A. Rawlins was ever at Grant's side. Yet Rawlins's role in Grant's career is often overlooked, and he barely received mention in Grant's own two-volume Memoirs. General John A. Rawlins: No Ordinary Man by Allen J. Ottens is the first major biography of Rawlins in over a century and traces his rise to assistant adjutant general and ultimately Grant's secretary of war. Ottens presents the portrait of a man who teamed with Grant, who submerged his needs and ambition in the service of Grant, and who at times served as the doubter who questioned whether Grant possessed the background to tackle the great responsibilities of the job. Rawlins played a pivotal role in Grant's relatively small staff, acting as administrator, counselor, and defender of Grant's burgeoning popularity. Rawlins qualifies as a true patriot, a man devoted to the Union and devoted to Grant. His is the story of a man who persevered in wartime and during the tumultuous years of Reconstruction and who, despite a ravaging disease that would cut short his blossoming career, grew to become a proponent of the personal and citizenship rights of those formerly enslaved. General John A. Rawlins will prove to be a fascinating and essential read for all who have an interest in leadership, the Civil War, or Ulysses S. Grant.




No Ordinary Crime


Book Description




No Ordinary School


Book Description

In 1913, Oxford-educated Margaret Gascoigne left England for Montreal in search of new opportunities. In 1915 she established a small school for six students in the study of her downtown Montreal home - the modest but aspiring beginning of what would become known as The Study. Presenting lively images, oral testimonies, and material gleaned from the school’s archives, No Ordinary School explores the evolution of The Study through world wars, the Great Depression, the Quiet Revolution, and many stages of feminism, from its predominantly English Montreal origins into the bilingual and multicultural community that it is today. Always at the forefront of the most progressive educational developments, The Study has encouraged generations of women to transcend the boundaries of their times. Influential alumni include the physicist and Canadian Department of External Affairs civil servant Dorothy Osborne Xanthaky, avant-garde artist Marian Dale Scott, former chief curator and director of the McCord Museum of Canadian History Isabel Barclay Dobell, world-renowned architect Phyllis Lambert, internationally acclaimed pianist Janina Fialkowska, Olympic rowing medalist Andréanne Morin, and tennis star Eugenie Bouchard. Firmly grounded in a wider historical context, No Ordinary School celebrates an exceptional educational institution while paying tribute to its illustrious past and promising future.




No Ordinary Determination


Book Description

An epic tale of two ordinary individuals thrown into theextraordinary and surreal world of the Gallipoli campaignas soldiers of the First AIF in WWI.Percy Black and Harry Murray were plain hard-workingAustralians whose paths crossed in Western Australiawhen they enlisted in support of country and empire. Thepowerful narrative paints a complex and thorough pictureof the heroism, loyalty, inventiveness, mateship, stoicismand strength of the many individuals, on all sides, caughtup in the horror of the &‘war to end all wars'.




No Ordinary Woman


Book Description

A biography of one of the most under-rated economists of the 20th century, whose own remarkable and eventful life paralleled key events of the twentieth century. Edith Penrose's work is now the cornerstone of current work in business strategy and entrepreneurship.




No Ordinary General


Book Description

It was in his retirement that Bunbury wrote his history of the Napoleonic wars as he had personally experienced them. But his writings also include vivid accounts of his travels in Sicily and France at various stages of his life. Bunbury's writings, together with the story of his life, provide a fascinating and informative picture of the British army and many of its commanders during the Napoleonic wars, and of the exiled emperor Napoleon, as well as casting an interesting sidelight on the English political and economic scene in the first half of the nineteenth century.