Famine ravages war-torn, anarchic Bulimia. International humanitarian organizations want to help, but the country's rival gangs and militias have brought aid to a halt, targeting relief operations with violence and extortion while tens of thousands starve. Resolute action to secure humanitarian operations is needed, and the United States decides to take the lead. Yet good intentions are no match for cynical political calculations, interagency rivalries, bureaucratic ambitions and escalating incompetence. Humanitarian volunteers, diplomats, military personnel and a beleaguered Department of State analyst face one disaster after another in this farcical and tragic story of problems that belie solution.

A Feast of Famine

Literature & Fiction

Manuel, David E

Literary

Persimmon Alley Press

Encounters: Ten Appointments with History describes ten meetings between historically relevant individuals and, in one case civilizations, that have profoundly imprinted themselves on both their contemporary eras and what followed. Each of the subjects of this book changed the world in ways that still resonate today, from the 2,500-year-old clash between Persia and Greece on the Plain of Marathon (Chapter One) to the dangerous Cold War inflection point represented by the summit meeting of President John F. Kennedy and his arch-rival, the Soviet Union¿s Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961 (Chapter Ten). The theme that weaves through each encounter can best be labeled the ¿Lessons of History,¿ a refrain that is especially relevant today when those lessons are often unknown to or not well understood by our leaders and decision-makers.

Encounters: Ten Appointments with History

History

Hermann, Mr. Richard L

World

Mother's Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times

Mother’s Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times is the “bio-history” of Margarete Sobel Hermann, the author’s mother and role model, who lived 101 tumultuous and productive years. Her life spanned 95 percent of the twentieth century, during which she and her family experienced much of the good, the bad and the exceptionally ugly that marked that most violent of eras. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Imperial Vienna, she survived the First World War, famine and starvation, runaway inflation, political turmoil that makes what we are undergoing today pale in comparison, discrimination, street violence, the Great Depression, the Nazi takeover of Austria, the Holocaust during which scores of her relatives perished in the death camps, and the daunting task of getting herself and her family out of Europe to America. Once in the United States, she faced and overcame the formidable task of creating a new life for herself. The first two-thirds of this chronicle is about the initial one-third of her life—the European phase. The last third of this book is an account of the last two-thirds of her life—the American story. The theme that carries through this remarkable life is one of perseverance, grit in the face of often overwhelming odds and obstacles.

Biographies & Memoirs

Hermann, Richard L.

Community & Culture

Author Richard Hermann had a front-row seat during the Cold War. Close Encounters with the Cold War: Personal Battles with Evil Empires, Cold Warriors and Others is his bio-history of his and his Cold Warrior colleagues' experiences during that nail-biting half-century. From childhood memories of being trained to "duck and cover" at the first sign of a nuclear detonation to growing up and participating in a world gone MAD-"Mutually Assured Destruction" being both an agreed-upon strategy by reputedly responsible political leaders on both sides of the nuclear divide as well as an acronym describing a planet driven to the brink of insanity by the ever-present threat of annihilation-meant a constant stream of news that kept us in a state of high anxiety. A drumbeat of fear-inducing headlines like those during the McCarthy era swirled, with absurdities like swimwear named after the location-Bikini Atoll-of 23 nuclear weapons tests. Periodic reminders that the Cold War was, indeed, a war included the Soviet Union's successful Sputnik launch-a harmless orbiting metal ball that nevertheless sent the United States into a panic and launched the space race-the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, various other proxy wars around the globe, and the occasional arrest of spies in our midst. Indeed, the Cold War left a lasting legacy, including dangerous lingering radiation levels from bomb testing and nuclear accidents like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. This last effect will plague life on planet Earth for generations, assuming of course we don't all die first from the effects of man-made climate change. Indeed, the post-World War II era, viewed at its onset as a promising dawn of new prosperity and innovation, has left us a toxic legacy. That mankind avoided self-extermination during these decades was more dumb luck than a testament to human wisdom.

Close Encounters with the Cold War: Personal Battles with Evil Empires, Cold Warriors and Others

Americas

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