Walking Since Daybreak

Author: Modris Eksteins
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547349629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 379

Book Description
An account of one family’s displacement and the tragic history of twentieth-century Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia: “Deeply moving.” —Los Angeles Times Winner of the Pearson Prize for Nonfiction The immense cataclysm of World War II devastated the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, sending many of their inhabitants to the ends of the earth. Part history, part autobiography, Walking Since Daybreak tells the tragic story of the Baltic nations before, during, and after the war. Personal stories of the survival or destruction of Modris Eksteins’s family members lend an intimate dimension to this vast narrative of those who have surged back and forth across the lowlands bordering the Baltic Sea. In the tradition of books that redefine our historical understanding, such as Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages and Burckhardt’s The Renaissance in Italy, Eksteins’s narrative is a haunting portrait of national loss and the struggle of a displaced family caught in the maw of history. “An authoritative and moving mélange . . . of historical analysis, family legend, and memoir.” —The Boston Globe “Eksteins has astutely and thrillingly braided together the tortured history of modern Latvia, his own personal story of being born there in 1943 . . . and the fate of his family as they (and countless millions) made their way to and through the refugee camps of postwar Europe.” —The Washington Post Book World “This unconventional account of the fate of the Baltic nations is also an important reassessment of WWII and its outcome . . . the pivotal character is Eksteins’s maternal great-grandmother Grieta. The tale of this Latvian chambermaid, made pregnant and then rejected by her Baltic-German baron, serves as a mirror of Latvian-German relations over the centuries. In addition, the family history opens up the subject of displacement . . . and the struggle and hope of the immigrant experience.” —Kirkus Reviews

Walking Since Daybreak

Author: Modris Eksteins
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618082315
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
Part history, part autobiography, Eksteins relates the tragic story of the Baltic nations before, during, and after World War II through personal stories from his family. Photos and map.

Rites of Spring

Author: Modris Eksteins
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780395937587
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Book Description
Looks at the origins and impact of World War I, discusses the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet, and analyzes public opinion of the period.

Solar Dance

Author: Modris Eksteins
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674064941
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Book Description
Main description: In Modris Eksteins's hands, the interlocking stories of Vincent van Gogh and art dealer Otto Wacker reveal the origins of the fundamental uncertainty that is the hallmark of the modern era. Through the lens of Wacker's sensational 1932 trial in Berlin for selling fake Van Goghs, Eksteins offers a unique narrative of Weimar Germany, the rise of Hitler, and the replacement of nineteenth-century certitude with twentieth-century doubt. Berlin after the Great War was a magnet for art and transgression. Among those it attracted was Otto Wacker, a young gay dancer turned art impresario. His sale of thirty-three forged Van Goghs and the ensuing scandal gave Van Gogh's work unprecedented commercial value. It also called into question a world of defined values and standards that had already begun to erode during the war. Van Gogh emerged posthumously as a hero who rejected organized religion and other suspect sources of authority in favor of art. Self-pitying Germans saw in his biography a series of triumphs-over defeat, poverty, and meaninglessness-that spoke to them directly. Eksteins shows how the collapsing Weimar Republic that made Van Gogh famous and gave Wacker an opportunity for reinvention propelled a third misfit into the spotlight. Taking advantage of the void left by a gutted belief system, Hitler gained power by fashioning myths of mastery. Filled with characters who delight and frighten, Solar Dance merges cultural and political history to show how upheavals of the early twentieth century gave rise to a search for authenticity and purpose.

The Case for Latvia

Author: Jukka Rislakki
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042024232
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union – interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war – now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: “Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin's revolution in 1917”, “Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family”, “Latvia was a thoroughly anti-Semitic country and Latvians started killing Jews even before the Germans arrived in 1941”, “Nazi revival is rampant in today's Latvia”, “The Russian minority is persecuted in Latvia. . .”True, false or in-between? The Finnish journalist and author Jukka Rislakki examines charges like these and provides an outline of Latvia's recent history while attempting to separate documented historical fact from misinformation and deliberate disinformation. His analysis helps to explain why the Baltic States (population 7 million) consistently top the enemy lists in public opinion polls of Russia (143 million). His knowledge of the Baltic languages allows him to make use of local sources and up-to-date historical research. He is a former Baltic States correspondent for Finland's largest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the author of several books on Finnish and Latvian history. As a neutral, experienced and often critical observer, Rislakki is uniquely qualified for the task of separating truth from fiction.

Daybreak

Author: Brian Ralph
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 1770462309
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
The cult classic zombie graphic novel: now a Netflix original series! You wake up in the rubble and see a ragged, desperate one-armed man greeting you. He takes you underground to a safe space, feeds you, offers you a place to sleep, and then announces that he’ll take the first watch. It’s not long before the peril of the jagged landscape has located you and your new-found protector and is scratching at the door. What transpires is a moment-to-moment struggle for survival-The Road meets Dawn of the Dead. Daybreak is seen through the eyes of a silent observer as he runs from the shadows of the imminent zombie threat. Brian Ralph slowly builds the tension of the zombies on the periphery, letting the threat-rather than the actual carnage-be the driving force. The post-apocalyptic backdrop features tangles of rocks, lumber, I beams, and overturned cars that are characters in and of themselves. Drawing inspiration from horror movies, television, and first-person shooter video games, Daybreak departs from zombie genre in both content and format, achieving a living-dead masterwork of literary proportions. When released in 2011, Daybreak was a critical success, a YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens, and a TLA Maverick Graphic Novel. Now for the first time, Daybreak is being adapted into a Netflix Original series, executive produced by Aron Eli Coleite (Star Trek: Discovery, Heroes), Brad Peyton (Frontier, Rampage), and Jeff Fierson (Frontier, Rampage), starring Matthew Broderick. Read the book before it hits the small screen this fall!

Daybreak

Author: Shelley Shepard Gray
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062204416
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Book Description
In this close-knit Amish family, nothing is as perfect as it seems . . . When Viola Keim starts working at a nearby Mennonite retirement home, she strikes up an unlikely friendship with resident Atle, whose only living relative, son Edward, is living as a missionary in Nicaragua. Viola understands the importance of mission work, but she can't imagine leaving her father in the hands of strangers. Even though her family is New Order Amish, it's not the Amish way, and though she doesn't know Ed, she judges him for abandoning his father. But when Ed surprises his father with a visit, Viola and Ed both discover an attraction they never expected. Despite her feelings, choosing Ed would mean moving to a far-off country and leaving her family behind. She can't do that. Her twin sister, Elsie, is going blind and will need someone to care for her all her life. Her family is reeling with the recent discovery that her grandmother hid her past as an Englischer. Her father seems forgetful and distracted—and to be harboring some secrets of his own. Does Viola dare leave them all behind and forge her own life? Or will family ties mean her one chance at love slips away?

Auschwitz and After

Author: Charlotte Delbo
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300195125
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 391

Book Description
Written by a member of the French resistance who became an important literary figure in postwar France, this moving memoir of life and death in Auschwitz and the postwar experiences of women survivors has become a key text for Holocaust studies classes. This second edition includes an updated and expanded introduction and new bibliography by Holocaust scholar Lawrence L. Langer. “Delbo’s exquisite and unflinching account of life and death under Nazi atrocity grows fiercer and richer with time. The superb new introduction by Lawrence L. Langer illuminates the subtlety and complexity of Delbo’s meditation on memory, time, culpability, and survival, in the context of what Langer calls the ‘afterdeath’ of the Holocaust. Delbo’s powerful trilogy belongs on every bookshelf.”—Sara R. Horowitz, York University Winner of the 1995 American Literary Translators Association Award

Walking Since Daybreak

Author: Modris Eksteins
Publisher: London : Papermac
ISBN: 9780333766217
Category : Baltic States
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
Part history and part autobiography, 'Walking Since Daybreak' tells the tragic story of the Baltic nations before, during, and after World War II. Personal stories of the survival or destruction of Modris Ekstein's family members lend an intimate dimensio

Latvia

Author: Mara Kalnins
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849046050
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
The history of the Latvian people begins some four and a half millennia ago with the arrival of the proto-Baltic Indo-Europeans to northern Europe. One branch of these migrants coalesced into a community which evolved a distinctive and remarkably robust culture and language, and which eventually developed into a loose federation of tribal kingdoms that stretched from the shores of the Baltic sea to the upper Dniepr river. But these small independent kingdoms were unable to resist the later invasion of the Teutonic Knights in 1201, an invasion that initiated nearly eight hundred years of helotry for the Latvians in their own domains. In the centuries of domination by successive European powers that followed, the inhabitants nonetheless preserved a powerful sense of identity, fostered by their ancient language, oral literature, songs and customs. These in turn informed and gave impetus to the rise of national consciousness in the nineteenth century and the political activities of the twentieth which brought the modern nation-state of Latvia into being. This book traces the genesis and growth of that nation, its endurance over centuries of conquest and oppression, the process by which it achieved its independence, and its status as a member of the European community in the twenty-first century.