26. 1900-1950 Women's Lives in Collision
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Between 1900 and 1950 the world was at war. Between the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and World War II, every part of the world was effected. Women at home or on the front played a vital role in fighting for peace, sustaining the war effort, and rebuilding.
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Coming soon!
Draw your own conclusions
Public Domain
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Why did women join the WWI war effort?
In this inquiry, students explore women's motivations to participate in the WWI effort, looking closely at recruitment posters as well as the words of women service members themselves. 
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Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Was Nazism anti-women?
Students will examine sources from historians and primary sources who discuss women in Nazi Germany before and during the war. How do they describe Nazi policies? How did Hitler and the Nazi's treat women? Helen Stephens, one of the sources included gave an oral history. You can listen or read the interview of her experience as an Olympian and witness to Nazi Germany here.
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Lesson Plans from Other Organizations
- This website, Women in World History has primary source based lesson plans on women's history in a whole range of topics. Some are free while others have a cost.
- The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has produced recommendations for teaching women's history with primary sources and provided a collection of sources for world history. Check them out!
- The Stanford History Education Group has a number of lesson plans about women in World History.
nina macdonald: sing a song of wartime
Sing a song of War-Time,
Soldiers marching by,
Crowds of people standing,
Waving them 'Good-bye'.
When the crowds are over,
Home we go to tea,
Bread and margarine to eat,
War economy!
... Mummie does the house-work,
Can't get any maid,
Gone to make munitions,
'Cause they're better paid,
Nurse is always busy,
Never time to play,
Sewing shirts for soldiers,
Nearly ev'ry day.
Ev'ry body's doing Something for the War,
Girls are doing things They've never done before,
Go as 'bus conductors,
Drive a car or van,
All the world is topsy-turvy
Since the War began.
Nina MacDonald, “Sing a Song of War-Time,” https://allpoetry.com/poem/8620641-Sing-ASong-of-War-Time-by-Nina-Macdonald.
Questions:
Soldiers marching by,
Crowds of people standing,
Waving them 'Good-bye'.
When the crowds are over,
Home we go to tea,
Bread and margarine to eat,
War economy!
... Mummie does the house-work,
Can't get any maid,
Gone to make munitions,
'Cause they're better paid,
Nurse is always busy,
Never time to play,
Sewing shirts for soldiers,
Nearly ev'ry day.
Ev'ry body's doing Something for the War,
Girls are doing things They've never done before,
Go as 'bus conductors,
Drive a car or van,
All the world is topsy-turvy
Since the War began.
Nina MacDonald, “Sing a Song of War-Time,” https://allpoetry.com/poem/8620641-Sing-ASong-of-War-Time-by-Nina-Macdonald.
Questions:
- What were some of the things women were doing to support World War I?
- According to this poem, why were women supporting the WWI effort?
FRANCES PERKINS: SPEECH
Frances Perkins was the first woman ever appointed to the President’s cabinet in US history. She was appointed Secretary of Labor, which was especially shocking considering the employment crisis that came along with the Great Depression. Perkins was one of the main reasons that the Social Security Administration was sustained through economic hardship and below is a speech regarding its success.
I must say I feel very much at home even though I just arrived. I feel at home because the Social Security Administration has, ever since it was established, been a sort of special concern of mine, although by the chicanery of politics it was not placed in the Department of Labor. I, of course, thought it should be.
As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I feel so deeply involved with the Social Security Administration is that even though it was not in the Department of Labor when it was first established, the Department of Labor had to carry it the way you carry a dependent child. It didn't have any money. That was so unfortunate. And we didn't have very much either. but we did, however, was to provide the Social Security Administration with offices in the Department of Labor Building. I even gave to the Chairman of the Social Security Board (as it was called in those days) the large, handsome, red-upholstered, high-back chair out of my own office so that he could look like a king. I didn't have to keep on looking like a queen. I found the chair somewhat uncomfortable so I made the sacrifice.
The whole Department did the same kind of thing. We gave them our best statisticians. We gave them the best of everything including Arthur Altmeyer, who was the Assistant Secretary of Labor and my real right hand, and without whom I felt very lost. It showed that we put our best people in there on loan, and we carried it for the first year and made it look like a going concern. In fact, it became a going concern in an extraordinarily short time.
When I asked what I was to speak about today, the suggestion was made I talk about the roots, or beginnings, of the Social Security Act. So I have thought about the roots. I suppose the roots--the idea that we ought to have a systematic method of taking care of the material needs of the aged--really springs from that deep well of charitableness which resides in the American people, and the efforts and the struggles of charity workers and social workers to handle the problems of people who were growing old and had no adequate means of support. Out of this impulse to be kind to the poor sprang, I suppose, a mulling of ideas about social insurance for the aged. But those people who were doing it didn't know that it was social insurance. They just kept thinking that something definite, something that people could look forward to, would be a great asset and a great assistance to them in their work. De Tocqueville, in his memoirs of his visit to America, mentioned what he thought was a unique state of mind of the American people: That they were so honestly concerned about their poor and did so much for them personally. It was not an organization; it was not a national action; it was not a State action; it was not Government. It was a personal action that De Tocqueville mentioned as being characteristic of the American people. They were so generous, so kind, so charitably disposed.
Well, I don't know anything about the times in which De Tocqueville visited America. That was long ago, and I know little about the psychological state of mind of the people of this country at that time. But I do know that at the time I came into the field of social work, these feelings were real. It was surprising what we were able to do through volunteer work--by the volunteer support of organizations who help the poor; and particularly the aged poor. Just look over the country At the old ladies' homes and the old couples' homes and the old members' homes that sprang up because aged people had necessities that had to be met. In each case, somebody got money together and established these homes. And life went on for the aged, after a fashion, as recipients of a kind of charity. These things have been going on for years.
Perkins, Frances. Speech. The Roots of Social Security. October 1963. https://www.ssa.gov/history/perkins5.html.
Questions:
I must say I feel very much at home even though I just arrived. I feel at home because the Social Security Administration has, ever since it was established, been a sort of special concern of mine, although by the chicanery of politics it was not placed in the Department of Labor. I, of course, thought it should be.
As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I feel so deeply involved with the Social Security Administration is that even though it was not in the Department of Labor when it was first established, the Department of Labor had to carry it the way you carry a dependent child. It didn't have any money. That was so unfortunate. And we didn't have very much either. but we did, however, was to provide the Social Security Administration with offices in the Department of Labor Building. I even gave to the Chairman of the Social Security Board (as it was called in those days) the large, handsome, red-upholstered, high-back chair out of my own office so that he could look like a king. I didn't have to keep on looking like a queen. I found the chair somewhat uncomfortable so I made the sacrifice.
The whole Department did the same kind of thing. We gave them our best statisticians. We gave them the best of everything including Arthur Altmeyer, who was the Assistant Secretary of Labor and my real right hand, and without whom I felt very lost. It showed that we put our best people in there on loan, and we carried it for the first year and made it look like a going concern. In fact, it became a going concern in an extraordinarily short time.
When I asked what I was to speak about today, the suggestion was made I talk about the roots, or beginnings, of the Social Security Act. So I have thought about the roots. I suppose the roots--the idea that we ought to have a systematic method of taking care of the material needs of the aged--really springs from that deep well of charitableness which resides in the American people, and the efforts and the struggles of charity workers and social workers to handle the problems of people who were growing old and had no adequate means of support. Out of this impulse to be kind to the poor sprang, I suppose, a mulling of ideas about social insurance for the aged. But those people who were doing it didn't know that it was social insurance. They just kept thinking that something definite, something that people could look forward to, would be a great asset and a great assistance to them in their work. De Tocqueville, in his memoirs of his visit to America, mentioned what he thought was a unique state of mind of the American people: That they were so honestly concerned about their poor and did so much for them personally. It was not an organization; it was not a national action; it was not a State action; it was not Government. It was a personal action that De Tocqueville mentioned as being characteristic of the American people. They were so generous, so kind, so charitably disposed.
Well, I don't know anything about the times in which De Tocqueville visited America. That was long ago, and I know little about the psychological state of mind of the people of this country at that time. But I do know that at the time I came into the field of social work, these feelings were real. It was surprising what we were able to do through volunteer work--by the volunteer support of organizations who help the poor; and particularly the aged poor. Just look over the country At the old ladies' homes and the old couples' homes and the old members' homes that sprang up because aged people had necessities that had to be met. In each case, somebody got money together and established these homes. And life went on for the aged, after a fashion, as recipients of a kind of charity. These things have been going on for years.
Perkins, Frances. Speech. The Roots of Social Security. October 1963. https://www.ssa.gov/history/perkins5.html.
Questions:
- What role does Frances Perkins take credit for in the founding and continuation of the administration?
- What does Perkins view the role of the Administration to be?
HELEN STEPHENS: INTERVIEW
I had read everything I could about Adolf Hitler and I had read his book. And I felt sure I was going to meet him. The Ouija Board said I would. [W]hen we were in Germany, why we had English speaking, they called them guides, assigned to each Olympic Team. For instance, the track team had several girls assigned to them through the duration of our stay. They were sort of “hostesses” for us. They would show us about. They could speak excellent English and through several of these girls who let their hair down, they were about our age, 18, 19, 20, and they began to tell us some of the terrible things that were happening over there. I had a friend from Poland who was going to school at the University of Berlin at that time too, and I went out there and met her. And she introduced me to an awful lot of people out there of course, teachers, professors, students, and I got the distinct impression that it was not only the Jews who were being discriminated against in Germany at that time, but women in general, in the sense that Hitler did not see any reason for women to receive any higher education and that their greatest service to the fatherland was to have babies and more babies.
…He didn’t care where they were, except to produce babies. And as I understood it from these girls, any German officer, I don’t know whether that included soldiers or not, but any German officer had the right and the privilege upon seeing any German girl that he took a fancy to – to invite her to his quarters and to get her pregnant – and that was a high honor for the girl and she would receive a medal and 500 dollars. Well, these girls… They were terrified.
… Well, after I had won my 100 meter race, I guess it was maybe 10 minutes after, I was still perspiring heavily. A German messenger came up, and I was standing there with Dee Boeckmann and he asked if, in English, if I would accompany him up to Hitler’s box that the Fuhrer wanted to meet me. And I had previously made plans to up and speak over CBS radio back to America and Dee and I were in the process of going up there. We were just getting ready to leave and she spoke up and told him that, you know, we couldn’t do it at this time, but after the broadcast we’d be available. He said, “I can’t go back and tell the Fuhrer that you won’t come. He’ll shoot me.” And we said, “Ah, he won’t shoot you, there are too many people around.” So he went back, reluctantly looking over his shoulder. But when we came out of that broadcast up at the top of the stadium, he was there to take us down, and Dee went with me. We were ushered into a room behind Hitler’s box and it was a long room and we hadn’t been there but a few seconds and the door swung open at the other end and about 20 Black Shirt guards came in and arrayed themselves around this room and pulled their German Lugers, loosened their holster, to see if their gun would come out easily, and they all stood stiff at attention and we looked at each other and wondered, “What is going on here?” Then Hitler came in… He was accompanied by his interpreter and strode forward and gave me a sloppy Nazi salute and I didn’t return it and I gave him my ‘ole “Missouri” handshake I always say. And he immediately came up and began to pinch me and squeeze me and pinch my fanny and all that stuff. I was kind of shocked, you know, the leader doing that.
…And he was asking me what I thought of Germany and what I thought of the Olympics and so forth. I was giving him affirmative answers and, I asked him if he would give me his autograph. He started to write it, then a flash bulb went off and he jumped about three feet up, straight up in the air and began to spout German and it was a little photographer, a fellow about five feet tall, a little guy and he began to kick him and he had these gloves draped over, his kid gloves draped over his arm, and he took those off and hit him across the face (MAKES SLAPPING NOISES ABOUT FIVE TIMES) and he motioned to those guards to come and get him – you know sick him and three or four of them came forward and one of them grabbed the guy’s camera and he picked it up and bashed it on the floor and glass flew, you know the lens I guess breaking.
… And then they began to kick that around in there like soccer, (MAKES FAST SLAPPING SOUNDS FIVE TIMES) you know, in that room, kicking that thing all over the place. And these four guys grabbed this little guy and carried him – his arms and legs stretched out – to the door and then they went, “One, two, three,” and threw him out against the hall and he scooted right down the hall and then they kicked his camera out after him. Then Hitler just returned and said, “How would you like to spend a weekend with me in Berchtesgaden?” Dee spoke up right away and said, “She’s in training. She’s got a track meet here.”… and after a few more squeezes and he said, “I was a pure Aryan type and I should have been running for Germany. I should be a German.” Then he shook hands and he left.
Stephens, Helen. “Helen Stephens Oral History.” Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum. Last modified September 29, 1984. https://stlholocaustmuseum.org/oral-history/helen-stephens/
Questions:
…He didn’t care where they were, except to produce babies. And as I understood it from these girls, any German officer, I don’t know whether that included soldiers or not, but any German officer had the right and the privilege upon seeing any German girl that he took a fancy to – to invite her to his quarters and to get her pregnant – and that was a high honor for the girl and she would receive a medal and 500 dollars. Well, these girls… They were terrified.
… Well, after I had won my 100 meter race, I guess it was maybe 10 minutes after, I was still perspiring heavily. A German messenger came up, and I was standing there with Dee Boeckmann and he asked if, in English, if I would accompany him up to Hitler’s box that the Fuhrer wanted to meet me. And I had previously made plans to up and speak over CBS radio back to America and Dee and I were in the process of going up there. We were just getting ready to leave and she spoke up and told him that, you know, we couldn’t do it at this time, but after the broadcast we’d be available. He said, “I can’t go back and tell the Fuhrer that you won’t come. He’ll shoot me.” And we said, “Ah, he won’t shoot you, there are too many people around.” So he went back, reluctantly looking over his shoulder. But when we came out of that broadcast up at the top of the stadium, he was there to take us down, and Dee went with me. We were ushered into a room behind Hitler’s box and it was a long room and we hadn’t been there but a few seconds and the door swung open at the other end and about 20 Black Shirt guards came in and arrayed themselves around this room and pulled their German Lugers, loosened their holster, to see if their gun would come out easily, and they all stood stiff at attention and we looked at each other and wondered, “What is going on here?” Then Hitler came in… He was accompanied by his interpreter and strode forward and gave me a sloppy Nazi salute and I didn’t return it and I gave him my ‘ole “Missouri” handshake I always say. And he immediately came up and began to pinch me and squeeze me and pinch my fanny and all that stuff. I was kind of shocked, you know, the leader doing that.
…And he was asking me what I thought of Germany and what I thought of the Olympics and so forth. I was giving him affirmative answers and, I asked him if he would give me his autograph. He started to write it, then a flash bulb went off and he jumped about three feet up, straight up in the air and began to spout German and it was a little photographer, a fellow about five feet tall, a little guy and he began to kick him and he had these gloves draped over, his kid gloves draped over his arm, and he took those off and hit him across the face (MAKES SLAPPING NOISES ABOUT FIVE TIMES) and he motioned to those guards to come and get him – you know sick him and three or four of them came forward and one of them grabbed the guy’s camera and he picked it up and bashed it on the floor and glass flew, you know the lens I guess breaking.
… And then they began to kick that around in there like soccer, (MAKES FAST SLAPPING SOUNDS FIVE TIMES) you know, in that room, kicking that thing all over the place. And these four guys grabbed this little guy and carried him – his arms and legs stretched out – to the door and then they went, “One, two, three,” and threw him out against the hall and he scooted right down the hall and then they kicked his camera out after him. Then Hitler just returned and said, “How would you like to spend a weekend with me in Berchtesgaden?” Dee spoke up right away and said, “She’s in training. She’s got a track meet here.”… and after a few more squeezes and he said, “I was a pure Aryan type and I should have been running for Germany. I should be a German.” Then he shook hands and he left.
Stephens, Helen. “Helen Stephens Oral History.” Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum. Last modified September 29, 1984. https://stlholocaustmuseum.org/oral-history/helen-stephens/
Questions:
- Summarize this source?
- How did Hitler treat women as described by this excerpt?
Remedial Herstory Editors. "26. 1900-1950 WOMEN'S LIVES IN COLLISION." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2022. www.remedialherstory.com.
Primary AUTHOR: |
Jacqui Nelson
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Primary Reviewer |
Kelsie Brook Eckert
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Consulting Team |
Editors |
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Kelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University Dr. Nancy Locklin-Sofer, Consultant Professor of History at Maryville College. Chloe Gardner, Consultant PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University Dr. Whitney Howarth, Consultant Former Professor of History at Plymouth State University Jacqui Nelson, Consultant Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University Maria Concepcion Marquez Sandoval PhD Candidate in History at Arizona University |
Amy Flanders
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy ReviewersAncient:
Dr. Kristin Heineman Professor of History at Colorado State University Dr. Bonnie Rock-McCutcheon Professor of History at Wilson College Sarah Stone PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University Medieval: Dr. Katherine Koh Professor of History at La Sierra University Dr. Jonathan Couser Professor of History at Plymouth State University Dr. Shahla Haeri Professor of History at Boston University Lauren Cole PhD Candidate in History at Northwestern University |
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Exploring the works of key women writers within their cultural, artistic and socio-political contexts, this book considers changes in the perception of women in early modern China. The sixteenth century brought rapid developments in technology, commerce and the publishing industry that saw women emerging in new roles as both consumers and producers of culture.
An innovative and valuable resource for understanding women's roles in changing societies, this book brings together the history of Africa, the Atlantic and gender before the 20th century. It explores trade, slavery and migrationin the context of the Euro-African encounter.
In June 1846 Susan Shelby Magoffin, eighteen years old and a bride of less than eight months, set out with her husband, a veteran Santa Fe trader, on a trek from Independence, Missouri, through New Mexico and south to Chihuahua. Her travel journal was written at a crucial time, when the Mexican War was beginning and New Mexico was occupied by Stephen Watts Kearny and the Army of the West.
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modern History (1800-now)
The author traces the history of Indian women from the nineteenth century under colonial rule, to the twentieth century after Independence. She begins with the reform movement, established by men to educate women, and demonstrates how education changed their lives, enabling them to take part in public life. Through the women's own accounts, the author has compiled an accessible and immediate record of their achievements over the past two centuries, which will be of interest to students of South Asia and to anyone concerned with women and their history.
Recording the important milestones in the birth of the modern feminist movement and the rise of women into greater social, economic, and political power, Miles takes us through a colorful pageant of astonishing women. Women in the arts, women in sports, women in business, women in religion, women in politics—this is a one-stop roundup of the tremendous progress women have made in the modern era.
This pioneering study of the social and political lives of Muslim women has shaped a whole generation of scholarship. In it, Leila Ahmed explores the historical roots of contemporary debates, ambitiously surveying Islamic discourse on women from Arabia during the period in which Islam was founded to Iraq during the classical age to Egypt during the modern era. The book includes a new foreword by Kecia Ali situating the text in its scholarly context and explaining its enduring influence.
Founded in 1919 along with the League of Nations, the International Labour Organization (ILO) establishes labor standards and produces knowledge about the world of work, serving as a forum for nations, unions, and employer associations. Over time, the ILO embraced non-discrimination and equal treatment. It now promotes fair globalization, standardized employment and decent work for women in the developing world. In Making the Woman Worker, Eileen Boris illuminates the ILO's transformation in the context of the long fight for social justice.
Women in World History brings together the most recent scholarship in women's and world history in a single volume covering the period from 1450 to the present, enabling readers to understand women's relationship to world developments over the past five hundred years.
History has largely ignored these female swashbucklers, until now. Here are their stories, from ancient Norse princess Alfhild to Sayyida al-Hurra of the Barbary corsairs; from Grace O’Malley, who terrorized shipping operations around the British Isles during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I; to Cheng I Sao, who commanded a fleet of 1,400 ships off China in the early 19th century.
She was the first Western woman to become a Tibetan Buddhist nun - but that pioneering ordination was really just one in a life full of revolutionary acts. Freda Bedi (1911-1977) broke the rules of gender, race, and religion - in many cases before it was thought that the rules were ready to be challenged. She was at various times a force in the struggle for Indian independence, a spiritual seeker, a scholar, a professor, a journalist, an author, a social worker, a wife, and mother of four children.
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World war i
Women Heroes of World War I brings to life the brave exploits of 16 women from around the world who served their countries at a time when most women didn’t even have the right to vote. These and other suspense-filled stories of daring girls and women from around the world are told through fast-paced narrative, dialogue, direct quotes, and document and diary excerpts.
Telling the stories of a diverse group of women, including African Americans, dissidents, pacifists, reformers, and industrial workers, Dumenil analyzes both the roadblocks and opportunities they faced. She richly explores the ways in which women helped the United States mobilize for the largest military endeavor in the nation's history. Dumenil shows how women activists staked their claim to loyal citizenship by framing their war work as home-front volunteers, overseas nurses, factory laborers, and support personnel as "the second line of defense". But in assessing the impact of these contributions on traditional gender roles, Dumenil finds that portrayals of these new modern women did not always match with real and enduring change.
In 1914 the world changed forever. When World War One broke out and a generation of men went off to fight, best-selling author and From Our Own Correspondent presenter Kate Adie shows how women emerged from the shadows of their domestic lives.
Now a visible force in public life, they began to take up essential roles - from transport to policing, munitions to sport, entertainment, even politics. They had finally become citizens, a recognised part of the war machine, acquiring their own rights and often independent incomes. 
Crossed Currents is the first history of women in the U.S. Navy. Since the World War I service of Yeoman (F) Loretta Perfectus Walsh - the first U.S. servicewoman not a nurse - through the Gulf War and the recent Tailhook scandal, women have struggled for acceptance within the U.S. Navy. This book tells a fascinating story of two currents crossing and recrossing, sometimes conflicting, sometimes converging.
Women have participated in war throughout history, but their experience in Russia during the First World War was truly exceptional. Between the war's beginning and the October Revolution of 1917, approximately 6,000 women answered their country's call as the army was faced with insubordination and desertion in the ranks while the provisional government prepared for a new offensive. These courageous women became media stars throughout Europe and America, but were brushed aside by Soviet chroniclers and until now have been largely neglected by history.
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Approximately 150,000 African-American soldiers, officers and men went to France to serve in WWI. Alongside them were thousands of African-American women who served in the various volunteer relief organizations like the Red Cross and the Y.M.C.A.
Addie Hunton and Kathryn Johnson were two of the women who served. With keen observation and intelligence, they tell the story of what it was like to be overseas "fighting for democracy" with only a glimmer of hope of achieving it back home after the war. They relate the soldiers' stories as well as their own excitement at their new experiences in Europe. 
On August 1, 1914, as the Great War erupted in Europe and financial and physical resources were realigned toward the war effort, some 120,000 American travelers scattered across the Continent suddenly found themselves in the midst of a vast warzone without means of escape. Among the stranded Americans was twenty-five-year-old Nancy Johnson, the daughter of influential U.S. Congressman Ben Johnson of Kentucky. Using Nancy Johnson's letters and photographs, her granddaughter Mary W. Schaller recounts the harrowing chronicle of Johnson's flight from war-torn Europe.
After President Woodrow Wilson suffered a paralyzing stroke in the fall of 1919, his wife, First Lady Edith Wilson, began to handle the day-to-day responsibilities of the chief executive. Mrs. Wilson had had little formal education and had only been married to President Wilson for four years, yet in the tenuous peace following the end of World War I, she dedicated herself to managing the office of the president, reading all correspondence intended for her bedridden husband. Though her Oval Office authority was acknowledged in Washington circles at the time - one senator called her "the presidentress who had fulfilled the dream of suffragettes by changing her title from First Lady to Acting First Man" - her legacy as the first woman president is now largely forgotten.
Yashka is the autobiography of Maria Botchkareva, a young Russian woman who bravely took up arms first against the Germans in World War One, and then opposed the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution of 1917. When war broke out in 1914, she applied to join as a soldier - facing verbal abuse and sexual harassment from the outset, she nevertheless took to military life with eagerness and courage. The soldiers nicknamed her 'Yashka', and a measure of respect was slowly gained as she demonstrated great bravery.
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In No Man's Land, Wendy Moore illuminates this turbulent moment of global war and pandemic when women were, for the first time, allowed to operate on men. Their fortitude and brilliance serve as powerful reminders of what women can achieve against all odds.
How did women contribute to the French Army in the World Wars? Drawing on myriad sources, historian Andrew Orr examines the roles and value of the many French women who have been overlooked by historians—those who worked as civilians supporting the military.
In 1916, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the "Adam and Eve" of the NSA, Elizebeth’s story, incredibly, has never been told.
Accompany Scottish novelist Sarah Macnaughtan as she volunteers alongside British humanitarian groups to alleviate the suffering in war-torn lands. A daring and spirited woman, Sarah encounters many people caught up in the mayhem – thrillseekers, aristocrats, refugees, diplomats, royalty and ordinary citizens.
The centenary of the First World War in 2014-18 offers an opportunity to reflect upon the role of gender history in shaping our understanding of this pivotal international event. From the moment of its outbreak, the gendered experiences of the war have been seen by contemporary observers and postwar commentators and scholars as being especially significant for shaping how the war can and must be understood. The negotiating of ideas about gender by women and men across vast reaches of the globe characterizes this modern, instrumental conflict.
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World war ii
Thirty-two engaging and suspense-filled stories unfold from across Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain, the United States and, in this expanded edition, the Soviet Union, providing an inspiring reminder of women and girls' refusal to sit on the sidelines around the world and throughout history.
In Coming Out Under Fire, Allan Berube examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontation--not as a story of how the military victimized homosexuals, but as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed between gay citizens and their government, transforming them both. Drawing on GIs' wartime letters, extensive interviews with gay veterans, and declassified military documents, Berube thoughtfully constructs a startling history of the two wars gay military men and women fough--one for America and another as homosexuals within the military.
When the war began, the men called these women “girls.” They didn’t believe this grand experiment could ever work—that the women of America—sisters and wives—could fly Army airplanes all over the country. Yet, these women were patriots and all they asked was a chance to do something that would help win the war. Of the 1,074 who flew as a WASP, 38 young women never came back—never had a future, and never heard their country say, “Thank you.”
In 1944, news of secret diaries kept by Italy's Foreign Minister, Galeazzo Ciano, had permeated public consciousness. What wasn't reported, however, was how three women—a Fascist's daughter, a German spy, and an American banker’s wife—risked their lives to ensure the diaries would reach the Allies, who would later use them as evidence against the Nazis at Nuremberg.
On a sunny morning in May 1939 a phalanx of 867 women—housewives, doctors, opera singers, politicians, prostitutes—was marched through the woods fifty miles north of Berlin, driven on past a shining lake, then herded in through giant gates. Whipping and kicking them were scores of German women guards. Their destination was Ravensbrück, a concentration camp designed specifically for women by Heinrich Himmler, prime architect of the Holocaust. By the end of the war 130,000 women from more than twenty different European countries had been imprisoned there; among the prominent names were Geneviève de Gaulle, General de Gaulle’s niece, and Gemma La Guardia Gluck, sister of the wartime mayor of New York.
In The Unwomanly Face of War, Alexievich chronicles the experiences of the Soviet women who fought on the front lines, on the home front, and in the occupied territories. These women—more than a million in total—were nurses and doctors, pilots, tank drivers, machine-gunners, and snipers. They battled alongside men, and yet, after the victory, their efforts and sacrifices were forgotten.
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Women's Work in WWII tells the history of millions of women working in thousands of roles with minimal training and no experience but fully confident that they were equal to filling the roles of men they replaced. It tells the chronological story about the zigzag social and political developments that enabled women to gain equal employment in thousands of jobs coupled with the parallel story of WWII. These women had a job to do. They were comfortable in their own skin and proved why you need to be who you are. They imagined success and achieved it.
We’ve heard of women who became nurses treating soldiers with battlefield injuries, partisans who fought occupying armies, and skilled laborers who worked in wartime industries. These courageous women spies worked in secret, but their stories, which are finally coming to light today, offer a significant and unique perspective on the history of World War II.
And while men shot to kill in the North African, European, and the Pacific theaters of war, nurses served right behind them, armed with tools of healing rather than warfare. It’s hard to imagine today what life was like during the greatest conflict in recent history, but these untold true stories of women heroes of WWII paint a vivid picture of life as a military nurse—from makeshift field hospitals in France to bombed-out station hospitals in Belgium to journeys fraught with danger on ambulance trains, air ambulances, and hospital ships.
As Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s special envoy to Europe in World War II she went where the president couldn’t go. She was among the first Allied women to enter a liberated concentration camp, and stood in the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s mountain retreat, days after its capture. She guided the direction of the G.I. Bill of Rights and the Manhattan Project. Though Anna Rosenberg emerged from modest immigrant beginnings, equipped with only a high school education, she was the real power behind national policies critical to America winning the war and prospering afterward. Astonishingly, her story remains largely forgotten
Before December 1941 drew to a close, five navy nurses on Guam became the first American military women of WWII to be taken prisoner by the Japanese. More than seventy army nurses survived five months of combat conditions in the jungles of Bataan and Corregidor before being captured, only to endure more than three years in prison camps. In all, nearly one hundred nurses became POWs.
In 1946, at age twenty-two, Beate Sirota Gordon helped to draft the new postwar Japanese Constitution. The Only Woman in the Room chronicles how a daughter of Russian Jews became the youngest woman to aid in the rushed, secret drafting of a constitution; how she almost single-handedly ensured that it would establish the rights of Japanese women; and how, as a fluent speaker of Japanese and the only woman in the room, she assisted the American negotiators as they worked to persuade the Japanese to accept the new charter.
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The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line are the heroes of the Greatest Generation that you hardly ever hear about. These women who did extraordinary things didn’t expect thanks and shied away from medals and recognition. Despite their amazing accomplishments, they’ve gone mostly unheralded and unrewarded. No longer. These are the women of World War II who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen - in and out of uniform.
Behold, the Second World War—a ruthless period of oppression and torment that Jews and other minorities were forced to endure. To this day, this event represents one of humanity’s greatest tragedies. Yet in the thick of cruelty, suffering, and loss, ordinary women secretly stood against the Nazi regime, selflessly serving as bearers of peace and hope. They risked their lives to protect the persecuted without seeking reward or recognition. Today, we honor these women for their courage, kindness, wit, and resourcefulness during the war.
Here lie their unsung legacies. 
General George Patton once remarked that World War II undoubtedly would have lasted a lot longer were it not for his soldiers and his wife. Those who knew the Pattons were aware of the vital role Beatrice played in his reaching his destiny, but few others understood the singular impact of this remarkable woman whom people described as having “a personality which radiates like a brilliant gem.”
For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. "With bald honesty and brutal lyricism" (Elle), the anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. "Spare and unpredictable, minutely observed and utterly free of self-pity" (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland), A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject--the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.
The girls came from every corner of the U.S.S.R. They were factory workers, domestic servants, teachers and clerks, and few were older than twenty. Though many had led hard lives before the war, nothing could have prepared them for the brutal facts of their new existence: with their country on its knees, and millions of its men already dead, grievously wounded or in captivity, from 1942 onwards thousands of Soviet women were trained as snipers
Based on letters and documents written by Catholic Sisters during the Nazi occupation of Belgium, this book tells the remarkable story of these brave and faithful women, and how they served to resist the German forces. From running contraband to hiding Jews, from spying for the allies to small acts of sabotage, these courageous women risked their lives to help defeat the Reich.
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Prehistory (3,300,000-3000 BC)
They live in caves and huddle around fires, but they are fully human, though they belong to our most ancient history. Risa the Arbiter has now spent years in her role and is known and respected throughout the area. Her children are half-grown and exhibiting traits of independence, both of thought and action. Her tribe has grown along with her and now needs more than one Arbiter can provide alone. Risa struggles with how best to organize her duties and establishes acolytes in each village to screen petitioners.
Ancient HISTORY (3000 BC - 500 AD)
The men of Athens gather to determine the truth. Meanwhile, the women of the city, who have no vote, are gathering in the shadows. The women know truth is a slippery thing in the hands of men. There are two sides to every story, and theirs has gone unheard. Until now.
Timely, unflinching, and transportive, Laura Shepperson’s Phaedra carves open long-accepted wounds to give voice to one of the most maligned figures of mythology and offers a stunning story of how truth bends under the weight of patriarchy but can be broken open by the force of one woman’s bravery. |
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Middle ages (500-1500 ad)
The earl of Trent's Norman widow, Blanche, and her English steward, Miles Edwulfson, take possession of Blanche's estates, hoping to live a life of peace and quiet. However, they run afoul of a baron named Aimerie, who is building an illegal castle and taxing the surrounding manors--including Blanche's--to pay for it. Aimerie has ambitions that go far beyond this castle, to the heart of the English throne, and he won't let anyone stand in his way. What's more, Aimerie's hot-headed son, Ernoul, lusts after Blanche and wants to make her his wife. When Blanche and Miles refuse to pay Aimerie's taxes, Aimerie vows to crush them.
Though Japan has been devastated by a century of civil war, Risuko just wants to climb trees. Growing up far from the battlefields and court intrigues, the fatherless girl finds herself pulled into a plot that may reunite Japan -- or may destroy it. She is torn from her home and what is left of her family, but finds new friends at a school that may not be what it seems
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For all fifteen years of her life, Pauline de Pamiers has witnessed an attack on her family, friends, and faith. It’s the early thirteenth century and the Pope and King of France are conducting a Crusade against the Cathars; the only crusade on European soil and against another Christian sect. As a member of this sect in France that sits outside the dominant Roman Church, Pauline is an outsider: young, but independent and bold.
11th century North Africa. In an attempt to change her destiny, love-struck Zaynab makes a false prophecy: that she is destined to marry a man who will create an empire. Although her plan backfires, Zaynab’s intelligence, beauty and ambition leads to four marriages, each lifting her status higher.
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Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in Europe, is crowned queen of England beside her young husband Henry II. While Henry battles their enemies and lays his plans, Eleanor is an adept acting ruler and mother to their growing brood of children. But she yearns for more than this - if only Henry would listen.
England, 1364: When married off at aged twelve to an elderly farmer, brazen redheaded Eleanor quickly realizes it won’t matter what she says or does, God is not on her side—or any poor woman’s for that matter. But then again, Eleanor was born under the joint signs of Venus and Mars, making her both a lover and a fighter.
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Early modern (1500-1800 ad)
Runner-up for the National Book Award for Children's Literature in 1969, Constance is a classic of historical young adult fiction, recounting the daily life, hardships, romances, and marriage of a young girl during the early years of the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth.
Sirma used to be happy. She had a home, loving parents, and wonderful friends. But her quiet mountain village changed forever when she lost her two best friends to a gang of outlaws. The village elders did nothing, fearing the wrath of Hamza Bei – the head outlaw in the area. Not long after, the same outlaws returned and devastated her village. Sirma has had enough. On St. George’s day, she disguised herself as a man and lead her own mountain gang dedicated to protecting the mountain villages and searching for Hamza Bei to put a stop to his tyranny. But the path she has chosen is harsh and merciless. Clashing with gangs of outlaws, surviving the elements in the mountain wilderness, and keeping her men from becoming the scoundrels they’ve sworn to fight are just a few of the challenges. But the biggest issue was the fact that her comrades had no idea they were led by a woman.
The author of The Soong Dynasty gives us our most vivid and reliable biography yet of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, remembered through the exaggeration and falsehood of legend as the ruthless Manchu concubine who seduced and murdered her way to the Chinese throne in 1861.
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modern history (1800-now)
Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side, understanding more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star. But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: She was a scientist. And she knew a few secrets about the enemy. She had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis...if anyone would listen to her. A powerful novel based on the incredible true story of the glamour icon and scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionized modern communication.
When Hollywood auctioneer Emsley Wilson finds her famous grandmother's diary while cleaning out her New York brownstone, the pages are full of surprises. The first surprise is, the diary isn't her grandmother's. It belongs to Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law. Johanna inherited Vincent van Gogh's paintings. They were all she had, and they weren't worth anything. She was a 28-year-old widow with a baby in the 1800s, without any means of supporting herself, living in Paris where she barely spoke the language. Yet she managed to introduce Vincent's legacy to the world. The inspiration couldn't come at a better time for Emsley. With her business failing, an unexpected love turning up in her life, and family secrets unraveling, can she find answers in the past?
A moving coming-of-age story set in the 1900s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Johnny Nolan is as loving and fanciful as they come, but he is also often drunk and out of work, unable to find his place in the land of opportunity. His wife Katie scrubs floors to put food on the table and clothes on her children's backs, instilling in them the values of being practical and planning ahead.
South China coast, 1801. Sold as a child to a floating brothel, 26-year-old Yang has finally bought her freedom, only to be kidnapped by a brutal pirate gang and forced to marry their leader. Dragged through stormy seas and lawless bandit havens, Yang must stay scrappy to survive. She embeds herself in the dark business of piracy, carving out her role against the resistance of powerful pirate leaders and Cheung Po Tsai, her husband's flamboyant male concubine. As she is caught between bitter rivals fighting for mastery over the pirates—and for her heart—Yang faces a choice between two things she never dreamed might be hers: power or love. Based on a true story that has never been fully told until now, The Flower Boat Girl is the tale of a woman who, against all odds, shaped history on her own terms.
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WOrld war i
May, 1917. Ginger Whitman left a life of wealth and privilege in England to train as a battlefield nurse and serve in the Great War. Working on the brutal frontlines in Palestine, she finds a wounded soldier hiding in her camp. The soldier claims to carry intelligence unmasking a secret plot against the British - and that traitors within British intelligence are searching for him. Desperate and dying, the soldier entrusts a coded message to her care.
December 1917. As World War I rages in Europe, twenty-four-year-old Ruby Wagner, the jewel in a prominent Philadelphia family, prepares for her upcoming wedding to a society scion. Like her life so far, it’s all been carefully arranged. But when her beloved older brother is killed in combat, Ruby follows her heart and answers the Army Signal Corps’ call for women operators to help overseas.
Egypt, 1917: British nurse Ginger Whitman thought she escaped the intrigue that devastated her family and threatened her life on the desert sands of WWI Palestine. But when she’s drafted into an investigation for the Cairo Intelligence Department, she uncovers forces at work to destroy the man she loves: intelligence officer Noah Benson.
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Following the outbreak of World War I, Sarah learned that her brother Aaron had formed Nili, an anti-Turkish spy ring, to aid the British in their war against the Ottomans. Sarah, who had witnessed the atrocities of the Armenian genocide by the Turks, believed that only the defeat of the Ottoman Empire could save the Palestinian Jews from a similar fate. Sarah joined Nili, eventually rising to become the organization's leader. Operating behind enemy lines, she and her spies furnished vital information to British intelligence in Cairo about the Turkish military forces until she was caught and tortured by the Turks in the fall of 1917. The Woman Who Fought an Empire, set at the birth of the modern Middle East, rebukes the Hollywood stereotype of women spies as femme fatales and is both an espionage thriller and a Joan of Arc tale.
In 1917, after Arlene Favier’s home burns to the ground, taking her father with it, she must find a way to support her mother and younger brother. If she doesn’t succeed, they will all be impoverished. Job opportunities are scarce, but then a daring possibility arises: the American Women’s Hospital needs ambulance drivers to join a trailblazing, all-female team of doctors and nurses bound for war-torn France.
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The Steward family eagerly prepares for the wedding of their daughter Hettie to Geoffrey Bartlette. The event forever binds them to the Bartlettes who have been their friends for decades. When the Great War explodes, Hettie and her brother, Freddie, join the Canadian Army Medical Corps. This decision is met with resistance and disapproval, causing a rift in the siblings’ relationship with their parents. As the war rages on, a once stable friendship is tested, two daughters’ marriages are in tatters, and the scourge of influenza sweeps through the civilian population. Will the Stewards bend under pressure?
In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill will save her husband. Lady Clementine is the ferocious story of the ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender to expectations or to enemies.
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world war ii
Since World War II, Okinawa has been the stage where the United States and Japan act out dramatic changes in their relationship. Women from three generations, each with a different account of the ways that international affairs have transformed Okinawa, here tell the story of that tiny island and its interactions with an enormous U.S. military presence.
On a golden August morning in 1939, sisters Antonina and Helena Dąbrowska send their father off to defend Poland against the looming threat of German invasion. The next day, the first bombs fall on Warsaw, decimating their beloved city and shattering the world of their youth.
Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side and understood more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star. But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis and revolutionize modern communication...if anyone would listen to her. A powerful book based on the incredible true story of the glamour icon and scientist, The Only Woman in the Room is a masterpiece that celebrates the many women in science that history has overlooked.
Based on a true story, Undrowning Lotus centers on Chunhua, who grew up during the opium crisis in Shanxi, located in Northern China. After being sold as a child bride, her feet were bounded by her in-laws, a popular practice in China at the time. She worked on the farm day and night while trying to find meaning in her life.
Upon arrival, Rosie’s head is shaved and along with the loss of her beautiful hair, she loses the life she once cherished. Among the chaos and surrounded by hopelessness, Rosie realizes the only thing the Nazis cannot take away from her is the fierce redhead resilience in her spirit. When all of her friends conclude they are going to heaven from Auschwitz, she remains determined to get home. She summons all of her courage, through death camps and death marches to do just that.
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In the autumn of 1948, Iris Digby vanishes from her London home with her American diplomat husband and their two children. The world is shocked by the family’s sensational disappearance. Were they eliminated by the Soviet intelligence service? Or have the Digbys defected to Moscow with a trove of the West’s most vital secrets?
Marnie Fern’s life is torn apart when her grandfather is killed in an air raid. But once she discovers that he’d been working undercover as a radio operative – or pianist – for the Dutch resistance, Marnie knows she must complete his mission – no matter the cost. At the other end of the wireless, fellow pianist Corrie Bakker is caught in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse as she desperately tries to keep her loved ones out of the line of fire – even if it means sacrificing herself. Bound together by the invisible wires of their radios, the two women lead parallel lives in their home cities, as both are betrayed by those they trust the most. But when the Nazis close in on one of them, only the other can save her.
Through the eyes of ten-year-old Annemarie, we watch as the Danish Resistance smuggles almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark, nearly seven thousand people, across the sea to Sweden. The heroism of an entire nation reminds us that there was pride and human decency in the world even during a time of terror and war.
In eight unforgettable sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the extraordinary lives of these women, from their arduous journeys by boat, to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; from their experiences raising children who would later reject their culture and language, to the deracinating arrival of war.
Julie Otsuka has written a spellbinding novel about identity and loyalty, and what it means to be an American in uncertain times. 
In telling this true story through the lens of a fearlessly unique trio of freedom fighters, Tim Brady offers a fascinating perspective of the Dutch resistance during the war. Of lives under threat; of how these courageous young women became involved in the underground; and of how their dedication evolved into dangerous, life-threatening missions on behalf of Dutch patriots–regardless of the consequences
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Inspired by real acts of bravery and resistance, The Schoolteacher of Saint Michel is a heartrending and deeply moving story of one woman's courage and sacrifice during World War II, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Missing Piece of Nancy Moon.
Two orphaned girls become found family amidst the horrors of WWII in a gripping and heart-wrenching tale of friendship, loss and survival against the odds which sweeps the reader across wartime Europe to Budapest from the mountains of Scotland.
In need of concealing her faith, and with limited choices, Edith becomes the private teacher to Erich’s young brothers. Her roommate is a Roma with a tragic past and also hides from the Nazis in plain sight. When the new friends learn that Erich’s father is a senior member of the Nazi party, they know it is time to escape. Yet, Nazi patrols complicate their travels. Then, the last person imagined supplies a means to not only leave the house but from the Reich, altogether, though their safety is at risk as they cross several national borders.
Determined to settle old scores from the war years, Sirinya returns to her native Thailand, where once she risked everything to help prisoners of war on the Death Railway. But her journey into the past uncovers unexpected truths... Thailand 1942: Sirinya and her family are members of the Thai underground, who risk their lives to resist the Japanese occupation and to and help prisoners of war building the Thai-Burma railway. The events of those years have repercussions for decades to come. The book tells Sirinya's wartime story and how in the 1970s she returns to Kanchanaburi after a long absence abroad, to discover long buried secrets from the war years.
The year is 1941. Hitler ruthlessly invades Russia, destroying more than 70 percent of the country's infrastructure and air force. A determined, patriotic 18-year-old schoolgirl, Lilia Litvyak, demonstrates her daring flying skills to the male-dominated Soviet high command. Reluctantly, she is assigned to an elite all-male squadron, making her the first female-fighter-pilot in the history of the world.
By age 21, Lilia completes 268 missions and records 15 solo kills and 22 assists, records which stand to this day. |
bibliography
Strayer, R. and Nelson, E., Ways Of The World. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.
