This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Picture Post magazine was made famous by its pioneering photojournalism, which vividly captured a panorama of wartime events and the ordinary lives affected. This book is the first to examine this fascinating primary source as a cultural record of women's dress history. Reading the magazine's visual narratives from 1938 to 1945, it weaves together the ways in which design, style and fashion were affected by, and responded to, the state of being at war - and the new gender roles it created for women. From the working class of Whitechapel to the beach sets of the Bahamas, and from well-heeled Mayfair to middle-class New York, Women in Wartime takes a wide-angled lens to the fashions and lifestyles of the women featured in Picture Post. Exploring the nature of femininity and the struggle to be fashionable during the war, the book reveals critical connections between clothing and social culture. Drawing on a unique range of photographs, Women in Wartime presents a living history of how women's clothing choices reflect changing perceptions of gender, body, and class during an era of unprecedented social change.

Few escapades of the Second World War have captured the public's imagination more than the successful abduction of German General Kreipe from enemy-occupied Crete in 1944. It was an operation instigated and daringly executed by two British SOE officers - Patrick Leigh Fermor and William (Billy) Stanley Moss. The war didn't stop for Billy Moss after this operation though, and it is his continuing story that is told here. He reflects movingly on what it means to fight and deal in death, how the success of operations behind enemy lines in a foreign country is dependent on the goodwill of local inhabitants, and, surprisingly, on moments of high humour that punctuate the turmoil of war. War of Shadows is a book in three parts - each displaying differing aspects of World War II and its eventual conclusion, and all told with that tell-tale blend of poignancy and humour so characteristic of the time.

Revives the overlooked stories of pioneering women aviators, who are also featured in the forthcoming documentary film Coming Home: Fight for a Legacy During World War II, all branches of the military had women's auxiliaries. Only the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program, however, was made up entirely of women who undertook dangerous missions more commonly associated with and desired by men. Within military hierarchies, the World War II pilot was perceived as the most dashing and desirable of servicemen. "Flyboys" were the daring elite of the United States military. More than the WACs (Army), WAVES (Navy), SPARS (Coast Guard), or Women Marines, the WASPs directly challenged these assumptions of male supremacy in wartime culture. WASPs flew the fastest fighter planes and heaviest bombers; they test-piloted experimental models and worked in the development of weapons systems. Yet the WASPs were the only women's auxiliary within the armed services of World War II that was not militarized. In Clipped Wings, Molly Merryman draws upon military documents-many of which weren't declassified until the 1990s-congressional records, and interviews with the women who served as WASPs during World War II to trace the history of the over one thousand pilots who served their country as the first women to fly military planes. She examines the social pressures that culminated in their disbandment in 1944-even though a wartime need for their services still existed-and documents their struggles and eventual success, in 1977, to gain military status and receive veterans' benefits. In the preface to this reissued edition, Merryman reflects on the changes in women's aviation in the past twenty years, as NASA's new Artemis program promises to land the first female astronaut on the moon and African American and lesbian women are among the newest pilot recruits. Updating the story of the WASPs, Merryman reveals that even in the past few years there have been more battles for them to fight and more national recognition for them to receive. At its heart, the story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots is not about war or planes; it is a story about persistence and extraordinary achievement. These accomplished women pilots did more than break the barriers of flight; they established a model for equality.

While prayer is generally understood as "communion with God" modern forms of spirituality prefer "communion" that is non-petitionary and wordless. This preference has unduly influenced modern scholarship on historic methods of prayer particularly concerning Anglo-Saxon spirituality. In Compelling God, Stephanie Clark examines the relationship between prayer, gift giving, the self, and community in Anglo-Saxon England. Clark's analysis of the works of Bede, Aelfric, and Alfred utilizes anthropologic and economic theories of exchange in order to reveal the ritualized, gift-giving relationship with God that Anglo-Saxon prayer espoused. Anglo-Saxon prayer therefore should be considered not merely within the usual context of contemplation, rumination, and meditation but also within the context of gift exchange, offering, and sacrifice. Compelling God allows us to see how practices of prayer were at the centre of social connections through which Anglo-Saxons conceptualized a sense of their own personal and communal identity.