Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author's grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome colour film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community, an entire culture that was annihilated in the Holocaust. Three Minutes in Poland traces Glenn Kurtz's remarkable four year journey to identify the people in his grandfather's haunting images. His search takes him across the United States to Canada, England, Poland, and Israel. To archives, film preservation laboratories, and an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield. Ultimately, Kurtz locates seven living survivors from this lost town, including an eighty six year old man who appears in the film as a thirteen year old boy. Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, funny, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz's home movie became the sole remaining record of a vibrant town on the brink of catastrophe. From this brief film, Glenn Kurtz creates a riveting exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival, a monument to a lost world.

The World Today Series: Nordic, Central, and Southeastern Europe is an annually updated presentation of each sovereign country in Nordic, Central and Southeastern Europe, past and present. It is organized by individual chapters for each country and presents a complete and authoritative overview of each region's geography, people, history, political system, constitution, parliament, parties, political leaders, and elections. The combination of factual accuracy and up-to-date detail along with its informed projections make this an outstanding resource for researchers, practitioners in international development, media professionals, government officials, potential investors and students. Now in its 20th edition, the content is thorough yet perfect for a one-semester introductory course or general library reference. Available in both print and e-book formats and priced low to fit student and library budgets.

Over the past forty years, the term Holocaust has come to represent the deliberate campaign of extermination of Jews by the Nazis of Germany's Third Reich preceding and during World War II. Masses of edited documents and analytical material have been generated by Holocaust scholars, and some bibliographical and encyclopedic guides to the field are available. However, a student or researcher may be confounded by the abundance of publications and may lack the necessary background and endurance to sift the wheat from the chaff. The present volume has a two-fold purpose: to offer substantial analysis in intrinsic areas of study and to assess the relevant literature in each case.

Major scholars and brilliant, less established historians from Israel, Canada, and the United States have contributed more than thirty essays complete with extensive reference lists in three broad divisions. The section on conceptual approaches to the Holocaust is composed of such topics as the rise of national socialism, biographies and interpretations of Hitler, concentration camps, post-Holocaust Jewish philosophies, and the righteous gentiles. Area studies deal with aspects of the Holocaust in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, the Balkans, France, Holland, Italy, and Spain, and with effects and reactions in Switzerland and Britain. Arab-German collaboration and American responses are also addressed. A third section takes up Holocaust subjects in education, belles lettres, and the arts, including diaries and memoirs, fiction, poetry, books for children, art, music, and films. Although the scholars all provide evaluative surveys of their subjects and related literature, each enjoyed considerable latitude in coverage and each presents his or her own views and selections, not all of which are shared by other contributors or the volume editor. The editor also provides an introduction and a final survey of major institutions and resources for Holocaust study. A significant reference tool, this volume will be consulted by researchers at all levels in university, public, secondary, and parochial school libraries and at religious institutions.

Filled with incident, discovery, and revelation, Dutch Light is a vivid account of Christiaan Huygens's remarkable life and career, but it is also nothing less than the story of the birth of modern science as we know it. Europe's greatest scientist during the latter half of the seventeenth century, Christiaan Huygens was a true polymath. A towering figure in the fields of astronomy, optics, mechanics, and mathematics, many of his innovations in methodology, optics and timekeeping remain in use to this day. Among his many achievements, he developed the theory of light travelling as a wave, invented the mechanism for the pendulum clock, and discovered the rings of Saturn - via a telescope that he had also invented. A man of fashion and culture, Christiaan came from a family of multi-talented individuals whose circle included not only leading figures of Dutch society, but also artists and philosophers such as Rembrandt, Locke and Descartes. The Huygens family and their contemporaries would become key actors in the Dutch Golden Age, a time of unprecedented intellectual expansion within the Netherlands. Set against a backdrop of worldwide religious and political turmoil, this febrile period was defined by danger, luxury and leisure, but also curiosity, purpose, and tremendous possibility. Following in Huygens's footsteps as he navigates this era while shuttling opportunistically between countries and scientific disciplines, Hugh Aldersey-Williams builds a compelling case to reclaim Huygens from the margins of history and acknowledge him as one of our most important and influential scientific figures.

Have you ever wanted accessible introductions to key figures and periods of Christian history? Augustine and His World Augustine is one of the giants of the Christian church. From his birth in North Africa and his days as a relatively permissive young man, through his midlife conversion to Christianity and career as bishop of Hippo, his story has intrigued and inspired every generation for over 1,600 years. As a thinker, teacher, writer and debater, Augustine's greatness lay in his ability to relate the philosophies of Ancient Greece and Rome to the precepts of the Christian faith. Augustine also saved the church itself from disintegrating into rival factions by forging sound doctrine in the fires of controversy. This immersive account of Augustine's life helps readers understand the world he came from and the enormous contribution he made to the church, both of his day and of the future. Francis of Assisi and His World Francis of Assisi is one of the world's most popular religious figures, and also one of the most misrepresented. In this lively and engaging account of Francis's story - from his hedonistic youth to his emergence as a Christian leader of great charisma and intensity - Mark Galli attempts to strip away the modern gloss in order to discover the real man and the world in which he lived. The saint revealed here is not the romantic free spirit of popular imagination, but a contentious figure who combined a deep mysticism with radical commitment and, above all, sought to glorify God, the creator.