The gripping tale of a legendary, century-old murder spree *** A silent, simmering killer terrorized New England in1911. As a terrible heat wave killed more than 2,000 people, another silent killer began her own murderous spree. That year a reporter for the Hartford Courant noticed a sharp rise in the number of obituaries for residents of a rooming house in Windsor, Connecticut, and began to suspect who was responsible: Amy Archer-Gilligan, who'd opened the Archer Home for Elderly People and Chronic Invalids four years earlier. "Sister Amy" would be accused of murdering both of her husbands and up to sixty-six of her patients with cocktails of lemonade and arsenic; her story inspired the Broadway hit Arsenic and Old Lace. The Devil's Rooming House is the first book about the life, times, and crimes of America's most prolific female serial killer. In telling this fascinating story, M. William Phelps also paints a vivid portrait of early-twentieth-century New England.

Exiled Emissary is a biography of the colorful life of George H. Earle, III - a Main Line Philadelphia millionaire, war hero awarded the Navy Cross, Pennsylvania Governor, Ambassador to Austria and Bulgaria, friend and supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, humanitarian, playboy, and spy. Rich in Casablanca-style espionage and intrigue, Farrell's deeply personal study presents FDR and his White House in a new light, especially when they learned in 1943 that high-ranking German officials approached Earle in Istanbul to convey their plot to kidnap Hitler and seek an armistice. When FDR rejected their offer, thereby prolonging World War II, his close relationship with Earle became most inconvenient, resulting in Earle's exile to American Samoa. Earle eventually returned to the United States, renewing his warnings about communism to President Truman, who underestimated the threat as a "bugaboo." Now, over four decades following Earle's death, Farrell has uncovered newly declassified records that give voice to his warnings about a threat we now know should have never been dismissed.

A BARACK OBAMA AND A BILL GATES SUMMER READING PICK 2022 A NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER 'This book helped me understand modern politics better' - Bill Gates, Summer Reading Pick 2022 'Superbly researched and written' - Francis Fukuyama, The Washington Post 'It's been a long time since I learned so much from one book.' - Rutger Bregman author of Utopia for Realists 'Powerful [and] intelligent.' - Fareed Zakaria, CNN America's political system isn't broken. The truth is scarier: it's working exactly as designed. In Why We're Polarized, Ezra Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America's deep political divisions, revealing how a system filled with rational, functional parts can combine into a dysfunctional whole. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump's rise to the Democratic Party's leftward shift to the politicisation of everyday culture. Klein shows how and why American politics polarised in the twentieth century, what that polarisation did to Americans' views of the world and one another, and how feedback loops between polarised political identities and polarised political institutions drive the system toward crisis. This revelatory book will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself.

War at sea-war in the air
This is an account of the early days, during the Great War, of the service that became the Fleet Air Arm. It did not take long after hostilities commenced for the Royal Navy to appreciate the potential of an 'air force' both as an eye in the sky and as an effective method of countering enemy surface vessels and most especially German submarine activity. Endurance, speed and surprise were the essential components of the sea-plane and flying boat war. Appearing suddenly out of the sun, a surface cruising U-Boat had little time to dive to safety before destruction rained down upon it. This book contains may gripping incidents of U-Boat hunting in the 'Spider Web', a great tract of the North Sea which was the Navy flyer's patrol area and battlefield. This was a hard war fraught with dangers from mechanical breakdowns, attacks from enemy aircraft, lethal weather and anti-aircraft fire among its many perils. A riveting account of the sea and early aviation warfare.

If you are interested in the JFK assassination, just starting to research the JFK assassination, or you have been studying the subject for a while you really need to have this book in your JFK library. "The JFK Assassination: A Researcher's Guide" is a compilation of almost 47 years of research, by some of the most noted author's in the JFK assassination community. It is like a depository for some of the most important issues of the assassination and more, all in one volume. The material is in an easy to read format with references so the reader can study an issue further if they wish. The author starts by introducing you to people, places, and issues surrounding the JFK assassination. Then you will walk through a sequential order of events leading up to the shooting, including a broad view of the shooting itself. You will continue through the aftermath of the murder, showing the impact this crime had on our history. You will also see proof Lee Harvey Oswald did not murder President Kennedy. Looking at the sequence of events you will see Oswald did not have time to get into position to do the shooting. The motorcade was scheduled to pass the Book Depository at 12:25 pm. Oswald was in the lunch room at 12:15. A good sniper would have been in position well in advance of his prey's expected arrival, which Oswald was not. Contrary to the WC's claim, authorities never had any "court-worthy" evidence putting Oswald in the sniper's window. Finally, looking at the evidence from a totally new perspective you will see definite proof of a conspiracy. It was a simple case of comparing the wounds, with the bullet count, and the time statistics of the rifle. If you were not convinced of a conspiracy before, you will be

This is the story of Chęciny, my hometown in southern Poland, and of the people who lived there between the two world wars of the 20th Century.

The Nazi invasion of Poland in October 1939 started World War II. Millions of Polish Jews died in the ensuing Holocaust, including 4,000 citizens of Chęciny, and 50 members of my family. I was lucky: my mother, brother, three sisters and I had joined my father in America in 1930. I finished high school in Chicago, went to college and graduated from the University of Illinois Medical School. I became a doctor and a psychiatrist, setting up a long and rewarding private practice in Los Angeles that spanned more than 50 years.

Like the wall paintings in Pompeii, which offer a glimpse into the daily life of that city before the volcano, I hope that these stories offer a glimpse into the daily life of my hometown before the Holocaust.

But most of all, this is the story of my family, and a tribute to my beloved Aunt Chana and her daughter, my cousin Rachel, whose courage and self-sacrifice saved Miriam - Chęciny's youngest survivor of the Holocaust - from the Nazi murderers.

At the height of the Cold War, the John F. Kennedy administration designed an ambitious plan for the Middle East-its aim was to seek rapprochement with Nasser's Egypt in order to keep the Arab world neutral and contain the perceived communist threat. In order to offset this approach, Kennedy sought to grow relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and embrace Israel's defense priorities-a decision which would begin the US-Israeli 'special relationship'. Here, Antonio Perra shows for the first time how new relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel which would come to shape the Middle East for decades were in fact a by-product of Kennedy's efforts at Soviet containment. The Saudi's in particular were increasingly viewed as 'an atavistic regime who would soon disappear' but Kennedy's support for them-which hardened during the Yemen Crisis even as he sought to placate Nasser-had the unintended effect of making them, as today, the US' great pillar of support in the Middle East.

Published in 1945 by the 65th Fighter Wing, Saffron Walden, 8th U.S. Air Force. This document was written to make and show why certain recommendations may help future air force commanders conserve fighters; this is not a training manual, however. It details the fact that flak was by far the most dangerous weapon the strategic fighter had to face. How it all came about and what was done to meet the problem (what was encountered, solution by phases, and lessons learned and recommendations) are told in the report. Please note this a high quality, carefully and extensively cleaned up copy of an archive document and while many efforts have been made to clean up these historic texts there may be occasional blemishes, usually reflecting the age of the documents and the typescript used at the time of writing.

Revolution, war, dislocation, famine, and rivers of blood: these traumas dominated everyday life at turn-of-the-century Russia. As Modernity, Domesticity and Temporality in Russia explains, amidst such public turmoil Russians turned inwards, embracing and carefully curating the home in an effort to express both personal and national identities. From the nostalgic landed estate with its backward gaze to the present-focused and efficient urban apartment to the utopian communal dreams of a Soviet future, the idea of time was deeply embedded in Russian domestic life. Rebecca Friedman is the first to weave together these twin concepts of time and space in relation to Russian culture and, in doing so, this book reveals how the revolutionary domestic experiments reflected a desire by the state and by individuals to control the rapidly changing landscape of modern Russia. Drawing on extensive popular and literary sources, both visual and textual, this fascinating book enables readers to understand the reshaping of Russian space and time as part of a larger revolutionary drive to eradicate, however ambivalently, the 19th-century gentrified sloth in favour of the proficient Soviet comrade.

Taking on the myth of France's creative exhaustion following World War II, this collection of essays brings together an international team of scholars, whose research offers English readers a rich and complex overview of the place of France and French artists in the visual arts since 1945. Addressing a wide range of artistic practices, spanning over seven decades, and using different methodologies, their contributions cover ground charted and unknown. They introduce greater depth and specificity to familiar artists and movements, such as Lettrism, Situationist International or Nouveau Realisme, while bringing to the fore lesser known artists and groups, including GRAPUS, the Sociological Art Collective, and Nicolas Schoeffer. Collectively, they stress the political dimensions and social ambitions of the art produced in France at the time, deconstruct the traditional geography of the French art world, and highlight the multiculturalism of the French art scene that resulted from its colonial past and the constant flux of artistic travels and migrations. Ultimately, the book contributes to a story of postwar art in which France can be inscribed not as a main or sub chapter, but rather as a vector in the wider constellation of modern and contemporary art.

Concentrating on the politics of the Habsburg Monarchy's self-proclaimed "cultural mission" in occupied Bosnia in the period from 1878 to the outbreak of war in 1914, Taming Balkan Nationalism addresses two related issues: the impact of "Europeanization" in a backward society and the crystallization of the identities which have since dominated Bosnian life.
On the basis of wide reading in the Austrian, Hungarian, and south Slav sources, including the Hungarian-language papers of the two leading administrators of Bosnia, Benjamin von Kallay and Istvan Burian, Robin Okey provides fresh and wide-ranging perspectives on a whole range of issues, including the "Orientalist" assumptions of Austrian policy, the struggle of administrators for the moral high ground with nascent Serb and Croat intelligentsias, Kallay's controversial policy of the "Bosnian nation," and the strategy and personality of the intriguing Burian. He also opens up the hitherto unexplored background to student terrorism in the secondary schools of pre-1914 Bosnia, from which the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to emerge.
Beyond this immediate historical context, the book also sheds much light on wider issues such as the construction of Serb and Croat nationhood in Bosnia, the beginnings of the Europeanization of Bosnian Muslims, and the new divisions created by the rapid pace of social, economic, and intellectual change as the nineteenth turned into the twentieth century.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, is often remembered as a pliant instrument of American power during the Cold War. In this book Roham Alvandi offers a revisionist account of the shah's relationship with the United States by examining the partnership he forged with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. Based on extensive research in the British and U.S. archives, as well as a wealth of Persian-language diaries, memoirs and oral histories, this study restores agency to the shah as an autonomous international actor and suggests that Iran evolved from a client to a partner of the United States under the Nixon Doctrine. Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah offers a detailed account of three key historical episodes in the Nixon-Kissinger-Pahlavi partnership that shaped the global Cold War far beyond Iran's borders. First, the book examines the emergence of Iranian primacy in the Persian Gulf as the Nixon administration looked to the shah to fill the vacuum created by the British withdrawal from the region in 1971. Then it turns to the peak of the partnership after Nixon and Kissinger's historic 1972 visit to Iran, when the shah succeeded in drawing the United States into his covert war against Iraq in Kurdistan. Finally, the book focuses on the decline of the partnership under Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, through a history of the failed negotiations from 1974 to 1976 for an agreement on U.S. nuclear exports to Iran. Taken together, these three episodes map the rise of the fall of Iran's Cold War partnership with the United States during the decade of superpower detente, Vietnam, and Watergate.

Kenneth Kaunda, the United States and Southern Africa carefully examines US policy towards the southern African region between 1974, when Portugal granted independence to its colonies of Angola and Mozambique, and 1984, the last full year of the Reagan administration's Constructive Engagement approach. It focuses on the role of Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, the key facilitator of international diplomacy towards the dangerous neighborhood surrounding his nation. The main themes include the influence of race, national security, economics, and African agency on international relations during the height of the Cold War. Andy DeRoche focuses on key issues such as the civil war in Angola, the fight against apartheid, the struggle for Namibia's independence, the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, and bilateral US/ Zambian relations. The approach is traditional diplomatic history based on archival research in Zambia and the USA as well as interviews with key players such as Kaunda, Mark Chona, Siteke Mwale, Vernon Mwaanga, Chester Crocker, and Frank Wisner. The result offers an important new insight into the nuances of US policy toward southern Africa during the hottest days of the Cold War.

Making the Best of Things is a record of the experiences of its author, Len Williams, over a period of more than thirty years. His narrative opens with a vivid and engaging memoir of childhood and adolescence in Camberwell during the 1910s and early 1920s, and culminates in a personal and anecdotal history of the Second World War, during which he served with the Auxiliary Fire Service and with an RAF Maintenance Unit (60 MU) based in Yorkshire and other parts of England. The central chapters are concerned with the changing fortunes of the Williams family during the 1920s and 1930s, offering an evocative account of the era of the Depression from the perspective of one who toiled, with little hope of advancement, as part of London's army of shopworkers. Williams presents these memoirs as a candid history of his family, and more particularly as his testimony with regard to an extraordinary and disturbing family secret uncovered in the wake of his father's death. The scope of the work quickly broadens, however, to form a rich and detailed panorama of his surroundings in Camberwell, one that pays special attention to the places he knew intimately, including Stobart Mansions, Kimpton Mission, the United Kingdom Tea Company and the Camberwell Green branch of the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society. Making the Best of Things is a meticulous and absorbing recreation of a lost world, offering masterful descriptions of the rituals and routines of ordinary life as Williams knew it, as well as first-hand accounts of many of the more momentous episodes in London's history, including Zeppelin raids, Armistice Night, the General Strike and the Blitz. This new edition, which collects these memoirs into a single volume for the first time, features editorial notes, an index, and a series of appendices relating to Williams's father and other members of his family. Making the Best of Things is also copiously illustrated with photographs and maps.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Greg Burgess's important new study explores the short life of the High Commission for Refugees (Jewish and Other) Coming from Germany, from its creation by the League of Nations in October 1933 to the resignation of High Commissioner, James G. McDonald, in December 1935. The book relates the history of the first stage of refugees from Germany through the prism of McDonald and the High Commission. It analyses the factors that shaped the Commission's formation, the undertakings the Commission embarked upon and its eventual failure owing to external complications. The League of Nations and the Refugees from Nazi Germany argues that, in spite of the Commission's failure, the refugees from Nazi Germany and the High Commission's work mark a turn in conceptions of international humanitarian responsibilities when a state defies standards of proper behaviour towards its citizens. From this point on, it was no longer considered sufficient or acceptable for states to respect the sovereign rights of another if the rights of citizens were being violated. Greg Burgess discusses this idea, amongst others, in detail as part of what is a crucial volume for all scholars and students of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and modern Jewish history.