Sacrifice, Captivity and Escape

Sacrifice, Captivity and Escape
Author: Peter Jackson
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2013-01-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1848848358

Sacrifice, Captivity and Escape is an exceptional story. Peter Jackson was young and recently married when he was drafted into the army at the start of World War II. He had no wish to be there but like most of his generation he was given no choice. Peter arrived in Singapore just as the city was being evacuated and within days he was a prisoner of the Imperial Japanese Army. Peter was one of the very few to survive the hardship, illnesses and brutality that followed. Like so many he was forced to work for the Japanese, first in Singapore and then on the infamous Thai-Burma railway. While there, remarkably, he escaped with seven other soldiers and, when recaptured, he was treated harshly. His memoir brings alive the characters of his comrades and also of the Japanese who he encountered. Some of the Japanese treated their prisoners humanely and Peter was able to form a relationship with them but others were sadistic psychopaths. But throughout his memoir there is a sense of hopefulness that, as young men, they would survive and get back to their homes; this was despite the despair many of them felt at losing four years of their lives as prisoners.

Raised in Captivity

Raised in Captivity
Author: Chuck Klosterman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0735217939

Microdoses of the straight dope, stories so true they had to be wrapped in fiction for our own protection, from the best-selling author of But What if We're Wrong? A man flying first class discovers a puma in the lavatory. A new coach of a small-town Oklahoma high school football team installs an offense comprised of only one, very special, play. A man explains to the police why he told the employee of his local bodega that his colleague looked like the lead singer of Depeche Mode, a statement that may or may not have led in some way to a violent crime. A college professor discusses with his friend his difficulties with the new generation of students. An obscure power pop band wrestles with its new-found fame when its song "Blizzard of Summer" becomes an anthem for white supremacists. A couple considers getting a medical procedure that will transfer the pain of childbirth from the woman to her husband. A woman interviews a hit man about killing her husband but is shocked by the method he proposes. A man is recruited to join a secret government research team investigating why coin flips are no longer exactly 50/50. A man sees a whale struck by lightning, and knows that everything about his life has to change. A lawyer grapples with the unintended side effects of a veterinarian's rabies vaccination. Fair warning: Raised in Captivity does not slot into a smooth preexisting groove. If Saul Steinberg and Italo Calvino had adopted a child from a Romanian orphanage and raised him on Gary Larsen and Thomas Bernhard, he would still be nothing like Chuck Klosterman. They might be good company, though. Funny, wise and weird in equal measure, Raised in Captivity bids fair to be one of the most original and exciting story collections in recent memory, a fever graph of our deepest unvoiced hopes, fears and preoccupations. Ceaselessly inventive, hostile to corniness in all its forms, and mean only to the things that really deserve it, it marks a cosmic leap forward for one of our most consistently interesting writers.

Remember My Sacrifice

Remember My Sacrifice
Author: Elizabeth Davey
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2007-11-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780807132777

On the morning of July 27, 1940, police arrested African American labor organizer Clinton Clark during a parishwide rally in Natchitoches, Louisiana. That day, over 800 black farmers and plantation workers made their way to town to protest for fair payments for their crops and equal access to New Deal assistance programs. Though those arrested with him were released after only three days, Clinton remained in jail for three weeks without charges and faced a possible lynching. News of Clark's captivity reached New Orleans labor organizers and spread to national civil liberties groups, making him a public figure among civil rights organizations. Recounting Clark's life in his own words, Remember My Sacrifice is an exceptional first-hand account of the lives of African Americans in rural Louisiana and of Clark's covert efforts to organize sharecroppers and farm workers during the Great Depression. Born in 1903, Clark grew up in a sharecropping family in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. Like many of his counterparts, Clark struggled to find work in the 1920s, and in 1931 he moved to California with hopes of finding work. Instead, he was introduced to the Unemployed Benefits Council, a Communist-affiliated relief organization. For Clark, the organization's mission of collective action coupled with respect and relief for the unemployed was the ideal political expression for the frustration he felt within the southern economy. Upon returning to Louisiana in 1933, Clark used his newfound confidence to organize sugar plantation workers and sharecroppers on his own, often hiding out in the woods to escape the persecution of landowners and town officials. Known as the "Black Ghost of Louisiana," Clinton Clark worked to connect rural Louisiana with a larger southern farmers' union movement, an effort that culminated in the formation of the Louisiana Farmers' Union in 1937. Helping small farmers and farm workers -- most of whom were black -- take advantage of President Franklin Roosevelt's agricultural benefit programs and form goods cooperatives that served to break down the tenant farmers' reliance upon plantation commissaries, Clark assisted Louisiana farmers in their search for an equitable income. In 1942 Clinton Clark penned his autobiography at night while working at a trucking company in New Orleans, and shortly afterwards, he fled Louisiana for New York City. In the years that followed, Clark faced the FBI's Communist surveillance, though his memoir suggests that Clark never wholeheartedly endorsed communism -- he simply wanted equality. With an introduction and thorough annotations by Elizabeth Davey and Rodney Clark, Clinton Clark's nephew, Clark's unique narrative illuminates the relationships between labor and civil rights groups and their important work organizing against racial discrimination in the years before the modern civil rights movement.

Escape in Iraq

Escape in Iraq
Author: Thomas Hamill
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2005
Genre:
ISBN: 9780805441826

Hans Staden's True History

Hans Staden's True History
Author: Hans Staden
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2008-07-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822389290

In 1550 the German adventurer Hans Staden was serving as a gunner in a Portuguese fort on the Brazilian coast. While out hunting, he was captured by the Tupinambá, an indigenous people who had a reputation for engaging in ritual cannibalism and who, as allies of the French, were hostile to the Portuguese. Staden’s True History, first published in Germany in 1557, tells the story of his nine months among the Tupi Indians. It is a dramatic first-person account of his capture, captivity, and eventual escape. Staden’s narrative is a foundational text in the history and European “discovery” of Brazil, the earliest European account of the Tupi Indians, and a touchstone in the debates on cannibalism. Yet the last English-language edition of Staden’s True History was published in 1929. This new critical edition features a new translation from the sixteenth-century German along with annotations and an extensive introduction. It restores to the text the fifty-six woodcut illustrations of Staden’s adventures and final escape that appeared in the original 1557 edition. In the introduction, Neil L. Whitehead discusses the circumstances surrounding the production of Staden’s narrative and its ethnological significance, paying particular attention to contemporary debates about cannibalism. Whitehead illuminates the value of Staden’s True History as an eyewitness account of Tupi society on the eve before its collapse, of ritual war and sacrifice among Native peoples, and of colonial rivalries in the region of Rio de Janeiro. He chronicles the history of the various editions of Staden’s narrative and their reception from 1557 until the present. Staden’s work continues to engage a wide range of readers, not least within Brazil, where it has recently been the subject of two films and a graphic novel.

A Knight's Captive

A Knight's Captive
Author: Lana Williams
Publisher: Lana Williams
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2018-12-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

A thrilling medieval romance from a USA Today Bestselling Author! A powerful knight on a dangerous mission... Sir Chanse de Bremont is determined to halt the wedding that will upset the tenuous balance of power between England and Scotland. He can think of only one way to do so—take the bride captive. But the willful if beautiful lady is nothing like he thought and more than he could’ve imagined. A defiant lady bent on escape... Lady Arabela Graham refuses to wed the brutal man her father intends to place on the Scottish throne. She knows her betrothed is not fit to be king, and she won’t be a pawn in a political game that will surely end in disaster. Yet when a bold, handsome knight appears on the eve of her wedding offering escape, she rebuffs his aid as she is certain he has an agenda of his own. A desire that can’t be denied. Chanse won’t take no for an answer and whisks Arabela on a perilous journey, pursuers on their heels. She’s touched by the knight whose tender regard and kisses make her heart sing. As those chasing them close in, Chanse realizes Arabela has become far more than a mission to him—she holds his heart. Will secrets keep these two apart, or will passion draw them ever closer? Buy the next installment of the Falling For A Knight series today! Although this book can easily be read as a stand-alone, most readers prefer to read the series in order, which includes: A Knight's Christmas Wish, a novella, Book 1 A Knight's Quest, Book 2 (also available in audio) A Knight's Temptation, Book 3 (also available in audio) A Knight's Captive, Book 4 (also available in audio) You might also enjoy The Vengeance Series: A Vow to Keep, Book 1 A Knight's Kiss, Book 1.5 Trust In Me, Book 2 Believe in Me, Book 3