{"title":"Samuel And Althea Stroum Books","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"lifesaving-letters-book-milena-roth-9780295983776","title":"Lifesaving Letters","description":"In 1939, in the shadow of Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia, six-year-old Milena Roth was sent away from her home and her loving parents and taken to safety by what came to be known as the Kindertransport, which rescued ten thousand Jewish children from the Holocaust and placed them with guardians in England. When she boarded the train in Prague, expecting to be reunited soon with her parents, Milena was aware of the danger and terror that surrounded her: 'I knew I would die if I didn't go.' At the end of her long journey she found a xenophobic, racist society, 'an anti-Semitic country in an anti-Semitic world.' Milena settled into the household of her mother's English friend from the Girl Guides, who had agreed to take Milena in and who planned to bring her parents to England as well. She spent six uncertain years waiting for her parents and enduring her foster mother's complex ambivalence. Milena learned only after the war that her parents were deported from Czechoslovakia in July 1943 and died at Auschwitz. Whatever the faults of Milena's guardian, she had been genuinely fond of Milena's mother and preserved her old friend's letters. These she gave to Milena, and they form the heart of this book. The first letter dates from 1930; the last, written less than a year before Milena's parents were captured and murdered, is heavy with 'an air of despairing farewell,' an understanding that escape was no longer possible. As an adult, Milena Roth spent many years piecing together the fate of her family and making sense of her life. In this book, drawing on her mother's poignant letters and on her own memories and experiences, she recounts the challenges of integrating, in adulthood, the wounds and bereavements of childhood and of 'regaining the confidence of my place in the universe that had been lost.'","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49511639548177,"sku":"GOR003244910","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50145093288209,"sku":"GOR006184400","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347822350609,"sku":"CIN0295983779G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51359242944785,"sku":"GOR014237606","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51689574990097,"sku":"CIN0295983779VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0295983779.jpg?v=1751438423"},{"product_id":"odessa-memories-book-nicolas-iljine-9780295983455","title":"Odessa Memories","description":"Odessa, the city founded by Catherine the Great in 1794 on the Black Sea, became a thriving international crossroads less than a century after its creation. This virtual 'melting pot of Russia' - the gateway to Russia from Constantinople, Athens, Venice, Marseilles, and Genoa, and the third largest metropolis in the country - quickly rose to prominence as a European cultural capital and a vibrant centre of Jewish culture. Odessa in its prime shared with St. Petersburg the distinction of being one of the few places in Russia where international ideas and commerce could flourish. In this album of pre-1917 Odessa, Nicolas Iljine has assembled a wealth of old postcards, rare photographs and illustrations from private archives, colourful posters and advertisements, and materials from the Russian National Library that have never before been published, to recapture a lost time in the life of one of the world's great romantic cities. Historian Patricia Herlihy's essay paints textured historical tableaux of Odessa's nightlife and resorts, its theatres and criminal underworld, its schools and industries, and, not least of all, the synagogues, philanthropic societies, and organizations for defence against pogroms that were such a large part of Jewish life in old Odessa. Her portrait brings to life the city as experienced by such luminaries as Isaac Babel, Sholem Aleichem, and Vladimir Jabotinski. Both a visual treat and a serious exploration of Odessa's rich history, culture, and social fabric, this book stands alone as a sumptuous homage to a storied city that has inspired affinity and curiosity all over the world. Nicolas Iljine, European representative for the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, has over 30 years experience in cultural exchange with Russia. Patricia Herlihy is research professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, and professor emeritus of history, Brown University. She is the author of \"Odessa: A History, 1774-1914\" in English and Ukrainian.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":49994579738897,"sku":"CIN0295983450LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346579394833,"sku":"CIN0295983450A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51321025822993,"sku":"CIN0295983450G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53238301753617,"sku":"GOR005611807","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0295983450.jpg?v=1750781174"},{"product_id":"narwhals-book-todd-mcleish-9780295992648","title":"Narwhals","description":"Among all the large whales on Earth, the most unusual and least studied is the narwhal, the northernmost whale on the planet and the one most threatened by global warming. Narwhals thrive in the fjords and inlets of northern Canada and Greenland. These elusive whales, whose long tusks were the stuff of medieval European myths and Inuit legends, are uniquely adapted to the Arctic ecosystem and are able to dive below thick sheets of ice to depths of up to 1,500 meters in search of their prey-halibut, cod, and squid.  Join Todd McLeish as he travels high above the Arctic circle to meet:  Teams of scientific researchers studying the narwhal's life cycle and the mysteries of its tusk  Inuit storytellers and hunters  Animals that share the narwhals' habitat: walruses, polar bears, bowhead and beluga whales, ivory gulls, and two kinds of seals  McLeish consults logbooks kept by whalers and explorers and interviews folklorists and historians to tease out the relationship between the real narwhal and the mythical unicorn. In Colorado, he visits climatologists studying changes in the seasonal cycles of the Arctic ice. From a history of the trade in narwhal tusks to descriptions of narwhals' vocalizations as heard through hydrophones, Narwhals reveals the beauty and thrill of the narwhal and its habitat, and the threat it faces from a rapidly changing world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50096737157393,"sku":"CIN0295992646G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50347803967761,"sku":"CIN0295992646VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0295992646.jpg?v=1750844242"},{"product_id":"ornament-book-james-trilling-9780295981482","title":"Ornament","description":"Ornament - \"the art we add to art,\" as James Trilling defines it - makes people happy; it stands for everything that makes life worth living. But ornament was effectively banned from our world almost a century ago, with modernism's doctrine that ornament was a betrayal of the beauty of function. Devotion to modernism stripped away our historical awareness of ornament and broke the tradition of craft that once kept ornament alive. Now that modernism is itself receding into history, ornament is again acceptable, but moving forward seems to mean reinventing the wheel. \"Not since the artists and connoisseurs of fifteenth-century Italy set out to rediscover classical antiquity has a culture been so completely on its own in relation to the past,\" Trilling writes. This engaging, generously illustrated book - part visual guide, part cultural history - is a wide-ranging consideration of the cultural and symbolic significance of ornament, its rejection by modernism, and its subsequent reinvention. Trilling explains how ornament works, why it has to be explained, and why it matters. His discussion of ornament - in textiles, ceramics, metalwork, architecture, manuscripts, and books - is enhanced by insights drawn from religion, science, ancient and modern literature, political history, and moral philosophy. The result is a resoundingly original, highly readable contribution to art history and, more broadly, to cultural and social history. James Trilling is a writer and art historian. He is former associate curator of Old World textiles at The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., and has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346565107985,"sku":"CIN0295981482G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50761675211025,"sku":"CIN0295981482VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50943589613841,"sku":"GOR009951004","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0295981482.jpg?v=1751291357"},{"product_id":"i-will-tell-of-my-war-story-book-scott-thompson-9780295979434","title":"I Will Tell of My War Story","description":"Chief Joseph's exhausted words of surrender, 'Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever', are the accepted end of the Nez Perce War of 1877, in which several bands of Nez Perce attempting to find a new home outside their diminished Idaho reservation clashed with the U.S. military (and occasionally other Indians) along the Clearwater and Big Hole Rivers, and finally at the foot of the Bear Paw Mountains. However, a number of Nez Perce escaped transportation to Indian Territory with Joseph and continued their flight to Canada, with perhaps a hundred eventually joining Sitting Bull's Lakota.\"I Will Tell of My War Story\" reproduces, describes, and discusses a remarkable series of drawings by an anonymous Indian artist who fought with Chief Joseph and later reached Canada. The drawings, in red, blue, and black pencil, include portraits of principal participants in the war, battle scenes, and views of Nez Perce camp life and celebrations during the war and after. The drawings are preserved in a small pocket ledger labeled 'Cash Book' on the front, which was acquired by Indian Agent Charles D. Warner in the 1880s.It was willed by him to a family living in northern Idaho, and is now in the collection of the Idaho State Historical Society. Scott Thompson worked closely both with the owners and with members of the Nez Perce community in preparing his manuscript. Thompson's detective work and research methods to identify Nez Perce and other parties pictured in the Cash Book make fascinating reading. He is careful to point out what is speculation and what has been documented or attested to by experts on dress, weapons, ceremony, and other aspects of Native culture.The Cash Book drawings are unique in several ways. They are one of very few firsthand pictorial records of the Nez Perce War, representing an even scarcer record of this war as seen from the Indian viewpoint. They contain invaluable historical and ethnographic information not only explicit in the form of military and Native dress, regalia, and quite graphic battle scenes, but also implicit. The drawings reveal an important stage of cultural adaptation as shown by the mixture of white and Native goods combined in Nez Perce material culture during the 1870s and 1880s, and by the artist's assimilation of white\/European drawing techniques such as texture and perspective. The artist combined these drawing techniques with Native art traditions to make exceptionally effective pictorial communications. Scott M. Thompson is an art teacher at Chase Middle School in Spokane, Washington.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50682117390609,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50682119291153,"sku":"CIN0295979437G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0295979437.jpg?v=1751133461"},{"product_id":"i-m-no-hero-book-henry-friedman-9780295978017","title":"I'm No Hero","description":"Henry Friedman was robbed of his childhood by the monstrous evil that annihilated millions of European Jews and changed forever the lives of those who survived. In this text, he confronts the pain, the shame and the bizarre comedy of his passage to adulthood.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50761674981649,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50761677930769,"sku":"CIN0295978015G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0295978015.jpg?v=1750738655"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/samuel-and-althea-stroum-books-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}