Loved iti thought it was very well told there were a couple historical i guess bits of naivete but other than that i still enjoyed this
Symphony for the city of the dead (2015)
Others: Positive National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson delivers a brilliant and riveting account of the Siege of Leningrad and the role played by Russian composer Shostakovich and his Leningrad Symphony. In September 1941, Adolf Hitler s Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history almost three years of bombardment and starvation that culminated in the harsh winter of 1943 1944. More than a million citizens perished. Survivors recall corpses littering the frozen streets, their relatives having neither the means nor the strength to bury them. Residents burned books, furniture, and floorboards to keep warm; they ate family pets and eventually one another to stay alive. Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself was composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who would write a symphony that roused, rallied, eulogized, and commemorated his fellow citizens the Leningrad Symphony, which came to occupy a surprising place of prominence in the eventual Allied victory.
- ISBN:
- 9780763668181
- Length:
- 460 pages
Genres: biography
Lists: …
Similar books
1 of 6
The choice
Edith Eva Eger
1900 · 296 pages · 1 review
Others: Positive"A powerful, moving memoir--and a practical guide to healing--written by Dr. Edith Eva Eger, an eminent psychologist whose own experiences as a Holocaust survivor help her treat patients and allow them to escape the prisons of their own minds. Edith Eger was sixteen years old when the Nazis came to her hometown in Hungary and took her Jewish family to an internment center and then to Auschwitz. Her parents were sent to the gas chamber by Joseph Mengele soon after they arrived at the camp. Hours later Mengele demanded that Edie dance a waltz to 'The Blue Danube' and rewarded her with a loaf of bread that she shared with her fellow prisoners. These women later helped save Edie's life. Edie and her sister survived Auschwitz, were transferred to the Mauthausen and Gunskirchen camps in Austria, and managed to live until the American troops liberated the camps in 1945 and found Edie in a pile of dying bodies. One of the few living Holocaust survivors to remember the horrors of the camps, Edie has chosen to forgive her captors and find joy in her life every day. Years after she was liberated from the concentration camps Edie went back to college to study psychology. She combines her clinical knowledge and her own experiences with trauma to help others who have experienced painful events large and small. Dr. Eger has counselled veterans suffering from PTSD, women who were abused, and many others who learned that they too, can choose to forgive, find resilience, and move forward. She lectures frequently on the power of love and healing. The Choice weaves Eger's personal story with case studies from her work as a psychologist. Her patients and their stories illustrate different phases of healing and show how people can choose to escape the prisons they construct in their minds and find freedom, regardless of circumstance. Eger's story is an inspiration for everyone. And her message is powerful and important: 'Your pain matters and is worth healing: you can choose to be joyful and free.' She is eighty-nine years old and still dancing."--
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also biography85%Red Fury Books loved both14%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations1%Beethoven
Maynard Solomon
1977 · 400 pages · 1 review
Others: PositivePresents a comprehensive study of Beethoven, his career, and his music.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also biography86%Red Fury Books loved bothPersonalize your recommendations14%Pops
Terry Teachout
2010 · 475 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveDraws on previously unavailable sources, including hundreds of private recordings made throughout the second half of the jazz master's life, to assess his artistic achievements and personal life.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also biography86%Red Fury Books loved bothPersonalize your recommendations14%Cut Out Girl
Bart van Es
2018 · 288 pages · 2 reviews
Others: PositiveThe extraordinary true story of a young Jewish girl in Holland under Nazi occupation who finds refuge in the homes of an underground network of foster families, one of them the author's grandparents Bart van Es left Holland for England many years ago, but one story from his Dutch childhood never left him. It was a mystery of sorts: a young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents, who understood the danger they were in all too well. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, there was a falling out, and they were no longer in touch. What was the girl's side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war, and after? So began an investigation that would consume Bart van Es's life, and change it. After some sleuthing, he learned that Lientje was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Somewhat reluctantly, she agreed to meet him, and eventually they struck up a remarkable friendship, even a partnership. The Cut Out Girl braids together a powerful recreation of that intensely harrowing childhood story of Lientje's with the present-day account of Bart's efforts to piece that story together, including bringing some old ghosts back into the light.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also biography91%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations9%Very Easy Death
Simone de Beauvoir
1966 · 106 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveA Very Easy Death has long been considered one of Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpieces. The profoundly moving, day-by-day recounting of her mother’s death “shows the power of compassion when it is allied with acute intelligence” (The Sunday Telegraph). Powerful, touching, and sometimes shocking, this is an end-of-life account that no reader is ever likely to forget.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also biography92%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations8%Escape from Camp 14
Blaine Harden
2012 · 256 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveThe heartwrenching New York Times bestseller about the only known person born inside a North Korean prison camp to have escaped North Korea’s political prison camps have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. No one born and raised in these camps is known to have escaped. No one, that is, except Shin Dong-hyuk. In Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden unlocks the secrets of the world’s most repressive totalitarian state through the story of Shin’s shocking imprisonment and his astounding getaway. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence—he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his mother and brother. The late “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il was recognized throughout the world, but his country remains sealed as his third son and chosen heir, Kim Jong Eun, consolidates power. Few foreigners are allowed in, and few North Koreans are able to leave. North Korea is hungry, bankrupt, and armed with nuclear weapons. It is also a human rights catastrophe. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people work as slaves in its political prison camps. These camps are clearly visible in satellite photographs, yet North Korea’s government denies they exist. Harden’s harrowing narrative exposes this hidden dystopia, focusing on an extraordinary young man who came of age inside the highest security prison in the highest security state. Escape from Camp 14 offers an unequalled inside account of one of the world’s darkest nations. It is a tale of endurance and courage, survival and hope.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also biography93%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations7%
Loved it