The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

Review A New York Times Editors' Choice Shortlisted for the 2019 Lionel Gelber Prize “A brilliant and disturbing analysis, which should be read by anyone wishing to understand the political crisis currently engulfing the world.” — Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens “Combining topical reporting with delvings into the history of ideas and some political-philosophical musing in the author’s own voice, this relatively short book covers a vast canvas. . . . A roller-coaster world calls for a news editor’s skill in processing facts and a philosopher’s ability to dissect ideologies. Snyder has both.” — The Economist “ The Road to Unfreedom is a rich and complex book, punctuated by epigrams that cast heroic clarity upon the disturbing distance the United States has already traveled to the sinister destination in Snyder’s title. If some of Snyder’s assessment seems overstated or premature, he can powerfully reply: He has perceived more accurately than his critics what has already happened. He has earned the right to be heard on what may lie ahead.” — David Frum, The Atlantic “ The Road to Unfreedom offers a brief, potent and carefully documented history of Vladimir Putin’s consolidation of power in Russia, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” — The Chicago Tribune “We are living in dangerous times, Timothy Snyder argues forcefully and eloquently in his new book. . . . To understand Putin, Snyder argues persuasively, you must understand his ideas. . . . The Road to Unfreedom is a good wake-up call.” — Margaret MacMillan, The New York Times Book Review “Deluged by ugly headlines, readers need books that force us to pause, step back and understand how America arrived at this chaotic moment. One of the best such books this year is historian Timothy Snyder’s essential, penetrating look at how toxic ideas, autocratic power and fake news spread from Russia into Ukraine, Western Europe and now to the White House. At a time when the politics of apocalypse haunt American democracy, Snyder helps unpack how we got here—and, maybe, how we can get out.” — Lucas Wittmann, TIME "Snyder’s horror at what has happened in Russia — and at the risks to the US and Europe — gives his writing energy and passion. He is unsparing in his indictment of Putin’s Russia. . . .But he is also clear-eyed about the weaknesses of American society that have made the US vulnerable to Russian intervention and domestic populism." — Gideon Rachman, The Financial Times "Essential reading. . . . Chilling and unignorable." — The Guardian “Of all the books that seek to explain the current crisis of Western liberal democracy, none is more eloquent or frightening than Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom .” — Foreign Affairs “Brilliant. . . . Bleak and eloquent. . . . Snyder’s account of the Trump ascendancy, and the many helping hands given from Russia, is vividly and insightfully told.” —Edward Lucas, The Times (London)Praise for Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny “We are rapidly ripening for fascism. This American writer leaves us with no illusions about ourselves.” — Svetlana Alexievich, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature “A slim book that fits alongside your pocket Constitution and feels only slightly less vital. . . . Grounded in history yet imbued with the fierce urgency of what now.” —Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post “Snyder reasons with unparalleled clarity, throwing the past and future into sharp relief. He has written the rare kind of book that can be read in one sitting but will keep you coming back to help regain your bearings.” — Masha Gessen, author of The Future Is History “As Timothy Snyder explains in his fine and frightening On Tyranny , a minority party now has near-total power and is therefore understandably frightened of awakening the actual will of the people.” — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker “Snyder knows this subject cold. . . . It is impossible to read aphorisms like ‘post-truth is pre-fascism’ and not feel a small chill about the current state of the Republic.” — Daniel W. Drezner, The New York Times Book Review “Snyder draws an unbroken line between the darkest events and personalities of the past and the ones that confront us in the here and now. . . . As he did in On Tyranny , Snyder argues that we are facing a challenge of potentially catastrophic proportions, but he refuses to despair.” –Jonathan Kirsch, Jewish Journal About the Author Timothy Snyder is the Levin Professor of History at Yale University and the author of the books On Tyranny , Black Earth , and Bloodlands . His work has received the literature award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter ONEIndividualism or Totalitarianism (2011)With law our land shall rise, but it will perish with lawlessness.—Njal’s Saga, c. 1280He who can make an exception is sovereign.—Carl Schmitt, 1922The politics of inevitability is the idea that there are no ideas. Those in its thrall deny that ideas matter, proving only that they are in the grip of a powerful one. The cliché of the politics of inevitability is that “there are no alternatives.” To accept this is to deny individual responsibility for seeing history and making change. Life becomes a sleepwalk to a premarked grave in a prepurchased plot.Eternity arises from inevitability like a ghost from a corpse. The capitalist version of the politics of inevitability, the market as a substitute for policy, generates economic inequality that undermines belief in progress. As social mobility halts, inevitability gives way to eternity, and democracy gives way to oligarchy. An oligarch spinning a tale of an innocent past, perhaps with the help of fascist ideas, offers fake protection to people with real pain. Faith that technology serves freedom opens the way to his spectacle. As distraction replaces concentration, the future dissolves in the frustrations of the present, and eternity becomes daily life. The oligarch crosses into real politics from a world of fiction, and governs by invoking myth and manufacturing crisis. In the 2010s, one such person, Vladimir Putin, escorted another, Donald Trump, from fiction to power.Russia reached the politics of eternity first, and Russian leaders protected themselves and their wealth by exporting it. The oligarch-in-chief, Vladimir Putin, chose the fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin as a guide. The poet Czesław Miłosz wrote in 1953 that “only in the middle of the twentieth century did the inhabitants of many European countries come to understand, usually by way of suffering, that complex and difficult philosophy books have a direct influence on their fate.” Some of the philosophy books that matter today were written by Ilyin, who died the year after Miłosz wrote those lines. Ivan Ilyin’s revival by official Russia in the 1990s and 2000s has given his work a second life as the fascism adapted to make oligarchy possible, as the specific ideas that have helped leaders shift from inevitability to eternity.The fascism of the 1920s and 1930s, Ilyin’s era, had three core features: it celebrated will and violence over reason and law; it proposed a leader with a mystical connection to his people; and it characterized globalization as a conspiracy rather than as a set of problems. Revived in conditions of inequality as a politics of eternity, fascism serves oligarchs as a catalyst for transitions away from public discussion and towards political fiction; away from meaningful voting and towards fake democracy; away from the rule of law and towards personalist regimes.History always continues, and alternatives always present themselves. Ilyin represents one of these. He is not the only fascist thinker to have been revived in our century, but he is the most important. He is a guide on the darkening road to unfreedom, which leads from inevitability to eternity. Learning of his ideas and influence, we can look down the road, seeking light and exits. This means thinking historically: asking how ideas from the past can matter in the present, comparing Ilyin’s era of globalization to our own, realizing that then as now the alternatives were real and more than two. The natural successor of the veil of inevitability is the shroud of eternity, but there are alternatives that must be found before the shroud drops. If we accept eternity, we sacrifice individuality, and will no longer see possibility. Eternity is another idea that says that there are no ideas.When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, American politicians of inevitability proclaimed the end of history, while some Russians sought new authorities in an imperial past. When founded in 1922, the Soviet Union inherited most of the territory of the Russian Empire. The Tsar’s domain had been the largest in the world, stretching west to east from the middle of Europe to the shores of the Pacific, and north to south from the Arctic to Central Asia. Though largely a country of peasants and nomads, its middle classes and intellectuals considered, as the twentieth century began, how a empire ruled by an autocrat might become more modern and more just.Ivan Ilyin, born to a noble family in 1883, was typical of his generation as a young man. In the early 1900s, he wanted Russia to become a state governed by laws. After the disaster of the First World War and the experience of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Ilyin became a counterrevolutionary, an advocate of violent methods against revolution, and with time the author of a Christian fascism meant to overcome Bolshevism. In 1922, a few months before the Soviet Union was founded, he was exiled from his homeland. Writing in Berlin, he offered a program to the opponents of the new Soviet Union, known as the Whites. These were men who had fought against the Bolsheviks’ Red Army in the long and bloody Russian Civil War, and then made their way, like Ilyin, into political emigration in Europe. Ilyin later formulated his writings as guidance for Russian leaders who would come to power after the end of the Soviet Union. He died in 1954.After a new Russian Federation emerged from the defunct Soviet Union in 1991, Ilyin’s short book Our Tasks began to circulate in new Russian editions, his collected works were published, and his ideas gained powerful supporters. He had died forgotten in Switzerland; Putin organized a reburial in Moscow in 2005. Ilyin’s personal papers had found their way to Michigan State University; Putin sent an emissary to reclaim them in 2006. By then Putin was citing Ilyin in his annual presidential addresses to the general assembly of the Russian parliament. These were important speeches, composed by Putin himself. In the 2010s, Putin relied upon Ilyin’s authority to explain why Russia had to undermine the European Union and invade Ukraine. When asked to name a historian, Putin cited Ilyin as his authority on the past.The Russian political class followed Putin’s example. His propaganda master Vladislav Surkov adapted Ilyin’s ideas to the world of modern media. Surkov orchestrated Putin’s rise to power and oversaw the consolidation of media that ensured Putin’s seemingly eternal rule. Dmitry Medvedev, the formal head of Putin’s political party, recommended Ilyin to Russian youth. Ilyin’s name was on the lips of the leaders of the fake opposition parties, the communists and (far-right) Liberal Democrats, who played a part in creating the simulacrum of democracy that Ilyin had recommended. Ilyin was cited by the head of the constitutional court, even as his idea that law meant love for a leader ascended. He was mentioned by Russia’s regional governors as Russia became the centralized state that he had advocated. In early 2014, members of Russia’s ruling party and all of Russia’s civil servants received a collection of Ilyin’s political publications from the Kremlin. In 2017, Russian television commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution with a film that presented Ilyin as a moral authority.Ilyin was a politician of eternity. His thought held sway as the capitalist version of the politics of inevitability collapsed in the Russia of the 1990s and 2000s. As Russia became an organized kleptocracy in the 2010s, as domestic inequality reached stupefying proportions, Ilyin’s influence peaked. The Russian assault on the European Union and the United States revealed, by targeting them, certain political virtues that Ilyin the philosopher ignored or despised: individualism, succession, integration, novelty, truth, equality.Ilyin first proposed his ideas to Russians a century ago, after the Russian Revolution. And yet he has become a philosopher for our time. No thinker of the twentieth century has been rehabilitated in such grand style in the twenty-first, nor enjoyed such influence on world politics. If this went unnoticed it was because we are in the thrall of inevitability: we believe that ideas do not matter. To think historically is to accept that the unfamiliar might be significant, and to work to make the unfamiliar the familiar. Our politics of inevitability echo those of Ilyin’s years. Like the period between the late 1980s to the early 2010s, so the period between late 1880s to the early 1910s was one of globalization. The conventional wisdom of both eras held that export-led growth would bring enlightened politics and end fanaticism. This optimism broke during the First World War and the revolutions and counterrevolutions that followed. Ilyin was himself an early example of this trend. A youthful supporter of the rule of law, he shifted to the extreme Right while admiring tactics he had observed on the extreme Left. The former leftist Benito Mussolini led his fascists in the March on Rome soon after Ilyin was expelled from Russia; the philosopher saw in the Duce hope for a corrupted world.Ilyin regarded fascism as the politics of the world to come. In exile in the 1920s, he was troubled that Italians had arrived at fascism before Russians. He consoled himself with the idea that the Russian Whites were the inspiration for Mussolini’s coup: “the White movement as such is deeper and broader than [Italian] fascism.” The depth and breadth, Ilyin explained, came from an embrace of the sort of Christianity that demanded the blood sacrifice of God’s enemies. Believing in the 1920s that Russia’s White exiles could still win power, Ilyin addressed them as “my White brothers, fascists.”Ilyin was similarly impressed by Adolf Hitler. Although he visited Italy and vacationed in Switzerland, Ilyin’s home between 1922 and 1938 was Berlin, where he worked for a government-sponsored scholarly institute. Ilyin’s mother was German, he undertook psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud in German, he studied German philosophy, and he wrote in German as well and as often as he did in Russian. In his day job he edited and wrote critical studies of Soviet politics (A World at the Abyss in German and The Poison of Bolshevism in Russian, for example, just in the year 1931). Ilyin saw Hitler as a defender of civilization from Bolshevism: the Führer, he wrote, had “performed an enormous service for all of Europe” by preventing further revolutions on the Russian model. Ilyin noted with approval that Hitler’s antisemitism was derivative of the ideology of Russian Whites. He bemoaned that “Europe does not understand the National Socialist movement.” Nazism was above all a “Spirit” of which Russians must partake.In 1938, Ilyin left Germany for Switzerland, where he lived until his death in 1954. He was supported financially in Switzerland by the wife of a German-American businessman, and also earned some money by giving public lectures in German. The essence of these lectures, as a Swiss scholar noted, was that Russia should be understood not as present communist danger but as future Christian salvation. According to Ilyin, communism had been inflicted upon innocent Russia by the decadent West. One day Russia would liberate itself and others with the help of Christian fascism. A Swiss reviewer characterized his books as “national in the sense of opposing the entire West.”Ilyin’s political views did not change as the Second World War began. His contacts in Switzerland were men of the Far Right: Rudolf Grob believed that Switzerland should imitate Nazi Germany; Theophil Spoeri belonged to a group that banned Jews and Masons; Albert Riedweg was a right-wing lawyer whose brother Franz was the most prominent Swiss citizen in the Nazi extermination apparatus. Franz Riedweg married the daughter of the German minister of war and joined the Nazi SS. He took part in the German invasions of Poland, France, and the Soviet Union, the last of which Ilyin saw as a trial of Bolshevism in which the Russian nation might prevail.When the Soviet Union won the war and extended its empire westward in 1945, Ilyin began to write for future generations of Russians. He characterized his work as shining a small lantern in a great darkness. With that small flame, Russian leaders of the 2010s have begun a conflagration.Ilyin was consistent. His first major work of philosophy, in Russian (1916), was also his last major work of philosophy, in its edited German translation (1946).The one good in the universe, Ilyin maintained, had been God’s totality before creation. When God created the world, he shattered the single and total Truth that was himself. Ilyin divided the world into the “categorical,” the lost realm of that single perfect concept; and the “historical,” human life with its facts and passions. For him, the tragedy of existence was that facts could not be reassembled into God’s totality, nor passions into God’s purpose. The Romanian thinker E. M. Cioran, himself once an advocate of Christian fascism, explained the concept: before history, God is perfect and eternal; once he begins history, God seems “frenetic, committing error upon error.” As Ilyin put it: “When God sank into empirical existence he was deprived of his harmonious unity, logical reason, and organizational purpose.”For Ilyin, our human world of facts and passions is senseless. Ilyin found it immoral that a fact might be grasped in its historical setting: “the world of empirical existence cannot be theologically justified.” Passions are evil. God also erred in his creation by releasing “the evil nature of the sensual.” God yielded to a “romantic” impulse by making beings, ourselves, who are moved by sex. And so “the romantic content of the world overcomes the rational form of thought, and thought cedes its place to unthinking purpose,” physical love. God left us amidst “spiritual and moral relativism.”By condemning God, Ilyin empowered philosophy, or at least one philosopher: himself. He preserved the vision of a divine “totality” that existed before the creation of the world, but left it to himself to reveal how it might be regained. Having removed God from the scene, Ilyin himself could issue judgments about what is and what ought to be. There is a Godly world and it must be somehow redeemed, and this sacred work will fall to men who understand their predicament—thanks to Ilyin and his books.The vision was a totalitarian one. We should long for a condition in which we think and feel as one, which means not to think and feel at all. We must cease to exist as individual human beings. “Evil begins,” Ilyin wrote, “where the person begins.” Our very individuality only proves that the world is flawed: “the empirical fragmentation of human existence is an incorrect, a transitory, and a metaphysically untrue condition of the world.” Ilyin despised the middle classes, whose civil society and private life, he thought, kept the world broken and God at bay. To belong to a layer of society that offered individuals social advancement promise of movement was to be the worst kind of human being: “this estate constitutes the very lowest level of social existence.” Read more

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

Review “ Babel has earned tremendous praise and deserves all of it. It’s Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass by way of N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season : inventive and engaging, passionate and precise. Kuang is fiercely disciplined even when she’s playful and experimental … Like the silver bars at its heart—like empires and academic institutions both— Babel derives its power from sustaining a contradiction, from trying to hold in your head both love and hatred for the charming thing that sustains itself by devouring you.”  — New York Times Book Review “A fantastical takedown of 19th-century imperialism that’s as meaty as its title. R.F. Kuang proved her prowess at blending history and magic with her debut series, The Poppy War , and she’s done it once again in this sweeping novel that blends historical fantasy and dark academia…If, as Babel suggests, words contain magic, then Kuang has written something spellbinding.” — Oprah Daily “Absolutely phenomenal. One of the most brilliant, razor-sharp books I've had the pleasure of reading that isn't just an alternative fantastical history, but an interrogative one; one that grabs colonial history and the Industrial Revolution, turns it over, and shakes it out.” — S.A. Chakraborty, bestselling author of The City of Brass “A fantastically made work, moving and enraging by turns, with an ending to blow down walls.” — The Guardian "Kuang follows her award-winning Poppy War trilogy with an engaging fantasy about the magic of language. Her richly descriptive stand-alone novel about an ever-expanding, alternate-world empire powered by magically enhanced silver talismans scrutinizes linguistics, history, politics, and the social customs of Victorian-era Great Britain." — Booklist (starred review) "It's ambitious and powerful while displaying a deep love of language and literature...Dark academia as it should be."  — Kirkus Reviews “The true magic of Kuang’s novel lies in its ability to be both rigorously academic and consistently welcoming to the reader, making translation on the page feel as enchanting and powerful as any effects it can achieve with the aid of silver.” — Oxford Review of Books “R.F. Kuang has written a masterpiece. Through a meticulously researched and a wholly impressive deep dive into linguistics and the politics of language and translation, Kuang weaves a story that is part love-hate letter to academia, part scathing indictment of the colonial enterprise, and all fiery revolution.”  — Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling author of Black Sun " Babel is a masterpiece. A stunningly brilliant exploration of identity, belonging, the cost of empire and revolution—and the true power of language. Kuang has written the book the world has been waiting for." — Peng Shepherd, bestselling author of The Cartographers "Kuang has outdone herself. Babel is brilliant, vicious, sensitive, epic, and intimate; it's both a love letter and a declaration of war. It's a perfect book."  — Alix E. Harrow, bestselling author of A Mirror Mended “A brilliant and often harrowing exploration of violence, etymology, colonialism, and the intersections that run between them. Babel is as profound as it is moving.”  >  — Alexis Henderson, author of The Year of the Witching “An astonishing mix of erudition and emotion. What Kuang has done here, I have never before seen in literature.” — Tochi Onyebuchi, author of Goliath “If you only read one book this year, read this one. Through the incredibly believable alternative HF, Kuang has distilled the truth about imperialism and colonization in our world. Kuang’s depth of knowledge of history and linguistics is breathtaking. This book is a masterpiece in every sense of the word, a true privilege to read.”  — Jesse Sutanto, author of Dial A for Aunties "A book that confirms Kuang as a major talent." — SFX "BABEL is one of the finest standalone novels I’ve read. It is a victory for literature, and its quality is what every other dark academia novel should strive to be. Paying homage to the importance of languages, translations, identity, and ethnicities, BABEL is one of the most important works of the year." — Novel Notions " Babel is ambitious, engaging, impactful, and executed with brutal effectiveness." — reader@work About the Author Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times bestselling and Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of Babel , the Poppy War trilogy, and the forthcoming Yellowface . She is a Marshall Scholar, translator, and has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

Review " Superb, enthralling and necessarily terrifying . . . the accident unfurls with a horrible inevitability. Weaving together the experiences of those who were there that night, Higginbotham marshals the details so meticulously that every step feels spring-loaded with tension. . . . Amid so much rich reporting and scrupulous analysis, some major themes emerge. . . . Higginbotham’s extraordinary book is another advance in the long struggle to fill in some of the gaps, bringing much of what was hidden into the light." —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times "A compelling, panoramic account." — The Christian Science Monitor “An account that reads almost like the script for a movie . . . Mr. Higginbotham has captured the terrible drama.” — The Wall Street Journal " Midnight in Chernobyl is top-notch historical narrative: a tense, fast-paced, engrossing, and revelatory product of more than a decade of research. . . . A stunningly detailed account . . . For all its wealth of information, the work never becomes overwhelming or difficult to follow. Higginbotham humanizes the tale, maintaining a focus on the people involved and the choices, both heroic and not, they made in unimaginable circumstances. This is an essential human tale with global consequences." — Booklist , Starred Review "Written with authority, this superb book reads like a classic disaster story and reveals a Soviet empire on the brink. . . . [A] vivid and exhaustive account.”— Kirkus , Starred Review "This is a highly detailed, carefully documented, beautifully narrated telling of this breathtakingly complex accident and its mitigation. Higginbotham’s handling of the sociopolitical context is also deft." —Nature "In fascinating detail, Higginbotham chronicles how the drama played out, showing that Soviet hubris in part led to the accident and Soviet secrecy compounded it." — Newsday " Midnight in Chernobyl is wonderful and chilling. . . . Adam Higginbotham tells the story of the disaster and its gruesome aftermath with thriller-like flair. . . . It is a tale of hubris and doomed ambition, featuring Communist party bosses and hapless engineers, victims and villains, confusion and cover-up." — The Guardian "More harrowing than any horror movie and more gripping than any thriller. . . Higginbotham creates a history book with the headlong pacing of fiction. . . . Read it to be scared. Read it to be angry. Read it because Higginbotham is a great writer in total control of his material. Just read it. This book will haunt you forever." — The Oklahoman "Highly readable . . . Higginbotham [is] a skilled science writer. . . . Mr. Higginbotham’s book reflects extensive on-the-scene research. . . . Disaster was inevitable, and Mr. Higginbotham vividly describes the futile attempts of engineers to bring a runaway reactor under control." —The Washington Times “The book reads like an adventure novel, but it’s a richly researched non-fiction work by a brilliant storyteller. . . . Get and read this gripping account to understand why people are still so afraid of nuclear power.” — Skeptic Magazine 's Science Salon “Higginbotham’s scrupulously reported book catalogues the chain of events that occasionally reads as stranger than fiction. The book is more than a gripping history that recounts in great detail events at the reactors; it also offers contextual insights into the Soviet era that help to explain how such a failure could occur. . . . As is the case with many great nonfiction books, it has the urgency and intrigue of the very best thrillers.” — Wired “Adam Higginbotham's brilliantly well-written Midnight In Chernobyl draws on new sources and original research to illuminate the true story of one of history’s greatest technological failures—and, along with it, the bewildering reality of everyday life during the final years of the Soviet Union.” — Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History and Red Famine: Stalin’s War On Ukraine “A masterpiece of reporting and storytelling that puts us on the ground for one of the most important events of the twentieth century. Adam Higginbotham opens a world nearly impossible to penetrate, then finds truths inside we weren’t supposed to discover. As readers, we could not hope for a more thrilling and visceral adventure. As citizens of the world, we ignore Midnight in Chernobyl at our peril.” — Robert Kurson, New York Times bestselling author of Shadow Divers and Rocket Men “Here is a triumph of investigative reportage, exquisite science writing, and heart-pounding storytelling. With Midnight in Chernobyl , Adam Higginbotham gives us a glimpse of Armageddon, but carries it off with such narrative verve that he somehow makes it entertaining . One thing is assured: After reading this astonishing, terrifying book, you will never think of nuclear power in quite the same way again.” —Hampton Sides, author of In the Kingdom of Ice and On Desperate Ground About the Author Adam Higginbotham writes for The New Yorker , The New York Times Magazine , Wired , GQ , and Smithsonian . The author of Midnight in Chernobyl , he lives in New York City. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Midnight in Chernobyl Read more

The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II

Review “A monument to courage . . . It would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original. . . . [Svetlana] Alexievich’s account of the second world war as seen through the eyes of hundreds of women is an extraordinary thing. . . . Her achievement is as breathtaking as the experiences of these women are awe-inspiring.” — The Guardian “Magnificent . . . After decades of the war being remembered by ‘men writing about men,’ she aims to give voice to an aging generation of women who found themselves dismissed not just as storytellers but also as veterans, mothers and even potential wives. . . . Alexievich presents less a straightforward oral history of World War II than a literary excavation of memory itself.” — The New York Times Book Review “Could not have appeared at a more opportune time . . . Women did everything—this book reminds and reveals. They learned to pilot planes and drop bombs, to shoot targets from great distances. . . . Alexievich has turned their voices into history’s psalm.” — The Boston Globe “Harrowing and moving . . . Alexievich did an enormous service, recovering these stories. . . . The Unwomanly Face of War tells the story of these forgotten women, and its great achievement is that it gives credit to their contribution but also to the hell they endured.” — The Washington Post “We should resolve to read this book alongside the world news report. . . .  Ms. Alexievich never tries to simplify. . . . Refusing to pass judgment, crediting all, she listens, suffers and brings to life. . . . It took years and many miles of traveling to find and capture all the testimonies here. . . . We still end up feeling that we have been sitting at her side. With her, we hear the memories of partisans, guerrilla fighters trapped behind the lines.” — The Wall Street Journal “Alexievich has forged her own distinctive identity: as a witness to witnesses who usually go unheard. . . . In a ‘post-truth’ era when journalism is under pressure—susceptible to propaganda, sensationalism, and ‘alternative facts’—the power of documentary literature stands out more clearly than ever. . . . Listen to Alexievich.” — The Atlantic “[A] remarkable collection of testimonies . . . Sitting at kitchen tables, Alexievich coaxes out of the women stories that describe a reality vastly different from the officially sanctioned version. . . . They speak guardedly but vividly of fleeting encounters, deep relationships, unexpressed feelings.” — The New Yorker “Continually shocking and tearjerking . . . The introductory materials here, in which Alexievich quotes from the journals she kept while working on the project and from her later reflections and dealings with censors, are as compelling as the primary text.” — The Christian Science Monitor “Alexievich gives us an idea of how the army women were perceived by society, during the war and afterwards. . . . These voices, thanks to Alexievich, have themselves become part of history.” — Financial Times About the Author Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, in 1948 and has spent most of her life in the Soviet Union and present-day Belarus, with prolonged periods of exile in Western Europe. Starting out as a journalist, she developed her own nonfiction genre, which gathers a chorus of voices to describe a specific historical moment. Her works include The Unwomanly Face of War (1985), Last Witnesses (1985), Zinky Boys (1990), Voices from Chernobyl (1997), and Secondhand Time (2013). She has won many international awards, including the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. “I Don’t Want to Remember . . .”An old three-story house on the outskirts of Minsk, one of those built hastily just after the war and, as it then seemed, not meant to last, now cozily overgrown with old jasmine bushes. With it began a search that went on for seven years, seven extraordinary and tormenting years, during which I was to discover for myself the world of war, a world the meaning of which we cannot fully fathom. I would experience pain, hatred, temptation. Tenderness and perplexity . . . I would try to understand what distinguishes death from murder and where the boundary is between the human and the inhuman. How does a human being remain alone with the insane thought that he or she might kill another human being? Is even obliged to? And I would discover that in war there is, apart from death, a multitude of other things; there is everything that is in our ordinary life. War is also life. I would run into countless human truths. Mysteries. I would ponder questions the existence of which I had never suspected. For instance, why is it that we are not surprised at evil, why this absence in us of surprise in the face of evil?A road and many roads . . . Dozens of trips all over the country, hundreds of recorded cassettes, thousands of yards of tape. Five hundred meetings, after which I stopped counting; faces left my memory, only voices remained. A chorus resounds in my memory. An enormous chorus; sometimes the words almost cannot be heard, only the weeping. I confess: I did not always believe that I was strong enough for this path, that I could make it. Could reach the end. There were moments of doubt and fear, when I wanted to stop or step aside, but I no longer could. I fell captive to evil, I looked into the abyss in order to understand something. Now I seem to have acquired some knowledge, but there are still more questions, and fewer answers.But then, at the very beginning of the path, I had no suspicion of that . . .What led me to this house was a short article in the local newspaper about a farewell party given at the Udarnik automobile factory in Minsk for the senior accountant Maria Ivanovna Morozova, who was retiring. During the war, the article said, she had been a sniper, had eleven combat decorations, and her total as a sniper was seventy-five killings. It was hard to bring together mentally this woman’s wartime profession with her peacetime occupation. With the routine newspaper photograph. With all these tokens of the ordinary.. . . A small woman with a long braid wound in a girlish crown around her head was sitting in a big armchair, covering her face with her hands.“No, no, I won’t. Go back there again? I can’t . . . To this day I can’t watch war movies. I was very young then. I dreamed and grew, grew and dreamed. And then—the war. I even feel sorry for you . . . I know what I’m talking about . . . Do you really want to know that? I ask you like a daughter . . .”Of course she was surprised.“But why me? You should talk to my husband, he likes to remember . . . The names of the commanders, the generals, the numbers of units—he remembers everything. I don’t. I only remember what happened to me. My own war. There were lots of people around, but you were always alone, because a human being is always alone in the face of death. I remember the terrifying solitude.”She asked me to take the tape recorder away.“I need your eyes in order to tell about it, and that will hinder me.”But a few minutes later she forgot about it . . .Maria Ivanovna Morozova (Ivanushkina)corporal, sniperThis will be a simple story . . . The story of an ordinary Russian girl, of whom there were many then . . .The place where my native village, Diakovskoe, stood is now the Proletarian District of Moscow. When the war began, I was not quite eighteen. Long, long braids, down to my knees . . . Nobody believed the war would last, everybody expected it to end any moment. We would drive out the enemy. I worked on a kolkhoz, then finished accounting school and began to work. The war went on . . . My girlfriends . . . They tell me: “We should go to the front.” It was already in the air. We all signed up and took classes at the local recruitment office. Maybe some did it just to keep one another company, I don’t know. They taught us to shoot a combat rifle, to throw hand grenades. At first . . . I’ll confess, I was afraid to hold a rifle, it was unpleasant. I couldn’t imagine that I’d go and kill somebody, I just wanted to go to the front. We had forty people in our group. Four girls from our village, so we were all friends; five from our neighbors’; in short—some from each village. All of them girls . . . The men had all gone to the war already, the ones who could. Sometimes a messenger came in the middle of the night, gave them two hours to get ready, and they’d be carted off. They could even be taken right from the fields. (Silence.) I don’t remember now—whether we had dances; if we did, the girls danced with girls, there were no boys left. Our villages became quiet.Soon an appeal came from the central committee of Komsomol for the young people to go and defend the Motherland, since the Germans were already near Moscow. Hitler take Moscow? We won’t allow it! I wasn’t the only one . . . All our girls expressed the wish to go to the front. My father was already fighting. We thought we were the only ones like that . . . Special ones . . . But we came to the recruitment office and there were lots of girls there. I just gasped! My heart was on fire, so intensely. The selection was very strict. First of all, of course, you had to have robust health. I was afraid they wouldn’t take me, because as a child I was often sick, and my frame was weak, as my mother used to say. Other children insulted me because of it when I was little. And then, if there were no other children in a household except the girl who wanted to go to the front, they also refused: a mother should not be left by herself. Ah, our darling mothers! Their tears never dried . . . They scolded us, they begged . . . But in our family there were two sisters and two brothers left—true, they were all much younger than me, but it counted anyway. There was one more thing: everybody from our kolkhoz was gone, there was nobody to work in the fields, and the chairman didn’t want to let us go. In short, they refused us. We went to the district committee of Komsomol, and there—refusal. Then we went as a delegation from our district to the regional Komsomol. There was great inspiration in all of us; our hearts were on fire. Again we were sent home. We decided, since we were in Moscow, to go to the central committee of Komsomol, to the top, to the first secretary. To carry through to the end . . . Who would be our spokesman? Who was brave enough? We thought we would surely be the only ones there, but it was impossible even to get into the corridor, let alone to reach the secretary. There were young people from all over the country, many of whom had been under occupation, spoiling to be revenged for the death of their near ones. From all over the Soviet Union. Yes, yes . . . In short, we were even taken aback for a while . . .By evening we got to the secretary after all. They asked us: “So, how can you go to the front if you don’t know how to shoot?” And we said in a chorus that we had already learned to shoot . . . “Where? . . . How? . . . And can you apply bandages?” You know, in that group at the recruiting office our local doctor taught us to apply bandages. That shut them up, and they began to look at us more seriously. Well, we had another trump card in our hands, that we weren’t alone, there were forty of us, and we could all shoot and give first aid. They told us: “Go and wait. Your question will be decided in the affirmative.” How happy we were as we left! I’ll never forget it . . . Yes, yes . . .And literally in a couple of days we received our call-up papers . . .We came to the recruiting office; we went in one door at once and were let out another. I had such a beautiful braid, and I came out without it . . . Without my braid . . . They gave me a soldier’s haircut . . . They also took my dress. I had no time to send the dress or the braid to my mother . . . She very much wanted to have something of mine left with her . . . We were immediately dressed in army shirts, forage caps, given kit bags and loaded into a freight train—on straw. But fresh straw, still smelling of the field.We were a cheerful cargo. Cocky. Full of jokes. I remember laughing a lot.Where were we going? We didn’t know. In the end it was not so important to us what we’d be. So long as it was at the front. Everybody was fighting—and we would be, too. We arrived at the Shchelkovo station. Near it was a women’s sniper school. It turned out we were sent there. To become snipers. We all rejoiced. This was something real. We’d be shooting.We began to study. We studied the regulations: of garrison service, of discipline, of camouflage in the field, of chemical protection. The girls all worked very hard. We learned to assemble and disassemble a sniper’s rifle with our eyes shut, to determine wind speed, the movement of the target, the distance to the target, to dig a foxhole, to crawl on our stomach—we had already mastered all that. Only so as to get to the front the sooner. In the line of fire . . . Yes, yes . . . At the end of the course I got the highest grade in the exam for combat and noncombat service. The hardest thing, I remember, was to get up at the sound of the alarm and be ready in five minutes. We chose boots one or two sizes larger, so as not to lose time getting into them. We had five minutes to dress, put our boots on, and line up. There were times when we ran out to line up in boots over bare feet. One girl almost had her feet frostbitten. The sergeant major noticed it, reprimanded her, and then taught us to use footwraps. He stood over us and droned: “How am I to make soldiers out of you, my dear girls, and not targets for Fritz?” Dear girls, dear girls . . . Everybody loved us and pitied us all the time. And we resented being pitied. Weren’t we soldiers like everybody else?Well, so we got to the front. Near Orsha . . . The 62nd Infantry Division . . . I remember like today, the commander, Colonel Borodkin, saw us and got angry: “They’ve foisted girls on me. What is this, some sort of women’s round dance?” he said. “Corps de ballet! It’s war, not a dance. A terrible war . . .” But then he invited us, treated us to a dinner. And we heard him ask his adjutant: “Don’t we have something sweet for tea?” Well, of course, we were offended: What does he take us for? We came to make war . . . And he received us not as soldiers, but as young girls. At our age we could have been his daughters. “What am I going to do with you, my dears? Where did they find you?” That’s how he treated us, that’s how he met us. And we thought we were already seasoned warriors . . . Yes, yes . . . At war!The next day he made us show that we knew how to shoot, how to camouflage ourselves in the field. We did the shooting well, even better than the men snipers, who were called from the front for two days of training, and who were very surprised that we were doing their work. It was probably the first time in their lives they saw women snipers. After the shooting it was camouflage in the field . . . The colonel came, walked around looking at the clearing, then stepped on a hummock—saw nothing. Then the “hummock” under him begged: “Ow, Comrade Colonel, I can’t anymore, you’re too heavy.” How we laughed! He couldn’t believe it was possible to camouflage oneself so well. “Now,” he said, “I take back my words about young girls.” But even so he suffered . . . Couldn’t get used to us for a long time.Then came the first day of our “hunting” (so snipers call it). My partner was Masha Kozlova. We camouflaged ourselves and lay there: I’m on the lookout, Masha’s holding her rifle. Suddenly Masha says: “Shoot, shoot! See—it’s a German . . .”I say to her: “I’m the lookout. You shoot!”“While we’re sorting it out,” she says, “he’ll get away.”But I insist: “First we have to lay out the shooting map, note the landmarks: where the shed is, where the birch tree . . .”“You want to start fooling with paperwork like at school? I’ve come to shoot, not to mess with paperwork!”I see that Masha is already angry with me.“Well, shoot then, why don’t you?”We were bickering like that. And meanwhile, in fact, the German officer was giving orders to the soldiers. A wagon arrived, and the soldiers formed a chain and handed down some sort of freight. The officer stood there, gave orders, then disappeared. We’re still arguing. I see he’s already appeared twice, and if we miss him again, that will be it. We’ll lose him. And when he appeared for the third time—it was just momentary; now he’s there, now he’s gone—I decided to shoot. I decided, and suddenly a thought flashed through my mind: he’s a human being; he may be an enemy, but he’s a human being—and my hands began to tremble, I started trembling all over, I got chills. Some sort of fear . . . That feeling sometimes comes back to me in dreams even now . . . After the plywood targets, it was hard to shoot at a living person. I see him in the telescopic sight, I see him very well. As if he’s close . . . And something in me resists . . . Something doesn’t let me, I can’t make up my mind. But I got hold of myself, I pulled the trigger . . . He waved his arms and fell. Whether he was dead or not, I didn’t know. But after that I trembled still more, some sort of terror came over me: I killed a man?! I had to get used even to the thought of it. Yes . . . In short—horrible! I’ll never forget it . . .When we came back, we started telling our platoon what had happened to us. They called a meeting. We had a Komsomol leader, Klava Ivanova; she reassured me: “They should be hated, not pitied . . .” Her father had been killed by the fascists. We would start singing, and she would beg us: “No, don’t, dear girls. Let’s first defeat these vermin, then we’ll sing.” Read more

When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery

Review "Dramatic, moving, and utterly fascinating." ― New York Times Book Review "By turns comic and tragic, this memoir…is a must-read for neurosurgeons but also of interest to most clinicians." ― Chris Barrett, The BMJ "Dr. Frank Vertosick provides an amusing, insightful and honest inside view of the training of the neurosurgeon. This highly readable account of daily life on the wards shows all the humility, fortitude, and humanity that genuinely underlies this sometimes not well-understood but genuinely wonderful profession." ― Dr. David W. Roberts, professor of surgery (neurosurgery), Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center " When the Air Hits Your Brain lets you feel the pain, grief and joy of practicing medicine. This book should be read by every medical student, doctor and present or potential patient. In other words, by all of us." ― Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of Love, Medicine and Miracles "Writing with humor and compassion, but without sentimentality, Vertosick shows us that neurosurgeons, those gods of the operating room, are humans, too." ― Kirkus Reviews About the Author Frank Vertosick Jr., MD , is the author of Why We Hurt and When the Air Hits Your Brain . He retired from surgery due to Parkinson’s disease in 2002, but he still treats office patients in Washington, Pennsylvania.

Sobreviviendo un yugo desigual en el matrimonio (Spanish Edition)

From the Back Cover Someone came between Lee and Leslie Strobel, threatening to shipwreck their marriage. No, it wasn't an old flame. It was Jesus Christ.Leslie's decision to become a follower of Jesus brought heated opposition from her skeptical husband. They began to experience conflict over a variety of issues, from finances to child-rearing. But over time, Leslie learned how to survive a spiritual mismatch. Today they're both Christians--and they want you to know that there is hope if you're a Christian married to a nonbeliever. In their intensely personal and practical book, they reveal:* Surprising insights into the thinking of non-Christian spouses* A dozen steps toward making the most of your mismatched marriage* Eight principles for reaching out to your partner with the gospel* Advice for raising your children in a spiritually mismatched home* How to pray for your spouse--plus a 30-day guide to get you started* What to do if you're both Christians but one lags behind spiritually* Advice for single Christians to avoid the pain of a mismatch. About the Author Lee Strobel es el galardonado editor legal de The Chicago Tribune y es autor best seller de El caso de Cristo , El caso de la fe , El caso del creador y El caso de la gracia . Posee una licenciatura en periodismo otorgada por la Universidad de Missouri y un master de estudios en leyes otorgado por la Universidad de Yale, Lee ha ganado cuatro medallones de oro por la excelencia en la publicación y es coautor del libro cristiano del año. Se desempeña como profesor de pensamiento cristiano en la Universidad Bautista de Houston Baptist. Su historia ahora se revela en la pelicula cinamatográfica The Case for Christ. Para más información visita el sitio web: leestrobel.com Leslie Strobel ha estado participando en los ministerios de mujeres y en consejería personal en las iglesias donde los Strobels ha servido. Ella y Lee residen en Orange County, CA y son padres de dos hijos mayores. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Sobreviviendo un yugo desigual en el matrimonio By LEE STROBEL LESLIE STROBEL Zondervan Copyright © 2008 Lee StrobelAll right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8297-4514-6 Contents Cmo Leslie y yo escribimos este libro.................................................................91. Entramos en la desigualdad..........................................................................132. En palabras de Leslie: Una historia de soledad, temor, perseverancia y fe...........................313. En palabras de Lee: Una historia de ira, resentimiento, conviccin y renovacin.....................454. Los jugadores: Dios, tu cnyuge y un mentor.........................................................635. Da a tu cnyuge lo que Dios te dio..................................................................896. El enfriamiento, los hijos y la pregunta ms desafiante.............................................1117. Antes de hablarle de Dios a tu cnyuge..............................................................1338. Qu decir cuando las palabras son difciles de encontrar............................................1559. El poder de un cnyuge que ora......................................................................17910. Cmo evitar las trampas de las citas...............................................................20311. Cuando los cristianos no estn sincronizados.......................................................229Conclusin: Hacia el futuro de tu desigualdad..........................................................249Notas..................................................................................................257Apndice 1: Tu aventura de oracin durante treinta das................................................269Apndice 2: Gua de aplicacin.........................................................................287Apndice 3: Gua de recursos...........................................................................299Apndice 4: Una carta a tu cnyuge.....................................................................301 Chapter One Entramos en la desigualdad La temperatura estaba fresca y el da claro, despus de la Navidad de 1966 cuando mi amigo Pete y yo tomamos el tren desde nuestros hogares suburbanos hasta el centro de Chicago. Durante un rato paseamos alrededor de Loop, divirtindonos con el bullicio de la ciudad, pero luego me lleg la hora de traerlo a un peregrinaje que yo haca tan a menudo como poda. Recorrimos a pie el puente de la Avenida Michigan y nos detuvimos frente al edificio Wrigley. All estuvimos con las manos en los bolsillos buscando calor, mientras que contemplbamos, al otro lado de la calle, el majestuoso gtico de la Torre Tribune. No puedo recordar si pronunci la palabra en voz alta o si meramente hizo eco en mi mente: " Algn da ". Pete estaba quieto. Los estudiantes de primer ao de la escuela secundaria estn autorizados para soar. Nos quedamos durante unos cuantos minutos y observamos cmo las personas entraban y salan de la oficina del peridico. Eran los reporteros cuyos artculos yo estudiaba cada maana? O los editores que los despachaban alrededor del mundo? O los impresores que manejaban las prensas gigantescas? Di rienda suelta a mi imaginacin hasta que se agot la paciencia de Pete. Dimos la vuelta y caminamos calle arriba por la Milla Magnfica, pasando por las tiendas pretenciosas y de precios muy altos hasta que decidimos emprender la caminata de veinte minutos de regreso a la estacin de trenes. Cuando pasbamos frente al Teatro Cvico de la Opera, me pareci escuchar una voz familiar llamndome desde la multitud. "Oye, Lee, qu ests haciendo aqu?" llam Clay, otro estudiante de la escuela secundaria que viva en mi vecindario. No le contest enseguida. Me cautiv la muchacha que tena a su lado, sosteniendo su mano y usando su brazalete de identificacin de oro. Su cabello castao le caa sobre los hombros, su sonrisa era ya tmida, ya confiada. "Oh, bueno, oh ... solo haciendo nada", me las arregl para decirle a Clay, aunque mis ojos estaban clavados en su novia. Cuando por fin l nos present a Leslie, ya yo no estaba pensando mucho en Clay ni en Pete ni en el hecho de que mis manos estuvieran entumecidas por el fro y que yo estuviera parado en la nieve incrustada de holln que me llegaba a los tobillos. Sin embargo, cuando Clay pronunci el nombre de Leslie, me asegur de estar muy atento porque saba que necesitara deletrear el apellido para buscarlo en la gua de telfonos. Despus de todo, en el amor y en la guerra todo es lcito. De un cuento de hadas a una pesadilla En cuanto a Leslie, descubr ms adelante que ella no estaba pensando en Clay cuando esa tarde los dos subieron al tren de regreso a sus casas. Ella lleg a su hogar en la suburbana Palatine, fue a la cocina y encontr a su madre, una escocesa casada con un soldado americano que conoci durante la guerra y que estaba apurada preparando la comida. Leslie anunci: "Mam, hoy conoc al joven con quien me voy a casar!" La respuesta no fue la que ella esperaba. Su madre escasamente la mir desde el caldero que estaba revolviendo. Con una voz mezclada de condescendencia y escepticismo, le replic dando por terminado el asunto: "Qu bueno, querida". Pero en la mente de Leslie no haba duda. Ni tampoco en la ma. Cuando la llam a la noche siguiente desde un telfono pblico en el exterior de una estacin de gasolina cerca de mi casa (con cuatro hermanos y hermanas, esa era la nica manera de conseguir alguna privacidad), hablamos como si nos hubiramos conocido durante aos. A la gente le gusta debatir si hay algo como el amor a primera vista, pero para nosotros, el problema se haba resuelto de una vez y por todas. Leslie y yo nos veamos en la escuela casi continuamente, y cuando yo me fu a estudiar periodismo en la Universidad de Missouri, ella se mud all de modo que pudiramos estar cerca el uno del otro. Nos casamos cuando yo tena veinte aos y ella diecinueve. Despus de graduarme nos mudamos a Chicago, donde se realiz el sueo de toda mi vida de llegar a ser un reportero del Chicago Tribune . Leslie, mientras tanto, comenz su carrera en una asociacin de ahorros y prstamos al cruzar la calle de mi oficina en el Chicago Tribune . Vivamos una vida de cuentos de hadas. Disfrutbamos la alegra y el reto de subir la escalera corporativa mientras residamos en un emocionante vecindario de gente acomodada. Leslie qued encinta de nuestra primera hija, una nia a quien llamamos Alison, y despus dio a luz a un hijo, Kyle. Animados por nuestro profundo amor del uno hacia el otro, nuestro matrimonio estaba fuerte y seguro, hasta que alguien se meti en medio de nosotros, amenazando con hacer naufragar nuestra relacin y lanzarnos al tribunal para divorcios. No era una relacin ilcita. No era el resurgir de un antiguo amor. En lugar de eso, el alguien que casi hace naufragar nuestro matrimonio no era ningn otro sino el mismo Dios. Al final era a l a quien yo culpaba en ese tiempo. Irnicamente, fue la fe en Jesucristo -la que muchas parejas acreditan que contribuye a la fortaleza de su matrimonio- la que por poco destruye nuestra relacin y nos hubiera separado para siempre. Todo por causa de una desigualdad espiritual. Un matrimonio sin Dios Puedo describir el papel de Dios en nuestra relacin y al principio del matrimonio con una oracin: Sencillamente l no apareca en la pantalla de nuestro radar. En otras palabras, l era irrelevante. Personalmente, me consideraba ateo. Rechac la idea de Dios desde que en la escuela secundaria me ensearon la teora de la evolucin de Darwin explicando el origen y el desarrollo de la vida. Me figur que Darwin le haba quitado el trabajo a Dios. Libre de responsabilidad, decid vivir completamente para mi persona y para mi bsqueda de placer. En cuanto a los cristianos, tenda a rechazarlos como ingenuos y pensadores faltos de sentido crtico que necesitaban la muleta de una deidad imaginaria para que los llevara a travs de la vida. Por otro lado, es posible que Leslie se autoconsiderara agnstica. Mientras que yo tenda a reaccionar con antagonismo hacia las personas de fe, ella era ms neutral espiritualmente hablando. Durante su crecimiento recibi poca influencia de la iglesia, aunque guardaba recuerdos agradables de su niez cuando su madre suavemente le cantaba himnos mientras la arropaba para dormir en las noches. Para Leslie, sencillamente Dios era una idea abstracta que nunca se haba tomado el tiempo de explorar. Sin Dios en mi vida, yo careca de una brjula moral. La mentalidad del xito a todo costo lentamente corroa mi carcter. Mi ira se encenda a causa de mi frustracin al ser incapaz de encontrar la satisfaccin que apeteca. Mis juergas de bebida muy a menudo se vean fuera de control, trabajaba arduamente en mi trabajo, haciendo, en efecto, un dios de mi carrera. A pesar de todo eso, nuestro matrimonio permaneca estable. Nuestro amor mutuo suavizaba muchos filos speros. Cuando estbamos juntos, ramos felices. Es decir, hasta que todo explot en el otoo de 1979. Aqu fue cuando la armona se convirti en hostilidad. La razn: Leslie anunci que despus de un largo perodo de investigacin y bsqueda haba decidido convertirse en seguidora de Jesucristo. Para m, esa fue la peor noticia posible. Tena miedo de que se volviera una mojigata reprimida sexual y que abandonara nuestro estilo de vida ascendente en favor de emplear todo su tiempo libre sirviendo a los pobres en alguna clase de ministerio a los desamparados. "Mira, si necesitas esa clase de muleta", le dije en un tono condescendiente y sarcstico, "si no puedes sostenerte por ti misma sobre tus pies y enfrentar la vida sin poner tu fe en algn dios imaginario y en un libro de mitologa y leyenda, entonces sigue adelante. Pero recuerda dos cosas: no des a la iglesia nuestro dinero, porque eso es lo nico que les interesa, y no trates de sacarme de la cama para ir a algn lugar los domingos por la maana. Soy demasiado inteligente para esa bobera!" Qu tipo tan agradable!, verdad? "Yo no firm para esto" As fue la salva de apertura de lo que sera la fase agitada por la emocin turbulenta, llena de lucha, de nuestro matrimonio. Nuestros valores comenzaron a chocar, nuestras actitudes comenzaron a entrar en conflicto y nuestras prioridades y deseos repentinamente estuvieron disparejos. Surgieron peleas, la frialdad reemplaz a la calidez, y ms de una vez yo dej que mi frustracin y mi ira se derramaran en un disparo de eptetos y tirones de puerta. Recuerdo cuando todo culmin en un da caluroso y hmedo mientras estaba cortando el csped despus de una de nuestras peleas. Mi sangre estaba ardiendo. "Basta ya!", refunfu mientras araba en medio de sus flores en un despliegue de ira infantil pasiva/agresiva. "Yo no necesito ms de eso. Esto no es lo que yo firm. Tal vez ya sea tiempo de salir de este matrimonio". Ese fue el punto bajo. Nuestro futuro colgaba de un hilo. Quiz te puedas relacionar con esa clase de agitacin emocional. O quiz te asuste el futuro de tu propio matrimonio porque tu fe est creando una divisin cada vez ms profunda entre t y tu cnyuge. A travs de los aos Leslie y yo hemos aconsejado a muchos cristianos quienes con lgrimas nos han contado cmo su unin con un incrdulo los ha llevado cada vez ms a la angustia, la ira y las peleas. Una vez Leslie y yo recibimos una llamada telefnica a las 3:30 p.m., el Da de Resurreccin: "Los das festivos son siempre los peores", dijo ella entre sollozos. "Pero realmente hoy fue demasiado lejos. Se ha estado burlando de m, diciendo que soy dbil, que creo cosas ridculas, que la iglesia est tratando de conseguir mi dinero. Estoy cansada de defenderme. No s lo que debo hacer. Por qu no me deja creer lo que yo quiera? Por qu tiene que arruinarlo todo? No era ya suficientemente malo tener que ir a los servicios de Resurreccin sola? Por qu tiene que tambin destruir el resto de mi da?" Teresa no est sola, el esposo de Rita es un abogado abiertamente antagonista a cualquier cosa cristiana. "l le dijo a nuestro hijo que la iglesia es donde estn los malos, que si t vas a la iglesia tratarn de hacerte pensar como ellos, a esos niitos que van a la iglesia los molestan, y si mami trata alguna vez de llevarte a la iglesia otra vez, dile que t no vas a ir". O considera a Catalina. Ella dijo que la angustia por su situacin marital solo se ha amplificado por su iglesia y los amigos cristianos que sin darse cuenta empeoran las cosas. Hay esa implicacin subyacente de que todo sera mejor si solo fuera una mejor testigo, si orara con ms intensidad, si consiguiera que l viniera a los servicios de Navidad, si le diera a leer el libro correcto o una cinta adecuada para or, de alguna manera todo cooperar. Luego agreg: "Ellos no vienen directamente y te dicen eso, pero tengo la impresin de ser la nica culpable y eso duele". Linda Davis, que durante aos vivi en un yugo desigual hasta que su esposo se convirti a Cristo, dijo que nicamente la muerte de un cnyuge se puede comparar con la situacin de soledad que es mayor a la de una persona unida en yugo desigual. Aadi: "Dudo, sin embargo, que aun la viudez fsica haga a una mujer sentirse tan rechazada e inadecuada como lo es la viudez espiritual". La viuda espiritual no recibe flores ni tarjetas de simpata. Simplemente sufre en silencio por una unin que nunca fue. No pierdas las esperanzas Ms de una vez, cuando Leslie y yo estbamos espiritualmente desiguales, predije que nuestro matrimonio terminara en divorcio. Mentalmente yo haba tirado la toalla. Pero por medio de una variedad de circunstancias fuimos rescatados de esa suerte. Antes de que fuera demasiado tarde, Leslie se las arregl para vivir su fe de una manera que comenz a atraerme antes de repelerme. Ella aprendi cmo crecer y hasta florecer en su relacin con Cristo a pesar de mi oposicin. Aunque sera la primera en admitir que cometa errores de vez en cuando, ella era capaz de restaurar el equilibrio en nuestra relacin. Gentil y amablemente, comenz a sealarme a Cristo y, en ltima instancia, Dios la us para abrirme los ojos a mi necesidad de un Salvador. Hoy estamos celebrando veinte aos como pareja cristiana y treinta aos de matrimonio. En un despliegue asombroso de la gracia de Dios, l no solo me perdon mi pasado inmoral y ateo, sino que me dio un ministerio como pastor y evangelista. Juntos, Leslie y yo, estamos experimentando una profundidad de intimidad, aventura y satisfaccin que no podamos haber imaginado durante aquellos frvolos aos que pasamos sin Dios. Ahora bien, es importante destacar que, desdichadamente, no toda desigualdad espiritual terminar con los dos cnyuges sirviendo a Cristo con gozo. La verdad es que algunas parejas pasan el resto de sus vidas viajando por senderos espirituales diferentes. Esa es la realidad. No importa cunto t lo quieras, no puedes forzar a tu cnyuge a ser cristiano. Pero es igualmente importante destacar que si te encuentras en un matrimonio espiritualmente disparejo, hay esperanzas. No te desesperes. Puedes aprender a florecer a pesar de tus diferencias. Puedes aprender a estimular a tu cnyuge en su peregrinaje espiritual sin espantarlo, sin que te des cuenta. Puedes aprender a buscar con fervor lo mejor para tu compaero sin cargarte injustamente con la responsabilidad indebida de su salvacin. En resumen, una desigualdad espiritual no tiene que ser una sentencia de muerte para un matrimonio. Eso puede parecer difcil de creer si actualmente ests enredado en un conflicto con tu cnyuge acerca de diferentes puntos de vista en cuanto a Dios. Pero ese es el motivo por el cual Leslie y yo estamos escribiendo este libro, para ayudarte a reconocer lo que nosotros hicimos bien y mal en este perodo escabroso de nuestra relacin. Creme, fuimos torpes manejando nuestro paso, pero salimos con algunas lecciones difcilmente aprendidas que esperamos que al mismo tiempo te estimulen y te den a tomar pasos concretos, prcticos y bblicos. Ms importante an, necesitas recordarte regularmente que Dios no te ha olvidado. l no te est castigando con jbilo por estar casada con un incrdulo. De hecho, todo el cielo te est saludando mientras tratas de humillarte y de vivir sinceramente en un medio ambiente a menudo extenueante y difcil. Tu Padre celestial con gracia te quiere ofrecer valor ante la lucha, paz en medio de la confusin y optimismo cuando todas las cosas parecen cubiertas de oscuridad. Con su ayuda, realmente t puedes aprender a sobrevivir una desigualdad espiritual. El "por qu" detrs del mandamiento de Dios Si has experimentado la angustia de ser un cristiano casado con una incrdula, entonces comprenders enseguida por qu Dios ha prohibido que sus seguidores se casen fuera de la fe. l nos ama tanto que quiere librarnos de la angustia emocional, el choque de valores y el conflicto continuo que puede resultar cuando un cnyuge es cristiano pero el otro no lo es. Su meta no es limitar innecesariamente nuestra eleccin de las parejas en perspectiva sino escudarnos amorosamente de la clase de dificultades que Leslie y yo enfrentamos durante los casi dos aos en que estuvimos espiritualmente disparejos. Pablo, en 2 Corintios 6:14-16, escribi: "No formen yunta con los incrdulos. Qu tienen en comn la justicia y la maldad? O qu comunin puede tener la luz con la oscuridad? Qu armona tiene Cristo con el diablo? Qu tiene en comn un creyente con un incrdulo? En qu concuerdan el templo de Dios y los dolos? Porque nosotros somos templo del Dios viviente". Pablo no est emitiendo una prohibicin global en contra de que los cristianos tengan asociacin alguna con los no creyentes, l era demasiado realista para esperar eso. En sntesis, observ un erudito, Pablo estaba diciendo: <>. (Continues...) Excerpted from Sobreviviendo un yugo desigual en el matrimonio by LEE STROBEL LESLIE STROBEL Copyright © 2008 by Lee Strobel. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Read more

The Little Tim Collection: With Exclusive Audio CD Read by Stephen Fry

Review "[Tim's] maritime experiences are those a child might dream of — full of storms, shipwrecks, and fascinating knots. He deals doggedly with dangers, never stints on chores below deck, and always gets home after the voyage.”— 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up About the Author Edward Ardizzone (1900-1979) was born in 1900. In 1905 his family moved to Ipswich, where he learned to know and love the little coastal steamers that he was to draw so often in the Little Tim books. Illustrator of more than 170 much-loved children's books, Edward Ardizzone was awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1956 and the CBE in 1971. He died in 1979. Stephen Fry is a national treasure and was born in 1957 in London and brought up in Norfolk. Memorable television appearances included Blackadder, A Bit of Fry & Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster. Big screen outings included Wilde, Gosford Park and Peter’s Friends. He also read all of the Harry Potter books for the unabridged audiobook edtions. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Tim and GingerTim was a small boy who lived in a house by the sea.Every day, when the weather was fine, he and his best friend, Ginger, would play on the beach.When the tide was high and the sea came right up to the steep shingle bank, Tim and Ginger would play ducks and drakes by throwing flat pebbles so they skipped across the water.Ginger was very good at this.When the tide was low and the sea went far out, they would dig in the sand for lug worms which they sold to the fishermen for bait.Tim, because he worked harder, always found more worms than Ginger.However, what Tim liked to do best was to sit and talk with the old boatman who would tell him all about the sea and ships.This sometimes bored Ginger, who thought he knew everything , though of course he did not.“Poof!” he would say. “I have been a sailor boy and know all about the silly old sea.”Then he would go off and practise playing ducks and drakes and get even better at it than before.One day, they found the old boatman looking sad and serious.“Ah!” he said. “Have you heard about poor Tom, the baker’s son? Went shrimping he did among the rocks under the high chalk cliffs and was caught by the tide. He will never come home no more.”Then he went on to say that tides were dangerous and that, if they would stop and listen, he would tell them why.Tim stayed to listen, but Ginger only said, “Poof! I know all about the silly old tides,” and went off to play ducks and drakes again. Read more

National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of Dinosaurs (National Geographic Little Kids First Big Books)

About the Author Catherine D. Hughes is the author of several books in the National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book series, including Little Kids First Big Book of Dinosaurs , Little Kids First Big Book of Space , and Little Kids First Big Book of the Ocean . She also has a degree in early childhood development. Franco Tempesta is an illustrator who specializes in the depiction of dinosaurs and other primitive mammals. A member of the Italian Illustrators Association, he has worked with National Geographic Children’s Books, Random House, and the Smithsonian Institution. His work can be seen in titles such as Little Kids First Big Book of Dinosaurs . Tempesta lives in Verona, Italy. To learn more, visit francotempesta.eu.