Roosevelt and the Holocaust: How FDR Saved the Jews and Brought Hope to a Nation

Roosevelt and the Holocaust: How FDR Saved the Jews and Brought Hope to a Nation By Robert L Beir
2013 | 384 Pages | ISBN: 1620876264 | EPUB | 3 MB

There is a great debate among historians about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s actions during the Holocaust. Was FDR the hero that defeated the Germans, or did he turn a blind eye to the plight of the Jews as long as he possibly could? In Roosevelt and the Holocaust, Robert Beir analyzes specific actions and legislation to get at the truth behind Roosevelt’s role in the Holocaust. Beir has a unique perspective. He is a Jew who was raised during the extreme anti-Semitism of the Great Depression. Having witnessed the fruits of the New Deal firsthand, Beir became a Roosevelt scholar. It wasn’t until later in life, when confronted by a student about Roosevelt’s role in the Holocaust, that Beir began to research this topic intensely. Beir ultimately concludes that Roosevelt acted not out of anti-Semitism, nor out of moral outrage over the plight of the Jews. Rather he acted in the way he felt was best to navigate the United States and the world through this tumultuous time.

Henry Giroux - Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and Schooling, A Critical Reader

Henry Giroux – Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and Schooling, A Critical Reader
1997 | ISBN: 0813332745 | English | 304 pages | PDF | 30 MB

Henry A. Giroux is one of the most respected and well-known critical education scholars, social critics, and astute observers of popular culture in the modern world. For those who follow his considerably influential work in critical pedagogy and social criticism, this first-ever collection of his classic writings, augmented by a new essay, is a must-have volume that reveals his evolution as a scholar. In it, he takes on three major considerations central to pedagogy and schooling.The first section offers Giroux’s most widely read theoretical critiques on the culture of positivism and technocratic rationality. He contends that by emphasizing the logic of science and rationality rather than taking a holistic worldview, these approaches fail to take account of connections among social, political, and historical forces or to consider the importance of such connections for the process of schooling.In the second section, Giroux expands the theoretical framework for conceptualizing and implementing his version of critical pedagogy. His theory of border pedagogy advocates a democratic public philosophy that embraces the notion of difference as part of a common struggle to extend the quality of public life. For Giroux, a student must function as a border-crosser, as a person moving in and out of physical, cultural, and social borders. He uses the popular medium of Hollywood film to show students how they might understand their own position as partly constructed within a dominant Eurocentric tradition and how power and authority relate to the wider society as well as to the classroom.In the last section, Giroux explores a number of contemporary traditions and issues, including modernism, postmodernism, and feminism, and discusses the matter of cultural difference in the classroom. Finally, in an essay written especially for this volume, Giroux analyzes the assault on education and teachers as public intellectuals that began in the Reagan-Bush era and continues today.

September Hope: The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (Audiobook)

September Hope: The American Side of a Bridge Too Far By John C. McManus, read by Walter Dixon
Unabridged edition 2012 | 14 hours and 53 mins | ISBN: 1520020279, ASIN: B008H62188 | M4B 64 kbps | 396 MB

In September Hope, acclaimed historian John C. McManus explores World War II’s most ambitious invasion, an immense, daring offensive to defeat Nazi Germany before the end of 1944. Operation Market-Garden is one of the war’s most famous, but least understood, battles, and McManus tells the story of the American contribution to this crucial phase of the war in Europe.

August 1944 saw the Allies achieve more significant victories than in any other month over the course of the war. Soviet armies annihilated more than 20 German divisions and pushed the hated enemy from Russia to deep inside Poland. General Eisenhower’s D-Day Invasion led to the liberation of France. Encouraged by these triumphs, British, Canadian, and American armored columns plunged into Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. The Germans were in disarray, overwhelmed on all fronts, losing soldiers by the thousands as Allied bombers pulverized their cities. For the Third Reich it seemed the end was near. Rumors swirled that the war would soon be over and that everyone would be home for Christmas.

Then came September, and Holland.

On September 17, the largest airborne drop in military history commenced – including two entire American divisions, the 101st and the 82nd. Their mission was to secure key bridges at such places as Son, Eindhoven, Grave, and Nijmegen until British armored forces could relieve them. The armor would slash northeast, breech the Rhine and go wild on the north German plains. However, the Germans were much stronger than the Allies anticipated. In eight days of ferocious combat, they mauled the airborne, stymied the tanks and prevented the Allies from crossing the Rhine. For the first time, using never-before-seen sources and countless personal interviews, September Hope reveals the American perspective on one of the most famous and decisive battles of World War II.