Caroline Moorehead

Combines original sources, archival research, and personal interviews to relate the story of 230 women of the French Resistance who were captured and imprisoned by the Gestapo outside of Paris before being transported to Auschwitz.

An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France

A Train in Winter

The acclaimed author of A Train in Winter returns with the final volume in her Resistance Quartet--the powerful and inspiring true story of the women of the partisan resistance who fought against Italy's fascist regime during World War II--as riveting, intimate, and cinematic as the novels The Nightingale and The Alice Network. In the late summer of 1943, when Italy broke with the Germans and joined the Allies after suffering catastrophic military losses, an Italian Resistance was born. Four young Piedmontese women--Ada, Frida, Silvia and Bianca--living secretly in the mountains surrounding Turin, risked their lives to overthrow Italy's authoritarian government. They were among the thousands of Italians who joined the Partisan effort to help the Allies liberate their country from the German invaders and their Fascist collaborators. What made this partisan war all the more extraordinary was the number of women--like this brave quartet--who swelled its ranks. The bloody civil war that ensued pitted neighbor against neighbor, and revealed the best and worst in Italian society. The courage shown by the partisans was exemplary, and eventually bound them together into a coherent fighting force. But the death rattle of Mussolini's two decades of Fascist rule--with its corruption, greed, and anti-Semitism--was unrelentingly violent and brutal. Drawing on a rich cache of previously untranslated sources, prize-winning historian Caroline Moorehead illuminates the experiences of Ada, Frida, Silvia, and Bianca to tell the little-known story of the women of the Italian partisan movement fighting for freedom against fascism in all its forms, while Europe collapsed in smoldering ruins around them. A House in the Mountains features black-and-white photographs throughout.

A House in the Mountains

From the author of the New York Times bestseller A Train in Winter comes the fascinating story of a French village that helped save thousands hunted by the Gestapo during World War II. High up in the mountains of the southern Massif Central in France lie tiny, remote villages united by a long and particular history. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and its parishes saved thousands wanted by the Gestapo: resisters, Freemasons, communists, and, above all, Jews, many of them orphans whose parents had been deported to concentration camps. There were no informers, no denunciations, and no one broke ranks. During raids, the children would hide in the woods, their packs on their backs, waiting to hear the farmers' song that told them it was safe to return. After the war, Le Chambon became one of only two places in the world to be honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations. Just why and how Le Chambon and its outlying villages came to save so many people has never fully been told. With unprecedented access to newly opened archives in France, Britain, and Germany, along with interviews documenting the testimony of surviving villagers, Caroline Moorehead paints an inspiring portrait of courage and determination: of what was accomplished when a small group of people banded together to oppose tyranny. A major contribution to the history of the Second World War, illustrated with black-and-white photographs, Village of Secrets sets the record straight about the events in Chambon and pays tribute to a group of heroic individuals for whom saving others became more important than their own lives.

Defying the Nazis in Vichy France

Village of Secrets

The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism

House in the Mountains

The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe

Mussolini's Daughter

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Traveling for nearly two years and across four continents, Caroline Moorehead takes readers on a journey to understand why millions of people are forced to abandon their homes, possessions, and families in order to find a place where they may, quite literally, be allowed to live. Moorehead's experience living and working with refugees puts a human face on the news, providing unforgettable portraits of the refugees she meets in Cairo, Guinea, Sicily, Lebanon, England, Australia, Finland, and at the U.S.-Mexico border. Human Cargo changes our understanding of what it means to have and lose a place in the world, and reveals how the refugee "problem" is on a par with global crises such as terrorism and world hunger.

A Journey Among Refugees

Human Cargo

Martha Gellhorn

A collection of four heart-rending stories of the Great Depression based on Martha Gellhorn's time as a special correspondent for the Roosevelt White House.

The Trouble I've Seen

Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution

Dancing to the precipice

Freya Stark (Lives of Modern Women)

"Relates the story of Le Cambon-sur-Lignon, a small, remote mountain village whose inhabitants banded together to save thousands from the Gestapo during World War II"--OCLC

Villiage of Secrets

Describes the discovery of the lost gold of ancient Troy in 1873 and its recent reemergence in Moscow

Heinrich Schliemann and the Gold That Got Away

Lost and Found

The acclaimed author of A Train in Winter and Village of Secrets delivers the next chapter in "The Resistance Quartet": the astonishing story of the aristocratic Italian family who stood up to Mussolini's fascism, and whose efforts helped define the path of Italy in the years between the World Wars—a profile in courage that remains relevant today. Members of the cosmopolitan, cultural aristocracy of Florence at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Rosselli family, led by their fierce matriarch, Amelia, were vocal anti-fascists. As populist, right-wing nationalism swept across Europe after World War I, and Italy’s Prime Minister, Benito Mussolini, began consolidating his power, Amelia’s sons Carlo and Nello led the opposition, taking a public stand against Il Duce that few others in their elite class dared risk. When Mussolini established a terrifying and brutal police state controlled by his Blackshirts—the squaddristi—the Rossellis and their anti-fascist circle were transformed into active resisters. In retaliation, many of the anti-fascists were arrested and imprisoned; others left the country to escape a similar fate. Tragically, Carlo and Nello were eventually assassinated by Mussolini’s secret service. After Italy entered World War II in June 1940, Amelia, thanks to visas arranged by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt herself, fled to New York City with the remaining members of her family. Renowned historian Caroline Moorehead paints an indelible picture of Italy in the first half of the twentieth century, offering an intimate account of the rise of Il Duce and his squaddristi; life in Mussolini’s penal colonies; the shocking ambivalence and complicity of many prominent Italian families seduced by Mussolini’s promises; and the bold, fractured resistance movement whose associates sacrificed their lives to fight fascism. In A Bold and Dangerous Family, Moorehead once again pays tribute to heroes who fought to uphold our humanity during one of history’s darkest chapters. A Bold and Dangerous Family is illustrated with black-and-white photographs.

The Remarkable Story of an Italian Mother, Her Two Sons, and Their Fight Against Fascism

A Bold and Dangerous Family

Heather Dune Macadam

'Books such as this are essential: they remind modern readers of events that should never be forgotten' - Caroline Moorehead On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia. Filled with a sense of adventure and national pride, they left their parents' homes wearing their best clothes and confidently waving good-bye. Believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months, they were eager to report for government service. Instead, the young women-many of them teenagers-were sent to Auschwitz. Their government paid 500 Reichsmarks (about £160) apiece for the Nazis to take them as slave labour. Of those 999 innocent deportees, only a few would survive. The facts of the first official Jewish transport to Auschwitz are little known, yet profoundly relevant today. These were not resistance fighters or prisoners of war. There were no men among them. Sent to almost certain death, the young women were powerless and insignificant not only because they were Jewish-but also because they were female. Now, acclaimed author Heather Dune Macadam reveals their poignant stories, drawing on extensive interviews with survivors, and consulting with historians, witnesses, and relatives of those first deportees to create an important addition to Holocaust literature and women's history.

The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz

The Nine Hundred

A definitive biography of one of the century's most brilliant and controversial figures uses unpublished letters and papers and new interviews to present a compelling portrait of the passionate, dedicated, and maddeningly inconsistent Nobel Prize-winning philosopher.

A Life

Bertrand Russell

Op een ijskoude ochtend in januari 1943 worden 230 vrouwen uit het Franse verzet in veewagons naar Auschwitz vervoerd. De jongste was een schoolmeisje van vijftien, de oudste een boerin van 68. Toen de trein vertrok zongen ze het Franse volkslied.Deze heldinnen waagden hun leven en kwamen terecht in de hel; 49 van hen keerden terug naar huis. Vriendschap en een beetje geluk maakten overleven mogelijk.Caroline Moorehead verdiepte zich jarenlang in de verhalen van deze vrouwen en las hun dagboeken en brieven. Ze laat zien wie ze waren, waarom ze in het verzet gingen en hoe ze werden verraden en opgepakt door de Franse politie en de Gestapo. De trein naar het oosten is niet alleen een hommage aan deze dappere vrouwen, het is vooral een indrukwekkend document.

De trein naar het oosten

Iris Origo was one of the twentieth century’s most attractive and intriguing women, a brilliantly perceptive historian and biographer whose works remain widely admired. Iris grew up in Italy with her Irish mother after the death of her wealthy American father. They settled in the Villa Medici in Florence, where they became part of the colourful and privileged Anglo-Florentine set that included Edith Wharton, Harold Acton and the Berensons. When Iris married Antonio Origo, they bought and revived La Foce, a derelict stretch of the beautiful Val d’Orcia valley in Tuscany and created an estate that thrives to this day. During World War II they sided firmly with the Allies, taking considerable risks in protecting children and sheltering partisans and Iris’s diary from that time, War in Val d’Orcia, is now considered a modern classic. Caroline Moorehead has drawn on many previously unpublished letters, diaries, and papers to write the definitive biography of a very remarkable woman.

Marchesa of Val d'Orcia

Iris Origo

Marchesa of Val D'Orcia

Born in Paris 1893, a precocious and tough Freya Stark spent her childhood wondering across Europe, speaking three languages by the time she was five. She became one of the twentieth-century's most remarkable and inspirational women. Renowned for her flamboyant and unorthodox behaviour, Freya was also self-disciplined, courageous and remained fearlessly independent throughout her life. As an explorer she was unconventional, always travelling alone, without money or support. Her expeditions in Persia and the Hadhramaut during the thirties established her reputation not only as a great traveller and writer, but also as a geographer, historian and archaeologist. Caroline Moorehead brilliantly captures Freya's extraordinary and eventful life that was tempered by a constant struggle against ill health and loneliness, in this compelling biography.

Freya Stark

A photographic collection which traces the history of the largest humanitarian organisation in the world through its remarkable photographic archive. These iconic images show what can be achieved when aid to the suffering is given without discrimination. The collection of images from esteemed photographers such as Sebastian Salgado, Eric Bouvier and Nick Danziger is introduced by James Nachtway, a US photo journalist. Published on behalf of the Red Cross.

Frontline Photography Since 1860

Humanity in War

From the author of the New York Times bestseller A Train in Winter comes the absorbing story of a French village that helped save thousands hunted by the Gestapo during World War II—told in full for the first time. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a small village of scattered houses high in the mountains of the Ardèche, one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of Eastern France. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of this tiny mountain village and its parishes saved thousands wanted by the Gestapo: resisters, freemasons, communists, OSS and SOE agents, and Jews. Many of those they protected were orphaned children and babies whose parents had been deported to concentration camps. With unprecedented access to newly opened archives in France, Britain, and Germany, and interviews with some of the villagers from the period who are still alive, Caroline Moorehead paints an inspiring portrait of courage and determination: of what was accomplished when a small group of people banded together to oppose their Nazi occupiers. A thrilling and atmospheric tale of silence and complicity, Village of Secrets reveals how every one of the inhabitants of Chambon remained silent in a country infamous for collaboration. Yet it is also a story about mythmaking, and the fallibility of memory. A major contribution to WWII history, illustrated with black-and-white photos, Village of Secrets sets the record straight about the events in Chambon, and pays tribute to a group of heroic individuals, most of them women, for whom saving others became more important than their own lives.

Caroline Moorehead

Books

Your next favorite book is out there