Deborah Cohen

A prize-winning historian’s revelatory account of a close-knit band of wildly famous American reporters who, in the run-up to World War II, took on dictators and rewrote the rules of modern journalism “As intimate and gripping as a novel, this brilliant book vividly conveys what it felt like to live through the shocking crises of the thirties and forties.”—Larissa MacFarquhar, author of Strangers Drowning They were an astonishing group: glamorous, gutsy, and irreverent to the bone. As cub reporters in the 1920s, they roamed across a war-ravaged world, sometimes perched atop mules on wooden saddles, sometimes gliding through countries in the splendor of a first-class sleeper car. While empires collapsed and fledgling democracies faltered, they chased deposed empresses, international financiers, and Balkan gun-runners, and then knocked back doubles late into the night. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial is the extraordinary story of John Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson. In those tumultuous years, they landed exclusive interviews with Hitler and Mussolini, Nehru and Gandhi, and helped shape what Americans knew about the world. Alongside these backstage glimpses into the halls of power, they left another equally incredible set of records. Living in the heady afterglow of Freud, they subjected themselves to frank, critical scrutiny and argued about love, war, sex, death, and everything in between. Plunged into successive global crises, Gunther, Knickerbocker, Sheean, and Thompson could no longer separate themselves from the turmoil that surrounded them. To tell that story, they broke long-standing taboos. From their circle came not just the first modern account of illness in Gunther’s Death Be Not Proud—a memoir about his son’s death from cancer—but the first no-holds-barred chronicle of a marriage: Sheean’s Dorothy and Red, about Thompson’s fractious relationship with Sinclair Lewis. Told with the immediacy of a conversation overheard, this revelatory book captures how the global upheavals of the twentieth century felt up close.

The Reporters Who Took On a World at War

Last Call at the Hotel Imperial

"On a Liverpool railway platform a heartbroken mother hands over her eight-year-old illegitimate son for adoption... A vicar brings to his bank vault a diary - sewed up in calico, wrapped in parchment - that chronicles his longing for other men... The one-year-old daughter committed to an institution and barely visited or referred to by her family ever again... In Family Secrets Deborah Cohen explores the extraordinary choices British families made in the past to protect their good name. Whether it is hiding an adopted son's origins or the tangled attempts to prevent a divorce, Family Secrets exposes how we dealt with our shame - publicly and in our hearts.

The Things We Tried to Hide

Family Secrets

You used to see a doctor. Now you go online. 'Your definitive guide to separating medical facts from online fiction.' Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt 'This superb book is an essential guide to the wild world of internet health.' Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People Need to focus? Want to lose weight? Build muscle? Get pregnant? Advice is just a click away. With long waits for treatment and fewer face‑to‑face GP appointments, influencers have stepped into the breach. From doctors promoting untested therapies to celebrities selling solutions, these self-styled experts radiate wellness and guarantee results. Exploring the transformation of a healthcare system driven by online trends, Dr Deborah Cohen reveals the truth behind Ozempic influencers, AI-powered diagnoses, ‘preventative’ screening and Instagram’s favourite wearable tech. Bad Influence is about the commodification of health in an age of anxiety and why we can no longer distinguish medicine from marketing. 'In a world where online medical opinions are fast and often dodgy, this is the perfect antidote.' Prof. Kevin Fong

How the Internet Hijacked Our Health

Bad Influence

‘A fresh, fast-paced history ... Riveting’ MAYA JASANOFF ‘The celebrated journalists of the lost generation were voracious, reckless, promiscuous, funny, and drunk, and they were also shrewd and deeply political ... As intimate and gripping as a novel ... I read it all at once. I couldn’t stop ... Brilliant’ LARISSA MACFARQUHAR

Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War

We live today in a culture of full disclosure, where tell-all memoirs top the best-seller lists, transparency is lauded, and privacy seems imperiled. But how did we get here? Exploring scores of previously sealed records, Family Secrets offers a sweeping account of how shame--and the relationship between secrecy and openness--has changed over the last two centuries in Britain. Deborah Cohen uses detailed sketches of individual families as the basis for comparing different sorts of social stigma. She takes readers inside an Edinburgh town house, where a genteel maiden frets with her brother over their niece's downy upper lip, a darkening shadow that might betray the girl's Eurasian heritage; to a Liverpool railway platform, where a heartbroken mother hands over her eight-year old illegitimate son for adoption; to a town in the Cotswolds, where a queer vicar brings to his bank vault a diary--sewed up in calico, wrapped in parchment--that chronicles his sexual longings. Cohen explores what families in the past chose to keep secret and why. She excavates the tangled history of privacy and secrecy to explain why privacy is now viewed as a hallowed right while secrets are condemned as destructive. In delving into the dynamics of shame and guilt, Family Secrets explores the part that families, so often regarded as the agents of repression, have played in the transformation of social mores from the Victorian era to the present day. Written with compassion and keen insight, this is a bold new argument about the sea-changes that took place behind closed doors.

Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain

When PhD history student, Ellie Bowlan, attends a séance, she receives a strange message: To end your family curse, you must save the life of the man who killed your parents. Ellie has always believed her parents' death to be an accident, but this mysterious missive hints at a secret murder. As a skeptic of all things supernatural, she ignores this bizarre advice, until her research forces her to face the truth about her parents' murders and the astonishing connection between the Bowlan and Boleyn family line. Long before Anne Boleyn was Queen of England, she was a precocious teen growing up in the French Royal Court. At the elegant Chateau Clos-Luce, Anne is tutored in witchcraft by artist Leonardo da Vinci and French royalty, Marguerite de Navarre. Drawn in by the alluring power of the Craft, Anne pursues her supernatural gifts with zeal. Then one night, she casts forbidden magic to kill the villainous King of France and leaves behind a terrible curse that echoes across the generations. And Ellie is next in line to pay the price. Soon Ellie realizes that solving her parent's murders isn't enough. She must find a way to end the curse or fall victim to its dire consequences.

Boleyn Curse

Maura O'Connor

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Europe in Cross-national Perspective

Comparison and History

The Reporters Who Took on a World at War

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A prize-winning historian’s “effervescent” (The New Yorker) account of a close-knit band of wildly famous American reporters who, in the run-up to World War II, took on dictators and rewrote the rules of modern journalism “High-speed, four-lane storytelling . . . Cohen’s all-action narrative bursts with colour and incident.”—Financial Times SHORTLISTED FOR THE PROSE AWARD AND THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, BookPage, Booklist They were an astonishing group: glamorous, gutsy, and irreverent to the bone. As cub reporters in the 1920s, they roamed across a war-ravaged world, sometimes perched atop mules on wooden saddles, sometimes gliding through countries in the splendor of a first-class sleeper car. While empires collapsed and fledgling democracies faltered, they chased deposed empresses, international financiers, and Balkan gun-runners, and then knocked back doubles late into the night. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial is the extraordinary story of John Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson. In those tumultuous years, they landed exclusive interviews with Hitler and Mussolini, Nehru and Gandhi, and helped shape what Americans knew about the world. Alongside these backstage glimpses into the halls of power, they left another equally incredible set of records. Living in the heady afterglow of Freud, they subjected themselves to frank, critical scrutiny and argued about love, war, sex, death, and everything in between. Plunged into successive global crises, Gunther, Knickerbocker, Sheean, and Thompson could no longer separate themselves from the turmoil that surrounded them. To tell that story, they broke long-standing taboos. From their circle came not just the first modern account of illness in Gunther’s Death Be Not Proud—a memoir about his son’s death from cancer—but the first no-holds-barred chronicle of a marriage: Sheean’s Dorothy and Red, about Thompson’s fractious relationship with Sinclair Lewis. Told with the immediacy of a conversation overheard, this revelatory book captures how the global upheavals of the twentieth century felt up close.

"The play's the thing to catch the conscience of the king." King Ahasuerus, that is. Beware the Ides of Adar: A Shakespearean Purim Shpiel retells the Book of Esther through the words of William Shakespeare. Composed nearly entirely of verses from Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, Beware the Ides of Adar captures the drama, intrigue and emotion of the Book of Esther. With humor and wit, Beware the Ides of Adar is a clever read for Shakespeare enthusiasts and students of the Bible alike. As a Purim Shpiel, Beware the Ides of Adar can be easily produced with eight speaking parts and simple set and prop requirements. Staging suggestions are included at the back of the book. Classic artwork by Rembrandt and others illustrates the text. Whether staged as a shpiel or simply read for enjoyment, Beware the Ides of Adar is a beautifully presented tribute to the Book of Esther and Shakespeare.

A Shakespearean Purim Shpiel

Beware the Ides of Adar

L. Frazier

This unique volume brings together literary critics, historians, and anthropologists from around the world to offer new understandings of gender and sexuality as they were redefined during the upheaval of 1968.

Transformative Politics in the Cultural Imagination

Gender and Sexuality in 1968

"Based on a breathtaking range of research in British and German archives, The War Come Home is written in an engaging, immediately accessible style and filled with rich anecdotes that are excellently told. This impressive book offers a powerful set of insights into the lasting effects of the First World War and the different ways in which belligerent states came to terms with the war's consequences."—Robert Moeller, author of War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany "With verve, compassion, and above all else, clarity, The War Come Home makes the dismal story of the failed reconstructions of disabled veterans in interwar Britain and German into engaging and provocative reading. Cohen moves from astute analysis of the interventions of high level bureaucrats to sensitive interpretations of how disabled veterans wrote and talked about their lives and the treatment they received at the hands of public and private agencies. She beautifully interweaves histories from below and above, showing how the two shaped -- but also collided with -- one another in profoundly consequential ways for the history of the 20th century."—Seth Koven, coeditor (with Sonya Michel) of Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States

Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914-1939

The War Come Home

Kate Roeske Zummer

In Humanity Works Better, leadership experts Debbie Cohen and Kate Roeske-Zummer chart a new path forward: one that brings humanity, awareness, choice, and courage to the workplace. The result? A happier work environment that draws the best—rather than squeezes the most—out of people.

Five Practices to Lead with Awareness, Choice and the Courage to Change

Humanity Works Better

Eduardo Salas

Scott Tannenbaum

Gary Latham

Praise for Developing and Enhancing Teamwork in Organizations "Few questions are more vital and important than teamwork, in an increasingly interdependent and connected world. This volume is a unique and essential reference for managers, scholars and anyone interested in enhancing team performance. The combination of vivid real-world examples with thoughtful evidence-based frameworks will make a lasting contribution to the study and practice of team-based management." —John Boudreau, Professor of Management and Organization, USC Marshall School of Business "Excellent practice insights from leading practitioners and academics. A valuable contribution to our knowledge concerning how to create and manage teams." —Ed Lawler, Director of Center for Effective Organizations

Evidence-based Best Practices and Guidelines

Developing and Enhancing Teamwork in Organizations

Developing and Enhancing Teamwork in Organizations Today’s team-based organizations face an unprecedented range of challenges. Many teams reflect the diversity of its members which vary in experience, education, and training. To add to the complexity, teams often include people who are not in the same room together, are geographically dispersed, and are connected only by electronic media. Developing and Enhancing Teamwork in Organizations is a volume in the SIOP Professional Practice Series that brings together leading edge practitioners and academics who share their knowledge about effective teamwork. The book contains evidence-based guidelines designed to offer practitioners advice, recommendations, and strategies for developing and sustaining teams that consistently function at peak performance. With contributions from leading experts in the field, this important resource covers team-based performance approaches from a wide range of activities and industries. For example, the volume explores team work in the NASA organization supporting astronauts, superior performance in football, and also in the military and industry. In addition, the contributors include information concerning healthcare organizations and their delivery of vital services. Each illustrative example reviews the lessons learned and the principles and the findings that were most influential when composing and managing a particular work team. International in scope, the volume clearly shows what it takes for team-based organizations to excel in the 21st Century. A division of the American Psychological Association and established in 1945, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is the premier association for professionals charged with enhancing human well-being and performance in organizational and work settings. SIOP has more than 7,000 members.

At what point did the British develop their mania for interiors, wallpaper, furniture, and decoration? Richly illustrated, 'Household Gods' chronicles 100 years of British interiors, focusing on class, choice, shopping and possessions.

Deborah Cohen

Books

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