A 26-year old gerontologist disguises herself as an 85-year old woman.

In this gripping memoir of war, courage, and honor, the author details her experiences in a Japanese POW camp where she, disguised as a boy and outraged at the conditions, injustice, and torture, dared to speak up for her fellow prisoners of war.

This exposition of writer S. Y. Abramovitsh explores the symbolic importance of his central character, Mendele the Bookseller, and the history of Yiddish fiction in Russia during the nineteenth century.

In the early seventeenth century, the London stage often portrayed a ruler covertly spying on his subjects. Traditionally deemed 'Jacobean disguised ruler plays', these works include Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Marston's The Malcontent and The Fawn, Middleton's The Phoenix, and Sharpham's The Fleer. Commonly dated to the arrival of James I, these plays are typically viewed as synchronic commentaries on the Jacobean regime. Kevin A. Quarmby demonstrates that the disguised ruler motif actually evolved in the 1580s. It emerged from medieval folklore and balladry, Tudor Chronicle history and European tragicomedy. Familiar on the Elizabethan stage, these incognito rulers initially offered light-hearted, romantic entertainment, only to suffer a sinister transformation as England awaited its ageing queen's demise. The disguised royal had become a dangerously voyeuristic political entity by the time James assumed the throne. Traditional critical perspectives also disregard contemporary theatrical competition. Market demands shaped the repertories. Rivalry among playing companies guaranteed the motif's ongoing vitality. The disguised ruler's presence in a play reassured audiences; it also facilitated a subversive exploration of contemporary social and political issues. Gradually, the disguised ruler's dramatic currency faded, but the figure remained vibrant as an object of parody until the playhouses closed in the 1640s.

"The experience of loss does not have to be the defining moment of our lives", writes Gerald Sittser. "Instead, the defining moment can be our response to the loss. It is not what happens to us that matters so much as what happens in us". Sittser knows. A tragic accident introduced him to loss of a magnitude few of us encounter. But this is not a book about one man's sorrow. It's about the grace that can transform us in the midst of sorrow. For those experiencing loss, A Grace Disguised offers a compassionate, deeply affirming message of hope, richness in living, and joy not after the darkness, but even in the midst of it. Now in softcover.