Written from September 1939 to January 1941, Simone de Beauvoir’s Wartime Diary gives English readers unabridged access to one of the scandalous texts that threaten to overturn traditional views of Beauvoir’s life and work. Beauvoir’s account of her clandestine affair with Jacques Bost and sexual relationships with various young women challenges the conventional picture of Beauvoir as the devoted companion of Jean-Paul Sartre, just as her account of completing her novel She Came to Stay at a time when Sartre’s philosophy in Being and Nothingness was barely begun calls into question the traditional view of Beauvoir’s novel as merely illustrating Sartre’s philosophy. Most important, the Wartime Diary provides an exciting account of Beauvoir’s philosophical transformation from the prewar solipsism of She Came to Stay to the postwar political engagement of The Second Sex. This edition also features previously unpublished material, including her musings about consciousness and order, recommended reading lists, and notes on labor unions. In providing new insights into Beauvoir’s philosophical development, the Wartime Diary promises to rewrite a crucial chapter of Western philosophy and intellectual history.

This unique record offers a woman's perspective on World War II and details the impact of the war on life in rural England.

A Diary of Darkness is one of the most important and compelling documents of wartime Japan. Between 1942 and 1945, the liberal journalist Kiyosawa Kiyoshi (1890-1945) kept at great personal risk a diary of his often subversive social and political observations and his personal struggles. The diary caused a sensation when it was published in Japan in 1948 and is today regarded as a classic. This is the first time it has appeared in English. Kiyosawa was an American-educated commentator on politics and foreign affairs who became increasingly isolated in Japan as militant nationalists rose to power. He began the diary as notes for a history of the war, but it soon became an "inadvertent autobiography" and a refuge for the bitter criticism of Japanese authoritarianism that he had to repress publicly. It chronicles growing bureaucratic control over everything from the press to people's clothing. Kiyosawa pours scorn on such leaders as Premiers Tojo and Koiso. He laments the rise of hysterical propaganda and relates his own and his friends' struggles to avoid arrest. He writes in gripping detail about increasing poverty, crime, and disorder. He records the sentiments of the local barber as faithfully as those of senior politicians. And all the while he traces the gradual disintegration of Japan's war effort and the looming certainty of defeat. A Diary of Darkness is a perceptive and courageous account of wartime Japan and a revealing record of the devastation wrought by total war.

Nineteen-year-old Thura al-Windawi traces the days leading up to the bombings in Iraq, the war, and the chaos that followed, describing her life and the reality of war for Iraqi families.

Examines the wartime diary and paintings of Japanese American artist Kamekichi Tokita, who was imprisoned in a Japanese-American internment camp, but never failed to record the events, fear, rumor, rules and internal struggles he experienced, in a book that includes 80 full-color and black-and-white illustrations.

Better times will come again - a fascinating insight into how ordinary people cope in extraordinary circumstances. At the outbreak of the Second World War Constance Miles was living with her husband in the pretty Surrey village of Shere. A prolific correspondent with a keen interest in current affairs, Constance kept a war journal from 1939 to 1943, recording in vivid detail what life was like for women on the Home Front. She writes of the impact of evacuees, of food shortages and the creative uses of what food there was, and the fears of the local populace, who wonder how they will cope. She tells of refugees from central Europe billeted in village houses and, later in the war, of the influx of American servicemen. She travels frequently to London, mourning the destruction of familiar landmarks and recording the devastation of the Blitz, but still finds time for tea in the Strand. In a time when people were asked to put national interests above their own personal comfort and liberty, a time when they, too, were reassured that they’d meet loved ones again, Mrs Miles’s diaries makes for compulsive reading.

'Unflinchingly honest... this diary is exceptional' Elizabeth Buchan 'Tuesday 23 October, 1934 Another glorious sunny day. Lunch in Kens Gdns. E had not slept well "as I longed and longed for you". It made me happy that he wanted me. I suppose that is mean. He said, "I could pick you out in the dark from fifty women . . ." ' The diary of Doreen Bates is a candid, spellbinding portrait of a gutsy young woman working in London in the years before and during the Second World War, as well as an extraordinary account of her long affair with an older, married colleague - one that brazenly challenged the strict conventions of the day. 'Startlingly frank and readable' David Kynaston 'Absolutely engrossing' Virginia Nicholson 'Astute, passionate, remarkably intimate, showing us the day-to-day picture of a long relationship' Guardian

The compelling firsthand account of the war in Sarajevo through the eyes of a young Croatian girl.