A deeply personal meditation on the haunting power of American photos and films of the 1940s Wartime Kiss is a personal meditation on the haunting power of American photographs and films from World War II and the later 1940s. Starting with a stunning reinterpretation of one of the most famous photos of all time, Alfred Eisenstaedt's image of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day, Alexander Nemerov goes on to examine an array of mostly forgotten images and movie episodes—from a photo of Jimmy Stewart and Olivia de Havilland lying on a picnic blanket in the Santa Barbara hills to scenes from such films as Twelve O'Clock High and Hold Back the Dawn. Erotically charged and bearing traces of trauma even when they seem far removed from the war, these photos and scenes seem to hold out the promise of a palpable and emotional connection to those years. Through a series of fascinating stories, Nemerov reveals the surprising background of these bits of film and discovers unexpected connections between the war and Hollywood, from an obsession with aviation to Anne Frank's love of the movies. Beautifully written and illustrated, Wartime Kiss vividly evokes a world in which Margaret Bourke-White could follow a heroic assignment photographing a B-17 bombing mission over Tunis with a job in Hollywood documenting the filming of a war movie. Ultimately this is a book about history as a sensuous experience, a work as mysterious, indescribable, and affecting as a novel by W. G. Sebald.

A magnificent wartime love story about the forces that brought the author’s parents together and those that nearly drove them apart Marianne Szegedy-Maszák’s parents, Hanna and Aladár, met and fell in love in Budapest in 1940. He was a rising star in the foreign ministry—a vocal anti-Fascist who was in talks with the Allies when he was arrested and sent to Dachau. She was the granddaughter of Manfred Weiss, the industrialist patriarch of an aristocratic Jewish family that owned factories, were patrons of intellectuals and artists, and entertained dignitaries at their baronial estates. Though many in the family had converted to Catholicism decades earlier, when the Germans invaded Hungary in March 1944, they were forced into hiding. In a secret and controversial deal brokered with Heinrich Himmler, the family turned over their vast holdings in exchange for their safe passage to Portugal. Aladár survived Dachau, a fragile and anxious version of himself. After nearly two years without contact, he located Hanna and wrote her a letter that warned that he was not the man she’d last seen, but he was still in love with her. After months of waiting for visas and transit, she finally arrived in a devastated Budapest in December 1945, where at last they were wed. Framed by a cache of letters written between 1940 and 1947, Szegedy-Maszák’s family memoir tells the story, at once intimate and epic, of the complicated relationship Hungary had with its Jewish population—the moments of glorious humanism that stood apart from its history of anti-Semitism—and with the rest of the world. She resurrects in riveting detail a lost world of splendor and carefully limns the moral struggles that history exacted—from a country and its individuals. Praise for I Kiss Your Hands Many Times “I Kiss Your Hand Many Times is the sweeping story of Marianne Szegedy-Maszák’s family in pre– and post–World War II Europe, capturing the many ways the struggles of that period shaped her family for years to come. But most of all it is a beautiful love story, charting her parents’ devotion in one of history’s darkest hours.”—Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief, the Huffington Post Media Group “In this panoramic and gripping narrative of a vanished world of great wealth and power, Marianne Szegedy-Maszák restores an important missing chapter of European, Hungarian, and Holocaust history.”—Kati Marton, author of Paris: A Love Story and Enemies of the People: My Family’s Journey to America “How many times can a heart be broken? Hungarians know, Marianne Szegedy-Maszák’s family more than most. History has broken theirs again and again. This is the story of that violence, told by the daughter of an extraordinary man and extraordinary woman who refused to surrender to it. Every perfectly chosen word is as it happened. So brace yourself. Truth can break hearts, too.”—Robert Sam Anson, author of War News: A Young Reporter in Indochina “This family memoir is everything you could wish for in the genre: the story of a fascinating family that illuminates the historical time it lived through. . . . Informative and fascinating in every way, [I Kiss Your Hands Many Times] is a great introduction to World War II Hungary and a moving tale of personal relationships in a time of great duress.”—Booklist (starred review)

On August 14, 1945, Alfred Eisenstaedt took a picture of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, minutes after they heard of Japan’s surrender to the United States. Two weeks later LIFE magazine published that image. It became one of the most famous WWII photographs in history (and the most celebrated photograph ever published in the world’s dominant photo-journal), a cherished reminder of what it felt like for the war to finally be over. Everyone who saw the picture wanted to know more about the nurse and sailor, but Eisenstaedt had no information and a search for the mysterious couple’s identity took on a dimension of its own. In 1979 Eisenstaedt thought he had found the long lost nurse. And as far as almost everyone could determine, he had. For the next thirty years Edith Shain was known as the woman in the photo of V-J Day, 1945, Times Square. In 1980 LIFE attempted to determine the sailor’s identity. Many aging warriors stepped forward with claims, and experts weighed in to support one candidate over another. Chaos ensued. For almost two decades Lawrence Verria and George Galdorisi were intrigued by the controversy surrounding the identity of the two principals in Eisenstaedt’s most famous photograph and collected evidence that began to shed light on this mystery. Unraveling years of misinformation and controversy, their findings propelled one claimant’s case far ahead of the others and, at the same time, dethroned the supposed kissed nurse when another candidate’s claim proved more credible. With this book, the authors solve the 67-year-old mystery by providing irrefutable proof to identify the couple in Eisenstaedt’s photo. It is the first time the whole truth behind the celebrated picture has been revealed. The authors also bring to light the couple’s and the photographer’s brushes with death that nearly prevented their famous spontaneous Times Square meeting in the first place. The sailor, part of Bull Halsey’s famous task force, survived the deadly typhoon that took the lives of hundreds of other sailors. The nurse, an Austrian Jew who lost her mother and father in the Holocaust, barely managed to escape to the United States. Eisenstaedt, a World War I German soldier, was nearly killed at Flanders.

Beginning with Charlie Chaplin's Shoulder Arms, released in America near the end of World War I, the military comedy film has been one of Hollywood's most durable genres. This generously illustrated history examines over 225 Army, Navy and Marine-related comedies produced between 1918 and 2009, including the abundance of laughspinners released during World War II in the wake of Abbott and Costello's phenomenally successful Buck Privates (1941), and the many lighthearted service films of the immediate postwar era, among them Mister Roberts (1955) and No Time for Sergeants (1958). Also included are discussions of such subgenres as silent films (The General), military-academy farces (Brother Rat), women in uniform (Private Benjamin), misfits making good (Stripes), anti-war comedies (MASH), and fact-based films (The Men Who Stare at Goats). A closing filmography is included in this richly detailed volume.

Alice, Kate and Naomi want to keep the magic of Christmas alive in their village of Churchwood but a thief in the area and a new family that shuns the local community are only the first of the problems they face. Naomi is fighting to free herself from Alexander - the man who married her for her money, then kept a secret family behind her back. But will she be able to achieve the independence she craves? Alice's dreams came true when she married sweetheart Daniel. Now he has returned to the fighting, but Alice is delighted to discover that she's carrying his child. Will the family make it through the war unscathed? While Kate's life on Brimbles Farm has never been easy, she now has help from land girls Pearl and Ruby. But what will it mean for them all when Kate's brother returns from the war with terrible injuries? And why has pilot Leo, the man she loves, stopped writing? As ever, the Wartime Bookshop is a source of community and comfort. But disaster is about to strike... Christmas at the Wartime Bookshop is the third novel in the uplifting Wartime Bookshop series, perfect for fans of Donna Douglas and Elaine Everest. **The fourth novel, Evacuees at the Wartime Bookshop, is available to pre-order now!** ---------------------------- Real readers are LOVING The Wartime Bookshop series: 'BRILLIANT' 'Oh I loved this book... please carry on the good writing' 'Wow what a brilliant start to a new series' 'Outstandingly fabulous, warm and inviting... so glad there is going to be a follow-on' 'I was only two pages in when I knew this would be a 5 star read... I honestly can't put my excitement into words at the thought of reading the next one!'

Powerful and often controversial, news pictures promise to make the world at once immediate and knowable. Yet while many great writers and thinkers have evaluated photographs of atrocity and crisis, few have sought to set these images in a broader context by defining the rich and diverse history of news pictures in their many forms. For the first time, this volume defines what counts as a news picture, how pictures are selected and distributed, where they are seen and how we critique and value them. Presenting the best new thinking on this fascinating topic, this book considers the news picture over time, from the dawn of the illustrated press in the nineteenth century, through photojournalism’s heyday and the rise of broadcast news and newsreels in the twentieth century and into today’s digital platforms. It examines the many kinds of images: sport, fashion, society, celebrity, war, catastrophe and exoticism; and many mediums, including photography, painting, wood engraving, film and video. Packed with the best research and full colour-illustrations throughout, this book will appeal to students and readers interested in how news and history are key sources of our rich visual culture.

Legendary actress and two-time Academy Award winner Olivia de Havilland (1916–2020) is best known for her role as Melanie Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). She often inhabited characters who were delicate, elegant, and refined. At the same time, she was a survivor with a fierce desire to direct her own destiny on and off the screen. She won a lawsuit against Warner Bros. over a contract dispute that changed the studio contract system forever, and is also noted for her long feud with her sister, actress Joan Fontaine. Victoria Amador utilizes extensive interviews and forty years of personal correspondence with de Havilland to present an in-depth look at the life and career of this celebrated actress, from her theatrical ambitions at a young age to becoming one of the most well-known starlets in Tinseltown. Readers are given an inside look at her love affairs with iconic cinema figures such as James Stewart and John Huston, as well as her onscreen partnership with Errol Flynn. Amador also details how de Havilland became the first woman to serve as the president of the Cannes Film Festival in 1965, and showcases how, even in her later years, she remained active but selective in film and television until 1988. A new chapter covers de Havilland's death at the age of 104 in July 2020. Olivia de Havilland: Lady Triumphant is a tribute to one of Hollywood's greatest legends—a lady who evolved from a gentle heroine to a strong-willed, respected, and admired artist.

A value-priced collection featuring heart-tugging historical romance stories of love and hope, set against the backdrops of war-torn battlefields and the home front. Love is a battlefield in these four romances starring courageous patriots called to duty for their country. With emotions running high and lives placed bravely on the lines, will they have the strength to fight for love as war wages on? The Forgotten Debutante: Saffron Fitzpatrick spent her teenage years mourning the dead rather than dancing at her debutante ball, with the exception of one forbidden kiss with solider Ezekiel Boone. Fate reunites the couple three years later, and they discover unexpected common ground and begin to build a relationship. But though the war is over, a future together may still elude them…especially if Saffron’s brother and the U.S. Army have anything to say about it. Mischief and Magnolias: Natchez, Mississippi, peacefully surrendered to the Union Army—but Shaelyn Cavanaugh didn’t. Major Remy Harte has taken over her home and her beloved steamboats, and she will use every mischievous weapon at her disposal to show the Union soldier that he has chosen unwisely. But he finds the attempts to make him leave Magnolia House amusing and his growing attraction to Shae unavoidable. Can their budding romance survive when a common enemy accuses her of espionage? Revolutionary Hearts: To complete his mission in India’s fight for independence, General Carton—a.k.a. U.S. undercover operative Warren Khan—must hide both his true objective and his heritage. But once he meets the captivating Parineeta, who holds the key to both his freedom and capturing her brother, a suspected anarchist, he finds the subterfuge more difficult than anticipated. The Winter Promise: In the fall of 1053, Lady Imma has one loyalty: to help her uncle, the king of Wales, win his war against the English. Lord Robert, the steward of Wessex, has one loyalty as well: to keep his beloved Wessex safe from enemies. When she is forced to seek shelter in his keep, they must decide if they can listen to their hearts—or if they would be wiser never to trust each other. Sensuality Level: Sensual

While WW2 rages, Elsie must battle for her family Elsie Weir is trying hard to keep her family together. Living in Kiltie Street tenement in Glasgow with her mother and little sister, Jessie, isn’t easy – not least because her mother spends most days in a drunken stupor. But life gets harder still when their mother dies suddenly, leaving Jessie and Elsie broken-hearted. When Elsie’s meagre wages won’t stretch to supporting them, they’re thrown out of their home. The future looks bleak, until their mother’s estranged family deigns to take them in. But their relief is short-lived as it becomes clear the Mearns family have taken in the orphan sisters only for appearances, treating them cruelly behind closed doors. When Elsie discovers the devastating secret her mother kept from them, it seems that they may have a lifeline – until that dream too, is cruelly dashed. Now, more than ever, the sisters only have each other. But can Elsie and Jessie find some hope in a life full of heartbreak? A heartwarming and compelling family saga that fans of Rosie Hendry and Annie Murray will love. Readers are loving Elsie's Wartime Wish: ‘Brilliant book – family saga at its best. I love the characters; you feel you are part of the story.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader Review ‘Fantastic characters, great setting, I was hooked and devoured this book in one sitting...was sad to finish it and keep thinking about the characters.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader Review ‘If you love wartime sagas this is definitely for you.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader Review ‘Heartwarming saga featuring friendships and heartache and happiness. Great characters and a good read.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader Review ‘Great wartime story.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader Review Praise for Carol MacLean: ‘A lovely, lovely story set in WW2. It gripped me from page one... I’d highly recommend it!’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader Review ‘WOW. Loved this book. If you love family saga based in the war, you will love this.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader Review ‘A great WWII-era historical fiction saga... I truly enjoyed this one... Through this story of love, loss, uncertainty, and finding one’s place in life we also get a glimpse of history as well... Beautifully written.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader Review

13th June, 1940. Carefully labelled, and each clutching a little brown suitcase, Terry, aged seven, and his elder brother Jack, eleven, stand amid the throng of chattering children which crowds the narrow platform at Welling station, awaiting the steam engine which will pull them and their fellow evacuees across the country towards their secret destination - and a new life... In the tiny Cornish backwater of Doublebois the brothers find they have swapped the newly built streets of suburban London for the joys of the countryside. The woods become their playground, tree-climbing, rabbit-catching and night-fishing their new pastimes. But it is the railway, above all, which delights them. The main London to Penzance line runs through a cutting right below the small community, the goods yard and siding lie a couple of hundred yards down the line: to the two young sons of a railway worker, No. 7 the Railway Cottages seems the perfect new home. And despite a not-always-friendly rivalry between local kids and the 'vackies', village life under the care of irreverent, Welsh ex-miner Uncle Jack and his generous wife Aunty Rose is idyllic. That is, until the bombing of nearby Plymouth and tragic news from the Front shatter the peace of Doublebois, a reminder of the brutal reality of a war which at times seems so far away. Warm-hearted and moving, Kisses on a Postcard is a vivid and intimate portrait of a forgotten part of our wartime history; a compelling and uplifting memoir of growing up in an extraordinary time.