What begins in the Warsaw Ghetto...will find the music of your heart. There are secrets in one's life that when revealed change the lives of all around. A REQUIEM FOR HANIA is a story of secrets and a story of who we are, who we were once meant to be. Inspired by a true story, based purposely on musical form, the novel follows three primary characters' journeys: In 1942, Hania Stern, a young Jewish girl, and her family are caught up in the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto. Hania survives when so many others do not survive, escaping when others do not escape. But escape is not release. Hers is the story of a soul lost, and a soul found.In 1968, Pawel Weisz, an avant-garde composer and teacher in Warsaw, knows little of his own past; what he does know he denies. At a time of great protest, anti-Semitism and attempted change in a Communist state at a crossroads, Pawel falls in a forbidden love with a radical young Jewish violinist. But the repressive State and the times in which the two men find one another prevent any real possibility of such. Theirs is a love discovered too late, leading to loss, to great pain, to exile...while in the shadows State Security watches and waits.And in 2006, Agniezka Janiec, an actor in Warsaw, seeking herself through her art, discovers at the death of her grandmother, Hannah Kielar, secrets that push her into a journey of self-discovery: about her Grandmother, about Warsaw in the Ghetto years, about where she comes from and who she is. About those lost, and those found.A REQUIEM FOR HANIA is a story of identity, of loss, of rediscovery. It is a story about friendship, about music that illuminates our common humanity, about the pain of the past and the potential for the present and for the future. It is finally a story of where we all come from, who we are...and where we ultimately are going as we find ourselves, as we grieve and as we celebrate.

As an influential and well-connected composer, Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) had encountered, befriended, and collaborated with hundreds of people over his significant career. In Brahms and His World: A Biographical Dictionary, author Peter Clive provides extensive and up-to-date information on the composer's personal and professional association with some 430 persons. These persons include relatives, friends, acquaintances, and physicians; fellow musicians and composers whom Brahms particularly admired and in the editions of whose works he was involved; conductors, instrumentalists, and singers who took part in notable or first performances of his works; poets whose texts he set to music; publishers and artists; and even the rulers of certain German states with whom he had significant contact. Offering information not usually available in Brahms biographies, this volume combines findings from both primary and secondary sources, giving insights into Brahms' character, his life, and his career, and shedding light on the educated middle and upper class culture of the nineteenth century. A comprehensive chronology of Brahms' life, a bibliography, and two indexes round out this important reference guide.

The civil war in Syria—which has claimed more than 600,000 lives and displaced over half of the country’s population since 2011—is an enormously complex conflict. The combatants include a wide array of state and nonstate forces, both Syrian and international. Adding to the war’s complexity, its many participants understand and explain the war in a range of different ways. For some, it is a fight for dignity and democracy; for others, a sectarian or communal conflict; still others see it as a fight against terrorism or a consequence of foreign interference. Ora Szekely draws on sources including in-depth interviews, conflict data, and propaganda distributed through social media to examine how these competing narratives have shaped the course of the conflict. Mapping out the broad patterns of violence among combatants and against civilians, Szekely argues that the competition to control the narrative in the eyes of important audiences at home and abroad has not only influenced the choices of participants, it has also—shaped in part by the use of social media—led many to treat warfare as a kind of performance. An insightful analysis of the forces fueling a brutal civil war, Syria Divided offers new perspectives on the performative aspects of violence, the weaponization of social media, and key features of twenty-first-century warfare.

With over 9,000 total entries, this concise, easy-to-use dictionary features eastern Armenian dialect, phonetic pronunciation for each language, and is ideal for the student and traveler. --