Arcadia Public Library

Five interrelated families -- American, German, Russian, English, Welsh -- enter a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil, beginning with the rise of the Third Reich, through the Spanish Civil War and the great dramas of World War II, up to the explosions of the American and Soviet atomic bombs. Carla von Ulrich, born of German and English parents, finds her life engulfed by the Nazi tide until she commits a deed of great courage...

"By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear that the Allies would win the Second World War. Around the same time, it also became increasingly clear to many Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic that the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. A war won by technological superiority merely laid the groundwork for a post-war society governed by technocrats. These Christian intellectuals--Jacques...

It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family, is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian brothers, whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul...

"At the threshold of a new millennium, we look back on an extraordinary century, the most momentous and eventful in the history of humankind. In a hundred years that encompass both astonishing achievements and unparalleled horrors, the world has seen the greatest scientific triumphs ever imagined and the two most destructive wars ever fought. At the dawn of the 20th century, powered flight was a visionary dream. A mere seven decades later, American...

A compilation of memorable photographs captures the execution of a Viet Cong officer, a woman mourning over one of Kent State's massacre victims, and Martin Luther King delivering his "I have a dream" speech.

"In the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the 1942 Rose Bowl was moved from Pasadena to Duke University out of fear of further Japanese attacks on the West Coast. Shortly after this unforgettable game, many of the players and coaches left their respective colleges, entered the military, and went on to serve around the world in famous battlegrounds, from Iwo Jima and Okinawa to Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, where fate and destiny would bring...