web analytics

wwii

Rape of Nanking, The

An Untold Story Finally Brought to Light Author: Iris Chang After reading Pearl S. Buck’s Dragon Seed, a novelization of the Nanking Massacre from the perspective of a farmer and his close-knit household, I became curious about the massacre. Admittedly, my historical knowledge is spotty, but World War II has made it into numerous movies and fictional books and is one of the more interesting and devastating moments in our contemporary world. Yet, I’d never heard of the Nanking massacre. For the Japanese part in World War II, the stories always focus on Pearl Harbor or the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima [...]

2023-04-23T12:44:36-07:00April 23rd, 2023|Tags: , , , , , |

Dragon Seed

A Story of the Nanjing Massacre Author: Pearl S. Buck Ling Tan is in love with his land, as any 1930s Chinese farmer would be. He has a good life, a good family, a connection with his land and village that is sustaining. True, there are rumors of war, but what does it matter to ordinary people who “rules” the country? Farming and village life will go on as before. Taxes will be sent to a different entity. Nothing will change. Lao Er, Ling Tan’s second son, and his wife, Jade, know better. As members of the younger generation, both are [...]

2023-03-21T18:17:50-07:00March 21st, 2023|Tags: , , , , , , , |

Book Thief, The

Death Narrates Nazi Germany Author: Markus Zusak Books and movies about war can make the most complicated of human circumstances seem simple, black and white, a basic battle between right and wrong.  In some ways, and in some wars, there is truth to be found in the basics, but to stop there ignores the real people whose lives are ended, destroyed and forever altered by conflicts in whose creation they had no part.  The Book Thief acknowledges all of those people through the vector of a single small girl living as part of the most highly controversial civilian population in [...]

2016-12-31T17:57:30-07:00April 6th, 2012|Tags: , , , , |
Go to Top