American Nightingale

The heart-wrenching and inspirational WWII story of the first American nurse to die at the Normandy landings, the true account of a woman whose courage and compassion led to what a national radio show host in 1945 called "one of the most moving stories to come out of the war—a story of an army nurse that surpassed anything Hollywood has ever dreamed of." She was a Jewish girl growing up in World War I-torn Poland. At age seven, she and her family immigrated to America with dreams of a brighter future. But Frances Slanger could not lay her past to rest, and she vowed to help make the world a better place—by joining the military and becoming a nurse. Frances, one of the 350,000 American women in uniform during World War II, was among the first nurses to arrive at Normandy beach in June 1944. She and the other nurses of the 45th Field Hospital would soon experience the hardships of combat from a storm-whipped tent amid the anguish of wounded men and the thud of artillery shells. Months later, a letter that Frances wrote to the Stars and Stripes newspaper won her heartfelt praise from war-weary GIs touched by her tribute to them. But she never got to read the scores of soldiers' letters that poured in. She was killed by German troops the very next day. American Nightingale is the unforgettable, first-ever full-length account of the woman whose brave life stands as a testament to the American spirit.

Widowed and penniless, Bella Gale Smith and her young daughter face a bleak future in 1865 New York City, until Zach Smith knocks on her door. She knows her late-husband’s estranged stepbrother as “the black sheep” of his family. The handsome bandleader hoped to visit his younger brother before joining his former musicians in Smith’s Cornet Band, a favorite of New York society before the war. Battle-weary from fighting on the Confederate side, Zach is certainly not looking to take on his brother’s family. But Bella and her daughter tag along, buying a ticket on a steamboat north to the opulent Catskill Mountain House, where his band is booked for the summer season. Determined to keep out of Zach’s way, Bella is hired as a hotel maid, struggling to care for her daughter despite her grueling schedule and a tyrannical boss. The hotel manager, meanwhile, pressures Zach to update the band’s image and hire a female singer in the style of the popular Swedish Nightingale. It’s only when Zach overhears Bella singing a lullaby to her daughter that he realizes her clear soprano voice and good looks could be the answer to both their problems. A sweeping saga of passions and new ambitions at the beginnings of the Gilded Age in old New York.

Florence Nightingale is famous as the ""lady with the lamp"" in the Crimean War, 1854-56. There is a massive amount of literature on this work, but, as editor Lynn McDonald shows, it is often erroneous, and films and press reporting on it have been even less accurate. The Crimean War reports on Nightingale's correspondence from the war hospitals and on the staggering amount of work she did post-war to ensure that the appalling death rate from disease (higher than that from bullets) did not recur. This volume contains much on Nightingale's efforts to achieve real reforms. He.

In love we find out who we want to be. In war we find out who we are. FRANCE, 1939 In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn't believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive. Vianne's sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others. With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women's war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

Florence Nightingale remains an inspiration to nurses around the world for her pioneering work treating wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War; authorship of Notes on Nursing, the foundational text for nursing practice; establishment of the world's first nursing school; and advocacy for the hygienic treatment of patients and sanitary design of hospitals. In Notes on Nightingale, nursing historians and scholars offer their valuable reflections on Nightingale and analysis of her role in the profession a century after her death on 13 August 1910 and 150 years since the Nightingale School of Nursing (now the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King's College, London) opened its doors to probationers at St Thomas' Hospital. There is a great deal of controversy about Nightingale—opinions about her life and work range from blind worship to blanket denunciation. The question of Nightingale and her place in nursing history and in contemporary nursing discourse is a topic of continuing interest for nursing students, teachers, and professional associations. This book offers new scholarship on Nightingale's work in the Crimea and the British colonies and her connection to the emerging science of statistics, as well as valuable reevaluations of her evolving legacy and the surrounding myths, symbolism, and misconceptions.

Although Florence Nightingale is famous as a nurse, her lifetime’s writing on nursing and to nurses is scarcely known in the profession. Nursing professors tend to “look to the future, not to the past,” and often ignore her or rely on faulty secondary sources. Volume 12 related the founding of her school at St Thomas’ Hospital and her guidance of its teaching for the rest of her life. Volume 13, Extending Nursing, relates the introduction of professional training and standards outside St Thomas’, beginning with London hospitals and others in Britain, followed by hospitals in Europe, America, Australia and Canada. Also presented is material on work in India, Japan and China. The challenge of raising standards in the tough workhouse infirmaries is reported, as is Nightingale’s fostering of district nursing. A chronology in this volume provides a convenient overview of Nightingales work on nursing from 1860 to 1900. Both volumes give biographical sketches of key nursing leaders.

April 4, 1915, Bertha Crawford bowed to tumultuous applause before a glittering audience at the Tsar’s Imperial Mariinsky Theatre. How had a young soprano from Ontario become a darling of the Russian capital eight months into the First World War? The Canadian Nightingale vividly resurrects the forgotten life of Bertha Crawford, a determined Canadian singer who chased the celebrity dream of her time to find unprecedented success on the opera stages of Russia and Poland. Meticulous historical research and compelling dramatic vignettes restore Crawford and her era to life. After a rollercoaster ride to fame that was ultimately derailed by broken trust, one big question remains: how was a Canadian story this fascinating left untold for more than eighty years.