Surviving With Wolves

One of the most extraordinary and poignant survival stories to come out of World War II; Misha was only six years old when her parents were taken away from their home in Belgium to Auschwitz. She was given a new name, a new home, and forced into a new religion. No one told her why her parents were no longer with her, only that they had gone East. So one day, equipped only with a tiny compass and a few provisions, she set out East to find them. Misha crossed Belgium, Germany and Poland on foot alone - until, close to starvation in a vast forest, she was adopted by a family of wolves. She ate and played with the wolf cubs, and was protected by their mother. Finally, at the end of the war, she found her way home to Belgium via the Ukraine, Romania and Italy. She never found her parents.

Outlearning the Wolves 3rd Edition: Surviving and Thriving in a Learning Organization Robert Fritz calls this fable a true classic that demonstrates how "a good story can be one of the best sources of profound change." Now available in 11 languages; the book continues to find new audiences and win the hearts of those who embrace its lessons. Yet; it’s fair to say that the central message of this deceptively simple tale is almost as radical today as it was when Pegasus first published it 10 years ago. As Fritz observes; it is still the rare organization that appreciates the insight that the sheep in the story discover: Individual learning; good as it is; does not necessarily translate into organizational learning. The learning must become collective." That’s why this book continues to be such an important resource for innovators determined to confront the wolves of complacency in their organizations by stimulating people’s natural desire to creatively improve their results together.

Originally published in hardcover in 1998.

This haunting, heart-stopping middle grade novel follows three of the Wolfskinder, German children left to fend for themselves in the final days of World War II, as they struggle to hold onto themselves and each other while surviving in the wild. Sometimes it’s good to be wild. Sometimes, you have to be. When the Russian Army marches into East Prussia at the end of World War II, the Wolf family must flee. Being caught by the Russians or Americans would be the end for them. Liesl, Otto, and baby Mia’s father has already been captured, and they get separated from their mother in a blizzard after only a few days on the run. Liesl promised Mama that she’d keep her brother and sister safe, no matter what. They’ll forage in the forests if they have to. Little do they know at the start that there are hundreds of other parentless children doing the same thing. And they far too quickly learn that, sometimes, to survive, you have to do bad things. Dangerous things. Wild things. Sometimes you must become a wolf.

"[G]ripping, immaculately researched . . . In Mr. Ullrich’s account, the murderous behavior of the Reich’s last-ditch loyalists was not a reaction born of rage or of stubbornness in the face of defeat—common enough in war—but of something that had long ago tipped over into the pathological." —Andrew Stuttaford, Wall Street Journal The best-selling author of Hitler: Ascent and Hitler: Downfall reconstructs the chaotic, otherworldly last days of Nazi Germany. In a bunker deep below Berlin’s Old Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler and his new bride, Eva Braun, took their own lives just after 3:00 p.m. on April 30, 1945—Hitler by gunshot to the temple, Braun by ingesting cyanide. But the Führer’s suicide did not instantly end either Nazism or the Second World War in Europe. Far from it: the eight days that followed were among the most traumatic in modern history, witnessing not only the final paroxysms of bloodshed and the frantic surrender of the Wehrmacht, but the total disintegration of the once-mighty Third Reich. In Eight Days in May, the award-winning historian and Hitler biographer Volker Ullrich draws on an astonishing variety of sources, including diaries and letters of ordinary Germans, to narrate a society’s descent into Hobbesian chaos. In the town of Demmin in the north, residents succumbed to madness and committed mass suicide. In Berlin, Soviet soldiers raped German civilians on a near-unprecedented scale. In Nazi-occupied Prague, Czech insurgents led an uprising in the hope that General George S. Patton would come to their aid but were brutally put down by German units in the city. Throughout the remains of Third Reich, huge numbers of people were on the move, creating a surrealistic tableau: death marches of concentration-camp inmates crossed paths with retreating Wehrmacht soldiers and groups of refugees; columns of POWs encountered those of liberated slave laborers and bombed-out people returning home. A taut, propulsive narrative, Eight Days in May takes us inside the phantomlike regime of Hitler’s chosen successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, revealing how the desperate attempt to impose order utterly failed, as frontline soldiers deserted and Nazi Party fanatics called on German civilians to martyr themselves in a last stand against encroaching Allied forces. In truth, however, the post-Hitler government represented continuity more than change: its leaders categorically refused to take responsibility for their crimes against humanity, an attitude typical not just of the Nazi elite but also of large segments of the German populace. The consequences would be severe. Eight Days in May is not only an indispensable account of the Nazi endgame, but a historic work that brilliantly examines the costs of mass delusion.

Nine year old Bernard loved to play in the vineyard while his father and uncle harvested the grapes. But, like the grapes in his father's basket, the life he knew would soon be crushed. Bernard survived to tell a tale of cunning and friendship, of humanity in the face of the inhumane, a tale of bravery and courage and incredible risk.

The thrilling Newbery Medal–winning classic about a girl lost on the Alaskan tundra and how she survives with the help of a wolf pack. Julie of the Wolves is a staple in the canon of children’s literature and the first in the Julie trilogy. The survival theme makes it a good pick for readers of wilderness adventures such as My Side of the Mountain, Hatchet, or Island of the Blue Dolphins. To her small village, she is known as Miyax; to her friend in San Francisco, she is Julie. When her life in the village becomes dangerous, Miyax runs away, only to find herself lost in the Alaskan wilderness. Miyax tries to survive by copying the ways of a pack of wolves and soon grows to love her new wolf family. Life in the wilderness is a struggle, but when she finds her way back to civilization, Miyax is torn between her old and new lives. Is she the Miyax of her human village—or Julie of the wolves? Don't miss any of the books in Jean Craighead George's groundbreaking series: Julie of the Wolves, Julie, and Julie's Wolf Pack.