This Time We Knew

This book punctures once and for all common excuses for Western inaction in the face of incontrovertible evidence of the most egregious crimes against humanity to occur in Europe since World War II.

This story is based on the true experiences of Doris Roth Van Vleet during the war years between 1937 and 1947 in the Japanese occupied City of Shanghai, China. She is the narrator of this amazing story. The war between China and Japan had started and the Japanese soon occupied the territory surrounding the city of Shanghai. The United States Government moved all American citizens to the Philippine Islands until the conflict was resolved. Although the International Settlement was isolated, the Japanese made no attempt to occupy that section of the city so the family returned to their apartment. Life went on in a fairly normal manner but the war in Europe had started and the British military was leaving Shanghai to join their respective battle units, primarily in Hong Kong. Life in the city was becoming more difficult, but the United States maintained neutrality until the Fourth Marines departed on Nov.28th. On the morning of December 8, 1941 there were Japanese tanks on the streets of Shanghai. The Japanese ruled the city in a sort of benign way until the American air raid on Tokyo which triggered the Japanese military to move all Americans over the age of twelve to prison camps. Her father, older brother and sister were interned and Doris, her mother and brother were now alone. They soon realized how difficult it would be just to stay alive, but due to the tenacity and courage of Zina they managed to survive. If the war had lasted into the winter of 1945, they, and most of the people in Shanghai, would have starved to death. It was the dream of all to gain passage, a visa for Zina and move to America as quickly as possible. It took the remainder of 1945 and 1946 to meet that goal. For the first sixteen years of his life George lived in a logging camp, owned by his father, located in Northwest Oregon several miles from the town of Astoria. He graduated from Jewell Grade School with six other kids in his eighth grade class. He entered Grant High School, the largest in the state of Oregon at that time, with five hundred freshmen; it was a social shock to say the least. He still worked every summer as a logger until his enlistment in the U.S. Marines. His entire professional occupation, after military service and college, was in the timber business. His writing career began as a result of a torn Achilles tendon putting him down when he was encouraged to write short stories by his wife and a good friend. After a move to Eugene he decided to enter the creative writing school at the University of Oregon. Starting in a freshman class, at seventy nine years of age, was a real adventure. With help, support and much patience from all his family and friends he finished this book. He hopes you enjoy reading this story as much as he did writing it.

In this time of global unrest and wars, the future appears increasing uncertain - with people projecting their fears onto others under the pretext of defending their religion or their religious way of life. Some even make hate speeches against the beliefs others hold dear. Developing nations are suffering (poverty, corruption, human right abuses, wars/conflicts among others). However, within their grasp, there is a way out if they can collectively will it. With so many happenings that are difficult to understand or explain, I hope this book will be a starting point for all positive minded people i.e. those who have tried, and those still trying to create a more peaceful world people who are just and unbiased in their desire for true freedom and equality for all humanity.

Most of what Americans have heard about the Tet Offensive is wrong. The brief battles in early 1968 during the Vietnam conflict marked the dividing line between gradual progress toward possible victory and slow descent to a humiliating defeat. That the enemy was handily defeated on the ground was considered immaterial; that it could mount attacks at all was deemed a military triumph for the Communists. This persistent view of Tet is a defeatist story line that continues to inspire America’s foreign enemies and its domestic critics of the use of force abroad. In This Time We Win, James S. Robbins at last provides an antidote to the flawed Tet mythology still shaping the perceptions of American military conflicts against unconventional enemies and haunting our troops in combat. In his re-examination of the Tet Offensive, Robbins analyzes the Tet battles and their impact through the themes of terrorism, war crimes, intelligence failure, troop surges, leadership breakdown, and media bias. The result is an explosion of the conventional wisdom about this infamous surge, one that offers real lessons for today’s unconventional wars. Without a clear understanding of these lessons, we will find ourselves refighting the Tet Offensive again and again.

The End is Nigh...Again is a book like no other. Its palpable enthusiasm literally scoops up the reader and guides them through a hilarious true life tale of a young boy called Douglas who, through no fault of his own, finds himself born into a fundamentalist religion.With his tongue firmly in his cheek, Douglas Lee tells this family saga story of his life as a second generation Jehovah's Witness and of his experiences within this bizarre religion. He candidly exposes the web of sin that lies beneath the holier-than-thou facade they present to the world and takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of sex, incest, paedophilia, debauchery, wife swapping and a host of other jaw dropping and highly original sins.

How do you start a new life when the person you love is about to die? At the age of thirty-six, Gordon Darroch's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a devastating blow just as he, and their two children with autism, were preparing to move to her native Holland. Eighteen months later, as their plans seemed to be back on course, came the second blow: Magteld was terminally ill and possibly had only a few months to live. As her health rapidly deteriorated, they became caught up in a race against time to get a dying mother home and give their children a future in a country they hardly knew. How could they build a new life in the midst of grief and loss? How would their two sons adjust to such enormous changes? And what would remain of Magteld once she was gone? A ll the Time We Thought We Had is a story of love and loss and a meditation on grief and memory. It's about how events shape our lives and how we cope with them. And it raises important questions about what we value in life and the legacies we leave behind.

Scripture tells us that the words of Jesus made people uncomfortable, confused, angry, repentant, worshipful, and riotous. Today, we read the words of Christ in a steady, even tone and find ourselves wondering if maybe we're missing something. Could it be that we've lost the emotional power of Jesus's words simply because we're too familiar with them? With incredible insight into the surprising and unsettling aspects of Jesus's parables and life, Matt Mikalatos reimagines familiar stories and parables in a modern-day setting, bringing alive for the contemporary reader all the controversy and conflict inherent in the originals. These emotional, sometimes humorous, and jaw-dropping retellings include the stories of the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, the lost coin, the feeding of the 5,000, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and more, asking provocative questions like What would be the modern equivalent of Jesus letting a "sinful woman" wash his feet? Who would be the hero of "The Good Samaritan"? How would Jesus tell the parable of the lost sheep in a city like Portland?