Central Skagit Library District

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. "With bald honesty and brutal lyricism" (Elle), the anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. "Spare and unpredictable, minutely observed and utterly...

This riveting account of German resistance is based on years of research by the distinguished journalist Anne Nelson. This is a beautiful and moving portrait of ordinary but heroic figures-an untold story of a circle of Germans and German-Americans in Berlin who took a principled stand against Hitler and the Holocaust. They expressed their opposition by infiltrating the Nazi ministries, distributing samizdat literature to break through the information...

After Wisconsin graduate student Mildred Fish marries brilliant German economist Arvid Harnack, she accompanies him to his German homeland, where a promising future awaits. In the thriving intellectual culture of 1930s Berlin, the newlyweds create a rich new life filled with love, friendships, and rewarding work--but the rise of a malevolent new political faction inexorably changes their fate. As Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party wield violence and...

"From international bestselling author Harald Gilbers comes the heart-pounding story of Jewish detective Richard Oppenheimer as he hunts for a serial killer through war-torn Nazi Berlin in Germania. Berlin 1944: a serial killer stalks the bombed-out capital of the Reich, preying on women and laying their mutilated bodies in front of war memorials. All of the victims are linked to the Nazi party. But according to one eyewitness account, the perpetrator...

At once an invaluable photographic record of life in Weimer Berlin and a timeless demonstration of the cinema's ability to enthrall on a purely visceral level, Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (Berlin, die Symphonie der Grosstadt) offers a kaleidoscopic view of a single day in the life of a bustling metropolis. Carl Mayer (The Last Laugh), influenced by the naturalistic Kammerspiel movement, envisioned "a melody of pictures" sprung from daily reality...

The true story of a young German girl, Mercedes Simon, and of the American pilot, Gail Halvorsen, who shared hope and joy with the children of West Berlin by dropping candy-filled parachutes during the Airlift.

Casting about is a lyrical documentary that illuminates the grit, mystery and raw emotion behind the process of casting actors. Shot from the filmmaker's point of view, the viewer encounters many of the 350 diverse actresses who test for a trio of roles in a dramatic film, in auditions held in Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London and Los Angeles. Deftly weaving together interviews, monologues, private moments, the film creates an impressionistic and moving...

"From the acclaimed author of Dreaming in Cuban, a new novel that follows three generations of a divided family against the tumultuous backdrops of Cuba, America, Germany, and Russia in the new millennium"-- "Celia del Pino, matriarch of a far-flung Cuban family, has watched her descendants spread out across the globe, struggling to make sense of their transnational identities and strained relationships with one another. In Berlin, the charismatic...

"Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, an auditing of the British Secret Service 'to investigate historical over-reaching.' Monochrome's mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer--and [allow] Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5's formidable...