Unlike 1945, the First World War did not end neatly with the unconditional surrender of the Germans. After a dramatic week of negotiations, military... offensives and the beginning of a Communist revolution, the German Imperial regime collapsed. The Kaiser fled to Holland. The Allies eventually granted an armistice to a new German government, and at 11.00hrs on 11 November, the guns officially ceased fire, but only after 11,000 casualties had been sustained - more than on D-Day! The story of this remarkable day has never been told properly, and yet the roll call of eyewitnesses who left us their impressions includes Adolf Hitler, Charles de Gaulle, Harry S Truman, Anthony Eden, Marie Curie, Maurice Chevalier, Richard Strauss - and future famous generals MacArthur, Patton and Montgomery. From the generals' headquarters to the frontline trenches, from the factories to the farms, Nicholas Best reveals the twists and turns that led to the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

At the conclusion of World War II, Americans anxiously contemplated the return to peace. It was an uncertain time, filled with concerns about ... demobilization, inflation, strikes, and the return of a second Great Depression. Balanced against these challenges was the hope in a future of unparalleled opportunities for a generation raised in hard times and war. One of the remarkable untold stories of postwar America is the successful assimilation of sixteen million veterans back into civilian society after 1945. The G.I. generation returned home filled with the same sense of fear and hope as most citizens at the time. Their transition from conflict to normalcy is one of the greatest chapters in American history. The Greatest Generation Comes Home combines military and social history into a comprehensive narrative of the veteran’s experience after World War II. It integrates early impressions of home in 1945 with later stories of medical recovery, education, work, politics, and entertainment, as well as moving accounts of the dislocation, alienation, and discomfort many faced. The book includes the experiences of not only the millions of veterans drawn from mainstream white America, but also the women, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans who served the nation. Perhaps most important, the book also examines the legacy bequeathed by these veterans to later generations who served in uniform on new battlefields around the world.

Alfred's Greatest Hits series has overwhelmingly been accepted by students and teachers. This series combines just the right combination of hits from... Broadway, Hollywood, television and recordings! As you might expect from Alfred, this series offers a rare combination of great music arranged with care and creativity. Adult students can savor the excitement of playing pop music and reap the benefits from making practicing more fun and rewarding.

Based on 1 Corinthians 13, this well-loved classic provides life-changing insight into the nine components of love: patience, kindness, humility,... generosity, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, guilelessness, and sincerity. The simple beauty and positive truths of this dynamic message will encourage readers to practice the power and blessing of love in every area of life.

Originally published in serial form from December 1860 to August 1861, Great Expectations is the ‘autobiography’ of Pip, as he transformed from... apprentice village blacksmith to a London gentleman. Unlike many of Dickens’s earlier works, the novel is not so much a protest against social evils as a sustained mediation upon the process of social reform in Victorian England. It is this which gives such importance to the book’s handling of the theme of the gentleman, a theme central both to Dickens’s society and to his own life story.

Adopted at more than 1,000 colleges and universities, Bedford/St. Martin's innovative Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism series has introduced more... than a quarter of a million students to literary theory and earned enthusiastic praise nationwide. Along with an authoritative text of a major literary work, each volume presents critical essays, selected or prepared especially for students, that approach the work from several contemporary critical perspectives, such as gender criticism and cultural studies. Each essay is accompanied by an introduction (with bibliography) to the history, principles, and practice of its critical perspective. Every volume also surveys the biographical, historical, and critical contexts of the literary work and concludes with a glossary of critical terms. New editions reprint cultural documents that contextualize the literary works and feature essays that show how critical perspectives can be combined.

Dickens’ epic literary Masterpiece From the agony of Charles Dickens’ disenchantment with the Victorian middle class comes a novel of spellbinding... mystery and a profound examination of moral values—this is the story of the orphan Pip’s trials and tribulations among London’s high society circles. @piMp The walk was a bad idea. I met a prisoner who demanded bread and a file. He looks like a pederast. And a murderer. Amber alert? From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

This Norton Critical Edition, edited by the pioneer of Great Expectations scholarship, presents the most thorough textual edition of the novel (1861)... available.The newly established text is based on all extant materials and is accompanied by several textual essays. "Backgrounds" provides readers with an understanding of Great Expectations's inception and internal chronology.  A discussion of the public-reading version of the novel is also included.  A wonderfully rich "Contexts" section collects thirteen pieces, centering on the novel’s major themes: the link between author and hero and, relatedly, Victorian notions of gentility, snobbishness, and social mobility; the often brutal training, at home and at school, of children born around 1800; and the central issues of crime and punishment. "Criticism" gathers twenty-two assessments of Great Expectations, both contemporary and modern, which offer a range of perspectives on Dickens and his novel.

In the marshy mists of a village churchyard, a  tiny orphan boy named Pip is suddenly terrified by a  shivering, limping convict on the run.... Years  later, a supremely arrogant young Pip boards the coach  to London where, by the grace of a mysterious  benefactor, he will join the ranks of the idle rich  and "become a gentleman." Finally, in the  luminous mists of the village at evening, Pip the  man meets Estella, his dazzingly beautiful  tormentor, in a ruined garden--and lays to rest all the  heartaches and illusions that his "great  expectations" have brought upon him. Dickens's  biographer, Edgar H. Johnson, has said that--except  for the author's last-minute tampering with his  original ending--Great Expectations  is "the most perfectly constructed and  perfectly written of all Dickens's works." In John  Irving's Introduction to this edition, the  novelist takes the view that Dickens's revised ending is  "far more that mirror of the quality of trust in  the novel as a whole." Both versions of the  ending are printed here.

Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the... student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Great Expectations, described by G. K. Chesterton as a “study in human weakness and the slow human surrender,” may be called Charles Dickens’s finest moment in a remarkably illustrious literary career.In an overgrown churchyard, a grizzled convict springs upon an orphan named Pip. The convict terrifies the young boy and threatens to kill him unless Pip helps further his escape. Later, Pip finds himself in the ruined garden where he meets the bitter and crazy Miss Havisham and her foster child Estella, with whom he immediately falls in love. After a secret benefactor gives him a fortune, Pip moves to London, where he cultivates great expectations for a life which would allow him to discard his impoverished beginnings and socialize with the idle upper class. As Pip struggles to become a gentleman and is tormented endlessly by the beautiful Estella, he slowly learns the truth about himself and his illusions.Written in the last decade of his life, Great Expectations reveals Dickens’s dark attitudes toward Victorian society, its inherent class structure, and its materialism. Yet this novel persists as one of Dickens’s most popular. Richly comic and immensely readable, Great Expectations overspills with vividly drawn characters, moral maelstroms, and the sorrow and pity of love.Radhika Jones is a doctoral candidate in English and comparative literature at Columbia University and the managing editor of Grand Street magazine.

Humbled, orphaned Pip is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman — and one day he finds himself in... possession of "great expectations." One of Dickens' finest novels, this is a gripping tale of crime and guilt, revenge and reward.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the divorce rate in the United States rose by a staggering 2,000 percent. To understand this... dramatic rise, Elaine Tyler May studied over one thousand detailed divorce cases. She found that contrary to common assumptions, divorce was not simply a by-product of women's increasing economic and sexual independence, or a rebellion against marriage. Rather, thwarted hopes for fulfillment in the public sphere drove both men and women to wed at a greater rate and to bring higher expectations to their marriages.