Joseph R. Matthews Ordine dei libri (cronologico)

Set in 1973 Greece during the military dictatorship, Shades of Resistance follows thirty-five year old American Jonas Korda into islands of the Aegean. Involved with Greeks who struggle with a junta both brutal and surreal, he confronts the connection between the heart and the larger world. As he attempts physically to run away from a life he has long since emotionally fled, Jonas is faced with the question of his capacity for love. The novel's lyrically evoked Greek islands, are counterpoint to political terror, captured with both shuddering intensity and mordant black humor. Shades of Resistance is that rare work of fiction that explores the relationship between the personal and the political, the heightened responses of a man trapped in a moment of history.

San Francisco, 1916, is a city in turmoil, marked by clashes between radical workers and industrial barons, as well as a vibrant Italian anarchist community opposing state and church forces. Amidst the backdrop of World War I and a growing call for U.S. involvement, Kate Jameson arrives as a novice envoy from Washington, tasked with secretly gauging war support among the city’s business elite. She hopes to find her estranged daughter, Maggie, whose last message came from San Francisco, and to seek closure regarding her husband Jamey, who returned from the Philippines war fifteen years earlier, deeply affected. At the same time, Baldo Cavanaugh, a Sicilian-Irish local with militant beliefs, returns to confront his past and the political violence he has long been entangled in. As their paths intertwine, they navigate the complexities of their histories, which span Boston, Dublin, London, Cuba, and the Philippines. This compelling narrative captures the personal and political upheaval of the era, showcasing how individual lives are shaped by broader societal conflicts. The novel paints a vivid portrait of a city and a pivotal moment in history, exploring the explosive intersection of personal struggles and political realities.

At a time when the issues of identity, immigration, and class remain both universally important and enormously controversial, this book is an accessible and captivating tale of one boy’s historically famous experience in the extraordinary setting of roiling pre-WWII Paris. On November 7, 1938, a small, slight 17-year-old Polish-German Jew named Herschel Grynszpan entered the German embassy in Paris and shot dead a consular official. Three days later, in supposed response, Jews across Germany were beaten, imprisoned, and killed, their homes, shops, and synagogues smashed and burned—Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Based on the historical record and told through his “letters” from German prisons, this novel begins in 1936, when 15-year-old Herschel flees Germany, and continues through his show trial, in which the Nazis sought to demonstrate through his actions that Jews had provoked the war. But Herschel throws a last-minute wrench in the plans, bringing the Nazi propaganda machine to a grinding halt and provoking Hitler to postpone the trial and personally give an order regarding Herschel’s fate.