1889-1974

Only a week after joining the 8th Durhams in April 1915 Private Herbert Tustin was captured at the Battle of Ypres. He describes the horror of trench warfare, his treatment on being taken a prisoner of war (POW) and the three day train journey into Germany. There followed sixteen months captivity at Rennbahn POW Camp with its hunger, hardships, brutality, work regime, friendships, humor and the different national characteristics of fellow POWs. In late summer 1916 together with Canadian, Gerrie Burk, the author escaped over the wire. For the next 10 days traveling by night, sleeping rough and stealing basic food they headed for Holland. Somehow they miraculously managed to avoid recapture despite the closest of calls. Once on the Dutch coast they found a boat, the SS Grenadier, to carry them across the mine-strewn, submarine infested North Sea to England, arriving on 18 September. This amazing story of war, imprisonment, escape and survival concludes with the author's wife recalling the hero's welcome home, the joyful reunion and his proposal of marriage.

"What does it mean to live for your ideals...and to risk dying for them? This book tells the story of young American radicals who sensed a moment of unprecedented promise for American life--politically, socially, culturally--and struggled to bring it about, only to see a cataclysmic war sweep it away. Based on six years of extensive archival research, Jeremy McCarter's ... narrative brings to life the adventures of Randolph Bourne, a cerebral hunchbacked writer, Max Eastman, an activist editor, Walter Lippmann, a slippery political operative, Alice Paul, a trailblazing suffragette, and John Reed, a Communist journalist. It evokes the America they fought to create in the early 20th century, one that young radicals are still fighting to create in the 21st, through movements such as Occupy and Black Lives Matter"--.

A biography of the black musician who in fifty years has composed 2000 songs and performed them all over the world.