| Last updated at 4:49 PM on 09/02/08 |
Ruth Gruber, woman of letters, tells her own story 
BOOKWORKS AND NETWORKS 
The Truro Daily News
These selections are now available at the Colchester-East Hants Public Library.
Witness: One of the Great
Correspondents of the
20th Century Tells Her Story
by Ruth Gruber
With her perfect memory (and plenty of zip), 95-year-old Ruth Gruber – adventurer, international correspondent, photographer, maker of (and witness to) history, responsible for rescuing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees during the Second War II and after – tells her story in her own words and photographs.
Gruber’s life has been extraordinary and extraordinarily heroic. She received a B.A. from New York University in three years, a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin a year later, and a Ph.D. from the University of Cologne (magna cum laude) one year after that, becoming at age 20 the youngest Ph.D. in the world (it made headlines in The New York Times; the subject of her thesis: the then little-known Virginia Woolf).
At 24, Gruber became an international correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and travelled across the Soviet Arctic, scooping the world and witnessing, firsthand, the building of cities in the Siberian gulag by the pioneers and prisoners Stalin didn’t execute ... and when she was 33, Ickes assigned another secret mission to her – one that transformed her life: Gruber escorted 1,000 Holocaust survivors from Italy to America, the only Jews given refuge in this country during the war. “I have a theory,” Gruber said, “that even though we’re born Jews, there is a moment in our lives when we become Jews. On that ship, I became a Jew.”
Gruber’s role as rescuer of Jews was just beginning. During her 32 years as a correspondent, Gruber photographed what she saw and captured the triumph of the human spirit. Witness is a revelation – of a time, a place, a world, a spirit, a belief.
It is, above all else, a book of heart.
First Man In My Life:
Daughters Write
About Their Fathers
by Sandra Martin
In 22 original narratives, some of Canada’s most acclaimed writers share stories, memories, insights, and revelations – from the comic to the tragic, and every shading in between – about the first man in their lives.
Complex, compelling, unforgettable, these stories will open a fresh and intense conversation with daughters everywhere about the men they’ve observed since childhood: their fathers.
Contributors include Anita Rau Badami, Christie Blatchford, Camilla Gibb, Sandra Martin, Lisa Moore, P.K. Page, Emma Richler, Eden Robinson, Pamela Wallin, and others.
Hubbub: Filth,
Noise & Stench in England
by Emily Cockayne
Modern city-dwellers suffer their share of unpleasant experiences – traffic jams, noisy neighbours, pollution, food scares – but urban nuisances of the past existed on a different scale entirely, this book explains in vivid detail.
Focusing on offences to the eyes, ears, noses, taste buds, and skin of inhabitants of England’s pre-Industrial Revolution cities, Hubbub transports us to a world in which residents were scarred by smallpox, refuse rotted in the streets, pigs and dogs roamed free, and food hygiene consisted of little more than spit and polish.
Through the stories of a large cast of characters from varied walks of life, the book compares what daily life was like in different cities across England from 1600 to 1770.
Bookworks and Networks is prepared by the staff of the Colchester-East Hants Public Library
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