Offering a perspective on this global phenomenon, this book traces its history through its objects, such as iconic items like the British Spitfire, the George Cross and Adolf Hitler's personal revolver, to personal objects which tell the poignant stories of individuals and official documents, maps and orders.

"An anthology of original essays by fifty major American writers on one hundred essential short stories. 'A writer,' Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow once said, 'is a reader who is moved to emulation.' That idea inspired New York Times bestselling novelist and memoirist Andre Dubus III to invite fifty acclaimed authors to write about the precise alchemy of emulation, about short stories that altered their view of life and their place in it-short stories...

"The lives of Mika and her husband, celebrated pianist Andre Polonski, are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Jeanne, a young woman who has learned that she might have been switched at birth with Polonski's son in the hospital. Also a pianist, Jeanne speculates that she may be Andre's daughter. Her suspicions further aroused by Mika's behavior, Jeanne begins the dangerous task of unraveling a dark web of family secrets and lies." --

"In a tribute to his late father, British historian Mark Mazower traces his family's story from the end of the nineteenth century to today, beginning with his grandfather Mordkhel Mazower's birth in the town of Grodno, part of the Pale of Settlement to which the majority of the Russian Empire's Jews were confined. An activist and member of the Communist Bund, Mordkhel--who later assumed the more European name "Max"--travelled widely in the years surrounding...

"In this wide-ranging collection of essays, stories, graphic memoir, and cross-genre work, writers explore the deeply human act of kissing." -- From book jacket.