Hard Landing or The Years of Extermination

Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos

Author: Thomas Petzinger Jr

In this updated paperback edition of a "rich, readable, and authoritative" Fortune) book, Wall Street Journal reporter Petzinger tells the dramatic story of how a dozen men, including Robert Crandall of American Airlines, Frank Borman of Eastern, and Richard Ferris of United, battled for control of the world's airlines. 416 pp. Radio drive-time pubilcity. 20,000 print.

Library Journal

Petzinger, a reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal, presents a thorough analysis of the growth of the airline industry from the 1930s to the present. He demonstrates in a highly detailed manner the competitive nature of the airline business in such notable battles as those between Robert Crandall (American) and Dick Ferris (United) and between Frank Lorenzo (Texas International) and Herb Kelleher (Southwest). Fueled by the big egos of their respective bosses, the major airlines fell into a financial abyss trying to serve the maximum number of passengers and destinations, only to face rising fuel, labor, and operating costs as well as rising debt-while Southwest Airlines became a model of success and profitability. Petzinger exposes the men behind airline growth and competition, computerization, deregulation, strikes, mergers, and bankruptcies and covers current alliances such as the one between KLM and Northwest. Recommended for public libraries.-William A. McIntyre, New Hampshire Technical Coll. Lib., Nashua

Books about: Getting It Right in Print or Descartes Dream

The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945

Author: Saul Friedlander

The last word on the Holocaust by the world's leading expert on the subject.

The extermination of the Jews of Europe triggers disbelief. This volume presents a thorough historical study of the events while attempting to keep some of the traces of the primary sense of disbelief.

The work is based on a vast array of contemporary sources and recent historical literature. Its interpretive framework is founded on the lethal impact of several converging factors: The growing crisis and the collapse of liberal democracy throughout continental Europe on the eve of the war and during its first year, and the anti-Semitic tradition it exacerbated; the raging anti-Jewish campaign of Adolf Hitler's Germany and the readiness of its leader, at a given point in time, to implement his extermination threats against the Jews; the course of the war that became total in 1941 and offered Hitler the context and the circumstances to launch the "Final Solution."

The Holocaust as history extends beyond the usual analysis of German policies, decisions, and measures that led to this most systematic and sustained of modern genocides. It includes the reactions of the surrounding world (authorities, populations, churches, social elites), related facets of everyday life throughout the continent, and their individual expressions. All these elements demand, as is attempted here, one single integrated narration.

The history of the victims is an intrinsic part of this overall context; their attitudes (hope, despair, passivity, collaboration, and resistance) found expression in both collective responses and individual testimonies. Here, the individual voices are weaved into the overall narrative and are the main carriers of disbelief: Some of them end in liberation, most are cut by extermination.

The New York Times - Richard J. Evans

What raises The Years of Extermination to the level of literature, however, is the skilled interweaving of individual testimony with the broader depiction of events. Friedlдnder never lets the reader forget the human and personal meanings of the historical processes he is describing. By and large, he avoids the sometimes unreliable testimony of memoirs for the greater immediacy of contemporary diaries and letters, though he also makes good use of witness statements at postwar trials. The result is an account of unparalleled vividness and power that reads like a novel.

The Washington Post - Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

Friedlдnder's book offers a useful, updated panorama of the events of the Holocaust.

Publishers Weekly

In the second volume of his essential history of Nazi Germany and the Jews, one of the great historians of the Holocaust provides a rich, vivid depiction of Jewish life from France to Ukraine, Greece to Norway, in its most tragic period, drawing especially on hundreds of diaries written by Jews during their ordeal, depicting a world collapsing on its inhabitants, along with the thousands of humiliating persecutions that Jews suffered on their way to extermination. Friedländer also provides insightful discussions of the many interpretive controversies that still surround the history of Nazi Germany. He has been party to many of the debates, and he remains attuned to the most recent historical research. Friedländer knows the bureaucratic workings of the Third Reich as well as anyone, but refuses to see in that alone the explanation for the Holocaust. Instead, he focuses largely on cultural and ideological factors. He considers other factors, such as "the crisis of liberalism," but these were not the essential motives for the Holocaust, which, Friedländer says, was driven by sheer hatred of Jews, by "a redemptive anti-Semitism" espoused by Hitler, a belief that Germans could thrive only through the utter destruction of Jews. This is a masterful synthesis that draws on a lifetime of learning and research. (Apr. 10)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Library Journal

A follow-up to the excellent Nazi Germany and the Jews, from a historian who witnessed the Holocaust firsthand. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction     xiii
Terror (Fall 1939-Summer 1941)
September 1939-May 1940     3
May 1940-December 1940     65
December 1940-June 1941     129
Mass Murder (Summer 1941-Summer 1942)
June 1941-September 1941     197
September 1941-December 1941     261
December 1941-July 1942     329
Shoah (Summer 1942-Spring 1945)
July 1942-March 1943     399
March 1943-October 1943     469
October 1943-March 1944     539
March 1944-May 1945     601
Notes     665
Bibliography     795
Index     849