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Eight days at Yalta : how Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin shaped the post-war world / by Preston, Diana,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."While some of the last battles of WWII were being fought, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin-the so-called "Big Three"-met from February 4-11, 1945, in the Crimean resort town of Yalta. Over eight days of bargaining, bombast, and intermittent bonhomie, while Soviet soldiers and NKVD men patrolled the grounds of the three palaces occupied by their delegations, they decided, among other things, on the endgame of the war against Nazi Germany and how a defeated and occupied Germany should be governed, on the constitution of the nascent United Nations, on the price of Soviet entry into the war against Japan, on the new borders of Poland, and on spheres of influence elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Greece. With the deep insight of a skilled historian, drawing on the memorable accounts of those who were there-from the leaders and high-level advisors such as Averell Harriman, Anthony Eden, and Andrei Gromyko, to Churchill's clear-eyed secretary Marian Holmes and FDR's insightful daughter Anna Boettiger-Diana Preston has, on the 75th anniversary of this historic event, crafted a masterful and vivid chronicle of the conference that created the post-war world, out of which came decisions that still resonate loudly today"--
Subjects: Yalta Conference (1945 : I͡Alta, Ukraine); World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The evolution of Charles Darwin : the epic voyage of the Beagle that forever changed our view of life on earth / by Preston, Diana,1952-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."When twenty-two-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles-invited by ship's captain Robert FitzRoy who wanted a travel companion at least as much as a ship's naturalist-he hardly thought he was embarking on what would become perhaps the most important and epoch-changing voyage in scientific history. Nonetheless, over the course of the five-year journey around the globe in often hard and hazardous conditions, Darwin would make observations and gather samples that would form the basis of his revolutionary theories about the origin of species and natural selection. Drawing on a rich range of revealing letters, diary entries, recollections of those who encountered him, and Darwin's and FitzRoy's own accounts of what transpired, Diana Preston chronicles the epic voyage as it unfolded, tracing Darwin's growth from untested young man to accomplished adventurer and natural scientist in his own right. Darwin often left the ship to climb mountains or ride hundreds of miles, accompanied by local guides whose languages he barely understood, across pampas and through rainforests in search of further unique specimens. From the wilds of Patagonia to the Galápagos and other Atlantic and Pacific islands, as Preston vibrantly relates, he collected and contrasted giant fossils and volcanic rocks, observed the Argentinian rhea, Falklands fox, and Galápagos finch, through which he began to discern connections between deep past and present. Darwin never left Britain again after his return in 1836, though his mind journeyed far and wide to develop the theories that were first revealed, after great delay and with trepidation about their reception, in 1859 with the publication of his epochal book On the Origin of Species. Offering a unique portrait of one of history's most consequential figures, The Evolution of Charles Darwin is a vital contribution to our understanding of life on Earth"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.; Beagle Expedition (1831-1836); Evolution (Biology); Natural history.; Naturalists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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