Search

The article discusses the continued impact of World War I on life in 2014 and discusses literature inspired by the war, as well as other wars. Topics discussed include the writing of books by military veterans, the impact of the author Ernest Hemingway and his novel "A Farewell to Arms," and the idea that World War I led to a loss of innocence.

The article presents information on the World War I play "Journey's End," by R.C. Sherriff. In the present backdrop of disillusionment with the Iraq War, the revival of the play will open on Broadway in New York City. According to Sherriff, the play was written by him to celebrate the men who fought with him and not as a plea for peace. The interpretation of the play by the modern day audiences is not parallel to the that of the author himself.

''YOU have to understand the feelings of the people you're interviewing,'' the veteran journalist Ruth Gruber said recently. Which sounds simple enough, unless the person you're interviewing is Ruth Gruber. After all, her own subjects have included Holocaust survivors, Arctic explorers, inmates of Stalin's gulags and Virginia Woolf. The precocious product of ''a shtetl called Brooklyn,'' Ms. Gruber made headlines in 1931 when, at 20, she earned a doctorate in literature from the University of Cologne in Germany. She journeyed to the Soviet Arctic in 1935 while reporting for The New York Herald Tribune; was a special assistant to Interior Secretary Harold Ickes during World War II; escorted 1,000 Jewish refugees to Oswego, N.Y., during the war; covered the Nuremberg war-crimes trials; and accompanied the globe-trotting Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry as it examined the question of Jewish refugees and Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHED onto the shores of his island home, after 10 years' absence in a foreign war and 10 years of hard travel in foreign lands, Odysseus, literature's most famous veteran, stares around him: ''But now brilliant Odysseus awoke from sleep in his own fatherland, and he did not know it,/having been long away.'' Additionally, the goddess Athena has cast an obscuring mist over all the familiar landmarks, making ''everything look otherwise/than it was.'' ''Ah me,'' groans Odysseus, ''what are the people whose land I have come to this time?'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reports that former U.S. Republican Representative John Hostettler is writing a book that he says will reveal the hidden political motives that led to the invasion of Iraq, an invasion only he and five other House Republicans have opposed. Hostettler has kept a low profile since losing his bid for re-election.

The article discusses how the concept of war has inspired some of the greatest works of literature.

Focuses on the interpretation which the literary group known as the Generation of '98 has put on the 1898 Spanish-American War, regarding Spain's loss of three of its colonies. Loss of colonies including Cuba and Philippines; View that the loss of the colonies was insignificant; Information on some of the group's members; Comments from Victor Garcia de la Concha, a literature professor at the University of Salamanca.

Discusses literature in wartime Bosnia-Hercegovina. Writer Miroslav Jancic's escape to Slovenia; Nationalism in the media; Disdain for escapees; Description of publications; Literary refugees; Activities of expatriate community.