Margaret R. Higonnet Boeken

Ellen N. La Motte (1873-1961) and Mary Borden (1886-1968) are two of the best known American nurses who wrote about their experiences working in the same field hospital on the Western Front during World War I. La Motte's The Backwash of War (1916) and Borden's The Forbidden Zone (1929) present in powerful, vivid, and often haunting prose each woman's acute observations of the stark realities of battle and the severe conditions under which military medicine is practiced.Now representative selections from these classic texts are published for the first time in one volume. Linked by parallel themes and narrative approaches, the episodes recounted by La Motte and Borden expose the intense, horrific world of the surgical wards and operating rooms. Revealing the moral dilemmas faced by those who make decisions about the lives and deaths of soldiers, they describe the ethical contradictions of saving men who will return to the trenches to kill or be killed. Written from the perspective of both observer and actor, these compelling sketches often shift from shocking realism to irony, as they invite the reader to enter the nurses' harsh world and to understand their professional and personal struggles. In addition, the depictions of men's suffering challenge institutional indifference to the human costs of war.

A heartbreaking portrayal of a woman faced by an impossible choice in the pursuit of happiness When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. With its sensitive depiction of the wronged Tess and powerful criticism of social convention, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, subtitled "A Pure Woman," is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's novels. Based on the three-volume first edition that shocked readers when first published in 1891, this edition includes as appendices: Hardy's Prefaces, the Landscapes of Tess, episodes originally censored from the Graphic periodical version, and a selection of the Graphic illustrations. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.