Yesterday’s Dreams

Danielle Ackley-Mcphail brings the richness of Irish legend, the myth and magic of Erie to the streets of New York in her first fantasy novel, “Yesterday’s Dreams.”

Ms. Ackley-Mcphail has used in depth research into the legends of Carman, an Athenian goddess and her three sons. The Tuatha de Danaan stepped in to stop the terror and destruction that Carman and her sons were reeking on the mortals of early Ireland. They chain Carman and force her to watch as her sons are destroyed.  But…..Oclas (evil), the third son has not been totally destroyed, and has set his minion Lucien Blanc lose on the unsuspecting humans.

Cliodna of the Tuatha de Danaan—the fairy folk of Ireland also known as the Sidhe—runs the quaint antique shop Yesterday’s Dreams, as Maggie. She collects and protects items that have  “a bit ‘o’ the magic.” And she waits, for those of her line have sworn to aid and protect the clan O’keefe.

Kara’s father’s illness and treatments have driven her to pawn her legacy from her grandfather, Quicksilver, her violin. And give up her dream of attending Juliard. While looking around Yesterday’s Dreams, Kara is shocked to see a picture of her grandfather dancing with a woman who looks exactly like the young woman running the shop. It doesn’t help knowing that Maggie’s ancestor might have known her grandfather. Kara feels as if her soul is being torn from her, and pours forth all her pain and sorrow when she plays a final tune on her precious instrument before leaving it in Maggie’s hands.

Maggie knows Quicksilver is more than just a violin. There is power here, as there is in Kara, and she knows she must protect them both from the evil that stalks them from the moment Kara and Quicksilver enter her shop. Maggie knows she must gather her forces for a desperate battle against evil. For it now walks the streets of modern New York in the form of Lucien Blanc, and he wants what he senses behind the walls of Yesterday’s Dreams, and he wants the power he senses in Kara O’keefe.

Danielle Ackley-Mcphail turns fantasy to plausible reality in Yesterday’s Dreams. The characters in this story are so charming and alive they spring from the story to haunt and taunt like a soft Irish mist long after the final page is read. I found “Yesterday’s Dreams” a delightful page turning adventure into imagination, and certainly look forward to reading more works by this author.
 

Reviewd by: Charlene Austin 

TURKEY'S MODERNIZATION:
Refugees from Nazism and Ataturk's Vision.
©Arnold Reisman
arnoldreisman@sbcglobal.net

New Academia Publishers, Washington, DC. 
Release date August 28, 2006
WWW.newacademia.com– info@newacademia.com

Library of congress Control Number: 2006928369
ISBN 0-9777908-8-6paperback (alc.paper)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.
asp?z=y&isbn=0977790886&itm=1

 Pre-publication Reviews 
In the story of the Righteous, there are many little-known aspects. One of these is The willingness of the Turkish Government of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Ismet Inonu to take in German and Austrian Jews, and to use the talents of thes  victims of race prejudice and persecution to the benefit of the Turkish Republic in its academic, scientific, and medical endeavours. This book gives a detailed and revealing account of how this was done and who were its beneficiaries. It thereby adds to our knowledge of an important aspect of the Holocaust, and  of the behaviour of Nation States in the modern world of woe and grief.

Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill's official biographer and a leading historian of the modern world.His book The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (published in the United States as The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War) is a classic work on the subject.

The subject of the German Jewish scientists’ exile in Turkey is known in Germany and in Turkey but not outside these two countries. Because the literature on this subject is fragmented and exists only in German or Turkish, the Anglo Saxon world is unaware of this subject.There exists no book that provides a comprehensive picture and analysis of this part of 20^th century history. There are only monographs on some of the exiled scientists. The strength of the research contained in TURKEY'S MODERNIZATION: Refugees from Nazism and Ataturk's Vision, is that it uses archives, memoirs, correspondence, oral histories, photographic, and other documents never used before in discussing the émigré professors in Turkey and ties them together in a historical context to give for the first time a total and detailed picture of the exiled scientists’ lives while in Turkey and the contributions they made in America and elsewhere in the west after their departure. For these reasons, Arnold Reisman’s scholarly and painstaking research is a very important contribution to the history of relations between Germany and Turkey during WW2 and to Holocaust studies as well. It also provides contributions to the history of science and of higher education, and is a case study of national development.

Rifat N. Bali, independent scholar, and author of several books on Turkish Jewry. The most recent is Bali, R. (2005), The “'varlik vergisi” affair: A study of its legacy.Istanbul, Turkey

This book should be on the "must-read" list of books about World War II and the years preceding it. At first glance, the book is about a limited subject: the contribution of scientist refugees from countries under Nazi rule to the modernization of Turkish academic institutions. Yet, the author presents the personal stories within a global perspective that makes the book much more important than its main subject.

The stories of intellectuals, mostly Jewish, who were saved by Turkey after being fired from their academic positions in countries under Nazi rule, highlight just the visible tip of an iceberg of talents. The iceberg’s greater mass was annihilated during the Holocaust. The persecution against these great minds started years before the beginning of the war while other countries of the world collaborated with the Nazi regime or at best stood silently by. The book documents how the Turkish government welcomed these scientists while the United States had its doors closed to most refugees, even to these world-class professors. The silence and indifference of the Western world in the face of persecution against the Jews allowed the growth of the monster Nazi Germany that eventually engulfed the globe, leaving over 50 million people dead by the end of the WW II.

The concluding chapter of the book presents a comparative analysis of the
scientific and technological development of Turkey. The author’s reflections
on these issues should be carefully heeded by policy makers not only in
Turkey but in many developed and in most developing countries.

Overall, the book is very well organized, captivating to read and flowing
in style. Arnold Reisman has done a great service in documenting history
and providing us with plenty of lessons for the future.
 

Dr. Israel Hanukoglu, Former Science Adviser to the Prime Minister
of Israel. Currently Professor and Chairman of the Department of
Molecular Biology, College of Judea and Samaria, Ariel, Israel

This book involves five major topics: science, history, politics, economics, and the arts. It is the earliest comprehensive essay in the English language, on the German émigrés who, while taking refuge in Turkey after 1933, contributed to the modernization of its higher education, to implementation of research activities, and social reforms. Most of these scholars left Turkey as WWII came to a close, to carry their scientific activities in the US and other countries. Arnold Reisman's work, based on a large array of sources makes
their history known to a public with a wide variety of interests.Prof. Dr. Feza Günergun , Chair for History of Science, Faculty of Letters, Istanbul University, 34459 Beyazit-Istanbul, Turkey

 A large number of German intellectuals who left their homeland because of Nazi persecution found haven, as an outcome of the 1933 Turkish University Reforms, in the newly founded Turkish Republic, profoundly impacting higher education in that country. Working together with Atatürk’s government, these individuals participated in the modernization of the young Republic. The events leading to their arrival in Turkey, their work and their contributions during their stay in their host country, which became a second home for many, constitute a remarkable chapter in modern history. This intellectual migration changed many lives and contributed to a diaspora of knowledge. Nevertheless, since most of the writings on the subject have been in German and in Turkish, this history is not well known in the English-speaking world. Reisman’s book, therefore, is a significant and welcome addition to the existing literature on the subject, rich in documentation, memoirs and oral histories that provide
precious first hand accounts of a dangerous and difficult period.

A final note on chapter 14: these memoirs provide extremely important documentation for the period, are most informative and poignant. I was deeply moved reading this material, which brought me back to my own years at the English High School (for Girls) and at the American College in Arnavutköy, then the women’s campus of Robert College in Bebek.

Dr. Lâle Aka Burk , Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, and author of L.A. Burk, "An Open Door: German Refugee Professors in Turkey" in Peter I. Rose, Ed., The Dispossessed-An Anatomy of Exile, University of Massachusetts Press, 2004,

 German-Jewish refugee scientists in Turkey is a fascinating topic and I have seen little good research about it, which makes it doubly appealing. The subject of this book is of enormous interest.

Noah Efron, Chair Graduate Program in Science, Technology & Society Committee on Interdisciplinary Studies
Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.

As I am working on German-Jewish interwar migration, it is most relevant and innovative, apart from its importance to the history of science development and transfer.

Hagit Lavsky, the Samuel L. and Perry Haber Chair in Post- Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A leading expert on the Jewish experience during and prior to the Holocaust, Prof. Lavsky is a Matthew Family Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies within the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is the author of five books including Before Catastrophe: The Distinctive Path of German Zionism, 1918-1932, which won the esteemed Arnold Wiznitzer Prize for best book of the year in the field of Jewish history.

 I have been reading your chapters with interest—they bring back so much of the past. All those names I remember, all those people we used to know.... I think your focusing on Turkey's role in helping so many of the refugee intellectuals to survive is a great idea. As you point out, little is known about the contribution Turkey made to intellectual achievement in the past century, and little is known about how these "cream of the crop" professors transformed Turkey's higher education. So the appearance of your book is very timely.  Elizabeth [Reichenbach] Austin. Sacramento, CA.

 TURKEY'S MODERNIZATION  is an honest, detailed, and factual account of the circumstances surrounding the creation of Turkey’s modern educational system with the help of exiled intellectuals. Dr. Reisman presents the facts even-handedly, glossing over nothing.

I believe I can speak for my late husband Hans Güterbock and his University of Chicago colleague Benno Landsberger, and say that they would have been pleased at the recognition of their contributions and those of other similarly situated German, Austrian, and Czech émigrés who, during the darkest years of the 20^th century, created and developed the modern university system that now exists in Turkey.

Frances Güterbock, Chicago. IL  

I am reading your book and learning facts about people of whom I had heard about as a child, having met some of them. I remember playing with the daughter of Dr. Nissen. By the way, the Nissen couple were extremely handsome, that I remember well. I am sure your book will be a source of rarely known information for those who want to know more about each of the very famous people you are mentioning. It is also of interest for those who want to learn more about the Diaspora of the Jewish people before and after the holocaust. The story makes it clear what a great opportunity this was. For people like us it was the only way to avoid the gas chambers. The idea of categorizing the subject into different themes seems to be excellent.

Mariam[Hellmann] Schmidt, Ramat Hasharon, Israel.

“Turkey’s Modernization” is uniquely well researched and it describes a chapter of history not well known to the public. It illustrates in rare form and with great accuracy the significant contributions that the Jewish German, Austrian, and Czechoslovakian scientists; exiled by the Nazis made on emerging Turkey under the leadership of Ataturk’s vision. From a “Zeitzeuge” survivor my gratitude to Arnold Reisman for his tremendous work and for bringing this chapter of history to the public.

Robert R. Weiss, Organizer of some of the down the Danube, through the Bosphorus and on to Palestine refugee transports during the midst of WWII and author of “Joshko’s Children”

Reading your book had been a real delight...I felt like watching a very professionally made documentary series on the subject that deserves the interest and passion you have invested in it. Thank you for letting me read your masterpiece.

Misha Schauli, Professional book translator from Russian to Hebrew.

Tel Aviv, Israel  

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