David Hapgood – författare

Monte Cassino opens in the cold Italian winter of 1943-44. Germany would lose the war, but they still held much of Italy, leaving the Allies to fight their way north to capture Rome,a route no army had taken since Hannibal traversed the Alps to avoid it. And overlooking the only possible passage stood the ancient Abbey of Monte Cassino. The ultimate decision to bomb Monte Cassino was one of the most controversial,and tragic,events of World War II. The combat that followed was just as tragic: Soldiers from more than a dozen nations fought through that savage winter in a ferocious battle that allowed no advance or retreat. Here Hapgood and Richardson examine the military operations and political machinations that led inexorably to the bombing, explore the personalities of all involved, and in a new afterword reflect on its lingering consequences. This is an epic tale of men,and monks,at war.

Heir to a Chicago plumbing company fortune, he lived a life so adventurous that he was the prototype for characters in at least three thrillers. Seldom seen on the public stage, he changed the course of history: once when he intervened with his friend Woodrow Wilson on behalf of another friend, Thomas G. Masaryk, to create a new nation, Czechoslovakia, and again when he sent a geologist to his friend Ibn Saud to prospect the Arabian sands for oil. Mostly, though, he was a man who used his money to help those in whom he believed. Wherever he was, in Bokhara or Baghdad, in the deserts or in the cities, Charles R. Crane carried with him a little black notebook. He would jot down the name of someone whose dream had impressed him — an artist, a would-be statesman, a rescuer of children trapped in Russia´s Civil War, an explorer — and an unexpected check would arrive weeks or months later to help that dream toward reality. In his later years Crane created a foundation, the Institute of Current World Affairs, which for seventy-five years has been carrying on his work of helping promising individuals to make the most of what is in them. Today, when fortunes of record size are being made in record numbers, Crane´s story tells us how one man of vision used his wealth to help make real the visions of others.