Jour: 20 septembre 2026

What I read this summer was about another summer. What’s a summer? A few months. How can just a few months change the world? When it’s 1945 and war is finally declared over the four months of summer that follow are intense and important, like no other summer. Summer of Freedom, How 1945 Changed the World by Oliver Hilmes (The Other Press) is a combining and weaving together of letters, agendas and diaries by several different personalities as well as ordinary people. Hilmes begins by looking at how they were spending their day on May 8, 1945 the day the war in Europe was declared finished. The Russians wait until May 9th when Stalin fired a thousand cannon shots to usher in a new era where the world was free again… or was it? The book goes on to follow through the summer these same people and events all across Europe, as occupiers and occupied, the victors and the vanquished try to sort things out and get the world back to cooperative functioning. The people, soldi…