1. “Once every decade, a masterpiece of history is written. Historian Ruth B. Cook has created such a gem. We could not praise it more highly. An utterly fascinating and delightful read.’

   --Roger Mansell, Director Center for Research Allied POWs under the Japanese.

2. “This is local history at its best. Ms. Cook has explored the wartime world of rural Aliceville, Alabama, in encyclopedic detail. It is the history of a generation, written with accuracy and depth that any American camp guard, local resident, or for that matter, German prisoner would recognize. From that day in August in 1942, when the appraiser from the Federal Land Bank swept in to Aliceville to purchase the Parker family’s 400 acres for $29,300, none of their lives would ever be the same. On June 1, 1943, several thousand German soldiers were marched from the train to their new camp, as the folks from Aliceville lined the road to gawk. The adventure continued inside the wire and on the streets of Aliceville and in the lives of everybody involved. Local historian Ruth Cook offers the reader a complete world in Aliceville.”

   --Arnold Krammer Professor, Texas A&M University Author of Nazi Prisoners of War in America, and Undue Process: The Untold Story of America’s German Alien Internees.

3. “Ruth Beaumont cook has written a ‘people’s history.’ Impressive and emotive details of the daily lives of Alabama locals, guards, and POWs, and a celebration of sixty-plus years of mutual good will-in-the-making characterize this sensitive portrayal of a small town in Pickens county where Americans and Germans learned that enemies are human.”

   --Robert D. Billinger, Jr., Ph.D., author of Hitler’s Soldiers in the Sunshine State

4. “This careful study provides an excellent historical narrative of the people and events during the Second World War in the small town of Aliceville, Alabama, the location of one of the largest prisoner of war camps holding up to 6,000 German POWs. Her study is more than just the history of the camp, the German POWs brought to the United States beginning in the fall of 1942 and the history of the American military personnel and civilians who came to Aliceville to work at the camp, as guards, administrators, medical personnel, typists and cooks. It is also the history of a small Southern town and its people, transformed by the war and the camp. Based on interviews with participants, former German POWs, local townspeople, and individuals, both military and civilian who moved to Aliceville during this period to work at the camp, newspaper records and the archives of the Aliceville Museum, Beaumont Cook weaves a sensitive portrayal of the people and events in Aliceville. Despite the fact that the initial contact between the German POWs and their American captors was based on fear, mutual ignorance and misconceptions, both parties came to recognize that “enemies are human too.” Indeed more than fifty years after the war, many former German POWs fondly remember their time in Aliceville and some have continued to return there for reunions several times. Beyond vividly portraying the experiences of the individuals, Beaumont Cook does not loose sight of the larger legal framework that under girded the American prisoner of war program, the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War. It is a stark reminder of the continued relevance of the Geneva Convention to protect us from the temptation of cruelty and revenge against our enemies and to affirm their and our continued humanity. In short, Ruth Beaumont Cook’s book is more than a good read it is also thought-provoking.

   --Barbara Schmitter Heisler, Ph.D. Professor Emerita Department of Sociology and Anthropology Gettysburg College Gettysburg, PA 97035

5. "Occasionally, during the worst of times, America gets it right. Ruth Beaumont Cook documents one of those bright, shining periods, in this exquisitely detailed and compassionate portrait of enemies who found a way to get along with one another while much of the world was in chaos. Every history buff, each historian, every citizen desiring better times, would benefit from a close reading of this book."

   --Jim Reed, author of Dad’s Tweed Coat Birmingham bookstore owner

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