Books in the Christa-Maria's Memoirs series

Not Hitler's Child traces the long, eventful arc of Christa-Maria Beardsley's life - from her childhood in Nazi Germany, where the war forced her family into a life of almost continual displacement, to her immigration to the United States and her two-decade tenure as a professor of German at Indiana University, a career marked by the author's pioneering efforts in the development of study-abroad programs, and finally to her artistically active retirement, during which she played a prominent and passionate role in the classical-music community of Bloomington, Indiana. Ms. Beardsley's guiding concerns - a commitment to education and the arts, an abiding curiosity about the vagaries of human relationships, and an ever-deepening sensitivity to music and the natural world - form the bass line of her life story. By turns celebratory and sorrowful, reflective and humorous, Not Hitler's Child is the record of both a life of the mind and a life fully lived.

Fireball Lily offers a vivid, firsthand account of Christa-Maria Beardsley's wide-ranging global travels, an endeavor she pursued energetically for a full fifteen years after her retirement from academia. From the Buddhist monasteries of Thailand and Japan and the imposing grandeur of Victoria, Niagara, and Iguazú Falls to the moai of Easter Island, the North Pole's otherworldly beauty, and the stark poverty of Hong Kong's fishing communities, Ms. Beardsley's destinations elicit her fascination with the varied expressions of both nature and human culture. Informed by a rich personal history and an enduring concern for human suffering, the author's keenly appreciative eye takes in the full range of socioeconomic conditions - from the tragic to the unimaginably luxurious - and the virtually endless quirks of human personality. Indeed, at the heart of the author's travelogue are the people she meets along the way, a cast of characters she treats with her hallmark blend of curiosity, humor, and moral discernment.