Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel was a German general and military theorist. Popularly known as the Desert Fox, he served as field marshal in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II, as well as serving in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, the army of Imperial Germany. Rommel was a decorated officer in World War I and was awarded the Pour le Mérite for his actions on the Italian Front. In 1937 he published his classic book on military tactics, Infantry Attacks, drawing on his experiences in that war. In World War II, he distinguished himself as the commander of the 7th Panzer Division during the 1940 invasion of France, his leadership of German and Italian forces in the North African campaign established his reputation as one of the most able tank commanders of the war, earned him the nickname der Wüstenfuchs, "the Desert Fox". Among his British adversaries he had a reputation for chivalry, his phrase "war without hate" has been used to describe the North African campaign, he commanded the German forces opposing the Allied cross-channel invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

Rommel supported the Nazi seizure of power and Adolf Hitler, although his reluctant stance towards antisemitism and Nazi ideology and his level of knowledge of the Holocaust remain matters of debate among scholars. In 1944, Rommel was implicated in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler; because of Rommel's status as a national hero, Hitler desired to eliminate him instead of executing him, as many other plotters were. Rommel was given a choice between committing suicide, in return for assurances that his reputation would remain intact and that his family would not be persecuted following his death, or facing a trial that would result in his disgrace and execution. Rommel was given a state funeral, it was announced that he had succumbed to his injuries from the strafing of his staff car in Normandy. Rommel has become a larger-than-life figure in both Allied and Nazi propaganda, in postwar popular culture, with numerous authors considering him an apolitical, brilliant commander and a victim of the Third Reich although this assessment is contested by other authors as the Rommel myth.

Rommel's reputation for conducting a clean war was used in the interest of the West German rearmament and reconciliation between the former enemies – the United Kingdom and the United States on one side and the new Federal Republic of Germany on the other. Several of Rommel's former subordinates, notably his chief of staff Hans Speidel, played key roles in German rearmament and integration into NATO in the postwar era; the German Army's largest military base, the Field Marshal Rommel Barracks, Augustdorf, is named in his honour. Rommel was born on 15 November 1891, in Southern Germany at Heidenheim, 45 kilometres from Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg part of the German Empire, he was the third of five children to Erwin Rommel Senior and his wife Helene von Lutz, whose father, Karl von Luz, headed the local government council. As a young man, Rommel's father had been an artillery lieutenant. Rommel had one older sister, an art teacher and his favorite sibling, one older brother named Manfred who died in infancy and two younger brothers, of whom one became a successful dentist and the other an opera singer.

At age 18 Rommel joined the local 124th Württemberg Infantry Regiment as a Fähnrich, in 1910, studying at the Officer Cadet School in Danzig. He graduated in November 1911 and was commissioned as a lieutenant in January 1912 and was assigned to the 124th Infantry in Weingarten, he was posted to Ulm in March 1914 to the 46th Field Artillery Regiment, XIII Corps, as a battery commander. He returned to the 124th. While at Cadet School, Rommel met his future wife, 17-year-old Lucia Maria Mollin, of Polish and Italian descent. During World War I, Rommel fought in France as well as in Italian campaigns, he employed the tactics of penetrating enemy lines with heavy covering fire coupled with rapid advances, as well as moving forward to a flanking position to arrive at the rear of hostile positions, to achieve tactical surprise. His first combat experience was on 22 August 1914 as a platoon commander near Verdun, when – catching a French garrison unprepared – Rommel and three men opened fire on them without ordering the rest of his platoon forward.

The armies continued to skirmish in open engagements throughout September, as the static trench warfare typical of the First World War was still in the future. For his actions in September 1914 and January 1915, Rommel was awarded Second Class. Rommel was promoted to Oberleutnant and transferred to the newly created Royal Wurttemberg Mountain Battalion of the Alpenkorps in September 1915, as a company commander. In November 1916 in Danzig and Lucia married. In August 1917, his unit was involved in the battle for Mount Cosna, a fortified objective on the border between Hungary and Romania, which they took after two weeks of difficult uphill fighting; the Mountain Battalion was next assigned in a mountainous area in Italy. The offensive, known as the Battle of Caporetto, began on 24 October 1917. Rommel's battalion, consisting of three rifle companies and a machine gun unit, was part of an attempt to take enemy positions on three mountains: Kolovrat and Stol. In two and a half days, from 25 to 27 October and his 150 men captured 81 guns and 9,000 men, at the loss of six dead and 30 wounded.

Rommel achieved this remarkable success by

Hard Candy is the fourth studio album by Counting Crows, released in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2002 and the following day in the United States. The album features the hidden track "Big Yellow Taxi", a Joni Mitchell cover; this was one of their biggest radio hits from the album. The song did not include Vanessa Carlton and the standard version caught the ear of a producer who added it to the movie Two Weeks Notice adding Carlton's voice to the track; this version topped the VH-1 American Top 40 for a while. A new version of the song "Holiday in Spain", recorded as a duet in two languages, turning into a "round" before the final choruses with the Dutch band BLØF, became a #1 hit in the Netherlands. Reviews hailed the album as the best release since their debut, with the albums of the mid-1990s being "long, drawn out" due to Duritz's state of mind at that time, one reviewer announced that, "Hard Candy is crisp and tight, packed with three- and four-minute shots of radio friendly fare", that during a time when hard rock is the standard, the band are not afraid of a sound, in the title track, compared to the Byrds, with its "Allman-esque" twin guitars, echoes The Band in "If I Could Give All My Love".

The album has received a score of 69 out of 100 based on "generally favorable reviews" from Metacritic. All tracks written by Adam F. Duritz; the song "Big Yellow Taxi" was written by Joni Mitchell, credited in the liner notes with the passage "May contain trace amounts of Joni Mitchell" "Hard Candy" – 4:20 "American Girls" – 4:32 "Good Time" – 4:24 "If I Could Give All My Love" – 3:52 "Goodnight L. A." – 4:17 "Butterfly in Reverse" – 2:48 "Miami" – 5:01 "New Frontier" – 3:51 "Carriage" – 4:04 "Black and Blue" – 3:53 "Why Should You Come When I Call?" – 4:38 "Up All Night" – 5:07 "Holiday in Spain" – 3:50 "Big Yellow Taxi" – 3:47 2006 revised edition"4 White Stallions" – 4:21 "Big Yellow Taxi" – 3:47United Kingdom release"4 White Stallions" – 4:21 "You Ain't Going Nowhere" – 8:43 "Big Yellow Taxi" – 3:47 United Kingdom 2003 re-release"4 White Stallions" – 4:21 "You Ain't Going Nowhere" – 3:44 "Big Yellow Taxi" – 3:47Japanese release"4 White Stallions" – 4:21 "You Ain't Going Nowhere" – 3:44 "Start Again" – 3:34 "Big Yellow Taxi" – 3:47 Japanese 2003 re-release"4 White Stallions" – 4:21 "You Ain't Going Nowhere" – 3:44 "Start Again" – 3:34 "Big Yellow Taxi" – 3:47 Counting CrowsDave Bryson – acoustic guitar, electric guitar Adam Duritz – piano, horn arrangements, string arrangements, string samples Charlie Gillingham – synthesizer, oboe, Hammond organ, Omnichord, Fender Rhodes, horn arrangements, string arrangements, tack piano, vocals David Immerglück – acoustic guitar, mandolin, electric guitar, slide guitar, electric sitar Matt Malley – bass, upright bass Ben Mize – drums, vocals, drum loops Dan Vickrey – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, vocalsAdditional musiciansRyan Adams – backing vocalist on "Butterfly In Reverse" Vanessa Carlton - backing vocalist on "Big Yellow Taxi" Sheryl Crow – backing vocalist on "American Girls" Dave Gibbs – backing vocalist Leona Naess – backing vocalist Matthew Sweet – backing vocalist Carole Castillo – viola Jacqueline Brand – violin Mario deLeon – violin Brian Dembow – viola Stephen Erdody – cello Ron Fair – string arrangements Richard Feves – bass Alan Grunfeld – violin Jerry Hey – flugelhorn, horn arrangements, string arrangements Paula Hochhalter – cello Ethan Johns – conga Karen Jones – violin Natalie Leggett – violin Alan Mautner – violin Ed Meares – bass Ralph Morrison – violin Robin Olson – violin Sara Parkins – violin Katia Popov – violin John Scanlon – viola Tina Soule – cello Cecilia Tsan – cello Josephina Vergara – violin AlbumSingles Official website Hard Candy at Metacritic

Carlos Nakatani was a painter, sculpture and writer, the son of a Japanese immigrant to Mexico, noted for his introduction of a snack called “Japanese peanuts” in Mexico City. Nakatani is best known for his painting, which mixes Mexican and Japanese influences, as part of a generation of artists which broke with the Mexican art establishment from the early 20th century. Reclusive, he nonetheless won a number of recognitions for his work and was a member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana. Carlos Nakatani was born in the La Merced neighborhood of Mexico City in 1934 to a Mexican mother, Ema Avíla Espinoza and Yoshigei Nakatani Moriguchi, who immigrated from Japan to Mexico, his father made his fortune with the creation of a peanut snack called “cacahuates japoneses”, which he sold in the La Merced market and established the Nipon company. These peanuts remain popular in the Mexican capital to this day. While valuing his Latin heritage through his life by enjoying the capital’s nightlife from the 1950s to 1970s and reading Latin American authors such as José Lezama Lima throughout his life, but of Carlos’ brothers and sisters, he was the most influenced by his Asian heritage.

Nakatani was called “hermanito” by his artistic contemporaries Gilberto Aceves Navarro. He was reclusive and ascetic, eating only what he needed to live and bought little, he married Mercedes Martínez with whom he had two daughters, Mayra, an art dealer and Carla, an actress. Nakatani died on February 2004 at age 70 after suffering a heart attack in his home. Three weeks before this, he predicted his death. Karla dedicated a theatrical performance to him after his death. Nakatani's artistic career included writing along with the visual arts. Shortly before he took up painting, he created a black-and-white film He wrote and directed a 1967 drama called about his father called “Yoshio.” His other cinematic works include “Una proxima luna” in 1965 and La Excursion, starring Graciela Lara, José Luis Loman, Rocio Lance, Rafael Espinosa, Ruben Islas and Marta Aura. He wrote two novels. “Papa extranjero” is about his relationship with his father. The other novel consists of 400 manuscripts which narrate the life of Mozart.

However, Nakatani is best known for his painting. From 1956 to 1992, he exhibited his work individually and collectively in Mexico, the United States, Guatemala, Yugoslavia, Switzerland and New Zealand and other countries, his work can be found in the permanent collections of the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the National Library in Paris. At the time of his death, he was working on a series of eighty paintings to be exhibited at the José Luis Cuevas Museum in Mexico City. Only sixteen of these were finished and were included in a retrospective held at the same museum nine months after his demise under the title of “Tanta melancholia”, he has had one major exhibition of his death posthumously at the Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City as part of an exhibition of Japanese-Mexican artists and Japanese artists in Mexico. His awards include Salón Nacional de Grabado de la Plástica Mexicana in 1976, the Premio Salvatore Rosa in engraving and watercolor and the L’Arengario Prize in Rome, he was a member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

Nakatani was a painter, engraver and cinematographer noted for his use of color. Nakatani’s work is classified with that of the Generación de la Ruptura as it broke with the established traditions of the first half of the 20th century, he was nearly self-taught. He used water-based pigments switched to oils, his artwork was characterized by its delicacy and subtlety according to art critic Teresa del Conde, mixing Japanese and Mexican influences. He works shows influence from Japanese landscape and other Asian painting, with his paintings having large empty spaces with tranquil colors, his painting contains few human forms although humanity is suggested through his depictions of nature