Author : James Carroll
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Page : 696 pages
File Size : 18,67 MB
Release : 2007-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9780618872015
An analysis of the Pentagon, the military, and their vast, frequently hidden influence on American life argues that the Pentagon has, since its inception, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society.
Author : David Bellavia
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 18,79 MB
Release : 2012-12-25
Category : History
ISBN : 1471105873
On 8 November 2004, the largest battle of the War on Terror began, with the US Army's assault on Fallujah and its network of tens of thousands of insurgents hiding in fortified bunkers, on rooftops, and inside booby-trapped houses. For Sgt. David Bellavia of 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, it quickly turned into a battle on foot, from street to street and house to house. On the second day, he and his men laid siege to a mosque, only to be driven to a rooftop and surrounded, before heavy artillery could smash through to rescue them. By the third day, Bellavia charges an insurgent-filled house and finds himself trapped with six enemy fighters. One by one, he shoots, wrestles, stabs, and kills five of them, until his men arrive to take care of the final target. It is one of the most hair-raising battle stories of any age -- yet it does not spell the end of Bellavia's service. It would take serveral more weeks before the Battle of Fallujah finally came to a close, with Bellavia, miraculously, alive. In the words of the author: "HOUSE TO HOUSE holds nothing back. It is a raw, gritty look at killing and combat and how men react to it. It is gut-wrenching, shocking and brutal. It is honest. It is not a glorification of war. Yet it will not shy from acknowledging this: sometimes it takes something as terrible as war for the full beauty of the human spirit to emerge."
Author : Christina Lamb
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 36,27 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1556527357
Describes the lives of two very different Zimbabweans--Nigel Hough, a wealthy white farmer, and Aqui, his poor black nanny--from the 1970s to 2002, focusing how both were affected by Zimbabwe's brutal civil war and its aftermath.
Author : Scott Mariani
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
Page : 403 pages
File Size : 49,47 MB
Release : 2019-10-31
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0008235996
The edge-of-your-seat thriller from the #1 bestseller.‘A gripping tale that will have you turning the pages well into the night’ MARK DAWSON
Author : M. R. Carey
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 424 pages
File Size : 21,83 MB
Release : 2014-06-19
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0575132744
In the year 1740, with the whole of Europe balanced on the brink of war, a company of Austrian soldiers is sent to the village of Narutsin to defend the border with Prussia. But what should be a routine posting is quickly revealed to be anything but. The previous garrison is gone, the great house of Pokoj, where they're to be billeted, a dilapidated ruin, and the people of Narutsin sullen and belligerent. Convinced the villagers are keeping secrets - and possibly consorting with the enemy - the commanding officer orders his junior lieutenant, Klaes, to investigate. While Klaes sifts through the villagers' truths, half-truths and lies, Drozde, the quartermaster's woman, is making uncomfortable discoveries of her own - about herself, her man, and the house where they've all been thrown together. Because far from being the empty shell it appears to be, Pokoj is actually teeming with people. It's just that they're all dead. And the dead know things - about Drozde, about the history of Pokoj, and about the terrible event that is rushing towards them all, seemingly unstoppable. The ghosts of Pokoj, the soldiers of the empress and the villagers of Narutsin are about to find themselves actors in a story that has been unfolding for centuries. It will end in blood - that much is written - but how much blood will depend on Klaes' honour, Drozde's skill and courage, and the keeping of an impossible promise...
Author : Hamilton Wende
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 34,91 MB
Release : 2012-10-02
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0143026968
What drove one man to set out to conquer the known world? What madness? What unquenchable desire? What love? Sebastian Burke, a British academic, has spent his whole life trying to understand the secret life of Alexander the Great and his slave bride Roxane. Now, with the Taliban forced underground, he finally has the opportunity to undertake the journey he has dreamed of for almost his entire adult life, a journey into the heart of Alexander's world, a journey to the lost city of Ay Khanoum in northern Afghanistan. Here, with the help of Claire Finch - a fiercely independent American documentary producer - he hopes to find and expose to the world the contents of the Royal Diaries of Alexander - the last copies of which were kept in the city before its destruction by barbarian invaders from the East. However, from the moment two American servicemen are murdered by Al Qaeda terrorists in the bar of their hotel in Tashkent it becomes clear that there is far more at stake than just Sebastian's reputation as a historian, and what started out as a quest to validate a lifetime of academic study quickly turns into a journey of discovery that will bring Sebastian face to face with his Rhodesian past - a past he has run from for more than thirty years.
Author : John Freely
Publisher : Knopf
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 43,35 MB
Release : 2017
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0451494709
An engaging, funny, and tender memoir from a man of ninety years: of growing up poor in a Brooklyn and Ireland that now exist only in memory, and of serving in the China/Burma/India theater during World War II as a member of an elite U.S. Navy commando unit John Freely's voice is still astonishingly youthful, full of wonder, humor, and gratitude, as he remembers his fully lived life. Born in Brooklyn to Irish immigrants, he went to Ireland with his mother when he was five, where he spent his young childhood on his grandfather's farm. Western Ireland was impoverished by the times, but rich in beauty and intriguing people, and it opened in him a lifelong desire to see the world and its inhabitants. When he was seven, he returned to Brooklyn, and the antics of a coming-of-age boy played out on streets filled with character and characters. He took whatever jobs he could when times got tough, always shaking off his losses and moving on, hungry to see and experience what was next. He joined the U.S. Navy at seventeen to "see the world," and did just that. In wartime, while bringing supplies and ammunition over the Stilwell-Burma Road to Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese guerrilla forces, Freely served alongside them during the last weeks of World War II in the Tibetan borderlands of China, a Shangri-la that war had turned into hell on earth.
Author : Michelle West
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 772 pages
File Size : 14,50 MB
Release : 2009-03-03
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780756405403
Jay, a young orphan, is rescued from the streets by the mysterious Rath, but when the demons that once nearly destroyed the Essalieyan Empire begin to stir again, Rath and Jay find themselves the target of these dangerous beings. Reprint.
Author : Alexander Waugh
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 43,28 MB
Release : 2009-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0747596735
The true story of a one-handed pianist and the fall of his aristocratic family.
Author : Sam Cherribi
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 44,21 MB
Release : 2010-07-09
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0199780102
Sam Cherribi is a Moroccan Muslim who became a naturalized Dutch citizen and member of the Dutch Parliament. In this book he draws on his personal experiences with European politics and media, extensive fieldwork in Dutch mosques, and interviews with imams. In recent years, the Netherlands has been swept by the same forces of change that have swept the rest of Europe: the consolidation of the European Union, a massive influx of Muslim immigrants and the rising voice of Islamic fundamentalism. Cherribi argues that this small country has amplified these forces, providing a useful lens through which to examine trends in all of Europe. The portents are troubling, he notes, as evidenced by the murders of journalist Pim Fortuyn and filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, after which riots broke out, mosques were burned, and Muslims were openly reviled by the public and the media. Cherribi himself was voted out of Parliament in the anti-migrant fervor that engulfed the Netherlands after these murders and, like many other Dutch Muslims, he emigrated to the United States. Looking back on these events, and bringing to bear his skills and training as a sociologist, Cherribi provides an invaluable account of one country's encounter with some of the most troubling trends of our times.
