This book is not an adventure story with a fictitious hero, but is the story of one of the great nautical heroes of the eighteenth century, a man who discovered many of the islands of the Pacific, to say nothing of the great lands of Australia and new Zealand.

    It doesn't matter how small the tunnel is you never know what's around the bend ... You don't know if it's abandoned, you don't know if it's booby trapped and you don't know why the tunnel is there in the first place."They were young, they were Australian, they were Army engineers and they were the first allied soldiers to risk their lives in the darkness of the Vietcong tunnels of South Vietnam. Staring death squarely in the face every day, not only did they follow their enemy down into these unknown underground labyrinths, but matched the Vietcong's jungle warfare skills and defused thousands of their clever booby traps.Off duty, it was a different story. The bad boys of 3 Field Troop were a boozing, brawling, bonking bunch of larrikins, who cut a swathe through the bars and brothels of Saigon, fought American Military Police to a standstill, built a secret casino and booby-trapped their own HQ to teach their officers a lesson.Thrilling, inspiring and action packed, this is the true story of the unsung heroes of Australia's war in Vietnam. Living up to their motto of 'We Make and We Break', they created the legend of the Tunnel Rats.

    Covering the country region by region, Ian Glasper profiles not only big names like Vice Squad, Anti Pasti, and The Defects, but also the more obscure bands of the era such as Xtract, Skroteez, and Soldier Dolls.

    Nothing could have prepared the Spanish for the devastating implosion of 1805-14. Trafalgar destroyed its navy and the country degenerated into a brutalized shambles with French and British armies marching across it at will. The result was a war which killed over a million Spaniards and ended its empire.This book is the first in a generation to come to terms with this spectacular and terrible conflict, immortalised by Goya and the arena in which Wellington and his redcoats carved out one of the greatest episodes in British military history.

    Author Mick Minas goes behind the scenes-- interviewing players, coaches, and front office personnel--to create the first in-depth look at the history of the Clippers.The Curse is filled with drama: the unauthorized relocation of the franchise that led to the NBA filing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Clippers, the disruption of the team's first playoff appearance by the Los Angeles riots, the bold but unsuccessful attempt to sign Kobe Bryant at the peak of his career, and the scandal that ultimately resulted in owner Donald Sterling being banned from the NBA for life. Featuring some of basketball's biggest names, including World B. Free, Elgin Baylor, Danny Manning, Doc Rivers, Larry Brown, Dominique Wilkins, Elton Brand, Baron Davis, Blake Griffin, and Chris Paul, The Curse delves into the disasters of the past and the complications of the present. This is the definitive history of the NBA's most dysfunctional franchise.

    

    Red Coat is non-fiction Sharpe, filled with anecdote and humour as well as historical analysis.‘Redcoat is a wonderful book. It is not just a work of history – but one of enthusiasm and unparalleled knowledge.' BERNARD CORNWELLRedcoat is the story of the British soldier from c.1760 until c.1860 – surely one of the most enduring and magnetic subjects of the British past. Solidly based on the letters and diaries of the men who served and the women who followed them, the book is rich in the history of the period. It charts Wolfe's victory and death at Quebec, the American War of Independence, the Duke of York's campaign in Flanders, Wellington's Peninsular War, Waterloo,the retreat from Kabul, the Sikh wars in 1845-9, the Crimean war and the Indian Mutiny.The focus of Redcoat, however, is the individual recollection and experience of the ordinary soldiers serving in the wars fought by Georgian and early Victorian England.Through their stories and anecdotes – of uniforms, equipment,'taking the King's shilling', flogging, wounds, food, barrack life, courage, comradeship, death, love and loss – Richard Holmes provides a comprehensive portrait of a fallible but extraordinarily successful fighting force.'Such a scene of mortal strife from the fire of fifty men was never witnessed…' writes Harry Smith of the 95th Rifles, recounting the death of a brother officer in Spain in 1813. 'I wept over his remains with a bursting heart as, with his company who adored him, I consigned to the grave the last external appearance of Daniel Cadoux. His fame can never die.' Smith's account is typical of the emotions and experiences of the men who appear on every page of this book, sporting their red uniforms to fight for King and country.

    Helena, Napoleon Bonaparte has been remembered as either demi-god or devil incarnate. In The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, the first volume of a two-volume cradle-to-grave biography, Robert Asprey instead treats him as a human being. Asprey tells this fascinating, tragic tale in lush narrative detail. The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte is an exciting, reckless thrill ride as Asprey charts Napoleon's vertiginous ascent to fame and the height of power. Here is Napoleon as he was-not saint, not sinner, but a man dedicated to and ultimately devoured by his vision of himself, his empire, and his world.

    So He sent us His very strongest men and women." So begins the heartwarming story of Verna Mae and her father, Isom B. "Kitteneye" Slone, an extraordinary personal family history set in the hills around Caney Creek in Knott County, Kentucky.

    But Waterloo was one peak only in the career of this phenomenal man, and it is the achievement of this major biography that it reveals the subtlety and full variety of Wellington's genius as well as the fascinating complexity of England in his time.He was born Arthur Wesley, third son of the Earl of Mornington, in 1769--the same year as Napoleon. His family, which belonged to the ruling caste of Englishmen in Ireland, was long on the tradition of proud service to the King and chronically short of funds. Neither his childhood nor his years at Eton were happy; but when he went to Anjou at seventeen, to study at France's Royal Academy of Equitation, he came into his own, learned well, and emerged qualified and cosmopolitan.He joined the British Army as an ensign and, for the next few years, rose through the ranks. He courted Kitty Pakenham but her family would not allow his suit--his family was not rich enough-- so he went to India at the age of twenty-seven still a bachelor.It was in India that he made his name. There he became a scholar and a soldier. He returned a Knight of the Bath, a major-general, a hero to his countrymen and acceptable, at last, to the Pakenhams. (He had courted Kitty by post over the twelve intervening years; it was scarcely surprising that the woman he married proved different indeed from the charming girl he had left.)When he was forty, the youngest lieutenant-general in the army, he took command of the allied armies in the Peninsular War. With Napoleon's downfall, abdication and exile to Elba, the hero of Europe began a gay career as ambassador to Paris. All the ladies, from the formidable Madame de Staël to the melting Signora Grassini, vied--often successfully--for his favors. His behavior with them and as a diplomat caused some disquiet, and there was evident relief when he was dispatched to the Congress of Vienna. When word came of Napoleon's escape, Wellington took command once more, and after the spectacular eve-of-battle ball in Brussels, led the British and Dutch-Belgian armies to triumph at Waterloo.Lady Longford's unique biography draws on new material from private papers and Wellington's own uninhibited correspondence. Wellington: The Years of the Sword is a worthy successor to her superb Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed.

    Killing the Rising Sun takes readers to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made a triumphant return and is plotting a full-scale invasion of Japan.

    It is a place where time stops and lives are held in suspension, taken out of circulation. Amongst the jail population are the dangerous inmates: killers and rapists, gang 'hit-men' and serial offenders. They are the most notorious, their reputations sometimes enhanced by glamour, horrendous tales of their misdeeds and by their very incarceration.

    Following defeat in the Ardennes Offensive, Adolf Hitler and the German leadership faced the question of how best to use what little offensive firepower remained to them, as represented by the Sixth SS Panzer Army. Hitler’s obsession with protecting the last source of natural oil available to the Reich compelled this decision, one made against the strong opposition of his military advisers. The resulting offensive, code-named Operation Spring Awakening, was a disaster for Nazi Germany, but a boon for postwar Europe. Heavily outnumbered and lacking supplies, especially fuel, the Sixth SS Panzer Army nevertheless delayed the Red Army long enough for American and British forces to occupy much of western and southern Austria. There is, therefore, a strong likelihood the presence in Austria of Sixth SS Panzer Army saved that country from being overrun completely by the Red Army, and possibly being included in the Warsaw Pact as a Soviet satellite. Impeccably footnoted for peer review, the author hopes this will wet the reader's appetite for more detailed histories on the subject.

    To what extent did King Henry VIII’s upbringing shape him into the tyrannical figure we know today? This concise, well-researched analysis sheds light on a little-known period of the infamous monarch’s life.

    Costain has etched in the glass of history a moving tale of adventure and enduring love.Francis Ellery is a young, courageous newspaper editor who publishes scathing broadsides against the rampaging Napoleon. One foggy London night he loses his heart to the beautiful Gabrielle de Salle, one of a group of exiled French aristocrats. But as the Continent becomes engulfed in the Napoleonic wars, Francis must part from her. He serves on the battlefronts of Spain and Russia as a war correspondent, surviving many colorful and bloody conflicts. And as romance and intrigue swirl around Francis and Gabrielle, their destinies are swept into a vortex of crises and betrayal, spurred on by a hero's rousing cry,RIDE WITH ME