Americans in Paris: Life and Death under Nazi Occupation 1940-1944


Charles Glass - 2009
    They had refused or been unable to leave for many different reasons; their actions during the course of the German occupation would prove to be just as varied. Glass interweaves the experiences of some of the individuals who belonged to this unique colony of American expatriates living in Paris. Among the stories highlighted are those of Charles Bedaux, an American millionaire determined to carry on with his business affairs as usual; Sylvia Beach, owner of the famous English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company; Clara Longworth de Chambrun, patroness of the American Library in Paris and distantly related to FDR; and Dr. Sumner Jackson, the American Hospital’s chief surgeon. These fascinating tales reflect the complicated network of choices—passive compromise, outright collaboration, patient retreat, and active resistance—that existed for Americans caught in the German web.

Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958


David Galula - 2002
    occupation in Iraq and the war on terrorism. In this volume, originally published in 1963, David Galula recounts his experiences in Algeria at the height of the rebellion, and presents his theories on counterinsurgency and pacification. He confronts the larger political, psychological, and military aspects of the Algerian war, and provides a context for present-day counterinsurgency operations. This groundbreaking work, now declassified, retains its impact and relevance, presenting successful approaches to predicting, managing, and resolving insurgent and guerilla conflict.

Invisible Nation: How the Kurds' Quest for Statehood Is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East


Quil Lawrence - 2008
    Kurdistan is an invisible nation, and the Kurds the largest ethnic group on Earth without a homeland, comprising some 25 million moderate Sunni Muslims living in the area around the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Through a history dating back to biblical times, they have endured persecution and betrayal, surviving only through stubborn compromise with greater powers. They have always desired their own state, and now, accidentally, the United States may have helped them take a huge step toward that goal.As Quil Lawrence relates in his fascinating and timely study of the Iraqi Kurds, while their ambition and determination grow apace, their future will be largely dependent on whether America values a budding democracy in the region, or decides to yet again sacrifice the Kurds in the name of political expediency. Either way, the Kurdish north may well prove to be the defining battleground in Iraq, as the country struggles to hold itself together. At this extraordinary moment in the saga of Kurdistan, informed by his deep knowledge of the people and region, Lawrence's intimate and unflinching portrait of the Kurds and their heretofore quixotic quest offers a vital and original lens through which to contemplate the future of Iraq and the surrounding Middle East.

By Way of Deception: The Making of a Mossad Officer


Victor Ostrovsky - 1990
    By Way of Deception is the true story of an officer in Israel's most secret agency:Author's ForwardPrologue: Operation SphinxRecruitmentSchool DaysFreshmenSophomoresRookiesThe Belgian TableHairpieceHail & FarewellStrellaCarlosExocetCheckmateHelping ArafatOnly in AmericaOperation MosesHarbor InsuranceBeirutEpilogueAppendicesGlossary of TermsIndex

World War I: An Imperial War on the Dark Continent


Edward Paice - 2007
    On August 7, 1914, Britain fired its first shots of World War I not in Europe but in the German colony of Togo. The campaign to eliminate the threat at sea posed by German naval bases in Africa would soon be won, but in the land war, especially in East Africa, British troops would meet far fiercer resistance from German colonial forces that had fully mastered the tactics of bush warfare. It was expected to be a small war, over by Christmas, yet it would continue bloodily for more than four years, even beyond the signing of the Armistice in Europe. Its costs were immense, its butchery staggering (in excess of100,000 British troops and 45,000 native recruits dead). Utmost among the tragic consequences, though, was the waste laid to the land and its indigenous peoples in what one official historian described as a war of extermination and attrition without parallel in modern times. Imperialism had gone calamitously amok. This eye-opening account of the Great War in East Africa does not flinch at the daily horrors of an ill-fated campaign--not just the combat but also a hostile climate, disease, the terrible loneliness--nor does it fail to recount tales of extraordinary courage and the kind of adventure that inspired fiction like C. S. Forester's The African Queen, William Boyd's An Ice-Cream War, and Wilbur Smith's Shout at the Devil, In all, it demonstrates dramatically why even the most hardened of Great War soldiers preferred the trenches of France to the trauma of East Africa.

Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West


Anthony Pagden - 2008
    Here, richly rendered, are the crucial battle of Marathon, considered the turning point of Greek and European history; the heroic attempt by the Greeks to turn the Persians back at Thermopylae; and Salamis, one of the greatest naval battles of all time, which put an end to the Persian threat forever.From there Pagden’s story sweeps to Rome, which created the modern concepts of citizenship and the rule of law. Rome’s leaders believed those they conquered to be free, while the various peoples of the East persisted in seeing their subjects as property. Pagden dramatizes the birth of Christianity in the East and its use in the West as an instrument of government, setting the stage for what would become, and has remained, a global battle of the secular against the sacred. Then Islam, at first ridiculed in Christian Europe, drives Pope Urban II to launch the Crusades, which transform the relationship between East and West into one of competing religious beliefs.Modern times bring a first world war, which among its many murky aims seeks to redesign the Muslim world by force. In our own era, Muslims now find themselves in unwelcoming Western societies, while the West seeks to enforce democracy and its own secular values through occupation in the East. Pagden ends on a cautionary note, warning that terrorism and war will continue as long as sacred and secular remain confused in the minds of so many.Eye-opening and compulsively readable, Worlds at War is a stunning work of history and a triumph of modern scholarship. It is bound to become the definitive work on the reasons behind the age-old and still escalating struggle that, more than any other, has come to define the modern world–a book for anyone seeking to know why “we came to be the way we are.”

The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam


Martin Windrow - 2004
    When French paratroopers landed in the jungle on the border between Vietnam and Laos, the Vietnamese quickly isolated the French force and confronted them at their jungle base in a small place called Dien Bien Phu. The hunters-the French army-had become the hunted, desperately defending their out-gunned base. The siege in the jungle wore on as defeat loomed for the French. Eventually the French were depleted, demoralized, and destroyed. As they withdrew, the country was ominously divided at U.S. insistence, creating the short-lived Republic of South Vietnam for which 55,000 Americans would die in the next twenty years.

The Thirty Years War


C.V. Wedgwood - 1938
    After angry Protestants tossed three representatives of the Holy Roman Empire out the window of the royal castle in Prague, world war spread from Bohemia with similar abandon and relentless persistence, destroying European powers from Spain to Sweden as they marched on the contested soil of Germany. Fanatics, speculators, and ordinary people found themselves trapped in a nightmarish world of famine, disease, and seemingly unstoppable destruction. The Thirty Years War was a turning point in the making of modern Europe and the modern world: out of it came the system of nation-states that remains fundamental to international law. C.V. Wedgwood's magisterial book is the only comprehensive account of the war in English, as well as a triumph of scholarship and literature. Includes maps and charts.

War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land


Anton LaGuardia - 2002
    Statesmen tinker with peace plans for the Middle East and generals worry about future wars there. Religious leaders stoke the violent passions of the devout while pilgrims flock to find God and archaeologists dig to find the origins of His revelations. All this goes on under the watchful eye of an army of reporters, observers, diplomatic envoys, and aid workers.Between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, dreams and ideals collide with the reality of violent nationalist struggle, and God's name is invoked in defense of the jealousies of men. With the experienced journalist's eye for irony, anecdote, and telling detail, Anton La Guardia offers an intimate look into the Israelis as they come to terms with the "post-Zionist" demolition of national myths, and the Palestinians as they try to build their own state. A classic in the making, War Without End is the definitive book on Israel and her people.

The War of the Spanish Succession 1701-1714


James Falkner - 2015
    Yet this major subject is not well known and is little understood. That is why the publication of James Falkner's absorbing new study is so timely and important. In a clear and perceptive narrative he describes and analyses the complex political manoeuvres and a series of military campaigns which also involved the threat posed by Ottoman Turks in the east and Sweden and Russia in the north. Fighting took place not just in Europe but in the Americas and Canada, and on the high seas. All European powers, large and small, were involved - France, Spain, Great Britain, Holland, Austria and Portugal were the major players. The end result of eleven years of outright war was a French prince firmly established on the throne in Madrid and a division of the old Spanish empire. More notably though, French power, previously so dominant, was curbed for almost ninety years.

The Good Soldiers


David Finkel - 2009
    In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. He called it the surge. “Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences,” he told a skeptical nation. Among those listening were the young, optimistic army infantry soldiers of the 2-16, the battalion nicknamed the Rangers. About to head to a vicious area of Baghdad, they decided the difference would be them.Fifteen months later, the soldiers returned home forever changed. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter David Finkel was with them in Bagdad, and almost every grueling step of the way.What was the true story of the surge? And was it really a success? Those are the questions he grapples with in his remarkable report from the front lines. Combining the action of Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down with the literary brio of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, The Good Soldiers is an unforgettable work of reportage. And in telling the story of these good soldiers, the heroes and the ruined, David Finkel has also produced an eternal tale—not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time.

War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War


John W. Dower - 1986
    As Edwin O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, has pointed out, this book offers "a lesson that the postwar generations need most...with eloquence, crushing detail, and power."

Not A Good Day To Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda


Sean Naylor - 2005
    Over 200 soldiers of the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions flew into Afghanistan's Shahikot valley - and into the mouth of a buzz-saw. They were about to pay a bloody price for strategic, higher-level miscalculations that underestimated the enemy's strength and willingness to fight.After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Coalition forces quickly toppled the Taliban regime from the seat of government. But, believing the war to be all but over, the Pentagon and US Central Command refused to commit the forces required to achieve total victory in Afghanistan. Instead, they delegated responsibility for fighting the war's biggest battle to a tangle of untested units thrown together at the last moment.Then the world watched as Anaconda seemed to unravel.Denied the extra infantry, artillery and close air support with which they trained to go to war, the soldiers of this airborne assault fought for survival in brutal high-altitude combat. Backed up by a small, but crucial, team of special forces, they were all that stood between the Coalition and a military disaster.

Khartoum: The Ultimate Imperial Adventure


Michael Asher - 2005
    The story begins with the massacre of the 11,000 strong Hicks Pasha column in 1883. Sent to evacuate the country, British hero General Gordon was surrounded and murdered in Khartoum by an army of dervishes led by the Mahdi. The relief mission arrived 2 days too late. The result was a national scandal that shocked the Queen and led to the fall of the British government. Twelve years later it was the brilliant Herbert Kitchener who struck back. Achieving the impossible he built a railway across the desert to transport his troops to the final devastating confrontation at Omdurman in 1898. Desert explorer and author Michael Asher has reconstructed this classic tale in vivid detail. Having covered every inch of the ground and examined all eyewitness reports, he brings to bear new evidence questioning several accepted aspects of the story. The result is an account that sheds new light on the most riveting tale of honour, courage, revenge and savagery of late Victorian times.

Mossad: Israel's Most Secret Service


Ronald Payne - 1990
     Hailed by the CIA as ‘the best in the world’, it is held in awe by its friends and feared by its foes. It can boast the most devoted, patriotic agents in the world. It was Mossad who pulled off the spectacular rescue of Israeli hostages from Entebbe and Mossad agents who pinpointed the target for Israeli bombers to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Since the 1940s, Mossad has been a crucial weapon in Israel’s constant struggle to survive. Now Ronald Payne has written the first full history of Mossad. It reads like a thriller, but every word is true. Here are the heroes, the dare-devils, the masters of intelligence, and their incredible stories of kidnappings, Nazi hunts, high-tech espionage, smuggling nuclear weapons and counter-terrorist operations. ‘Mossad: Israel’s Most Secret Past’ is a penetrating, gripping and suspense-filled account. ‘Brilliantly revealing’ – Daily Express Ronald Payne (1926-2013) was a distinguished newspaper correspondent who focussed on espionage and international crime. He began covering the Middle East in the 1950s, reporting on the Suez crisis and the 1973 Yom Kippur War for the Telegraph. He also conducted a well-publicised interview with Colonel Gaddafi. As a writer he released several books on terrorism and warfare, including ‘The Carlos Complex’ about Carlos the Jackal, and a bestselling book about the Falklands War. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.