For eighteen months, John L. Rotundo and Don Ericson braved the test of war at its most bloody and most raw, specializing in ambushing the enemy and fighting jungle guerillas using their own tactics. From the undiluted high of a "contact" with the enemy to the anguished mourning of a fallen comrade, they experienced nearly every emotion known to man--most of all, the power and the pride of being the finest on America's front lines.From the Paperback edition.

    Marshall was in Korea in 1953, deep in enemy territory when Pork Chop Hill was overrun with Red Chinese troops. A handful of U.S. GIs on the frontline fought the Chinese and won. His classic account of the battle is a distinguished contribution to the literature of war (The New York Times).

    He then plunges right into the action: the massing of Chinese forces in about ten-to-one strength; the Marines' command problems due to the climate and terrain and high-level over confidence; and the onset of the overwhelming Chinese assault.With a wealth of tactical detail and small-unit action Chosin: Heroic Ordeal of the Korean War is the most complete book written to date on this iconic battle. Author Eric Hammel's masterful account offers invaluable perspective on war at the gut level.

    We are living in an age of conflict: Russia's resurgence and China's rise, global terrorism, international criminal empires, climate change and dwindling natural resources.But while the West has been playing the same old war games, the enemy has a new strategy.The rules have changed, and we are dangerously unprepared. Former paratrooper Sean McFate has been on the front lines of conflict, and seen first-hand the horrors of battle. As a Professor of Strategy, he understands the complexity of the current military situation. In this new age of war:· Plausible deniability is more potent than firepower · Russia has become a disinformation superpower, twisting the West's perception of reality· Sanctions are blunt instruments that starve only the masses, not the elite· Victory will belong to the cunning, not the strong· New types of world powers will ruleLearn how to triumph in the coming age of conflict in ten new rules. Adapt and we can prevail. Fail, and size and strength won't protect us.This is The Art of War for the 21st century.__________'Some of what he says makes more sense than much of what comes out of the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence' Max Hastings, Sunday Times'Thought-provoking' Johnathon Evans, Former Head of MI5'Fascinating and disturbing' Economist

    They built lavish villas designed by the best Beaux Arts–style architects of the time, including Richard Morris Hunt, Charles McKim and Robert Swain Peabody. America’s elite delighted in referring to these grand retreats as “summer cottages,” where they would play tennis and polo and sail their yachts along the shores of the Ocean State. The coachman had an important role as the discreet outdoor butler for Gilded Age gentlemen—not only was he in charge of the horses, but he also acted as a travel advisor and connoisseur of entertainment venues. From the driver’s seat, author and guide Edward Morris provides a diverse collection of biographical sketches that reveal the outrageous and opulent lives of some of America’s leading entrepreneurs.

    Harrowing and heroic, the events of D-Day were recorded in the personal writings of those who were there. Here, Francis Crosby has compiled a comprehensive collection of previously unpublished letters, diaries, photographs, and reminiscences that tell the story of D-Day as it has never been told before.With the use of new international archives, Crosby has culled vivid and detailed eye-witness accounts from each beach, as well as perspectives from land, sea, and air. This fascinating collection includes entries from American, British, and Canadian troops, the Merchant Navy and the Royal Air Force, and newly available German materials. Also included are contemporary and retrospective reactions of women "in the know" and those whom knew from "unofficial sources" of the immediate imminence of the assault.

    This is the memoir of Joan, who started nursing in the 1940s and whose experiences took her into the Yorkshire mining pits and through the tumult of the 1984-85 miners’ strike.Joan Hart always knew what she wanted to do with her life. Born in South Yorkshire in 1932, she started her nursing training when she was 16, the youngest age girls could do so at the time. She continued working after she married and her work took her to London and Doncaster, caring for children and miners.When she took a job as a pit nurse in Doncaster in 1974, she found that in order to be accepted by the men under her care, she would have to become one of them. Most of the time rejecting a traditional nurse’s uniform and donning a baggy miner’s suit, pit boots, a hardhat and a headlamp, Joan resolved always to go down to injured miners and bring them out of the pit herself.Over 15 years Joan grew to know the miners not only as a nurse, but as a confidante and friend. She tended to injured miners underground, rescued men trapped in the pits, and provided support for them and their families during the bitter miners’ strike which stretched from March 1984 to 1985.Moving and uplifting, this is a story of one woman’s life, marriage and work; it is guaranteed to make readers laugh, cry, and smile.

    Army soldier taken prisoner during the Vietnam War. A narrative of courage, hope, and survival, Through the Valley is more than just a war story. It also portrays the thrill and horror of combat, the fear and anxiety of captivity, and the stories of friendships forged and friends lost.In 1971 William Reeder was a senior captain on his second tour in Vietnam. He had flown armed, fixed-wing OV-1 Mohawks on secret missions deep into enemy territory in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam on his first tour. He returned as a helicopter pilot eager to experience a whole new perspective as a Cobra gunship pilot. Believing that Nixon's Vietnamization would soon end the war, Reeder was anxious to see combat action. To him, it appeared that the Americans had prevailed, beaten the Viet Cong, and were passing everything over to the South Vietnamese Army so that Americans could leave.Less than a year later, while providing support to forces at the besieged base of Ben Het, Reeder's chopper went down in a flaming corkscrew. Though Reeder survived the crash, he was captured after evading the enemy for three days. He was held for weeks in jungle cages before enduring a grueling forced march on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, costing the lives of seven of his group of twenty-seven POWs. Imprisoned in the notorious prisons of Hanoi, Reeder's tenacity in the face of unimaginable hardship is not only a captivating story, but serves as an inspiration to all.In Through the Valley William Reeder shares the torment and pain of his ordeal, but does so in the light of the hope that he never lost. His memoir reinforces the themes of courage and sacrifice, undying faith, strength of family, love of country, loyalty among comrades, and a realization of how precious is the freedom all too often taken for granted. Sure to resonate with those serving in the armed forces who continue to face the demands of combat, Through the Valley will also appeal especially to readers looking for a powerful, riveting story.

    Rhea continues his spectacular narrative of the initial campaign between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee in the spring of 1864. May 13 through 25, a phase oddly ignored by historians, was critical in the clash between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia. During those thirteen days -- an interlude bracketed by horrific battles that riveted the public's attention -- a game of guile and endurance between Grant and Lee escalated to a suspenseful draw on Virginia's North Anna River.From the bloodstained fields of the Mule Shoe to the North Anna River, with Meadow Bridge, Myers Hill, Harris Farm, Jericho Mills, Ox Ford, and Doswell Farm in between, grueling night marches, desperate attacks, and thundering cavalry charges became the norm for both Grant's and Lee's men. But the real story of May 13--25 lay in the two generals' efforts to outfox each other, and Rhea charts their every step and misstep. Realizing that his bludgeoning tactics at the Bloody Angle were ineffective, Grant resorted to a fast-paced assault on Lee's vulnerable points. Lee, outnumbered two to one, abandoned the offensive and concentrated on anticipating Grant's maneuvers and shifting quickly enough to repel them. It was an amazingly equal match of wits that produced a gripping, high-stakes bout of warfare -- a test, ultimately, of improvisation for Lee and of perseverance for Grant.

    A shot rang out, and the Redcoats replied with a devastating volley.But the day that started so well for the king's troops would end in catastrophe: seventy-three British soldiers dead, two hundred wounded, and the survivors chased back into Boston by the angry colonists. Drawing on diaries, letters, official documents, and memoirs, William H. Hallahan vividly captures the drama of those tense twenty-four hours and shows how they decided the fate of two nations.

    Although it is usually seen as an unqualified success, the Battle for Normandy was actually a much more closely fought affair. In The D-Day Deception the author and journalist Alex Gerlis explores whether it would have been won at all without the Allied deception operation. It was not until the 1970s that details began to emerge the Allies’ top secret and audacious deception plan. Operation Fortitude succeeded in confusing the Germans about where the Allies were going to land: would it be Normandy, or the Pas de Calais? The D-Day Deception looks at the part the deception played in the eventual Allied victory and asks to what extent it may have been helped by those in the German High Command and intelligence organizations who by 1944 wanted to see a swift end to the war. Alex Gerlis was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire and now lives with his family in West London. He was a BBC journalist for over 25 years, leaving in 2011 to concentrate on his writing. He is the author of The Best of Our Spies, a highly acclaimed espionage thriller based on D-Day and especially the deception operation that played a big part in its success. The Best of Our Spies was published in December 2012, since when it has featured prominently in the Amazon Kindle Spy best-selling lists and has over 180 Amazon reviews.

    The men who took it through walls of flak and surface-to-air missiles to help defeat the world's fourth-largest army were as untested as their airplanes, so they relied on personal determination and the amazing A-10 to accomplish their missions, despite the odds.Hogs in the Sand is the gripping journey of one of those pilots as he fights an increasingly terrifying war, all the while attempting to win over a woman and keep control of his internal demons. For anyone who has admired the Warthog, seen it in action, or called upon it to be their salvation, this story will fulfill a desire to virtually strap into the cockpit, while gaining unprecedented understanding of the mind of a modern combat pilot.

    These stories and photos, culled from the Star Tribune's microfilm archive by author Ben Welter, range from the catastrophic to the merely curious. From a fire that destroyed the State Capitol in 1881, to a wordless fistfight that broke out on a Minneapolis street in 1898, a flu outbreak that killed more than 10,000 Minnesotans in 1918 and the arrest of Frank Lloyd Wright at a Lake Minnetonka cottage in 1926.

    There are Gurkhas from the Himalayan foothills and Fijians from the South Sea Islands. There are men who learned their skills with the Japanese antiterrorist paramilitaries and many from southern Africa. There was even one guy who'd served in the Chinese People's Army and Chilean commandos and Sri Lankan antiterrorist experts who joined the mercenary gold rush to Iraq. They don't share a common ideology or common loyalty, but what they do share is a thirst for adventure and a hunger for big bucks; Iraq is the one place they are certain to find both..."For the first time a private military contractor delivers a frontline report on life as a hired gun in Iraq. ""Anyone entering Iraq must travel the road from Amman to Baghdad along the Fallujah bypass and around the Ramadi Ring Road. It's the most dangerous trunk route in the world, used as a personal fairground shooting gallery by insurgents and Islamists with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs. For newcomers to the country it's terrifying - but hell only really begins when that first journey ends...""" "Amidst the ongoing controversy over the widespread employment of private military contractors in Iraq, "Highway to Hell" is a mercenary's graphic, first-person expose of life in "the second biggest army in Iraq." Not since the days when the East India Company used soldiers of fortune to depose fabulously wealthy maharajas and conquer India for Great Britain, and mercenaries fought George Washington's Continental Army for King George, has such a large and lethal independent fighting force been assembled. Hired to do everything from securing American bases and supply routes to guarding the thousands of government officials, executives, aid workers, journalists, and other civilians now populating the Middle East's most notorious target range, today's clandestine soldiers of fortune earn up to $1,000 a day, while remaining almost entirely immune from government oversight, military authority, or Iraqi law John Geddes, a former warrant officer in Britain's elite SAS and veteran of several wars, became a private military contractor in Iraq immediately following President George W. Bush's declaration of the end of hostilities in early May 2003. In "Highway to Hell "Geddes gives an unsparing account of his harrowing, often bloody, and occasionally absurd adventures in the wild west of Iraq. After a chaotic chase on the Ramadi Ring Road, he takes out insurgents with a sniper rifle (while nursing the mother of all hangovers). He provides security to a cameraman during to a shootout on the rooftop of a Baghdad hotel alongside Kalashnikov-wielding Iraqi waiters (and accepts a marriage proposal that is almost drowned out by RPG fire). He witnesses American contractors shooting and pushing other vehicles off the road first and asking questions later (or, rather, not at all). From rushing a TV crew into the mayhem of a suicide bombing's aftermath to accompanying an oil executive to a meeting in the heart of darkness of Sadr City, Geddes presents a stunning, chilling inside look at the face of contemporary warfare.