August 06, 2011, 2:20 a.m.—Operation Lefty Grove is underway, a highly dangerous mission to take out another high-level Taliban operative, three months after the death of Osama Bin Laden. In the dark of night, twenty-five US Special Ops Forces and a five-man flight crew on board Extortion 17, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Seven unidentified Afghan Commandos are allowed to join them. Ground forces have already been engaged in a three-hour exhaustive battle. Extortion 17’s specially trained warriors drop into the Hot Landing Zone to help their fellow warriors. But there’s a problem: the standard chopper escorts have all been directed elsewhere. Mission directions are unclear. Worse, pre-assault fire to cover the Chinook transporting our brave fighting men is not ordered.

    It combines a brilliant overview of this immense conflict with telling detail, stories, letters and diaries that breathe life into those terrible battles of 90 years ago. In The Great War Carlyon has produced a masterpiece that takes the reader from the generals formulating strategy, to the troops fighting cold, filth and the terror of sudden death in their trenches.Written with the same narrative skill, humanity, vivid recreation and meticulous research that made Gallipoli a number one bestseller, Les Carlyon's astonishing new book is an epic that will stand as the lasting and definitive history of Australia's involvement in the Great War.

    Millions are spent on your training. And nothing is too lavish for your living. Lt Viktor Belenko was a MIG-25 pilot - one of Russia's elite warriors and the supreme expression of the ideal communist man. Or so everyone believed.Thwn on September 6, 1976, while on a routine training flight, Lt. Belenko veered off course - and embarked on an incredible escape, an unforgiveable betrayal of his nation, and a daring and torturous personal journey of hope and courage.MIG PILOT is the thrilling true story of how Russia's greatest air military secret was stolen and delivered right into America's lap. But it's more - it's the fascinating life story of a peasant's son who grew up to possess every luxury and honor Russia can bestow. And who threw it all away for one desperate chance to possess a dream. The American Dream.