Book picks similar to
The Soviet-Israeli War 1967-1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict by Isabella Ginor
cold-war
history-pol-modern
jewish
oxford-press
Night Fighter: From the Rise of Special Ops to the Age of Terrorism
William H. Hamilton Jr. - 2016
Hamilton Jr., and the veteran military history writer and bestselling author of One Shot One Kill,, Hill 488, and Crosshairs on the Kill Zone, Charles W. Sasser, detailing how Hamilton brought together a combination of Navy, Army, and CIA training methods to shape the United States’ unconventional military force, culminating in the Navy Seals, the world's most effective warriors in combating terrorists and international criminals, whose Team Six carried out the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
The Red Quest: Travels Through 22 Countries of the Former Soviet Union
Jason Smart - 2013
Oh, and he also takes a side trip to a genuine breakaway state where he is almost beaten up in a border hut. All in the name of The Red Quest! He must try to keep the mission a secret from his wife though, otherwise she may derail his plans.Constantly berated by his friend for wanting to go to 'Turnipland', the Red Quest is a journey spanning half the world from Western Europe to the edge of China! And he is armed only with a pocket full of roubles and a turnip masher.Join Jason Smart as he travels along the Red Quest through Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Hungary, Russia, Romania, Moldova. Ukraine, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Poland, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and East Germany!
Valor in Vietnam: Chronicles of Honor, Courage, and Sacrifice: 1963-1977
Allen B. Clark - 2012
The Vietnam War lives on famously and infamously dependent on political points of view, but those who have “been there, done that” have a highly personalized window on their time of that history. Valor in Vietnam focuses on nineteen stories of Vietnam, stories of celebrated characters in the veteran community, compelling war narratives, vignettes of battles, and the emotional impact on the combatants. It is replete with leadership lessons as well as valuable insights that are just as applicable today as they were forty years ago.This is an anecdotal history of America’s war in Vietnam composed of firsthand narratives by Vietnam War veterans presented in chronological order. They are intense, emotional, and highly personal stories. Connecting each of them is a brief historical commentary of that period of the war, the geography of the story, and the contemporary strategy written by Lewis Sorley, West Point class of 1956, and author of A Better War and Westmoreland.With a foreword by Lt. Gen. Dave R. Palmer, U.S. Army (Ret.), Valor in Vietnam presents a historical overview of the war through the eyes of participants in each branch of service and throughout the entire course of the war. Simply put, their stories serve to reflect the commitment, honor, and dedication with which America’s veterans performed their service.
At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War
Thomas Reed - 2004
presidents to outmaneuver the Russians, the Vietnam war, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Original.
K-19 THE WIDOWMAKER: The Secret Story of The Soviet Nuclear Submarine
Peter A. Huchthausen - 2002
An account of one of the Cold War era's most harrowing nuclear accidents documents the maiden voyage of the Soviet nuclear submarine, during which a serious reactor leak spurred a perilous race against time.
On the Sickle's Edge
Neville Frankel - 2016
What we cannot lose.A sweeping masterwork of love and loss, secrets and survival, On the Sickle's Edge is told through the voices of three characters who lay bare their family's saga: the endearing, scrappy South-African born Lena, transported to Latvia and later trapped in the USSR; her granddaughter Darya, a true Communist whose growing disillusionment with Soviet ideology places her family at mortal risk; and Steven, a painter from Boston who inadvertently stumbles into the tangled web of his family's past. Against the roiling backdrop of twentieth-century Russia and Eastern Europe, the novel delivers equal parts historical drama, political thriller and poignant love story.On the Sickle's Edge takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through some of the most tumultuous events of the 20th century. Instantly immersed in seven generations of the Shtein family, we witness their exhilarating celebrations and provocative controversies, and gain an intimate understanding of the pivotal events in South Africa, Latvia and the Soviet Union. Neville Frankel's ability to combine historical insight and human passion is spellbinding. I couldn't put it down. --Pamela Katz, The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the BrinkIn the hands of a masterful storyteller, On the Sickle's Edge pits the weight of an oppressive regime against individual tenacity and profound personal courage. Inspired by Frankel's own family history, this multi-generational epic holds up a mirror to a universal truth: all immigrants face the powerful tension between assimilation and cultural identity. We have--all of us--lived life on the edge of the sickle. --Rabbi Andrew Baker, Director of International Jewish Affairs, American Jewish Committee
Policing Saigon
Loren W. Christensen - 2017
Christensen's experience as a military policeman (MP) in a city of millions at a time when chaos and fear reigned. As a 23-year-old from a small town in Washington State, the author was plunged into a chaotic city of brawling servicemen, prostitutes, racial violence, enemy rockets, riots, and death. It was a place that would give him a unique opportunity to see up close a different side of the Vietnam War and its effect on the human condition. Nearly 80 stories collectively convey the author’s experiences and his arc—from naive to jaded, angry, confused, anxious, and bone-weary exhausted—that is representative of so many GIs who served in the Vietnam War as well as those veterans of today’s conflicts around the globe. * “A true warrior and a gifted and prolific author, Loren gives the reader a deep and illuminating insight into his experience that changed his life and subsequently led him toward helping others through his writing. Policing Saigon is a powerful book.” Lt. Col. Dave Grossman * Military Policeman Loren Christensen takes the reader on a gritty, moving, and intense ride-a-along in Saigon, Vietnam. K.F., Afghanistan War veteran Table of Contents Introduction PART ONE: THE FIRST FEW DAYS Chap 1: Flying there Chap 2: Door gunners and policing for cigarette butts Chap 3: Welcome to Saigon Chap 4: Python Chap 5: Culture shock Chap 6: Dead men’s gear PART TWO: "ROUTINE DAYS" Chap 7: Day after day Chap 8: EOD Chap 9: Skylight Chap 10: Cobra Chap 11: Bob Hope Chap 12: Papa-san and the ammo truck Chap 13: Dead mama-san Chap 14: Jail window Chap 15: “Karate number one” Chap 16: Sampson Chap 17: 100-P alley Chap 18: 200-P alley Chap 19: The swimming pool Chap 20: “Dance to the Music” Chap 21: Drugs Chap 22: Tracer rounds Chap 23: Puff the magic dragon Chap 24: Almost a coup Chap 25: Vietnam blues Chap 26: Tension Chap 27: A shaky fork Chap 28: Illusions of relief Chap 29: Korean Marines Chap 30: AFVN radio: “Goooooood morning, Vietnaaaaaam” Chap 31: “I’m not a crook” Chap 32: Running Code 3 Chap 33: Fire Chap 34: Riot Chap 35: Power and rank: a deadly mix Chap 36: The vision Chap 37: Screams Chap 38: Meyerkord Hotel Chap 39: Resisting arrest Chap 40: Letters Chap 41: One GI who went home and came right back PART THREE: LOSING IT Chap 42: Silencer Chap 43: Hangman Chap 44: Johnny Walker Black Chap 45: Escaped prisoner Chap 46: The punch Chap 47: Death of the spirit Chap 48: Grenade PART FOUR: PROSTITUTES Chap 49: “Boom-boom number one” Chap 50: Clap Chap 51: Peter PART FIVE: THE INDIGENOUS Chap 52: A fellow martial artist Chap 53: A most excellent shot Chap 54: “Everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout me” Chap 55: China girl Chap 56: Date night Chap 57: The old gravedigger Chap 58: Altered states: the Buddhist temple Chap 59: Dog sex and an alligator baby PART SIX: STREET CHILDREN Chap 60: A Tu Do paperboy Chap 61: Cemetery k
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
Adam Higginbotham - 2019
The disaster not only changed the world’s perception of nuclear power and the science that spawned it, but also our understanding of the planet’s delicate ecology. With the images of the abandoned homes and playgrounds beyond the barbed wire of the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone, the rusting graveyards of contaminated trucks and helicopters, the farmland lashed with black rain, the event fixed for all time the notion of radiation as an invisible killer.Chernobyl was also a key event in the destruction of the Soviet Union, and, with it, the United States’ victory in the Cold War. For Moscow, it was a political and financial catastrophe as much as an environmental and scientific one. With a total cost of 18 billion rubles—at the time equivalent to $18 billion—Chernobyl bankrupted an already teetering economy and revealed to its population a state built upon a pillar of lies. The full story of the events that started that night in the control room of Reactor No.4 of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant has never been told—until now. Through two decades of reporting, new archival information, and firsthand interviews with witnesses, journalist Adam Higginbotham tells the full dramatic story, including Alexander Akimov and Anatoli Dyatlov, who represented the best and worst of Soviet life; denizens of a vanished world of secret policemen, internal passports, food lines, and heroic self-sacrifice for the Motherland. Midnight in Chernobyl, award-worthy nonfiction that reads like sci-fi, shows not only the final epic struggle of a dying empire but also the story of individual heroism and desperate, ingenious technical improvisation joining forces against a new kind of enemy.
The Madonnas of Leningrad
Debra Dean - 2006
And while the elderly Russian woman cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild—her distant past is preserved: vivid images that rise unbidden of her youth in war-torn Leningrad.In the fall of 1941, the German army approached the outskirts of Leningrad, signaling the beginning of what would become a long and torturous siege. During the ensuing months, the city's inhabitants would brave starvation and the bitter cold, all while fending off the constant German onslaught. Marina, then a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum, along with other staff members, was instructed to take down the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, yet leave the frames hanging empty on the walls—a symbol of the artworks' eventual return. To hold on to sanity when the Luftwaffe's bombs began to fall, she burned to memory, brushstroke by brushstroke, these exquisite artworks: the nude figures of women, the angels, the serene Madonnas that had so shortly before gazed down upon her. She used them to furnish a "memory palace," a personal Hermitage in her mind to which she retreated to escape terror, hunger, and encroaching death. A refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more. . . .
The Keeper of Secrets
Julie Thomas - 2011
A family torn apart. A decision that could change everything.Berlin, 1939. Fourteen year old Simon Horowitz is awash in a world of music. His family owns a superb collection of instruments and at its heart is his father's 1742 Guarneri de Gesu violin. But all is lost when the Nazis march across Europe and Simon and his father and brother are sent to Dachau. Amid unimaginable cruelty and death, Simon finds kindness from an unexpected corner, and a chance to pick up a violin again and a chance to live.In the present day, orchestra conductor Rafael Gomez has seen much in his time on the world's stage, but he finds himself oddly inspired by the playing of an aspiring violin virtuoso, a fantastic talent who is only just fourteen. Then the boy, Daniel Horowitz, suddenly refuses to play another note, and Rafael knows he'll do anything he can to change that. When he learns the boy's family once owned a precious violin, believed to have been lost forever, Rafael thinks he might know exactly how to get Daniel playing again. In taking on the task he discovers a family story like no other that winds from World War II and Communist Russia all the way to Rafael's very own stage.
Mars and Her Children: Poems
Marge Piercy - 1992
These poems celebrate the beauties of nature and the eternal cycle of love, death and birth that is being interrupted by the assault on the environment.
Hans Sturm: A Soldier's Odyssey on the Eastern Front
Gordon Williamson - 2015
However, few can match Hans Sturm in his astonishing rise from a mere private in an infantry regiment, thrown into the bloody maelstrom of the Eastern Front, to a highly decorated war hero. A young man who had displayed fearless heroism in combat, earning him some of Germany's highest military awards, Sturm hated bullies and injustice, and reacted in his normal pugnacious and outspoken manner when confronted with wrongdoing. From striking a member of the feared Sicherheitsdienst for his treatment of a Jewish woman, to refusing to wear a decoration he felt was tainted because of the treatment of enemy partisans, Sturm repeatedly stuck to his moral values no matter what the risk. Even with the war finally over, Sturm's travails would not end for another eight years as he languished in a number of Soviet labour camps until he was finally released in 1953. ** This electronic edition includes 60 black-and-white photographs **
Munich 1972: Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games
David Clay Large - 2012
Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources from the time, eminent historian David Clay Large explores the 1972 festival in all its ramifications. He interweaves the political drama surrounding the Games with the athletic spectacle in the arena of play, itself hardly free of controversy. Writing with flair and an eye for telling detail, Large brings to life the stories of the indelible characters who epitomized the Games. Key figures range from the city itself, the visionaries who brought the Games to Munich against all odds, and of course to the athletes themselves, obscure and famous alike. With the Olympic movement in constant danger of terrorist disruption, and with the fortieth anniversary of the 1972 tragedy upon us in 2012, the Munich story is more timely than ever.
Sniper Ace
Bruno Sutkus - 2009
Each success noted had to be verified by a witness and signed by a superior officer.The journal of Sutkus is one of only a few such books to have survived the war. It records more than 200 kills, placing him as one of the wars most successful snipers. A large part of his journal is reproduced for the first time here.As a Hitler Youth member his skill as a marksman was quickly noted and, in July 1943, aged 19, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. A month later he was sent on a five month snipers course in Wilna, after which he was posted to the Eastern Front. He was so successful that his superiors sent him to crucial positions. Despite his age, he was regarded as one of Germanys best snipers and in November 1944 he was awarded the Scharfshtzenabzeichen 3 Stufe the highest award for a sniper.After being wounded in January 1945, Sutkus was given time to recuperate away from the Eastern Front. During this time he met a Red Cross nurse, to whom he gave all his journal.When the war finished, Sutkus was forced to join the Red Army. He deserted to join the Lithuanian resistance fighters. After being captured again he was tortured by the KGB and deported to Siberia to endure forced labor. It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that he was able return to Germany and find his journal, still in the hands of the same nurse.Introduction written by David L. Robbins.
We Dared to Win: The SAS in Rhodesia
Hannes Wessels - 2018
A quiet, introspective thinker. Andre started out as a trooper in the SAS before being commissioned into the Rhodesian Light Infantry Commandos, where he was engaged in fire-force combat operations. He then rejoined the SAS.Wounded 13 times, his operational record is exceptional even by the tough standards that existed at the time. He emerged as the SAS officer par excellence; beloved by his men, displaying extraordinary calmness, courage, and audacious cunning during a host of extremely dangerous operations. Andre writes vividly about his experience, his emotions, and his state of mind during the war, and reflects candidly on what he learned and how war has shaped his life since.In addition to Andre's personal story, this book reveals more about some of the other men who were distinguished operators in SAS operations during the Rhodesian War.RUNNING TIME ➼ 10hrs. and 48mins.©2018 Hannes Wessels and Andre Scheepers (P)2020 Tantor