Citadel: The Battle of Kursk
Robin Cross - 1993
Two vast armies engaged one another on land and in the air, in a conflict that included the most costly single day of aerial warfare of all time. This was the battle of Kursk - a battle so terrible that even Hitler confessed it made his ‘stomach turn over’. Citadel was the last great German offensive on the Eastern Front; its aim was to claw back the initiative after the surrender of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad in January 1943. The location chosen by Hitler was the Kursk salient in the heartland of the Ukraine. The date was 5 July 1943, the codename ‘Citadel’. The Red Army, warned of the German plans by the ‘Lucy’ spy network in Switzerland, was prepared to defend the salient in massive strength and depth. Against its breakwaters Hitler launched his finest armoured divisions, only to see them mangled beyond repair. No sooner had the German thrusts been contained, while within the tantalizing grasp of success, than the Red Army delivered a series of crushing counter-blows with were to drive the Wehrmacht back beyond the River Dnieper. Characteristically, Hitler had gambled all on a throw of a single dice and had lost the initiative in the East - never to regain it. 'Citadel' provides a detailed picture of the Battle of Kursk, from the strategic tug-of-war waged within both high commands in the agonizing months which preceded the German offensive, to the first-hand experiences of the troops on the ground and the airmen flying over the blazing steppe as the battle reached fever pitch. Robin Cross places the battle firmly within the wider strategic context of the spring and summer of 1943, months in which Hitler and Stalin steeled themselves to take decisions which would decide the course of the war and the shape of the peace which followed. Praise for 'Fallen Eagle': "Mesmerising account of those final, bloody weeks of war ... Cross's account of the final hysterical days in his Berlin Bunker is masterful." Sunday Express Robin Cross is a distinguished journalist and military historian whose books include VE Day: Victory in Europe, The Bombers: Strategy and Tactics and The US Marine Corps. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.
Diplomatic Incidents
Cherry Denman - 2010
This is Cherry Denman's witty take on her life trailing husband Charlie round some of the most godforsaken outposts of the world. Illustrated by brilliantly funny cartoons of diplomatic life, this is a collection of clever and very funny tales of global misunderstanding.
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 **
The Way of the Monk: The four steps to peace, purpose and lasting happiness
Gaur Gopal Das - 2020
Whether you are looking to find your purpose, strengthen relationships, discover inner calm or give back to the world, this thought-provoking book will challenge you to change your outlook and align yourself with the life you want to live.*Previously published as Life's Amazing Secrets*
The Illuminator
Brenda Rickman Vantrease - 2004
The printing press had yet to be invented, and books were rare and costly, painstakingly lettered by hand and illuminated with exquisite paintings. Finn is a master illuminator who works not only for the Church but also, in secret, for John Wycliffe of Oxford, who professes the radical idea that the Bible should be translated into English for everyone to read. Finn has another secret as well, one that leads him into danger when he meets Lady Kathryn of Blackingham Manor, a widow struggling to protect her inheritance from the depredations of Church and Crown alike. Finn's alliance with Lady Kathryn will take us to the heart of what Barbara Tuchman once called the calamitous fourteenth century.Richly detailed and irresistibly compelling, Brenda Rickman Vantrease's The Illuminator is a glorious story of love, art, religion, and treachery at an extraordinary turning point in history.
Selbuvotter: Biography of a Knitting Tradition
Terri Shea - 2007
What started as a dare became an icon of Norwegian knitting and started a snowball of knitting traditions across the North Atlantic. Selbuvotter: Biography of a Knitting Tradition follows the story of these beautiful mittens and gloves, from folk tradition to major regional industry to national symbol, and passes the tradition on with over 30 patterns taken from actual antiques. Every aspect of business today can be found in the story of Selbu knitting. And above it all, thousands of women and men, using spare moments to create spectacular designs that are as fresh today as they were 150 years ago.
Bismarck
Edward Crankshaw - 1981
His legendary political genius and ruthless will engineered Prussia's stunning defeat of the Austrian Empire and, in 1871, led to his most dazzling achievement - the defeat of France and the unification of Germany.In this highly acclaimed biography Edward Crankshaw provides a perceptive look at the career of the First Reich's mighty founder - at his brilliant abilities and severe limitations and at the people who granted him the power to transform the shape and destiny of Europe.
Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe
Serhii Plokhy - 2018
Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill.In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy draws on new sources to tell the dramatic stories of the firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who heroically extinguished the nuclear inferno. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry, tracing the disaster to the authoritarian character of the Communist party rule, the regime's control over scientific information, and its emphasis on economic development over all else.Today, the risk of another Chernobyl looms in the mismanagement of nuclear power in the developing world. A moving and definitive account, Chernobyl is also an urgent call to action.
Climb to Conquer: The Untold Story of WWII's 10th Mountain Division Ski Troops
Peter Shelton - 2003
Today a versatile light infantry unit deployed around the world, the 10th began in 1941 as a crew of civilian athletes with a passion for mountains and snow. In this vivid history, adventure writer Peter Shelton follows the unique division from its conception on a Vermont ski hill, through its dramatic World War II coming-of-age, to the ultimate revolution it inspired in American outdoor life.In the late-1930s United States, rock climbing and downhill skiing were relatively new sports. But World War II brought a need for men who could handle extreme mountainous conditions -- and the elite 10th Mountain Division was born. Everything about it was unprecedented: It was the sole U.S. Army division trained on snow and rock, the only division ever to grow out of a sport. It had an un-matched number of professional athletes, college scholars, and potential officer candidates, and as the last U.S. division to enter the war in Europe, it suffered the highest number of casualties per combat day. This is the 10th's surprising, suspenseful, and often touching story.Drawing on years of interviews and research, Shelton re-creates the ski troops' lively, extensive, and sometimes experimental training and their journey from boot camp to the Italian Apennines. There, scaling a 1,500-foot "unclimbable" cliff face in the dead of night, they stunned their enemy and began the eventual rout of the German armies from northern Italy.It was a self-selecting elite, a brotherhood in sport and spirit. And those who survived (including the Sierra Club's David Brower, Aspen Skiing Corporation founder Friedl Pfeifer, and Nike cofounder Bill Bowerman, who developed the waffle-sole running shoe) turned their love of mountains into the thriving outdoor industry that has transformed the way Americans see (and play in) the natural world.
The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief
Ben Macintyre - 1997
. . .--Sherlock Holmes on Professor Moriarty in The Final ProblemThe Victorian era's most infamous thief, Adam Worth was the original Napoleon of crime. Suave, cunning Worth learned early that the best way to succeed was to steal. And steal he did.Following a strict code of honor, Worth won the respect of Victorian society. He also aroused its fear by becoming a chilling phantom, mingling undetected with the upper classes, whose valuables he brazenly stole. His most celebrated heist: Gainsborough's grand portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire--ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales--a painting Worth adored and often slept with for twenty years.With a brilliant gang that included "Piano" Charley, a jewel thief, train robber, and playboy, and "the Scratch" Becker, master forger, Worth secretly ran operations from New York to London, Paris, and South Africa--until betrayal and a Pinkerton man finally brought him down.In a decadent age, Worth was an icon. His biography is a grand, dazzling tour into the gaslit underworld of the last century. . . and into the doomed genius of a criminal mastermind.
Tank Commander: From the Fall of France to the Defeat of Germany: The Memoirs of Bill Close
Bill Close - 2013
He was wounded three times. He finished the war as one of the most experienced and resourceful of British tank commanders, and in later life, he set down his wartime experiences in graphic detail. His book is not only an extraordinary memoir; it is also a compelling account of the exploits of the Royal Tank Regiment throughout the conflict. As a record of the day-to-day experience of the tank crew of seventy-five years ago--of the conditions they faced and the battles they fought--it has rarely been equaled.
Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang
Jillian Becker - 1977
Throughout the 1970s, there was no more feared group of terrorists. On the surface, they were militant revolutionaries. But in reality they were 'Hitler's Children' - both in the sense that most of them were born during the Nazi regime, and in the sense that they were fiercely opposed to individual freedom and liberal democracy. In this ground-breaking book, Jillian Becker examines the roots of the Gang. The terrorists in the Federal Republic of Germany came out of the pacifist ‘new left’ student protest movement of the late 1960s. Few in number, almost all of them came from prosperous, educated families. Unaware how closely they resembled their Nazi predecessors, they described themselves as ‘anti-fascist’. ‘Fascism’, they claimed, lay just under the surface of liberal democracy and would be called into the open by the use of terrorist violence. They were beneficiaries of American aid, and of the West German ‘economic miracle’, and they had no cause of their own to fight for. And so they identified themselves with Third World victims of wars, poverty and oppression, whose plight they blamed on ‘Western imperialism’. In the name of ‘peace’, ‘national liberation’, ‘anti-imperialism’, and ‘anti-capitalism’, they killed Germans, Americans, Jews and others with bullets and bombs. Their dreams of leading a revolution were ended when one after another of them died in shoot-outs with the police, or was blown up with him own bomb, or was arrested and condemned to long terms of imprisonment. All four leader of the Gang eventually committed suicide in prison. Detailed biographical portraits, especially of Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin, reveal how they laid waste their own lives, and drove themselves furiously to their own destruction. 'A first rate piece of journalism in the best sense of the word ... Ms Becker is the only person who has managed in recent years to tell me something which I had not heard before about these desperate, hysterical, perverted idealists whose revolt against authoritarianism ... made them indistinguishable from fascists' The Times 'Jillian Becker finds an uncanny similarity between those supposedly leftist views and those expressed in Mein Kampf more than 50 years ago' TIME 'An important and highly readable book, thoroughly researched and written with the pace and excitement of a crime thriller' TLS 'A serious and readable study of events which few people in Britain have seriously tried to understand' The Observer 'Superbly researched . . . Mrs Becker has performed a great service with this book' Sunday Telegraph Jillian Becker was born in Johannesburg in 1932. She has had a strong interest in Germany for many years, a concern which now finds expression in Hitler's Children. Jillian Becker also writes fiction. Her titles include ‘The Keep’, ‘The Union’, and ‘The Virgins’, all of which have been highly praised by the critics.
Learning How to Fly: Life Lessons for the Youth
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam - 2016
Abdul Kalam had a great belief in the power of the youth. He met over 21 million children and young people in India and outside and spoke to them about the power of knowledge, ambition, moral behaviour and the need to bring about change in society. He travelled to almost every corner of the country meeting the youth in schools, universities and institutions and interacted with them like a committed teacher.In Learning How to Fly some of his nearly 2,000 lectures have been compiled. These lectures were addressed to teachers and students in school and beyond. In each one of them he has spoken about preparing oneself best for life, to identify and overcome challenges and how to bring out the best within each individual. Through stories from his own life, those of his teachers and mentors as well as stories of some of the greatest men and women of the world, and the latest developments in science and technology, he shows us the importance of dreams and the hard work needed to turn those dreams into reality.Filled with warmth, inspiration and a positive attitude, Learning How to Fly is essential reading for every Indian, young and old.
The Paris Bookseller
Kerri Maher - 2022
It's where some of the most important literary friendships of the twentieth century are forged--none more so than the one between Irish writer James Joyce and Sylvia herself. When Joyce's controversial novel Ulysses is banned, Beach takes a massive risk and publishes it under the auspices of Shakespeare and Company.But the success and notoriety of publishing the most infamous and influential book of the century comes with steep costs. The future of her beloved store itself is threatened when Ulysses' success brings other publishers to woo Joyce away. Her most cherished relationships are put to the test as Paris is plunged deeper into the Depression and many expatriate friends return to America. As she faces painful personal and financial crises, Sylvia--a woman who has made it her mission to honor the life-changing impact of books--must decide what Shakespeare and Company truly means to her.