Deneys Reitz was an unusual soldier. Having fought against the British in the Boer War, in 1917 he decided to go to London, in order to join the British Army. Presenting himself at a recruiting office in Chelsea, he enlisted as a private soldier. Shortly afterwards he was commissioned, and was sent to the Western Front in September 1917. Whilst on the Western Front, he witnessed the German spring offensive in 1918, and the allied counter-attack which followed. He was wounded twice as well as being gassed. Reitz experienced more than his fair share of the difficulties of trench warfare, from finding himself living in a trench whose sides were built out of sandbag-covered corpses, to being stretchered into a Casualty Clearing Station with serious wounds.

    She claimed the police had inserted a stick inside her… Swaranpreet realised that she had been cruelly violated; He spoke a single sentence but repeated it twice in chaste Punjabi: ‘Please give me a turban? I want nothing else…’ These are voices begging for deliverance in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination in October-November 1984 in which 2,733 Sikhs were killed, burnt and exterminated by lumpens in the country. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay walks us through one of the most shameful episodes of sectarian violence in post Independent India and highlights the apathy of subsequent governments towards Sikhs who paid a price for what was clearly a state-sponsored riot. Poignant, raw and most importantly, macabre, the personal histories in the book reveal how even after three decades, a community continues to battle for its identity in its own country.

    The Christians have broken the truce and the Fifth Crusade has begun, the irate Saracens are expelling Christians and Jews from their lands, and desperate refugees are pouring into Jerusalem's port city of Acre which is expected to fall. There are coins to be earned carrying those most favoured by God to safety, meaning those with the most coins to pay for a place on one of the company's galleys. And the French governor of Acre wants to leave his young wife behind and flee with the chests of coins he collected from the city's Saracen merchants before he expelled them despite the bribes they paid him. It is a rollicking good story and a very good read.

    

    When he is finally ready to turn a new page in life, he shoots for the moon and moves to the town of Moville to work in mining. Feeling like he is one step closer to his dream, little did he know that the life of a miner is more fraught with peril and disappointment than he'd imagined. The moment he discovers that a vicious killer is out there, taking the lives of innocent miners for no apparent reason, he is willing to risk it all to track him down. Will Jack manage to find the answer behind the enigma of the horrible murders? Or will the truth behind them remain forever hidden, haunting the small town?While trying to connect all dots and solve the intriguing mystery, Jack meets Charlotte Campbell, the town's head schoolteacher. Although they get off to a rocky start, he will soon realize that he's not alone in the battle against the town's enemies. Together they will fight the forces that wreak havoc in Moville, a lifetime adventure that will bring them closer. Even though their attraction is impossible to deny, their affection cannot be expressed as long as a criminal is out there. Will they finally have a chance at love, or will their romance be doomed to be lost forever?As the days go by and the murderers continue to bring chaos to what was once a thriving town, Jack feels like his dream is being shattered into a million pieces. Will his valor and wit win out in the end, leading him to the life he has been eagerly waiting for? Or will the cruel felon stop him from riding down the trail to happiness?"A Town of Lawlessness" is a historical adventure novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cliffhangers, only pure unadulterated action.

     A secret cargo is headed for Japan. The Japanese High Command has entrusted it to a veteran destroyer captain - the best in the Imperial Navy - and he will stop at nothing to see that it reaches its final destination... Carrier-based dive bombers could not stop it, nor could the guerilla-commandos of the Philippine Islands. Now, the submarine Wolffish is the last ditch hope of the Allied Command. Still shaken by a recent tragedy, and desperately low on fuel, torpedoes, and morale, the war-weary submarine and her eighty-man crew must pull together to track down and destroy the cargo before it reaches Japan, and changes the course of the war...

    Humans: from the beginning will appeal to anybody who reads about these discoveries, is intrigued by them, and would like to know more about prehistory. Now brought fully up to date for 2015, Humans: from the beginning is a single-volume guide to the human past. Drawing upon expert literature and the latest multi-disciplinary research, this rigorous but accessible book traces the whole of the human story from the first apes to the first cities. The end product of five years of research, it has also been planned from the ground up to take advantage of the eBook format and ease access to visual matter, references and glossary items. Humans: from the beginning is written for the non-specialist, but it is sufficiently comprehensive in scope, rigorous in content, and well-referenced to serve as an ideal ‘one-stop’ text not only for undergraduate students of relevant disciplines, but also to postgraduates, researchers and other academics seeking to broaden their knowledge. This 32-chapter work presents an even-handed coverage of topics including: • How climate change has long played a pivotal role in our affairs and those of our ancestors. • How humans evolved from apes at a time when the apes were facing extinction. • Why the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees (our closest living relatives) might have been more like a human than a chimpanzee. • A possible Asian rather than African origin for the earliest humans. • Why the Neanderthals were not the dimwits of popular imagination. • How language and modern human behaviour evolved: an examination of theories including those of Robin Dunbar, Steven Mithen and Derek Bickerton. • How the small group of modern humans that eventually colonised the whole of the non-African world might have started from Arabia rather than Africa. • David Lewis-Williams’ theory that the cave art of Ice Age Europe was linked to a shamanistic belief system that might be rooted in the very architecture of the human brain. • Why the Neolithic transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture was a lengthy process, with many down sides. • Colin Renfrew’s still-controversial theory that the spread of farming communities in Neolithic times was responsible for the languages now spoken in many parts of the world. • How an ‘Urban Revolution’ replaced egalitarian farming communities with socially-stratified kingdoms and city-states in just a few millennia. • How the complex, technological societies of today have much in common with not only the earliest states but much earlier primate societies.

    But Britain’s partitioning of Afghanistan will rank asthe greatest crime of the nineteenth century. That arbitrary line which Mortimer Durand drewin 1893 on a small piece of paper continues to bleed Afghanistan and hound the world. Alas,this story remained untold until now.Written in an inimitable style, Durand’s Curse is the result of deep research. Fascinating detailsfrom long-buried archives of history reveal for the first time a tale of intrigue and deceit againstAfghanistan. First the British and then Pakistan had taken away territory that originally belongedto Afghanistan. But the divided Pathan families refuse to accept this division even now and for thelast century and over, there has been a struggle to rub out the cursed line drawn across the sand.Rajiv Dogra brings alive the wars, the tragedies and the Afghan anger against injustice in thisheart-wrenching account of Afghanistan’s misfortunes. This is an absolutely riveting story of theIndian sub-continent's history told by an important writer of our generation.

    Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century makes a powerful case that wealth, and accumulated wealth, tends to stay where it lands: and with the passage of time, just gets bigger…and bigger.But how many of us who bought or borrowed the book–or even, perhaps, reviewed it–have read more than a fraction of its 696 pages? How many more shuddered at the thought of committing $40 to such a venture? And how many of Piketty’s groundshaking concepts have gone unappreciated, all for want of intellectual stamina?Deliverance is at hand in the form of Pocket Piketty, written in clear and accessible prose by an experienced economist and teacher–and one whose work was relied on by Piketty for his masterpiece. In this handy and slim volume, Jesper Roine explains all things Piketty.

    Historian Victor Brooks argues that 1944 was, in effect, “the longest year” for Americans of that era, both in terms of casualties and in deciding the outcome of war itself.Brooks also argues that only the particular war events of 1944 could have produced the “reshuffling” of the cards of life that, in essence, changed the rules for most of the 140 million Americans in some fashion. Rather than focusing on military battles and strategy alone, the author chronicles the year as a microcosm of disparate military, political, and civilian events that came together to define a specific moment in time.As war was raging in Europe, Americans on the home front continued to cope (with some prospering). As US forces launched an offensive against the Japanese in the Mariana Islands and Palau, folks at home enjoyed morale-boosting movies and songs such as "To Have and Have Not" and “G.I. Jive.” And as American troops invaded the island of Leyte—launching the largest naval battle during the war—President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Thomas E. Dewey were in the home stretch leading up to the election of 1944.It has been said that the arc of history is long. Throughout American history, however, some years have been truly momentous. The Longest Year makes the case that 1944 was one such year.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

    November '98 publication date.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    From gunpowder to opium, the East India Company uses every weapon to bring an entire sub-continent to its knees. Even Tipu, the fearsome Tiger of Mysore, falls prey to British military might. As a century of deceit and cruelty unfolds - the oppressed thirst for retribution. Delhi is the first to drown in blood, as a violent sepoy uprising engulfs all of Hindustan. The seat of the crumbling Mughal empire emerges as the epicenter of the ghadar. An unforgettable poet laments the destruction of his beloved city and a senile Badshah’s eyes gleam with unreal hope, as both sides of the Laal Qila witness terrifying bloodshed and historical battles. And amidst all the cannon-roars, brutal duels, intoxicated mushairas, ravishing courtesans, haunted treasures and bloody battles – unfolds the immortal story of the magnificent Mastaan & the beautiful Fay. Did one man really change the course of history’s greatest war for freedom? About the Authors Vineet Bajpai is one of India’s most popular and commercially successful authors. Counted among the 75 greatest Indian writers of all time, his books have touched the hearts & lives of millions of readers worldwide. A Nielsen chart-topping author, Vineet has written six books before Mastaan. His business and inspirational books Build From Scratch (2004), The Street to the Highway (2011) and The 30 Something CEO (2016) have been highly acclaimed. Vineet’s fiction novels, the best-selling Harappa Trilogy, sold over 1 lac copies within 12 months of release and are counted among the biggest blockbuster novels in the history of Indian fiction. Film-rights of the Harappa Trilogy have been acquired by one of the largest film production houses in India. A regular speaker at the Jaipur Literature Festival and other international literary events, Vineet’s books have been translated into several languages. Mastaan - The Fallen Patriot of Delhi is Vineet’s seventh book. ‘Vineet Bajpai... undoubtedly India’s new literary superstar’ - Times of India

    And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.The great Biblical flood so described in Genesis has long been a subject of fascination and speculation. In the 19th century the English archbishop James Ussher established it as having happened in the year 2348 B.C., calculating what was then taken as the age of the earth and working backward through the entire series of Biblical "begats." Proof of the flood, which is an element of so many creation myths, began in earnest when archaeology started connecting physical evidence with Biblical story. The dream of proving the Bible as literal truth has proven irresistible, producing both spurious claims and serious scholarship.As best-selling historian Ian Wilson reveals in this fascinating new book, evidence of a catastrophic event has been building steadily, culminating in the work of William Ryan and Walter Pitman. Several years ago Ryan and Pitman had posited that around 5600 BC there had an inundation in the Black Sea of such proportions that it turned the freshwater lake into a saltwater lake by connecting it to the Mediterranean. Were that true, they estimated that there would be signs of civilization 300 feet below the surface of the Black Sea. In September 2000, using his famous underwater equipment, Robert Ballard (of SS Titanic fame) explored parts of the Black Sea near the Turkish shore and found the remains of wood houses. There had been a flood, and whether God's wrath or not it had destroyed everything around it for hundreds of miles, killing tens of thousands of people.Exploring all the archeological evidence, Wilson explains how the Black Sea flood and the Biblical flood have to be connected. In particular, Wilson argues, learnedly and persuasively, that the center of the civilized world was further to the West than previously thought-not in Egypt or Mesopotamia but in what is today Northern Turkey.The earliest, antediluvian civilizations may have migrated east into those places we have come to call the cradles of civilization, forced by the Black Sea flood to create new settlements. Scrupulous in its details and compelling in its sweep, Before the Flood is narrative detective history at its most provocative, contributing a vital new chapter to the debate about the Bible and origins of the modern world.

    Stringer's new theory, based on archeological and genetic evidence, holds that distinct humans coexisted and competed across the African continent—exchanging genes, tools, and behavioral strategies.Stringer draws on analyses of old and new fossils from around the world, DNA studies of Neanderthals (using the full genome map) and other species, and recent archeological digs to unveil his new theory. He shows how the most sensational recent fossil findings fit with his model, and he questions previous concepts (including his own) of modernity and how it evolved.Lone Survivors will be the definitive account of who and what we were, and will change perceptions about our origins and about what it means to be human.