Africa Lost: Rhodesia's COIN Killing Machine (SOFREP)


Dan Tharp - 2013
    Everyone knows about Navy SEALs and Green Berets but nobody knows about the deep recce, sabotage, and direct action missions conducted by the Rhodesian SAS. The Rhodesian Light Infantry was a killing machine, participating in combat jumps every night during the heat of the Bush War. The Selous Scouts were perhaps the most innovative and daring unconventional warfare unit in history which would pair white soldiers with turncoat black “former” terrorists who would then infiltrate enemy camps.US military veteran and historian Dan Tharp covers each of these three units in depth.(18,000 words)

Cover of Darkness: The Memoir of a World War Two Night-Fighter


Roderick Chisholm - 2020
    

Dreadnought: A History of the Modern Battleship


Richard Hough - 1964
     In their day, battleships were the biggest and most complicated things built by human hand and they became symbols of national prestige. Despite their crippling costs, these mighty ships were built by many of the world's navies and many remain household names. The losses of the Hood, Bismarck, Yamato and Arizona still echo through the decades because of their fascinating stories. The era of the dreadnought lasted little more than 40 years. By then, these majestic warriors of the sea were overshadowed by the dominance of air power. A few lingered on, but the golden age of the battleship was over. Richard Hough provides the reader with an informative and exciting tour through the Dreadnoughts history. From the political anxieties that the first Dreadnought inspired to the battles that the ships won and lost. "Hough is a good storyteller with a refreshing, breezy style." The Wall Street Journal Richard Hough, the distinguished naval historian, was the author of many acclaimed books in the field, including ‘The Fleet That Had to Die’,’ Admirals in Collision’, ‘The Great War at Sea: 1914-18’, and ‘The Longest Battle: The War at Sea 1939-45’. He was the biographer of Mountbatten, and his last biography, ‘Captain James Cook’, became a world bestseller. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

Hunters: U.S. Snipers in the War on Terror


Milo S. Afong - 2010
     The ongoing War on Terror is unlike any conflict the United States Armed Forces have fought. There are no set battles. The enemy adheres to no warrior code or international law. Their only desire is to kill- or be killed. That's where the snipers of the U.S. Marine, Army, and Navy SEALs come in... Here in their own words are the compelling and gripping true stories of the snipers whose sole purpose is to eliminate any and all enemy threats with a single bullet. From the deserts and rubble-strewn streets of Iraq to the endless labyrinth of the remote Afghanistan mountain country, this is life and death beyond the front lines of battle and behind the scope of a high-powered rifle.

Admiral Halsey's Story


William F. Halsey - 1976
    “Bull” Halsey earned a legendary reputation for daring and boldness as commander of the U.S. Third Fleet. Admiral Halsey’s Story is this admiral’s record of his actions through the course of his remarkable career in the U.S. Navy. The account begins with a brief overview of his years in school and early years with the navy where he fought in the First World War and served in Mexico and Greece as he rose through the ranks to become vice admiral just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Halsey’s life was dramatically altered with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as through the next four years he rose from relative obscurity to become one of the most famous allied naval figures in the war. The events of Halsey’s life through World War Two are split into three sections in the book and are covered in wonderful detail: Firstly he uncovers the details of his command of a carrier task force in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor until May 1942. Next the book discusses his life as Commander of the South Pacific Area and its forces which lasted until June 1944. And finally the book gives an in-depth overview of the final year of the war when Halsey was commander of the U.S. Third Fleet. During the war Halsey had continually acted with bravery and speed and all of his most famous actions are covered through the book such as how he directed the campaigns in the Solomons and led the attacks on the Carolines and New Britain. “The book is pure Halsey — the personal yarn of a seagoing, fighting admiral who was forthright, honest, often brilliant, sometimes rash, but who possessed above all else, a natural modesty that enhanced his uncommon valor.” Naval War College Review “To learn what went on behind the wartime newspaper reports, her is an incomparable document. Admiral Halsey has written simply and modestly a book that will further enhance the Halsey legend.” The Saturday Review “he knew far better than armchair historians do that the best defense is a good offense. That is the legacy of Bull Halsey.” Warfare History Network William F. Halsey was an American admiral in the United States Navy during World War II. In 1943 he was made commander of the Third Fleet, the post he held through the rest of the war. He was promoted to fleet admiral in December 1945 and retired from active service in March 1947. Admiral Halsey's Story was first published in 1947 and Halsey passed away in 1959. The book was written with Lieutenant Commander J. Bryan III, USNR, who during the war had served a lieutenant commander assigned to naval air combat intelligence in the Pacific. In civilian life he was a journalist and writer who was born into the influential Bryan family of newspaper publishers and industrialists. He passed away in 1993.

Humble Heroes, How The USS Nashville CL43 Fought WWII


Steven Bustin - 2010
    It started like a Hollywood thriller, secretly transporting from England $25 million in British gold bullion, delivered to the ship in unguarded bread trucks, a pre-war “Neutrality Patrol” that was really an unofficial hostile search for the far bigger and more powerful German battleship Prinz Eugen, and sneaking through the Panama Canal at night with the ship’s name and hull number covered for secrecy. Now, with the ship bulging with an unusual load of fuel and supplies, in the company of a large fleet quietly passing under San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, the crew was about to learn of their latest (but not last) and most improbable adventure yet as the captain made an announcement that would change the war and their lives forever, “We are going to Tokyo!”. Over three years, scores of battles and hundreds of thousands of ocean miles later, the Nashville and her crew had earned 10 Battle Stars, served from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific, from the Aleutians to the Yangtze River, as McArthur’s flagship and suffered heavy casualties from a devastating kamikaze attack. Tokyo Rose reported her sunk, repeatedly. Earlier, with goodwill trips that included France, England, Scandinavia, Bermuda and Rio de Janeiro, the new, sleek Nashville built a pre-war reputation as a “glamour ship”. But with war came the secret missions, capturing the second and third Japanese POWs of the war, having a torpedo pass just under the stern, being strafed and bombed by Japanese planes, losing a third of the crew in a single devastating Kamikaze attack, swimming in shark infested waters protected by marines with machine guns, enjoying the beauty of Sydney and her people, planning a suicide mission to destroy the Japanese fishing fleet, and bombarding Japanese troops and airfields across the Pacific. The Nashville crew served their ship and country well. They came from Baltimore row-houses, New York walk-ups, San Francisco flats, Kansas wheat farms, Colorado cattle ranches, Louisiana bayous and Maine fishing towns. Many had never traveled more than 25 miles from home and had never seen the ocean until they joined the service. They were part Irish, part Italian, part Polish and All-American. Battered, burnt and bombed, they made the USS Nashville their home and lived and died as eternal shipmates. Historical narrative enriched with the personal stories of the crew, this is the story of a ship and crew of ordinary men who did extraordinary things.

The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln A Narrative And Descriptive Biography With Pen-Pictures And Personal Recollections By Those Who Knew Him


Francis Fisher Browne - 1886
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

The Cheater's Guide to Baseball


Derek Zumsteg - 2007
    But it happens every game. Baseball’s rules, it seems, were made to be broken. And they are, by the players, the front office, and even sometimes the fans. Like it or not, cheating has been an integral part of America’s favorite pastime since its inception. The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball will show you how cheating is really done. In this lively tour through baseball’s underhanded history, readers will learn how to cork a bat, steal signs, hurl a spitball, throw a World Series, and win at any cost!They’ll also see the dirty little secrets of the game’s greatest manipulators: John McGraw and Ty Cobb; Billy Martin and Gaylord Perry; Graig Nettles and Sammy Sosa; and, yes, even Barry Bonds. They’ll find out how the Cleveland Indians doctored their basepaths to give new meaning to the term home field advantage. They’ll delight in a hilarious examination of the Black Sox scandal, baseball’s original sin. And, in the end, they’ll come to understand that cheating is as much a part of baseball as pine tar and pinch hitters. And it’s here to stay.

Attack Transport: The Story Of The U.S.S. Doyen


Lawrence A. Marsden - 2018
     It was these ships that carried the bulk of the troops and equipment to the bloody assault beaches of the overseas landings. The Japanese military had swept across Pacific Ocean conquering and fortifying hundreds of small islands that the Allied forces would have to conquer one by one in order to defeat their enemy. Despite being unarmored and having little fire power, attack transports continued to make a monumental impact in the fate of the war. Not because they could defeat the Japanese on their own but because they carried in their hulls the war’s one essential combat element: the troops that fought on the ground. U.S.S. Doyen was one such attack transport that served with honor and made its contribution felt through the course of the war. Lawrence Marsden’s fascinating history of this ship uncovers the action of the Doyen from commissioning through to her last operation in World War Two and of course exposes the lives of the men who sailed her through treacherous waters to do their duty. This book provides brilliant insight into the Pacific War as it was seen from one small unit in the fleet as they were involved in some of the most important operations of that front, including the invasions of Kiska, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Saipan, Guam, Leyte, Lingayen Gulf and Iwo Jima. “In war, transports seldom rest. Between assaults, on long and dreary voyages they carry out to distant bases replacement and service troops and freight, and carry back to home ports our casualties and essential war materials. They are the unsung, battle-scarred work horses of the Navy.” Richmond K. Turner, Admiral, U.S. Navy, Former Commander Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet. This book is perfect for readers who wish to learn more about these fascinating boats, the men who fought aboard them and the impact that they made throughout the war. Lieutenant Commander Lawrence A. Marsden served on the U.S.S. Doyen from May 1944 through to the end of the war, and was involved in the landings at Saipan, Guam, Leyte Gulf, Luzon and Iwo Jima. After the war he resigned his commission and became a textile company executive. His book Attack Transport: The Story of The USS Doyen was first published in 1946 and he passed away in 2005.

Reluctant Pioneer: How I Survived Five Years in the Canadian Bush


Thomas Osborne - 1995
    The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents with axes and boats, and narrow escapes from wolves and bears. Many years later, after returning to the United States, Osborne wrote down all his adventures in a graphic memoir that has become, in the words of author and journalist Roy MacGregor, "an undiscovered Canadian classic."Reluctant Pioneer provides a brooding sense of adventure and un- sentimental realism to deliver a powerful account of pioneer life where tragedies arrive as naturally as rain and where humour resides in irony.

Convoy Escort Commander: A Memoir of the Battle of the Atlantic (Submarine Warfare in World War Two)


Peter Gretton - 1971
    

Operation Primrose: U110, the Bismarck and the Enigma code breakers


David Boyle - 2015
    One of the biggest secrets of the war, the capture of that one machine turned the tide of the war in British favour. The German U-boat attacks were crippling the nation’s ability to survive, and the key to breaking that threat was in deciphering the German’s naval Enigma code. Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park worked tirelessly to crack the code, and with the working Enigma machine they finally had their break-through moment. This book sets the story, and the Enigma cryptographers, in context – at the heart of the Battle of the Atlantic, when it reached its crescendo in the pursuit of the battleship Bismarck the week after U110 was taken. It sets Bletchley Park in its wider context too, at the heart of an intricate and maverick network of naval intelligence, tracking signals and plotting them to divert convoys around waiting U-boats, involving officers like James Bond’s future creator, Ian Fleming. It also sets out the most important context of all, forgotten in so much of the Enigma history: that Britain’s own naval code had already been cracked, and its signals were being read, thanks to the efforts of Turing’s opposite number, the German naval cryptographer, Wilhelm Tranow.An exciting and enthralling true story ‘Operation Primrose’ is an excellently researched piece on the race for naval supremacy in the Second World War. David Boyle's work has been widely praised. ‘The tone of the book may be gloomy but there is plenty of entertainment value …’ Anne Ashworth, The Times ‘Exhilarating’ Daily Mail ‘He tells these stories, on the whole persuasively and with some startling asides.’ New Statesman ‘A book that is engagingly sensitive to the sentiments of what is sometimes called “middle England”’ Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times David Boyle is a British author and journalist who writes mainly about history and new ideas in economics, money, business and culture. He lives in Crystal Palace, London. His books include ‘Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma’, ‘Rupert Brooke: England’s Last Patriot’, ‘Peace on Earth: The Christmas Truce of 1914’, ‘Jerusalem: England’s National Anthem’, ‘Unheard Unseen: Warfare in the Dardanelles’, ‘Towards the Setting Sun: The Race for America’ and ‘The Age to Come’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

Troubled Water: Race, Mutiny, and Bravery on the USS Kitty Hawk


Gregory A. Freeman - 2009
    Its five thousand men, cooped up for the longest at-sea tour of the war, rioted--or, as Troubled Water suggests, mutinied. Disturbingly, the lines were drawn racially, black against white. By the time order was restored, careers were in tatters. Although the incident became a turning point for race relations in the Navy, this story remained buried within U.S. Navy archives for decades.With action pulled straight from a high seas thriller, Gregory A. Freeman uses eyewitness accounts and a careful and unprecedented examination of the navy's records to refute the official story of the incident, make a convincing case for the U.S. navy's first mutiny, and shed new light on this seminal event in American history.

The Nuremberg Trials: The Nazis brought to justice


Alexander MacDonald - 2015
    Twenty-one Nazi leaders were charged with crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity - and with having a common plan or conspiracy to commit those crimes. It was the first time judges and members of the judiciary had been charged with enforcing immoral laws. Doctors too stood in the dock for the many hideous medical experiments conducted in concentration camps, while members of the death squads were tried for the indiscriminate murder of civilians. The Nuremberg Trails brought closure to the Second World War.

Charlie Rangers


Don Ericson - 1988
    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.