The first Indian Army officer to be promoted to the five-star rank of Field Marshal, Sam Bahadur continues to be the most admired of our Army Chiefs.

    In conversation with legendary rock critics and authors he respected, Reed’s interviews are as pithy and brilliant as the man himself.

    Previously published as Brothers in Arms, this edition includes a new preface by the author.When William Broyles Jr. was drafted, he was a twenty-four-year-old student at Oxford University in England, hoping to avoid military service. During his physical exam, however, he realized that he couldn’t let social class or education give him special privileges. He joined the marines, and soon commanded an infantry platoon in the foothills near Da Nang. More than a decade later, Broyles found himself flooded with emotion during the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. He decided to return to Vietnam and confront what he’d been through. Broyles was one of the very first combat veterans to return to the battlefields. No American before or since has gone so deeply into the other side of the war: the enemy side. Broyles interviews dozens of Vietnamese, from the generals who ran the war to the men and women who fought it. He moves from the corridors of power in Hanoi—so low-tech that the plumbing didn’t work—to the jungles and rice paddies where he’d fought. He meets survivors of American B-52 strikes and My Lai, and grieves with a woman whose son was killed by his own platoon. Along the way, Broyles also explores the deep bonds he shared with his own comrades, and the mystery of why men love war even as they hate it. Amidst the landscape of death, his formerly faceless enemies come to life. They had once tried to kill each other, but they are all brothers now.

    In the nearly forty years since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, space travel has come to be seen as a routine enterprise - at least until the shuttle Columbia disintegrated like the Challenger before it, reminding us, once again, that the dangers are all too real.Too Far from Home vividly captures the hazardous realities of space travel. Every time an astronaut makes the trip into space, he faces the possibility of death from the slightest mechanical error or instance of bad luck: a cracked O-ring, an errant piece of space junk, an oxygen leak . . . There are a myriad of frighteningly probable events that would result in an astronaut's death. In fact, twenty-one people who have attempted the journey have been killed.Yet for a special breed of individual, the call of space is worth the risk. Men such as U.S. astronauts Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox, and Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin, who in November 2002 left on what was to be a routine fourteen-week mission maintaining the International Space Station.But then, on February 23, 2003, the Columbia exploded beneath them. Despite the numerous news reports examining the tragedy, the public remained largely unaware that three men remained orbiting the earth. With the launch program suspended indefinitely, these astronauts had suddenly lost their ride home.Too Far from Home chronicles the efforts of the beleaguered Mission Controls in Houston and Moscow as they work frantically against the clock to bring their men safely back to Earth, ultimately settling on a plan that felt, at best, like a long shot.Latched to the side of the space station was a Russian-built Soyuz TMA-1 capsule, whose technology dated from the late 1960s (in 1971 a malfunction in the Soyuz 11 capsule left three Russian astronauts dead). Despite the inherent danger, the Soyuz became the only hope to return Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit home. Chris Jones writes beautifully of the majesty and mystique of space travel, while reminding us all how perilous it is to soar beyond the sky.

    Now he shares his recollections of those encounters, providing a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes.Far from starry-eyed where Tony Blair Co are concerned, he looks back also to the Britain of his youth and castigates those responsible for its decline to "a Third World country … misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic".Controversial, witty and revealing – or "curmudgeonly", "reactionary", "undiluted spleen", according to the critics – The Light's on at Signpost has struck a chord with a great section of the public. Perhaps, as one reader suggests, it should be "hidden beneath the floorboards, before the Politically-Correct Thought Police come hammering at the door, demanding to confiscate any copies".

    

    The magnificent and long-awaited biography of the beloved writer who gave us the Manawaka novels, including The Diviners and The Stone Angel.

    50 photographs.

    Still, though I followed their season closely, I never fully understood their impact."—Allen Barra, The New York SunIn 1947, major league baseball experienced its first measure of integration when the Brooklyn Dodgers brought Jackie Robinson to the National League. While Robinson's breakthrough opened the gates of opportunity for African Americans and other minority players, the process of integration proved slow and uneven. It was not until the 1960s that a handful of major league teams began to boast more than a few Black and Latino players. But the 1971 World Championship team enjoyed a full and complete level of integration, with half of its twenty-five-man roster comprised of players of African American and Latino descent. That team was the Pittsburgh Pirates, managed by an old-time Irishman.In The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, veteran baseball writer Bruce Markusen tells the story of one of the most likable and significant teams in the history of professional sports. In addition to the fact that they fielded the first all-minority lineup in major league history, the 1971 Pirates are noteworthy for the team's inspiring individual performances, including those of future Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, and Bill Mazeroski, and their remarkable World Series victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles. But perhaps their greatest legacy is the team's influence on the future of baseball, inspiring later championship teams such as the New York Yankees and Oakland Athletics to open their doors fully to all talented players, regardless of race, particularly in the new era of free agency.

    Having run out of options, former YouTube star Dax Flame must get a job at an ice cream shop in order to make ends meet.

    Wally sailed through a series of rigorous physical and mental tests, with one of her scores beating all the male Mercury 7 astronauts’, including John Glenn’s, the first American in orbit.But just one week before the final phase of training, the programme was abruptly cancelled. A combination of politics and prejudice meant that none of the women ever flew into space. Undeterred, Wally went on to become America’s first female aviation safety inspector, though her dream of being an astronaut never dimmed.In this offbeat odyssey, journalist and fellow space buff Sue Nelson joins Wally, now approaching her eightieth birthday, as she races to make her own giant leap, before it’s too late. Covering their travels across the United States and Europe – taking in NASA’s mission control in Houston, the European Space Agency’s HQ in Paris and Spaceport America in New Mexico, where Wally’s ride into space awaits – this is a uniquely intimate and entertaining portrait of a true aviation trailblazer.

    In The Answer Is Never, skating journalist Jocko Weyland tells the rambunctious story of a rebellious sport that began as a wintertime surfing substitute on the streets of Southern California beach towns more than forty years ago and has evolved over the decades to become a fixture of urban youth culture around the world. Merging the historical development of the sport with passages about his own skating adventures in such wide-ranging places as Hawaii, Germany, and Cameroon, Weyland gives a fully realized portrait of a subculture whose love of free-flowing creativity and a distinctive antiauthoritarian worldview has inspired major trends in fashion, music, art, and film. Along the way, Weyland interweaves the stories of skating pioneers like Gregg Weaver and the Dogtown Z-Boys and living legends like Steve Caballero and Tony Hawk. He also charts the course of innovations in deck, truck, and wheel design to show how the changing boards changed the sport itself, enabling new tricks as skaters moved from the freestyle techniques that dominated the early days to the extreme street-skating style of today. Vivid and vibrant, The Answer Is Never is a fascinating book as radical and unique as the sport it chronicles.

    He continued to make great music while slowly returning to his Catholic roots. His hard-won wisdom filters through his stories whether he's recalling how he went shopping with John Lennon and ended up on the cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band or what it was like to travel in the Jim Crow South with Sam Cooke.Praise for Dion... "To this day nobody, nobody can rock like Dion."—Lou Reed "He always had the name that said it all...Dion."—Bruce Springsteen "If you want to hear a great singer, listen to Dion. His genius has never deserted him."—Bob DylanThe audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible.

    It follows the experiences of the author as she and her friends come to terms with the non-stop hustle and bustle of hospital life. This book treats the reader to a peep behind the scenes as we enter the hospital wards. As well as an insight into nurse training, hurry up nurse provides a glimpse into the social history of life in the 1970's and early 1980's.

    Though his path to the heavens was riddled with setbacks and injury, Leland persevered to reach the stars.While training with NASA, Melvin suffered a severe injury that left him deaf. Leland was relegated to earthbound assignments, but chose to remain and support his astronaut family. His loyalty paid off. Recovering partial hearing, he earned his eligibility for space travel. He served as mission specialist for two flights aboard the shuttle Atlantis, working on the International Space Station.In this uplifting memoir, the former NASA astronaut and professional athlete offers an examination of the intersecting role of community, determination, and grace that align to shape our opportunities and outcomes. Chasing Space is not the story of one man, but the story of many men, women, scientists, and mentors who helped him defy the odds and live out an uncommon destiny.As a chemist, athlete, engineer and space traveler, Leland’s life story is a study in the science of achievement. His personal insights illuminate how grit and grace, are the keys to overcoming adversity and rising to success.