Blume reveals how one courageous American reporter uncovered one of the deadliest cover-ups of the 20th century—the true effects of the atom bomb—potentially saving millions of lives. Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the US government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation which would kill thousands during the months after the blast. For nearly a year the cover-up worked—until New Yorker journalist John Hersey got into Hiroshima and managed to report the truth to the world. As Hersey and his editors prepared his article for publication, they kept the story secret—even from most of their New Yorker colleagues. When the magazine published “Hiroshima” in August 1946, it became an instant global sensation, and inspired pervasive horror about the hellish new threat that America had unleashed. Since 1945, no nuclear weapons have ever been deployed in war partly because Hersey alerted the world to their true, devastating impact. This knowledge has remained among the greatest deterrents to using them since the end of World War II. Released on the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Fallout is an engrossing detective story, as well as an important piece of hidden history that shows how one heroic scoop saved—and can still save—the world.

    As a result, snipers are regarded as the elite of their units and their skills command the ungrudging respect of their fellows - and the enemy. The Author is one such man who recently served a full tour of duty with 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. James describes the highs and lows of almost daily front line action experienced by our soldiers deployed on active service in arguably the most dangerous area of the world. As part of the Battle Groups crack Mobile Operations Group, Jamess mission was to liquidate as many Taliban as possible. The reader experiences sniper tactics and actions, whether in ambush or quick pre-planned strikes, amid the ever present lethal danger of IEDs. His book, the first to be written by a trained sniper in Afghanistan, reveals the psychological pressures and awesome life-and-death responsibility of his role and, in particular, the deadly cat-and-mouse games with the enemy snipers intent on their own kills. These involved the clinical killing of targets at ranges of 1,000 meters or greater. Sniper in Helmand is a thrilling action-packed, yet very human, account of both front line service in the intense Afghanistan war and first-hand sniper action. Andy McNab inspired James to join the army and has written a moving foreword.

    It doesn't matter how small the tunnel is you never know what's around the bend ... You don't know if it's abandoned, you don't know if it's booby trapped and you don't know why the tunnel is there in the first place."They were young, they were Australian, they were Army engineers and they were the first allied soldiers to risk their lives in the darkness of the Vietcong tunnels of South Vietnam. Staring death squarely in the face every day, not only did they follow their enemy down into these unknown underground labyrinths, but matched the Vietcong's jungle warfare skills and defused thousands of their clever booby traps.Off duty, it was a different story. The bad boys of 3 Field Troop were a boozing, brawling, bonking bunch of larrikins, who cut a swathe through the bars and brothels of Saigon, fought American Military Police to a standstill, built a secret casino and booby-trapped their own HQ to teach their officers a lesson.Thrilling, inspiring and action packed, this is the true story of the unsung heroes of Australia's war in Vietnam. Living up to their motto of 'We Make and We Break', they created the legend of the Tunnel Rats.

    Uncover their mesmerizing, realistic stories of combat, courage, and distress in readable and balanced stories told from the front lines.Witness the creation of new technologies of destruction: tanks, planes, and submarines; machine guns and field artillery; poison gas and chemical warfare. It introduced U-boat packs and strategic bombing, unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners.World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, and whole populations lost their national identities.If you like gripping, authentic accounts of life and combat during WWI, then you won't want to miss WWI: Tales from the Trenches.

    They have fought from the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan and Iraq, in famous battles become bone and sinew of American lore. But why do Marines fight? Why fight so well? Why run toward the guns? Now comes a thrilling new book, pounding and magnificent in scope, by the author some Marines consider the unofficial “poet laureate” of their Corps.James Brady interviews combat Marines from wars ranging from World War II to Afghanistan, their replies in their own individual voices unique and powerful, an authentically American story of a country at war, as seen through the eyes of its warriors.  Culling his own correspondence and comradeship with hundreds of fellow Marines, Brady compiles a story---lyrical and historical---of the motivations and emotions behind this compelling question. Included are the accounts of Senator James Webb and his lance corporal son, Jim; New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly; Yankee second baseman (and Marine fighter pilot) Jerry Coleman, and of teachers, firemen, authors, cops, Harvard football players, and just plain grunts, as well as the unforgettable story of Jack Rowe, who lost an eye and other parts and now grows avocados and chases rattlesnakes. Their stories poignantly and profoundly illustrate the lives and legacies of battlefront Marines. Why Marines Fight is a ruthlessly candid book about professional killers not ashamed to recall their doubts as well as exult in their savagely triumphant battle cries.  A book of weight and heft that Marines, and Americans everywhere, will want to read, and may find impossible to forget. Praise for James Brady The Scariest Place in the World“[A] graceful, even elegant, and always eloquent tribute to men at arms in a war that, in a way, never ended.”---Kirkus Reviews“James Brady has done it again.  A riveting and illuminating insight into a dark corner of the world.”---Tim Russert, NBC’s Meet the Press The Coldest War“His story reads like a novel, but it is war reporting at its best---a graphic depiction, in all its horrors, of the war we’ve almost forgotten.”---Walter Cronkite“A marvelous memoir. A sensitive and superbly written narrative that eventually explodes off the pages like a grenade in the gut . . .taut, tight, and telling.”---Dan Rather The Marine“In The Marine, James Brady again gives us a novel in which history is a leading character, sharing the stage in this case with a man as surely born to be a gallant warrior as any knight in sixth-century Camelot.”---Kurt Vonnegut  The Marines of Autumn“Mr. Brady knows war, the smell and the feel of it.”---The New York Times

    CRACK! AND THUMP is Scheffel's chilling account of ground combat of a young company-grade officer who fought with the 9th Infantry Division in North Africa, Sicily, France, Belgium, and Germany. Scheffel vividly recalls the terror, mind-numbing fatigue, raw emotions, and horrific conditions fighting men endured to achieve victory in World War II.

    In the Pacific theater during World War II there were more than one hundred D-Days. The largest—and last—was the invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, which brought together the biggest invasion fleet ever assembled, far larger than that engaged in the Normandy invasion.D-Days in the Pacific tells the epic story of the campaign waged by American forces to win back the Pacific islands from Japan. Based on eyewitness accounts by the combatants, it covers the entire Pacific struggle from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Pacific war was largely a seaborne offensive fought over immense distances. Many of the amphibious assaults on Japanese-held islands were among the most savagely fought battles in American history: Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, New Guinea, Peleliu, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. Generously illustrated with photographs and maps, D-Days in the Pacific is the finest one-volume account of this titanic struggle.

    James Ogilvie is the third generation.Pitchforked with mixed feelings into imperial Britain’s elite military academy, Sandhurst, and then into the family regiment, he finds himself in 1894 a subaltern en route to India – a torrid journey out that teaches him the first lessons of military life and the command of men.His initiation is made more difficult by the vindictive attentions of the adjutant, Captain Black, and by the high expectations placed on him by his own irascible father, his Divisional Commander on the North West Frontier of India.Ogilvie gets his first taste of action when the Royal Strathspeys are sent through the Khyber Pass to contain the rebel Ahmed Khan outside Jalalabad. Fighting the border tribesmen brings brushes with death, but also many opportunities for the kind of glory that can forge a distinguished military career. But as the campaign goes on, Ogilvie also starts to doubt the entire Imperial project.‘Drums Along the Khyber’ is a thrilling historical adventure story, rich in period detail. It is the first in the Ogilvie series of novels by Philip McCutchan. ‘The adventure-writer succeeds who makes you read faster than you really can…Drums Along the Khyber has something of this quality’ – The Sunday Times Philip McCutchan (1920-1996) grew up in the naval atmosphere of Portsmouth Dockyard and developed a lifetime's interest in the sea. Military history was an early interest resulting in several fiction books, from amongst his large output, about the British Army and its campaigns, especially in the last 150 years.Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

    To a public suspicious about the motives for war, he offered some explanation for it and inspired a mood of optimism and humanity that has since been sadly lost. And yet, only two months later Collins was pilloried by two national newspapers and accused of war crimes. But this is only part of his story. From taking command of 1 Royal Irish in the aftermath of the Sierra Leone hostage crisis to combating the Loyalist murder gangs in East Tyrone, Rules of Engagement is a powerful memoir that offers a frank and compelling insight into the realities of warfare and a life lived on the frontline.

    He brilliantly conveys what it was like to be facing death, day after day, night after night, with never a bed to sleep in nor a hot meal to go home to. This is warfare in the raw ' brutal, yet humorous, immensely tragic, but sadly, all true.

     This was the first time the Americans had penetrated the “outer ring” of the Japanese Pacific sphere. From now until the end of the war the combined forces of the Navy, Marine Corps and Army would island hop their way to the Japanese mainland. Yet, the Battle of Kwajalein Atoll, particularly on the island of Roi-Namur where there were only 51 survivors of the original 3,500 garrison left, gave the Americans an insight into the fierce resistance that the Japanese would put up over the remaining months of the war. Drawn directly from the testimonies of several hundred infantrymen, Island Victory provides insight into what it was like to feel the heat of battle on the beaches of those Pacific islands. "Written accounts of war simply do not get any closer to the actions and feelings of those [who] were there. Island Victory is a highly recommended, 'must read' book." — The Midwest Book Review "The real value of Island Victory lies in the unadorned words of these soldiers, recorded so openly and methodically by Marshall after the battle. . . . The Kwajalein victors interviewed so painstakingly by Sam Marshall provide a priceless candor and authenticity, the emotional testimonies of young men still flushed with adrenalin, guilt, and relief." — Joseph H. Alexander, Journal of Military History S. L. A. Marshall was a chief U.S. Army combat historian during World War II and the Korean War. He had served on the border with Mexico during the Pancho Villa Expedition before serving in France during World War I. He wrote over thirty books about warfare. Island Victory was first published in 1944. Marshall passed away in 1977.

     This is the story, brilliantly told, of a desperate and heroic venture - the raid by British warships of the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, 23 April 1918. The objective was to sink blockships in the mouth of the canal, sealing off access to the English Channel from the U-boats and destroyers based in the harbour at Bruges. The British crews were all volunteers, yet highly trained and ready for the fight. Many knew they were unlikely to survive the firestorm from the German batteries. It was the ultimate example of heroism in the face of defeat. The Germans removed the obstructions, and the U-boats continued to operate through the summer. But in that one brief morning, eleven men won the VC, 21 the DSO, 29 the DSC, among many other awards. Barrie Pitt, the bestselling author of The Crucible of War (about the Battle of Alamein) and History of the SBS, captures logistics, action and spirit of the men during the campaign. Zeebrugge is a military classic, a testament to British heroism. Recommended reading for fans of Antony Beevor, Max Hastings and James Holland. Barrie Pitt (1918-2006) was well known as a military historian and editor of Purnell’s History of the Second World War and History of the First World War. His publications include 'Coronel and Falkland', 'Churchill and the Generals' and 'The Crucible of War', a trilogy covering the North African campaign of the Second World War. He was born in Galway and later lived near Ilminster in Somerset. Praise for Barrie Pitt: 'As much a thriller as it is a history book.' Daily Mail 'A breathless and unforgettable narrative.' Sphere 'A magnificent book. Barrie Pitt has almost a novelist's skill and perception of character.' Daily Telegraph Totally readable, Mr Pitt's study depicts equally well the broad outlines of strategy, the confusions and hazards of the battlefield and the personalities of the generals of private soldiers fighting there.' Oxford Times

    This is the thrilling untold story of the young helicopter pilots -- most barely out of their teens -- who risked their lives during this brief but ferocious war. In April 1982 Harry Benson was a 21 year-old Royal Navy commando helicopter pilot, fresh out of training and one of the youngest helicopter pilots to serve in the Falklands War. These pilots, nicknamed 'junglies', flew most of the land-based missions in the Falklands in their Sea King and Wessex helicopters. Much of what happened in the war -- the politics, task force ships, Sea Harriers, landings, Paras and Marines -- is well-known and documented. But almost nothing is known of the young commando helicopter pilots and aircrewmen who made it all happen on land and sea. This is their 'Boys Own' story, told for the very first time. Harry Benson has interviewed forty of his former colleagues for the book creating a tale of skill, initiative, resourcefulness, humour, luck, and adventure. This is a fast-paced, meticulously researched and compelling account written by someone who was there, in the cockpit of a Wessex helicopter.  None of these pilots has spoken before about: - The two helicopter crashes and eventual rescue following a failed SAS mission high up on an in hospitable glacier in South Georgia - The harrowing story of the Exocet strike that sunk the transport ship Atlantic Conveyor - The daring missile raid on the Argentine high command in Port Stanley - The constant mortar fire faced while supporting troops and evacuating casualties - The hair-raising head-on attacks by Argentine jets on British helicopters - The extraordinary courage shown during the evacuation of the bombed landing ship 'Sir Galahad'  If you liked Apache, Vulcan 607 and Chickenhawk, you'll love Scram!  The word "Scram" was coined by Falklands helicopter pilots to warn other 'junglies' to go to ground or risk being shot down as Argentinean jets blasted through 'bomb alley'. The term has never been used before or since.

    To help defeat the seemingly unstoppable German war machine, Churchill called for the swift and secret development of a very special kind of military unit, the likes of which the world had never seen. Churchill commanded the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to recruit a team of survivalists, free-thinkers, misfits, and outright criminals--men with a wide variety of skill sets that together would enable them to operate purely on their own initiative deep behind enemy lines. And because they would flout the rules of war, these men were to be the SOE's first "deniable" operatives, and the first to be truly "licensed to kill." The very first of these "butcher-and-bolt" units--the innocuously named Maid Honour Force--was led by Gus March-Phillipps, a wild British eccentric of high birth, and an aristocratic, handsome, and bloodthirsty young Danish warrior, Anders Lassen. Amped up on amphetamines, these assorted renegades and sociopaths undertook the very first of Churchill's special operations--a top-secret, high-stakes mission to seize Nazi shipping in the far-distant port of Fernando Po, in West Africa. Though few of these early desperadoes survived WWII, they took part in a series of fascinating, daring missions that changed the course of the war. It was the first stirrings of the modern special-ops team, and all of the men involved would be declared war heroes when it was all over. Written by award-winning historian Damien Lewis, Churchill's Secret Warriors focuses on a dozen of these extraordinary men, weaving their stories of brotherhood, comradeship, and elite soldiering into a gripping narrative yarn, from the earliest missions to Anders Larssen's tragic death, just weeks before the end of the war.

    He served for over a decade with the US Army's 75th Ranger Regiment on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. In Iraq, Nicholas participated in the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, hunted Iraq's Most Wanted and experienced brutal street combat, including 160 night-time missions over one 90-day deployment in the insurgent stronghold of Mosul. While serving in Afghanistan, he was also part of the search and rescue operation for Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell (author of Lone Survivor), and was on the ground again when a Chinook helicopter was shot down resulting in the death of 38 men and one military working dog. It was the single greatest loss of special operations personnel to date.