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Born Of The People by Luis Taruc
philippines
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Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India
Sujatha Gidla - 2017
While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary—and yet how typical—her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible life—how he became a famous poet, student, labor organizer, and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother’s battles with caste and women’s oppression. Page by page, Gidla takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society.A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
Stephen Kinzer - 2003
The victim was Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran. Although the coup seemed a success at first, today it serves as a chilling lesson about the dangers of foreign intervention.In this book, veteran New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer gives the first full account of this fateful operation. His account is centered around an hour-by-hour reconstruction of the events of August 1953, and concludes with an assessment of the coup's "haunting and terrible legacy."Operation Ajax, as the plot was code-named, reshaped the history of Iran, the Middle East, and the world. It restored Mohammad Reza Shah to the Peacock Throne, allowing him to impose a tyranny that ultimately sparked the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Islamic Revolution, in turn, inspired fundamentalists throughout the Muslim world, including the Taliban and terrorists who thrived under its protection."It is not far-fetched," Kinzer asserts in this book, "to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York."Drawing on research in the United States and Iran, and using material from a long-secret CIA report, Kinzer explains the background of the coup and tells how it was carried out. It is a cloak-and-dagger story of spies, saboteurs, and secret agents. There are accounts of bribes, staged riots, suitcases full of cash, and midnight meetings between the Shah and CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt, who was smuggled in and out of the royal palace under a blanket in the back seat of a car. Roosevelt,the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, was a real-life James Bond in an era when CIA agents operated mainly by their wits. After his first coup attempt failed, he organized a second attempt that succeeded three days later.The colorful cast of characters includes the terrified young Shah, who fled his country at the first sign of trouble; General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, father of the Gulf War commander and the radio voice of "Gang Busters," who flew to Tehran on a secret mission that helped set the coup in motion; and the fiery Prime Minister Mossadegh, who outraged the West by nationalizing the immensely profitable Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The British, outraged by the seizure of their oil company, persuaded President Dwight Eisenhower that Mossadegh was leading Iran toward Communism. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain became the coup's main sponsors.Brimming with insights into Middle Eastern history and American foreign policy, this book is an eye-opening look at an event whose unintended consequences - Islamic revolution and violent anti-Americanism--have shaped the modern world. As the United States assumes an ever-widening role in the Middle East, it is essential reading.
In Search of Shiva: A Study of Folk Religious Practices in Pakistan
Haroon Khalid - 2015
Comprising traditions that have their roots in the antiquity of the Indus Valley Civilization, it finds expression in shrines of phallic offerings, sacred animals and sacred trees. In the backdrop of economic development and rising extremism, these shrines exist as an anomaly and are increasingly at risk of being eroded. Growing connectivity between rural and urban areas further threatens the distinctiveness of these shrines and religious traditions.In Search of Shiva documents these religious traditions and studies how they have survived over the years and are now adapting to the increasingly rigid religious climate in Pakistan.
The Cobbler's Kids
Rosie Harris - 2005
Liverpool 1920s: Michael Quinn the cobbler returns home after the First World War forever changed by his experiences on the front line. He moves his family from their comfortable home to live over a shop in Liverpool's notorious Scotland Road. Though admired and liked by his customers, behind closed doors he rules his family with a fist of steel. Fourteen-year-old Vera Quinn longs for a life of her own. But when their mother dies, she must keep house for her father Michael and her brothers, Eddy and young Benny. So begins a life of hardship, until an unexpected series of events leads Vera to discover she is far stronger than she could have ever known…
We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam
Harold G. Moore - 2008
And Young" (1992) is still required reading in all branches of the military. Every day the authors receive letters from readers wanting to know what's happened to the characters they came to admire such as Ed "Too Tall to Fly" Freeman and Bruce "Old Snake" Crandall. There are also questions about whether they are still in touch with their North Vietnam counterparts and where they are now.Many of these questions are finally answered in title "We are Soldiers Still", which recounts a unique journey back to the battlefields by the commanders and veterans of both sides - a journey which ended with the authors and some of the comrades stranded overnight, alone, on the isolated field code-named Landing Zone XRay where so many perished. They will tell what was learned and felt during a night when a meteor shower filled the sky and peace came upon them. The authors mix gritty and vivid detail with reverence and respect for their comrades. Their authority on the military, their ability to capture man's sense of heroism and brotherhood, and readers' fascination with their story is sure to make this a must-buy book for all history buffs. While "We Were Soldiers" brought to life an important moment in US history, "We are Soldiers Still" will illuminate how that history has changed the authors, the men involved, and our country.
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
Steve Coll - 2004
It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005.Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of Bin Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.
Supersonic Saints 2
John Bytheway - 2008
After Supersonic Saints hit the shelves in 2007, many other LDS pilots came forward to share their stories of faith and flying in this exciting sequel. These pilots rely on the Lord for help when poor weather, mechanical problems, or aggressive enemies threaten their lives.
Charlie Company: What Vietnam Did To Us
Peter Goldman - 1983
They felt ignored and forgotten until 1981, when Newsweek correspondents came to talk to them for a major cover story--and came away with enough material to fill this book. More truth . . . than most of us care to take on.--The New York Times.
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
Robert Fisk - 2005
A book of searing drama as well as lucid, incisive analysis, The Great War for Civilisation is a work of major importance for today's world.
The Everlasting Hatred: The Roots of Jihad
Hal Lindsey - 2002
A bestselling author explains how on September 11th an ancient fight-to-the-death conflict exploded on the shores of the United States.
Flames Over Norway
Robert Jackson - 1996
In the winter of early 1940, freezing in their cramped cockpits, the pilots set out to photograph German targets that will be attacked when the ‘Phoney War’ gives way to a shooting war — the heavy industries of the Ruhr Valley and, above all, warships of the German Navy, standing ready to break out into the Atlantic and prey on Britain’s vital convoys. Suddenly, in the early days of April 1940, an armada of German warships begins to move from the north German ports. Armstrong and his fellow pilots have the task of shadowing them, and soon establish that the invasion of Norway is beginning. Shot down during a photo-recce sortie over Norway, Armstrong finds himself fighting with Allied ground forces before reaching an RAF fighter squadron operating from a frozen lake in the far north. He is soon involved in an amazing intrigue with Norwegian government officials, desperate to salvage Norway’s remaining gold reserves and fly them to England. Finding an aircraft capable of doing the job is a problem — which Armstrong and his new friends set about solving. The obvious answer is to steal one from under the noses of the conquering Germans … 'Takes you to the heart of the action.' - Tom Kasey, best-selling author of Cold Kill. Robert Jackson (b. 1941) is a prolific author of military and aviation history, having become a full time writer in 1969. As an active serviceman in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve he flew a wide range of aircraft, ranging from jets to gliders. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.
Shooting At The Moon: The Story of America's Clandestine War in Laos
Roger Warner - 1995
For a few years in the early 1960s the CIA seemed to be running a perfect covert war in Laos - quiet, inexpensive, just enough arms to help Meo tribesmen defend their home territory from the Communist Pathet Lao. Then the big American war next door in Vietnam spilled across the border. How the perfect covert war ballooned into sorrow and disaster is the story Roger Warner tell in Shooting at the Moon, awarded the Cornelius Ryan Award for 1995's Best Book on Foreign Affairs by the Overseas Press Club.Warner describes his characters with a novelist's touch - soldiers and diplomats busy with war-making; CIA field officers from bareknuckle warriors to the quiet men pulling strings in the shadows; and above all the Meo as they realized they had been led down the garden path.This is a book about war, about secrecy, and its illusions, about the cruel sacrifice of small countries for the convenience of large ones. Nothing better has been written about the CIA in the years when it thought a handful of Americans in sunglasses could do anything with planeloads of arms and money to burn.
9/11: The Conspiracy Theories
David Gardner
Nearly three thousand people were killed. The narrative in the weeks and months that followed seemed straightforward: the attacks had been masterminded by al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, an embittered terrorist with an abiding hatred of the West. But, as the twenty-year anniversary approaches, that neat explanation still fails to answer some important questions surrounding that fateful day.How did World Trade Center Building 7 - 100 yards from the Twin Towers - collapse so quickly and symmetrically when it had not been hit?How could two rogue aircraft bring down three towers?Did the US government help orchestrate the attacks as an 'inside job'?9/11: The Conspiracy Theories seeks the truth - not only of what we do know about 9/11, but also what has been intentionally hidden from us. Researching these stories with the help of strong first-person reporting and an in-depth examination of documentation released under freedom-of-information protocols, this book sheds new light on one of history's most tragic and troubling episodes, which shattered for ever the myth of America as a country immune to international terrorism.
All Ships Follow Me: A Family Memoir of War Across Three Continents
Mieke Eerkens - 2019
When the Japanese invaded the island he, his family, and one hundred thousand other Dutch civilians were interned in a concentration camp and forced into hard labor for three years. After the Japanese surrendered, Mieke’s father and his family were set free in a country that plunged immediately into civil war.Across the globe in the Netherlands, police carried a crying five-year-old girl out of her home at war’s end, abandoned and ostracized as a daughter of Nazi sympathizers. This was Mieke's mother. She would be left on the street in front of her sealed home as her parents were taken away and imprisoned in the same camps where the country’s Jews had recently been held. Many years later, Mieke’s parents met, got married, and moved to California, where she and her siblings were born. While her parents lived far from the events of their past, the effects of the war would continue to be felt in their daily lives and in the lives of their children.All Ships Follow Me moves from Indonesia to the Netherlands to the United States, and spans generations as Mieke recounts her parents' lives during and after the war, and travels with them in the present day to the sites of their childhood in an attempt to understand their experiences and how it formed them. All Ships Follow Me is a deeply personal, sweeping saga of the wounds of war, and the way trauma can be passed down through generations.
South From Corregidor
John H. Morrill - 2018
Quail was in the Philippines sweeping mines to provide access for American shipping to South Harbor, Corregidor. Damaged by enemy bombs and guns during the Japanese invasion of the island John Morrill and his fellow men decided to make the decision to scuttle their ship rather than allow it to be captured. This led them to begin one of the most daring escapes of the Second World War. Lieutenant Commander John Morrill and sixteen fellow sailors took a thirty-six-foot diesel boat nearly two thousand miles through Japanese controlled waters. They moved mostly at night, with a homemade sextant, some salvaged charts, with little fresh water and food, but even despite these difficulties they eventually made their way to Darwin, Australia. “nonfiction account of his breathtaking escape in 1942 from the Japanese at Corregidor, the beleaguered U.S. fortress commanding Manila Bay in the Philippines.” The Washington Post “The enthralling story of how a handful of Navy men escaped from falling Corregidor southward to Australia in a leaky 36-foot landing boat.” Foreign Affairs “A matter of fact, modest and inherently dramatic account of an isolated incident in the pacific war” Kirkus Reviews John Morrill was a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy. In June 1939 he became commanding officer of the minesweeper U.S.S. Quail. Pete Martin was a journalist and author. Their book South from Corregidor was first published in 1943. Pete Martin passed away in 1980 and John Morrill passed away in 1997.