Showing titles in Military & War

It is the worst of times... December 1968. The buses pull out of the holding station every hour. They are headed for Travis Air force base just north of the city, filled with a seemingly endless supply of young men who are themselves filled with doubts and fears. Of course, the doubt and fear is not allowed out in the open. It is instead tucked neatly away in a very private place. A place it can hide and grow, like a virus, as the journey continues.

There have been many biographies of Stalin, but the court that surrounded him is untravelled ground. Simon Sebag Montefiore, acclaimed biographer of Catherine the Great's lover, prime minister, and general, Potemkin, has unearthed the vast underpinning that sustained Stalin. Not only ministers such as Molotov or secret service chiefs such as Beria, but men and women whose loyalty he trusted only until the next purge.

General Frank McKenzie oversaw some of the most important—and controversial operations in modern US military history. McKenzie provides an honest assessment of his time in command-describing decisions that were sound, as well as some outcomes he wishes were different.

A very Australian story of heroism and healing. In 2004 Garth Callender, a junior cavalry officer, was deployed to Iraq. He quickly found his feet leading convoys of armoured vehicles through the streets of Baghdad and into the desert beyond. But one morning his crew was targeted in a roadside bomb attack. Garth became Australia's first serious casualty in the war. After recovering from his injuries, Garth returned to Iraq in 2006 as second-in-command of the Australian Army's security detachment in Baghdad.

Con Thien was a United States Marine Corps firebase that was the scene of fierce combat for months on end during 1967. Staving off attacks and ambushes while suffering from ineffectual leadership from Washington as well as media onslaughts, courageous American Marines protected this crucial piece of land at all costs. They would hold Con Thien, but many paid the ultimate price. By the end of the war, more than 1,400 Marines had died and more than 9,000 sustained injuries.

Hugh Riminton was a small-town New Zealand teenager with a possible drinking problem and a job cleaning rat cages when a chance meeting with a radio news director changed his life. The news man took a chance on him, and at 17 Riminton became a cadet reporter. Over nearly 40 years he has been shot at, blown up, threatened with deportation and thrown in jail. He has reported from nearly 50 countries, witnessed massacres in Africa, wars and conflicts on four continents, and every kind of natural disaster.

We all make mistakes, but starting the Third World War would have been a rather large one. To this day, I still maintain it was not entirely my fault. But I'm getting ahead of myself. During the course of my life, I've barely escaped the wrath of an arms dealer in Hamburg, been strafed by a MiG during the Nigerian civil war, and landed during a bloody coup in Guinea-Bissau.

The ‘Devil Dogs’ of K Company, 3/5 Marines, were part of the legendary first Marine Division. They landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in 1942—the first US ground offensive of the war—and were present when Okinawa, Japan’s most southerly prefecture, finally fell to American troops after a bitter struggle in June 1945. In between they fought in the ‘Green Hell’ of Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain, and across the coral wasteland of Peleliu in the Palau Islands.

The harrowing, true account from the brave men on the ground who fought back during the Battle of Benghazi. 13 Hours presents, for the first time ever, the true account of the events of September 11, 2012, when terrorists attacked the US State Department Special Mission Compound and a nearby CIA station called the Annex in Benghazi, Libya. A team of six American security operators fought to repel the attackers and protect the Americans stationed there. Those men went beyond the call of duty, performing extraordinary acts of courage and heroism.

On the morning of October 7, 2023, Israelis awoke to a harrowing reality. Not only were hundreds of rockets being launched from Gaza into Israeli population centers, but the security border had also been breached by several thousand Hamas terrorists. Carnage, not seen since the Second World War, ensued. Elkana Cohen, Captain of an Elite Commando Unit was called, along with thousands of other reservists, to prepare for war. One that will have to ensure nothing less than Israel's survival.

The Old Breed . . . The Complete Story Revealed brings to life an abundance of new material from the original manuscript of Eugene Sledge's classic memoir With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa. By interspersing his own personal anecdotes throughout, Henry Sledge takes his father's work and gives it newfound context, sharing memories of conversations between father and son. The result is a flowing narrative that portrays an intimate look at a WWII veteran and his struggles to adapt to civilian life following the war.

In The German Aces Speak II, Heaton and Lewis paint a picture of the war through the eyes of four more of Germany's most significant pilots, put together from numerous interviews personally conducted by Heaton from the 1980s through the 2000s. The four ex-Luftwaffe fighter aces bring the past to life as they tell their stories about the war, their battles, their off-duty lives, their lives after the war, and perhaps most importantly, how they felt about serving under the Nazi leadership of Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler.

This biography of Xenia, sister of Nicholas II gives a new angle on the Romanov story and provides new information on relationships within the family after the Revolution.

How much better would your world be if you deliberately trained and developed your confidence, competence, discipline, motivation, mental toughness, and more - like an elite member of the Special Operations community? Whether fighting the war against terrorism or applying their mentality and leadership principles in the marketplace and at home, this book is for anyone who wants to cultivate the champion mindset required to do more and win.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Where Have All the Bullets Gone?, written and read by Spike Milligan. Back to those haunting days in Italy in 1944, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, with lava running in great red rivulets down the slope towards us, and Jock taking a drag on his cigarette and saying, "I think we've got grounds for a rent rebate."

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian's acclaimed Civil War history of the complex man and controversial Union commander whose battlefield brilliance ensured the downfall of the Confederacy. Preeminent Civil War historian Bruce Catton narrows his focus on commander Ulysses S. Grant, whose bold tactics and relentless dedication to the Union ultimately ensured a Northern victory in the nation's bloodiest conflict.

Erik Wallin served with his unit in all of these locations, and provides the listener with a fascinating glimpse into these final battles. The book is written with a "no holds barred" approach which will captivate, excite, and maybe even shock the listener - his recollections do not evade the brutality of fighting against the advancing Red Army. Twilight of the Gods is destined to become a classic memoir of the Second World War.

This is the remarkable story of a German soldier who fought throughout World War II, rising from conscript private to captain of a heavy weapons company on the Eastern Front. >William Lubbeck, age 19, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in August 1939. As a member of the 58th Infantry Division, he received his baptism of fire during the 1940 invasion of France. The following spring his division served on the left flank of Army Group North in Operation Barbarossa.

Kenneth Macksey's highly regarded biography of Generaloberst Heinz Guderian gives clear insight into the mind and motives of the father of modern tank warfare. Panzer General shows Guderian as a man of ideas equipped with the ability to turn inspiration into reality. A master of strategy and tactics, he was the officer most responsible for creating blitzkrieg in World War II.

In the Spring of 1974, 2nd Lt. Hiroo Onoda of the Japanese army made world headlines when he emerged from the Philippine jungle after a thirty-year ordeal. Hunted in turn by American troops, the Philippine army and police, hostile islanders, and eventually successive Japanese search parties, Onoda had skillfully outmaneuvered all his pursuers, convinced that World War II was still being fought and waiting for the day when his fellow soldiers would return victorious.