Showing results by narrator "Michael Prichard" in All Categories

Spymaster, defector, double agent....Here is the remarkable true story of the man who ran Russia's post-cold-war spy program in America. The revelations are stunning. Many spies have told their stories. None has the astonishing immediacy, relevance, and cautionary warnings of Comrade J.

The Crimea was one of the crucibles of the war on the Eastern Front, where first a Soviet and then a German army were surrounded, fought desperate battles, and were eventually destroyed. The fighting in the region was unusual for the Eastern Front in many ways, in that naval supply, amphibious landings, and naval evacuation played major roles, while both sides were also conducting ethnic cleansing as part of their strategy - the Germans eliminating the Jews and the Soviets purging the region of Tartars.

In the tradition of John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World, this best-selling account of the collapse of the Soviet Union combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism.

The Matarese Circle are the Corsican Brotherhood. Terrifying killers, their power could plunge the world into chaos and destruction within two years. Only two rival spies - and one mysterious woman - can stop them. Brandon Scofield, CIA, and the West's most professional assassin, and Vasili Taleniekov, former KGB, now wanted by the Politburo. They share a genius for espionage - and a life of terror and explosive violence. Sworn enemies, now they must become allies.

John Mosier presents a revisionist retelling of the war on the Eastern Front. The conventional wisdom is that Hitler was mad to think he could defeat the USSR, because of its vast size and population, and that the Battle of Stalingrad marked the turning point of the war. Neither statement is accurate, says Mosier; Hitler came very close to winning outright.

On a zoology expedition up the Amazon, Professor Challenger has made an inexplicable discovery. Back in London, his claims are ridiculed throughout the professional community. Reluctantly, he recounts to Journalist Edward Malone, "Curupuri is the spirit of the woods, something terrible, something malevolent, something to be avoided. None can describe its shape or nature, but it is a word of terror along the Amazon. Something terrible lay that way. It was my business to find out what it was."

Twenty years ago, KGB and CIA agents worked together to bring down The Matarese, a dynasty of killers who threatened the world. But the terrifying group has regained its power. CIA officer Cameron Pryce is hot on the trail of the new Matarese alliance. His only chance to terminate its ruthless activities is to follow the trail of blood money and stone-cold killers. Then he gets a lucky break.

As one of the first titles in Atlantic Monthly Press' "Books That Changed the World" series, America's most provocative satirist, P.J. O'Rourke, reads from Adam Smith's revolutionary The Wealth of Nations - so you don't have to. Recognized almost instantly on its publication in 1776 as the fundamental work of economics, The Wealth of Nations was also recognized as really long: the original edition totaled over 900 pages in two volumes.

Tyrell Hawthorne was a naval intelligence officer until his wife was murdered. Now Hawthorne has been called out of retirement for one last assignment. For he is the only man who can track down the world's most dangerous terrorist, Amaya Bajaratt, who has set in motion a chilling conspiracy that a desperate government cannot stop. Hawthorne must follow Amaya's serpentine trail to uncover the sinister network that exists to help this consummate killer.

The purpose of Why Architecture Matters is to "come to grips with how things feel to us when we stand before them, with how architecture affects us emotionally as well as intellectually" - with its impact on our lives. "Architecture begins to matter," writes Paul Goldberger, "when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads."

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer. However, Captain William Kidd was no career cut-throat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates. Across the oceans of the world, the pirate hunter, Kidd, pursued the pirate, Culliford. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a page-turner.

After three years deep under cover, US agent Harry Latham has penetrated the fortress-like mountain hideaway of the Brotherhood of the Watch, a neo-Nazi organisation born after the fall of the Third Reich. Then, on the eve of his most spectacular success, Harry disappears. Drew Latham is frantic to discover his older brother's fate. But when he receives word that Harry has surfaced, serious doubts arise. Has Harry's cover been blown?

In the early morning hours of April 1, 1970, more than four hundred North Vietnamese soldiers charged out into the open and tried to overrun FSB Illingworth. The battle went on, mostly in the dark, for hours. Exposed ammunition canisters were hit and blew up, causing a thunderous explosion inside the FSB that left dust so thick it jammed the hand-held weapons of the GIs. Much of the combat was hand-to-hand. In all, twenty-four Americans lost their lives and another fifty-four were wounded.

Admiral Jake Grafton takes his wife, Callie, along when the U.S. government sends him to Hong Kong to find out how deeply the American consul-general is embedded in political money raising scandal. And why not? Jake and Callie met and fell in love in Hong Kong during the Vietnam War, and the consul-general is a friend from those days.

Dazzling in its originality, Rites of Spring probes the origins, impact, and aftermath of World War I from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet "The Rite of Spring" in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. "The Great War", as Modris Eksteins writes, "was the psychological turning point...for modernism as a whole. The urge to create and the urge to destroy had changed places."

In What It Takes to Be #1, Vince Lombardi, Jr. explores his father's leadership philosophy and extracts powerful lessons about what it takes to be an effective leader. Taking as his jumping-off point his father's legendary 1970 speech on the supreme importance of self-knowledge, character, and integrity, Lombardi, Jr. examines each of those qualities and offers guidelines on cultivating and applying them at work and in your personal life.

For the past 25 years, scientists have challenged conventional views of evolution and have developed revolutionary theories with profound implications. Fritjof Capra has been at the forefront of this revolution and now, in The Web of Life, he offers a brilliant synthesis of these exciting breakthroughs.

For the first four months of 1942, U.S., Filipino, and Japanese soldiers fought what was America's first major land battle of World War II, the battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of Bataan. It ended with the surrender of 76,000 Filipinos and Americans, the single largest defeat in American military history. The defeat, though, was only the beginning, as Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman make dramatically clear in this powerfully original book.

Still unsolved, still baffling, still claiming new victims. Here are the untold stories. A pilot reports a strange haze enveloping his plane, then disappears; 11 hours after fuel starvation, as if calling from a void, he is heard 600 miles away. He requests permission to land, then vanishes forever. A freighter steaming over placid seas disappears without a trace. A pleasure yacht ghosts past without a soul on board. A pilot calls for help because a "weird object" is harassing his plane. A jet collides with an "unknown" and is never found.

Mortally wounded in battle when he was only 31, the dashing J. E. B. Stuart, the South's "plumed warrior knight", stands with Stonewall Jackson as one of the Confederacy's most revered martyrs. Union General John Sedgwick called him "the greatest cavalryman ever foaled in America". Jeffry D. Wert, however, offers a more balanced assessment in this comprehensive biography.