Combat Memoirs

"Corentine" ou l'histoire d'une revanche sur un avenir de malheur et de servitude. En 1890, une petite fille naît dans une famille de paysans bretons au cœur de ces montagnes noires où la misère pousse des milliers de gens à émigrer. Ses parents vont la placer, alors qu'elle n'a que sept ans, chez un riche propriétaire où, disait-elle, elle put enfin manger à sa faim.

Stephen McAllister was a grunt, a dog handler in Vietnam, tasked not only with fighting what was by then an unwinnable war but with rehabilitating a scout dog named Big Mike whose trauma ran even deeper than his own. McAllister's voice has an abundance of heart and humor, but the laughter has a catch in its throat. For all the ingenuity and camaraderie, a dark and suspenseful melody plays behind the adventures of McAllister and his unforgettable constellation of young characters, American and Vietnamese.

They put a price on his head. They did everything they could to disrupt his mission. Finally, when an antitank mine tore off his right foot, the warriors of jihad in Iraq thought they had neutralized one of their most resourceful, determined foes.

John Arezzi was a lifelong Mets fan who dreamed of a job in baseball. In 1981, he took a job with the Mets Class A team in North Carolina. But Arezzi had another love: professional wrestling. Mat Memories is Arezzi's chance to hold the mic, and he holds nothing back - he names names and tells the untold behind-the-scenes stories: from the ring, the stage, and the diamond.

The story of Jeff Horn is like a fairy tale. Written with award-winning author, journalist and boxing aficionado Grantlee Kieza, The Hornet is the tale of a boy who, slapped around by bullies, saw through tears in his eyes a vision of himself as a hero, a champ, someone other people might one day look up to. Horn took up boxing after being tormented as a teenager. Fast-forward a dozen years and the former bullied schoolboy - now humble schoolteacher - became world boxing champion on 2nd July 2017 at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium.

In Muhammad Ali, Michael Ezra considers the boxer who calls himself “The Greatest” from a new perspective. Ezra’s incisive study examines the relationships between Ali’s cultural appeal and its commercial manifestations. Citing examples of the boxer’s relationship to the Vietnam War and the Nation of Islam - which serve as barometers of his “public moral authority” - Muhammad Ali analyzes the difficulties of creating and maintaining these cultural images, as well as the impact these themes have on Ali’s meaning to the public.

Fifty years after he coined the iconic phrase "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee", Drew "Bundini" Brown remains one of boxing's most mysterious and misunderstood figures. His impact on the sport and the culture at large is undeniable. Cornerman and confidant to two of the greatest fighters ever - Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali - Brown lived an extraordinary American life.

Joshua Shores was just nineteen years old when he deployed to Iraq in 2005. A Midwestern kid raised in a close-knit, supportive family, he had developed a strong sense of duty and honor. Both sides of his family had proudly served their country, fostering a legacy of service that would guide his own path. Serving in Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Shores was a teenager among battle-hardened peers, far removed from the naïve assumptions of war that he had once held.

After serving in a scout-sniper platoon in Mosul, Tom Voss came home carrying invisible wounds of war - the memory of doing or witnessing things that went against his fundamental beliefs. This was not a physical injury that could heal with medication and time but a "moral injury" - a wound to the soul that eventually urged him toward suicide. Desperate for relief from the pain and guilt, Voss embarked on a 2,700-mile journey across America with a fellow veteran. Listeners walk with these men as they meet other veterans, Native American healers, and spiritual teachers.

In this searing and beautifully written memoir, Marine Lieutenant and CNN Op-Ed contributor Mike Scotti charts a course from the front lines of Iraq back home to New York, showing how sometimes the hardest battle is the one after the war. Sometimes the hardest battle is the one after the war. As...

You may have read Newcastle and Middlesbrough accounts of Lee Duffy; now, for the first time, Paul Venis the actor is set to play Lee in the upcoming Sayers' film. In this audiobook, he speaks on behalf of the South Bank community about their most infamous son. It also includes Paul's own remarkable story: Unbeaten K1 world champion, British, European, and world champion (31 Fights, 31 Wins, 30 KO's).

Like the legendary Hellenic hero Prometheus, George Dillman is both admired and criticized for sharing once arcane knowledge with the wider world. His pioneering work in the field of pressure point fighting has had made a profound and lasting impression on the landscape of the martial arts. By any standard, Dillman is a martial giant. Here, then, for the first time anywhere, is his story, told in the words of the man himself, and those of his students, and voiced by one of his senior instructors...

For just over 30 years Al Bernstein has been one of the most recognizable and respected sportscasters in America. In those three decades, the “voice of boxing” reported the funny, poignant, and bizarre events that helped shape sports television, ESPN, boxing, Las Vegas, and Showtime. With an eclectic cast of characters that includes every big name in boxing, including Marvin Hagler, Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, and Manny Pacquiao, as well as such names in the entertainment world as Rodney Dangerfield, Sylvester Stallone, Russell Crowe, Jerry Lewis, and Jack Nicholson, Bernstein's memoir will have you in stitches.

The problem was that Les Darcy didn't want to march at the fore of such a procession, nor to such a destination. He wanted to continue what he had been doing to extraordinary acclaim before the war began - taking on the best boxers the world could throw at him, and lifting his entire family out of poverty as he did so. Torn between the duty he felt he owed his family, and the duty many felt he owed his country, Les made his choice ... and faced the consequences.

Beetle-browed, nearly bald, with a head that rode his collarbones like a bowling ball returning on rails, his waist size more than half his five-foot, eight-inch height, Two Ton Tony Galento resembled, according to Collier's magazine writer Jack Miley, ''a taxi driving away with its top down.'' By all measures he stood no chance when he stepped into the ring against the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis, the finest heavyweight of his generation.

Alexander Gustafsson grew up in Arboga, a small town in Sweden. A country boy, he started boxing when he was 10 - winning the national youth medal at the age of 16. After a handful of run-ins with the law, he began practicing mixed martial arts and working his way up the ranks of the UFC. Nicknamed The Mauler by his training partners, due to his power, killer instinct and somewhat recklessness whilst fighting; this is the story of Gustafsson's struggle to succeed in one of the world's most challenging sports.

Perils of Flight is an exciting collection of stories about a young college graduate turned fighter pilot. The book spans across the globe and across decades from rural Tennessee to Vietnam and interesting places in between.

Among them was green young Lieutenant Pat Caruso who became de facto company commander when the five officers ranking him were killed or wounded. He led his rapidly diminishing force steadily forward for the next few days, when a day's gains were measured in yards. Caruso was eventually wounded himself and was evacuated. Realizing that the heroism of his comrades would be lost by the decimation of his unit, Caruso latched onto any paper he could find and filled every blank space with his memory of the fighting.

Stepping into the ring against light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore, George Plimpton pauses to wonder what ever induced him to become a participatory journalist. Bloodied but unbowed, he holds his own in the bout—and lives to tell in this timeless book on boxing and its devotees, among them Ali, Joe Frazier, Ernest Hemingway, and Norman Mailer.

"Iron" Mike Tyson was one of the most feared opponents to ever step into a boxing ring. With unbelievable power that floored or stopped all but two of his first 28 professional opponents, Tyson began an unprecedented ascent to the top of the boxing world, becoming the youngest champion in history with a second-round TKO over Trevor Berbick, the last man to box and defeat Muhammad Ali.