True War

Adele Astaire was a glittering, glamorous star, dancing with her brother, Fred, endearing herself to audiences from New York to London. But although she is toasted by royalty and beloved by countless fans, Adele Astaire has dreams of a loving husband and a houseful of children. And when she meets Lord Charles Cavendish, her wishes may just come true—but at what cost?

From the author of bestselling Sisters in Captivity, seven remarkable stories of men who served from WWI to Korea–their wartime exploits and achievements through aviation.

In Polish: Applebaum presents the story of an inconceivable crime: “she describes the works of Stalin, which are only superseded by the Holocaust, but their cruelty and perfidy match the actions of Hitler” - Wacław Radziwinowicz (Polish journalist). This book describes Holodomor - the Great Famine in Ukraine between 1931 and 1933 which killed three million people and was man-made by the Soviet government.

Courage finds its way into the hearts of soldiers in the heat of war. A soldier's bravery is tested on the battlefield, where life-and-death decisions are made in a split second. These true stories detail the amazing events of soldiers who were outnumbered and staring death in the face but survived.

Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began. In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill, with orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory. Instead, he contacted MI5, the British Secret Service.

In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died. American planes were beginning to run low on plausible targets when it was decided to use two atomic weapons in a final flourish to try to end the war. Richard Overy’s remarkable book rethinks how we should regard this last stage of the war and the role of the bombs. The popular view that bombing worked in this case has now to be set in a broader context of what was happening in Japan in the months before surrender. The easy equation ‘bombing equals surrender’ is no longer viable.

When little Ruthie and her mother are taken to Belzec Extermination Camp in the midst of World War II, Ruthie's mother knows that her daughter's life is in grave danger. Desperate, she will do anything to save her from the terrible fate that awaits her, even at the cost of her own life. But she will have to act fast if she wants to give her daughter a chance of survival. Years later, Ruthie's daughter, Noga, delves into the untold mysteries of her mother's past, on a quest to heal their fragmented relationship.

This is the story of the most dangerous triple-agent in US history. Peter Lance, author of the highly acclaimed 1000 Years for Revenge and Cover Up, returns to uncover the story of Ali Mohamed, a trusted security advisor of Osama bin Laden who hoodwinked the United States for more than a decade. As Lance reveals for this first time, this one man served in a series of high-security position within the United States security establishment, as a Special Forces advisor, FBI informant, and CIA operative.

Corporal Andy Reid was an ordinary soldier, serving in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. But his life changed for ever on Tuesday 13 October 2009, when he was blown up by a Taliban improved explosive device (IED). Evacuated to the UK, it was touch-and-go whether he would survive. He had lost both legs and his right arm, while the index finger of his left hand was almost completely removed. Yet survive he did and less than a month after being blown up, he was reunited with his patrol back in Warminster.

Between dusk and dawn on the night of March 24-25, 1944, a small army of Allied soldiers crawled through tunnels in Germany in a covert operation the likes of which the Third Reich had never seen. The prison break from Stalag Luft III in Eastern Germany was the largest of its kind in the Second World War. Seventy-nine Allied soldiers and airmen made it outside the wire - but only three made it outside Nazi Germany. Fifty were executed by the Gestapo.

March 19, 1945: The war in the Pacific approaches its apocalyptic climax. The largest wartime armada ever assembled, Task Force 58, is closing in on Okinawa; once taken, it will finally put American B-29 bombers in range of the home islands of Japan - and victory. Trial by Fire is the gripping novelization of how, against all odds, the sailors of the Franklin were able to save their ship, after three agonizing days of battling the flames that ultimately claimed the lives of 832 men and injured 300 more.

I Turned Phone Hacking from a Backstreet Business into Industrial-Scale Organised Crime... for the British Press. But I started life as the penniless son of Ukrainian immigrants. Then I rose to be one of the most powerful news executives in Rupert Murdoch’s empire. My dad was in Hitler’s SS. My mum was a Nazi slave – I was born ready for the Fleet Street cauldron. At the News of the World, I broke the biggest exclusives. However, I discovered a secret weapon that would revolutionise news gathering: the use of Illegal Private Investigators to hack and blag.

En diciembre de 1972, varios encapuchados secuestraron a Jean McConville, una viuda de 38 años con 10 hijos a su cargo. En aquel barrio católico de Belfast todos intuían que se trataba de una represalia del IRA, pero nadie se atrevía a decirlo por el terror y paranoia imperantes en la época más caliente del conflicto. El crimen no empezó a resolverse hasta 2003, cinco años después de los acuerdos de paz del Viernes Santo, al ser desenterrados los restos mortales de McConville en una playa solitaria.

After surviving the horrors of the Holocaust - in ghettos, on death marches, and in concentration camps - a young couple seeks refuge in Canada. They settle into a new life, certain that the terrors of their past are behind them. They build themselves a cozy little cottage on a lake in Muskoka, a cottage that becomes emblematic of their victory over the Nazis. The charming retreat is a safe haven, a refuge from haunted memories. That is, until a single act of unspeakable violence defiles their sanctuary.

Graham Pitchfork has built on these reminiscences to trace the roles of Beaufighter squadrons spread across all the theaters of World War Two operations. From home bases, through north-west Europe, North Africa, Malta, and the Mediterranean to the far Far East and south-west Pacific, the Beaufighter served far and wide as did the crews of the RAF, RAAF, SAAF, and New Zealand and Canadian squadrons. All are covered in this quite unique book to be savored by all those interested in the war in the air from 1939-1945.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Cornelia Fort was already in the air. At 22, Fort had escaped Nashville’s debutante scene for a fresh start as a flight instructor in Hawaii. She and her student were in the middle of a lesson when the bombs began to fall, and they barely made it back to ground. Still, when the US Army Air Forces put out a call for women pilots to aid the war effort, Fort was one of the first to respond. She became one of just over 1,100 women from across the nation to make it through the Army’s rigorous selection process and earn her silver wings.

On November 23, 1942, German U-Boats torpedoed the British ship Benlomond, and it sank in the Atlantic in two minutes. The sole survivor was a second steward named Poon Lim, who, with no knowledge of the sea, managed to stay alive for 133 days on a small wooden raft.

Based on nearly 10 years of research in Italy, France, and Israel, including interviews with Gino Bartali's family, former teammates, a Holocaust survivor Bartali saved, and many others, Road to Valor is the first book ever written about the Italian cycling legend in English and the only book written in any language to fully explore the scope of Bartali's wartime work. An epic tale of courage, comeback, and redemption, it is the untold story of one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century.

Brought to life by the personal accounts of six Navy pilots and one British POW, this is the history of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong. Trawling through historic records, Steven K. Bailey discovered that the story of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong during the final year of World War II. Operation Gratitude involved nearly 100 U.S. Navy warships and close to a thousand planes. Target Hong Kong brings this operation down to a human scale by recounting the air raids through the experiences of seven men whose lives intersected at Hong Kong in January 1945.

At the core of this ancient strategy manual is the understanding that conflict is an inescapable part of human life. Since, as Sun Tzu teaches, aggression and response in kind can lead only to destruction, we must learn to work with conflict in a more profound and effective way. Crucial to this strategic vision is knowledge - especially self-knowledge - and a view of the whole that seeks to bring conflicting views into a larger perspective.