War Years

David Kilcullen was one of the architects of America's strategy in the late phases of the second Gulf War, and also spent time in Afghanistan and other hotspots. In Blood Year, he provides a view of the current situation in the Middle East and analyzes how America and the West ended up in such dire circumstances. This is an essential book for anyone interested in understanding not only why the region has collapsed into utter chaos, but also what the US can do to alleviate the grim situation.

In hindsight, we can say no one man or event served as a catalyst for the Civil War. It was not the John Brown Raid, no matter how many historians say it was the pivotal event. It was not the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the war was not about slavery - not in the beginning anyway. The Civil War got its start 73 years earlier when the Founding Fathers set aside the hot potato that was slavery - so they could ratify the Constitution. The signers knew they were passing the issue on to a future generation. Their hope was their progeny could answer the questions they could not.

World War II is raging in Europe, and Tomie finds that life has changed in many ways. Now he has to wear an extra sweater to school because they're trying to conserve coal. Then tragedy brings the war home to the dePaola family, and all Tomie can do is ask "Why?"

In Bucharest, Romania's capital, Kaplan discovered that few Westerners were reporting on the country - one of the darkest corners of Europe during the Cold War. In an intense and cinematic travelogue, Kaplan explores the history and culture of the only country in the West where the leading intellectuals have been right-wing rather than left-wing; a country that gave rise to the dictator Ion Antonescu, Hitler's chief foreign accomplice during WWII; a country where the Latin West mixes with the Greek East, producing a fascinating fusion of cultures.

World War II rises in its vastness and complexity over the rest of human history. A number of victims difficult to conceive, never surpassed by any other conflict; the masses of men, women, and resources mobilized in a conflict that shook even the most remote ends of the planet; the ideological battle between totalitarianism and democracy, between fascism and communism, the passions and hatred that it aroused; the unimaginable horror and fanaticism of the Holocaust; geopolitical games; the repetition of World War I on an even more dire scale.

As the 1960s drew to a close, the United States was coming apart at the seams. From August 1969 to August 1970, the nation witnessed 9,000 protests and 84 acts of arson or bombings at schools across the country. It was the year of the My Lai massacre investigation, the Cambodia invasion, Woodstock, and the Moratorium to End the War. The American death toll in Vietnam was approaching 50,000, and the ascendant counterculture was challenging nearly every aspect of American society.

King Philip VI was the first French King of the famous House Valois, and he inherited France at the height of its power. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t remain that way for long. His fierce rivalry with King Edward of England destabilized the region, threw France into turmoil, and launched one of Europe's most infamous wars: The Hundred Years’ War. Originally born into minor nobility, Philip was never considered to one day be king. The life journey of Philip VI, the first king of House Valois, is a truly fascinating story filled with unsuspecting inheritance.

When talented musician Gray Robinson persuades Belle to abandon her university studies and follow him to Silverwood, home to an artistic community on the Cornish coast, Belle happily agrees even though they’ve only just met. She knows she is falling in love, and the thought of spending a carefree summer with Gray is all she can think about. But being with Gray isn’t the only reason Belle agrees to accompany him to Silverwood... As the summer months unfold, Belle begins to learn the truth – about secrets from the past that have been kept hidden, but also about the person she wants to be.

From Time 100 honoree Saad Mohseni, the deeply moving and surprising story of the attempt to build a truly independent media company in contemporary Afghanistan. Saad Mohseni, chairman and CEO of Moby Group, Afghanistan’s largest media company, charts a twenty-year effort to bring a free press...

Cleethorpes – 1940. As the new year dawns, the show at the Empire comes to an end and it’s time for the girls to move on. All the seaside girls have their own battles to fight. And while they figure things out it’s time for them to do their bit for the war and keep Britain smiling.

Acclaimed military writer Mark Urban explores the extraordinary story of these military pioneers; the toughest and deadliest infantrymen in Wellington's Army. Immortalised in Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels, the 95th Rifles were skirmishers tasked with acting as Wellington's advanced guard. It was new technology for the warfare of the time: they travelled light, moved rapidly, armed with the accurate rifles that would allow them to take shots from distance. The 95th Rifles were the prototype of the modern infantryman.

The most eye-opening, and terrifying, story in Chip Reid's career as a journalist was the six weeks he spent with 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, as a correspondent for NBC News. Traveling shoulder-to-shoulder with the young Marines, he had unparalleled access, witnessing them in combat, and interviewing as many as he could persuade his bosses to put on air, allowing them to tell their war stories in their own words.

Author Doug Beed relates his memories of the men and missions during his year (1968-69) as a combat soldier with the First Infantry Division in Vietnam. After two years of college he couldn't afford to continue, so he was forced to relinquish his student deferment and enter the draft. He tried various strategies to get a non-combat job; nevertheless, he ended up in the infantry and was assigned to Vietnam. The stories in this book depict the year Doug spent in Alpha Company, where he spent days on patrols finding and killing North Vietnamese soldiers.

After flying for eight and a half years during high school and college, and participating in the Air Force ROTC Program at Ole Miss and The University of Texas, I felt I was well prepared for US Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training. In October 1965, I became a member of UPT Class 67C at Webb Air Force Base in Big Spring, Texas. I can say, without reservation, that my year in UPT was the best year of my life!

La historia de Juana parece ser una novela en vez de una parte de la historia. Fue una salvadora excepcional en su caballo de guerra, agitando su estandarte blanco y llamando a sus soldados a la victoria; pero también fue compasiva e intensamente humana, una joven que lloraba y sufría igual que el resto de nosotros. En el mismo sentido, es muy sencillo relacionarse con Juana como sorprenderse con su increíble personaje.

Tom Alexander has no memory of his life at House in the Hills orphanage at the outskirts of Sarajevo or of his birth parents - the ones whose faces he wants to see but doesn't remember. When he receives a letter from Child Abroad, the agency that arranged his adoption in 1994, he is offered the opportunity to search for the boy he once was - Andreij Kurik - if he returns to Sarajevo. Sulio Divijak uncovers a faded photograph in Andreij’s file of a girl wearing a red scarf. She looks like Ellie, the girl Tom fell in love with at first sight in a café in Regent’s Park.

"Narrators Shayna Small and Neil Shah transport listeners to 1940s New York in this dark fantasy set against a backdrop of racial tension and brewing war...Both narrators also excel at a range of accents, making this audiobook a fully immersive experience." -- AudioFile Magazine The dangerous...

The beginning of modern Europe was a time of confusion, excitement, suspicion, hope, despair, and ideas. It was a time of a lot of change spread out over just a few hundred years, but the end result was a completely different world than the one that had come before it. This audiobook includes details of the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern era, where Europe saw significant shifts across the continent in phases.

It was 1778, and the recent American victory at Saratoga had netted the US a powerful ally in France. Many, including General George Washington, presumed France’s entrance into the war meant independence was just around the corner. Meanwhile, having lost an entire army at Saratoga, Great Britain pivoted to a 'southern strategy'. The army would henceforth seek to regain its southern colonies, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, a highly profitable segment of its prewar American empire.

Eight Years of Fire: China’s Struggle in the Second World War by Oliver Greyson is a gripping, narrative nonfiction chronicle of China’s monumental resistance against Japanese invasion during World War II. Spanning from the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937 to the final Japanese surrender in 1945, this powerful account brings to life one of the most overlooked theaters of the global war. With vivid storytelling, firsthand testimonies, and primary sources, the book weaves together battlefield heroics, civilian endurance, and political intrigue at the highest levels.