Two months into a planned solo source-to-sea navigation of the Amazon River, adventure Davey du Plessis was ambushed and shot within the isolated jungles of Peru.

The adventure turned into an intense moment-to-moment struggle to survive as he made his way, wounded, through the dense jungle, seeking rescue and safety.

Choosing To Live is Davey's personal account of his Amazon experience. He retells the remarkable story with an endearing openness, while sharing unique insights into the power of compassion and his ability to maintain motivation in his balance between life and death.

The incredible true story of Louis Zamperini, now a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie. THE INTERNATIONAL NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER In 1943 a bomber crashes into the Pacific Ocean. Against all odds, one young lieutenant survives. Louise Zamperini had already transformed himself from child delinquent to prodigious athlete, running in the Berlin Olympics. Now he must embark on one of the Second World War's most extraordinary odysseys. Zamperini faces thousands of miles of open ocean on a failing raft. Beyond like only greater trials, in Japan's prisoner-of-war camps. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini's destiny, whether triumph or tragedy, depends on the strength of his will ... Now a major motion picture, directed by Angelina Jolie and starring Jack O' Connell.

'This is Doro and he is beautiful.' So begins the extraordinary story of Doro Goumaneh, who faced an unimaginable series of adversities on his journey from persecution in The Gambia to refuge in France. Doro was once a relatively prosperous fisherman, but in 2014, when the country's fishing rights were stolen and secret police began arresting Gambian fishermen, Doro left home, fleeing for his life. From Senegal to Libya to Algeria and back to Libya, Doro fell victim to the horrific cycle of abuse targeted at refugees. He endured shipwreck, torture and being left for dead in a mass grave. Miraculously, he survived. In 2019, during one of his many attempts to reach Europe, Doro was rescued by the boat Sea-Watch 3 in the Mediterranean, where he met volunteer Brendan Woodhouse. While waiting out a two-week standoff - floating off the coast of Sicily, as political leaders accused Sea-Watch, a German organisation that helps migrants, of facilitating illegal entry to Europe - a great friendship formed. Told through both Doro's and Brendan's perspectives, Doro touches on questions of policy and politics, brutality and bravery, survival and belonging - issues that confront refugees everywhere. But ultimately it is one man's incredible story - that of Doro: refugee, hero, champion, survivor and friend.

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2019 A BARACK OBAMA BEST BOOK OF 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION 2019 TIME's #1 Best Nonfiction Book of 2019 A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'A must read' Gillian Flynn One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen alive again. Her disappearance would haunt her orphaned children, the perpetrators of the brutal crime and a whole society in Northern Ireland for decades. Through the unsolved case of Jean McConville's abduction, Patrick Radden Keefe tells the larger story of the Troubles, investigating Dolours Price, the first woman to join the IRA, who bombed the Old Bailey; Gerry Adams, the politician who helped end the fighting but denied his IRA past; and Brendan Hughes, an IRA commander who broke their code of silence. A gripping story forensically reported, Say Nothing explores the extremes people will go to for an ideal, and the way societies mend - or don't - after long and bloody conflict. '10 Best Books of 2019' - The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Slate, NPR's Fresh Air 'Best History Book of 2019' - Amazon '10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019' - TIME '10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade' - Entertainment Weekly '20 Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade' - Literary Hub '10 Best True Crime Books of the Decade' - CrimeReads

A Times History Book of the Year 2022 From Sunday Times bestselling historian Saul David, the dramatic tale of the first American troops to take the fight to the enemy in the Second World War, and also the last. 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, a campaign described by one K Company veteran as 'thirty days of the meanest, around-the-clock slaughter that desperate men can inflict on each other.' Ordinary men from very different backgrounds, and drawn from cities, towns, and settlements across America, the Devil Dogs were asked to do something extraordinary: take on the victorious Imperial Japanese Army, composed of some of the most effective soldiers in world history - and defeat it. This is the story of how they did just that and, in the process, forged bonds of brotherhood that still survive today. Remarkably, the company contained an unusually high number of talented writers, whose first-hand accounts and memoirs provide the colour, emotion, and context for this extraordinary story. In Devil Dogs, award-winning historian Saul David sets the searing experience of K Company into the broader context of the brutal war in the Pacific and does for the U.S. Marines what Band of Brothers did for the 101st Airborne. Gripping, intimate, authoritative and far-reaching, this is a unique and incredibly personal narrative of war. Saul David's previous book SBS -Silent Warriors was in the Sunday Times Bestseller Chart in the 35th and 36th week of 2021.

From the shattered land of Israel and Occupied Palestine comes a vivid account of anguish and determination. In his passionate essays penned during the violence of the Second Intifada, writer Henry Ralph Carse, practical theologian, pilgrim and scholar, seeks meaning in the seemingly senseless conflict. Living in the heart of East Jerusalem, Carse is an educator and the father of four children growing up in the midst of the mayhem. Driven by hope and concern, he chronicles his daily ventures into No-One Land, engaging both Israelis and Palestinians in the terrible and inspiring realities of their lives in the crossfire.

'The Book Collectors of Daraya celebrates the political and therapeutic power of the written word . . . defiant and cautiously optimistic' Financial Times '[An] incredible chronicle . . . The book tells the kind of story that often gets buried beneath images of violence' LitHub In 2012 the rebel suburb of Daraya in Damascus was brutally besieged by Syrian government forces. Four years of suffering ensued, punctuated by shelling, barrel bombs and chemical gas attacks. People's homes were destroyed and their food supplies cut off; disease was rife. Yet in this man-made hell, forty young Syrian revolutionaries embarked on an extraordinary project, rescuing all the books they could find in the bombed-out ruins of their home town. They used them to create a secret library, in a safe place, deep underground. It became their school, their university, their refuge. It was a place to learn, to exchange ideas, to dream and to hope. Based on lengthy interviews with these young men, conducted over Skype by the award-winning French journalist Delphine Minoui, The Book Collectors of Daraya is a powerful testament to freedom, tolerance and the power of literature. Translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud.

The extraordinary story of how a Derbyshire coal miner survived as an escaped POW in occupied Poland by posing as a deaf-mute for three years. A few years before Colin Marshall died in 1993 he wrote his story and gave it to his daughter Hazel. She knew he'd had an extraordinary life but she read things he had never talked about, and it seemed part of another world. Years later, after Hazel's mother Nancy died, Hazel found tucked away in a cupboard, unseen letters, postcards and photographs that her mother had saved from Colin's time in Poland during WWII. As a tribute to her dad and the Polish people who helped him, Hazel decided to turn it into a book. This true story takes the reader from Colin growing-up in a Derbyshire mining village in the 1920s: starting work at the local colliery, joining the Lincolnshire Regiment of the Royal Engineers, being called-up at the outbreak of war, captured at Dunkirk and escaping from a POW camp in Poland - to being befriended by a Polish family, in a village occupied by German soldiers. Unable at that time to speak Polish, he posed as a deaf-mute for three years to avoid capture. Any slip-up and Colin knew that his Polish friends would be shot. It is a story of courage and determination and of two Polish families who risked their lives in order to save others.

You don't have to be born confident. You can learn to be confident. Here's how. Dr Nate Zinsser works with the cream of the US military to prepare them mentally for leadership and for action. He also trains top sportsmen and women to develop the self-belief essential for world-class performance. Now he shares the tried and tested techniques he has perfected over many years to help anyone who wants to acquire the confidence that will enable them to perform at their very best, whatever the environment, however stressful the situation. In the process he shows how to make positive use of nervousness, what acquiring a 'success cycle' involves, and why self-assurance, like all skills, requires constant practice. Drawing on the latest research, and packed with real-life examples, this is a supremely practical - and inspirational - guide to achieving bullet-proof confidence.

Part One This book is based on the true story of Jesse Fredrick Warren a 24 year old French Polisher by trade who was living in Bethnal Green, East London with his wife Amelia and their two young daughters Elizabeth and Beatrice. The start of the Great War in 1914 brought with it an end to regular employment and the beginning of great hardships for Jesse and his young family. By the February of 1915 they were destitute and starving. There was no money for food, gas or coal. Like so many other young men who found themselves in the same situation, there was only one option open to him: without telling his wife he signed on and volunteered for Kitchener's Army. It was not for King and Country that he joined up but to put food on the table for his wife and children. For this he was taken to France where he walked through the gates of hell. Part Two This is the continuing story of Jesse and Amelia Warren now living in Walthamstow, East London from the end of the Great War which against all odds he survived, until their deaths many years later...but firstly it takes the reader back to the meeting of a young couple who were to survive many hardships including two World Wars. It tells of their family, the good times they shared together and the bad times but also it tells of many hilarious moments that will certainly make the reader smile.

With the outbreak of World War I, whilst thousands of men were being swallowed up in the patriotic surge of volunteering for the Army, large numbers of physically fit men were being rejected out of hand. These were those who were less than the mandatory height for acceptance, five feet three inches. Six young men from very different walks of life found that when they tried to volunteer, they were summarily rejected because they were not tall enough. All this would change in December, 1914 when "Bantam" units were raised in order to tap this otherwise wasted source of manpower. These six men who enlisted at the same time and recruiting office made a pact that if they could manage to do so, they would stay together as a group whilst they were in the Army. The narrative sees them through their training in the Yorkshire Dales and on Salisbury Plain thence to France in the winter of 1916 where they are introduced to the hardships of trench warfare in the flooded battlefields of French Flanders. Ultimately, they move to the Somme where their luck runs out. Having recovered from their wounds, two of the survivors take part in the mining operations at Messines Ridge, before moving on to Passchendaele and all its horrors. One of them is shipped back to England after more wounding. As a result of his experiences catching up with him, he will not return to active service in France. This story is based on facts, the service history of the author's father.

My grandfather, Frank Carollo, was a prisoner of war in the infamous POW camp Stalag 17 B during World War II. During these dark days, he managed to keep a diary of his experiences, depicting everyday life within, through beautiful short stories, poetry, and drawings. Now years later, I've taken his accounts, adding background details from friends and family, to create a memoir of hope, love, and survival; a story of one man's life before, during, and after being confined within one of the most notorious of Nazi camps. 20% of the profits from each book sold will be donated to the national Alzheimer's Association, in memory of Frank Carollo.

Foreword by Dan Snow. Ten holders of the Victoria Cross, the highest British military honour - for 'valour in the face of the enemy' - are associated with the Borough of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK. They include the very first VC to be awarded (in the Crimea, 1856).

The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War - organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place - 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a camp in Maribor, in present-day Slovenia. The escape was organized not by officers, but by two ordinary soldiers: Australian Ralph Churches (a bank clerk before the war) and Londoner Les Laws (a jazz pianist by profession), with the help of intelligence officer Franklin Lindsay. The American was on a mission to work with the partisans who moved like ghosts through the Alps, ambushing and evading Nazi forces. How these three men came together - along with the partisans - to plan and execute the escape is told here for the first time. The Greatest Escape, written by Ralph Churches' son Neil, takes us from Ralph and Les's capture in Greece in 1941 and their brutal journey to Maribor, with many POWs dying along the way, to the horror of seeing Russian prisoners starved to death in the camp. The book uncovers the hidden story of Allied intelligence operations in Slovenia, and shows how Ralph became involved. We follow the escapees on a nail-biting 160-mile journey across the Alps, pursued by German soldiers, ambushed and betrayed. And yet, of the 106 men who escaped, 100 made it to safety. Thanks to research across seven countries, The Greatest Escape is no longer a secret. It is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of the last century.

This adventure story is also the biography of Heinrich Harrer, already a famous mountaineer and Olympic ski champion when he was caught by the outbreak of the World War II while climbing in the Himalayas.;Being an Austrian he was interned in India but succeeded in escaping into Tibet. After a series of experiences in a country never before crossed by a Westerner he reached the forbidden city of Lhasa. He stayed there for seven years, learned the language and acquired an understanding of Tibet and the Tibetans.;He became the friend and tutor of the young Dalai Lama and finally accompanied him into India when he was put to flight by the Red Chinese invasion.;As a mountaineer Heinrich Harrer was a member of the party which successfully ascended the North Wall of the Eiger in 1938.

Mention female spies, and most people think of Mata Hari. But during the Roaring Twenties, Marguerite Harrison and Stan Harding were the cause celebre: two beautiful, accomplished women whose names were splashed across newspapers around the world. Almost a century later, it is easy to understand the fascination with these two remarkable women. Marguerite was a highly respectable and recently widowed American journalist and socialite from Baltimore; Stan was a runaway, a bohemian artist and dancer of British heritage who left her wealthy, religious family to make a life for herself in the expatriate community in Florence. The two women were very different, yet both were strong-willed, independent and highly ambitious women unafraid of taking risks. And both, as the Great War ended and Central Europe dissolved into violent chaos, were looking for adventure. Their paths first crossed in war-ravaged Berlin during the Armistice and the the Spartacist Uprising in 1919. Fellow travellers, they became friends and, the evidence suggests, lovers. Dodging bullets and interviewing colourful characters in war-torn Europe led these intrepid women, separately, to Bolshevik Russia, a country closed to outsiders since the October Revolution of 1917. Their fateful meeting had repercussions that spanned three decades, involving heads of state and politicians in Britain, the United States and Soviet Russia. The Lady is a Spy tells their forgotten story: that of two women who, far in advance of their time, worked as foreign correspondents, who operated as spies in dangerous shadowlands of international politics, and who were both imprisoned in Lubyanka, one of the most desperate places on earth. Their lives are reconstructed through numerous primary sources, not only the poems, diaries and letters of their friends and lovers, but also government documents (including newly declassified US State Department papers) that reveal the truth about their espionage careers and - in one case - evidence of a shocking betrayal.

Uit die aard van hul hoogs geheime werk heers groot geheimsinnigheid oor die Recce's, maar nou het een van hulle - Koos Stadler - sy ervarings neergepen. Die boek bied 'n onthullende blik op die lewe van 'n Recce, op hul amper bomenslike fisieke vermoens en kameraderie. Verwag naelbyt-aksie en dramatiese verhale.

What are the hidden factors that motivate armies to prevail and conquer against all the odds? What is it that encourages soldiers to perform unbelievable acts of courage even when the odds against them look overwhelming? The words of inspired leaders and generals are often the key factor. Sometimes it is just the soldier on ground who sums up the situation best. It would seem that the day of the set-piece conventional battle is over. For centuries their format changed little. Even if this scenario has now changed, the need for leaders to communicate in times of adversity has not. Words of War covers an immense breadth - from Ancient Greece, Alexander the Great, mediaeval battles, the American Civil War, the two World Wars through to 21st century conflicts. Words of War highlights the fascinating contrasts in style and content of military and political leaders (most absorbing of all are the extraordinary differences, and also some of the similarities it has to be said, between the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and German leader Adolf Hitler during WWII). Interspersed with the longer speeches are brief quotes, insightful one-liners and the light-hearted look at conflict. All throw some light onto what words drive heroic deeds in the face of adversity.

On retirement from an unusual military career Howard Leedham settled in the USA with his American wife and successfully flew executive jets until...He was recruited in 2003 by the US State Department's Airwing (which operates an international fleet of aircraft engaged in counter-terrorism and anti-narcotics operations). Despite being British, the author had the unusual skills they required. Howard's specific brief was to activate a fleet of anti-terrorist helicopters given to the Pakistan armed forces but which had been embargoed and never properly used. This was easier said than done. Howard had to win over opposition from inside the State Department and in particular from their Islamabad Embassy, and also dispel the suspicions of the Pakistani Armed Forces. The helicopters were released and brought up to the high standard of mechanical and operational maintenance required - no mean achievement in itself. Despite finding doors closed to senior Pakistani officers and being constantly told that the appropriate general was much too busy to see him, Howard made his mark by offering to stand outside the general's toilet door and tell him about his plans! This tactic worked, he had his meeting (not in the toilet) and he was given command of twenty-five Pathan soldiers to train in Special Forces tactics and helicopter skills. Next he had to win his soldiers' confidence. Howard did this with great success and he was given a further 25 Pathans. They became an amazingly loyal team and the book describes in detail several very successful discreet operations; and the occasional failure or withdrawn patrol - often because of leaked information. Howard had to do all this while under great personal threat. How could he tell who was a friend and who was a foe - even among his own troops? His ultimate success in anti-terrorist operations can be measured by two factors: o The US State Department, with Congressional and Embassy approval, allocated more helicopters. o His farewell party in a desert tent for just his Pathans and his helicopter crews had over 1,500 soldiers guarding the perimeter. All this came at a personal price - on completing his mission Howard's marriage broke up and he was nearly killed by a bomb on a subsequent visit to Islamabad.