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Books > Fiction > True stories > War / combat / elite forces > General
A hard-hitting history of the U.S. airborne unit who made a name for themselves in the unforgiving jungles of South Vietnam. "It was easier killing than living." Third Battalion 506th Airborne veteran Drawing on interviews with veterans, many of whom have never gone on the record before, Ian Gardner follows up his epic trilogy about the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II with the story of the unit's reactivation at the height of the Vietnam War. This is the dramatic history of a band of brothers who served together in Vietnam and who against the odds lived up to the reputation of their World War II forefathers. Brigadier General Salve Matheson's idea was to create an 800-strong battalion of airborne volunteers in the same legendary "Currahee" spirit that had defined the volunteers of 1942. The man he chose to lead them was John Geraci, who would mold this young brotherhood into a highly cohesive and motivated force. In December 1967, the battalion was sent into the Central Highlands of Lam Dong Province. Geraci and his men began their Search and Destroy patrols, which coincided with the North Vietnamese build-up to the Tet Offensive and was a brutal introduction to the reality of a dirty, bloody war. Gardner reveals how it was here that the tenacious volunteers made their mark, just like their predecessors had done in Normandy, and the battalion was ultimately awarded a Valorous Unit Citation. This book shows how and why this unit was deserving of that award, recounting their daily sanguinary struggle in the face of a hostile environment and a determined enemy. Through countless interviews and rare personal photographs, Sign Here for Sacrifice shows the action, leadership, humor and bravery displayed by these airborne warriors.
**DAILY MAIL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2019** **SUNDAY TELEGRAPH CHRISTMAS BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2019** 'So blissfully good that I'd give it to a reader of any age . . . deeply touching, unforgettable family memoir' ALLISON PEARSON, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Uplifting and enlightening . . . Venning has a good eye for what makes the Walker story both unique and universal . . . Thrilling' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Superb . . . With its sweeping narrative, readable style, sense of humanity and breadth of research, the saga casts a highly personal light on some of the most significant episodes of [the Second World War]' DAILY EXPRESS 'A heart-pounding narrative that feels fresh . . . this marvellous book also depicts a world that was soon to vanish' DAILY MAIL 'A moving book . . . This account of one family's experience takes us to hidden crannies of the war that more official accounts might not bother with . . . Once read, never forgotten' THE TIMES 'A sensationally good book . . . I see reflections of my own family, and beyond them, like those mirrors tilted slightly into infinity, I can see literally miles of others lined up, inexorably linked forever by a shared experience . . . this is an exceptional book and should be required reading in modern history classes' JOANNA LUMLEY 'An extraordinary, compelling picture of a family entwined in the Second World War . . . at turns funny, sad, redemptive and tragic. Fabulous' JAMES HOLLAND 'A loving tribute . . . Brimming with anecdote and rich in fascinating detail' KEGGIE CAREW ~ How would it feel if all your sons and daughters were caught up in war? What would it be like to spend six years fearing what a telegram might bring? That was the heart-wrenching reality faced by so many families throughout the Second World War, including the parents of the Walker children. From the Blitz to the battlefields of Europe and the Far East, this is the remarkable story of four brothers and two sisters who were swept along by the momentous events of the war. Harold was a surgeon in a London hospital alongside his sister Ruth, a nurse, when the bombs began to fall in 1940. Peter was captured in the fall of Singapore. Edward fought the Germans in Italy, and Walter the Japanese in Burma, while in London, glamorous Bee hoped for lasting happiness with an American airman. In To War With the Walkers, Annabel Venning, Walter's granddaughter, tells the enthralling and moving tales of her relatives, six ordinary young men and women, who each faced an extraordinary struggle for survival.
November 1950, the Korean Peninsula: After General MacArthur ignores Mao's warnings and pushes his UN forces deep into North Korea, his ten thousand First Division marines find themselves surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by one hundred thousand Chinese soldiers near the Chosin Reservoir. Their only chance for survival is to fight their way south through the Toktong Pass, a narrow gorge in the Nangnim Mountains. This choke point will need to be held open at all costs. The mission is handed to Captain William Barber and the 236 men of Fox Company, a courageous but undermanned unit of the Seventh Marine Regiment. Barber and his men are ordered to climb seven miles of frozen terrain to a rocky promontory overlooking the pass, where they will endure four days and five nights of nearly continuous Chinese attempts to take Fox Hill. Amid the relentless violence, three-quarters of Fox's marines are killed, wounded, or captured. Just when it looks like the outfit will be overrun, Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Davis, a fearless marine officer who is fighting south from the Chosin, volunteers to lead a daring mission that will seek to cut a hole in the Chinese lines and relieve the men of Fox Company. The Last Stand of Fox Company is a fast-paced and gripping account of heroism and self-sacrifice in the face of impossible odds. The authors have conducted dozens of first-hand interviews with the battle's survivors, and they narrate the story with the immediacy of classic accounts of a single battle like Guadalcanal Diary, Pork Chop Hill, and Black Hawk Down.
Carve Her Name With Pride is the inspiring story of the half-French Violette Szabo who was born in Paris Iin 1921 to an English motor-car dealer, and a French Mother. She met and married Etienne Szabo, a Captain in the French Foreign Legion in 1940. Shortly after the birth of her daughter, Tania, her husband died at El Alamein. She became a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and was recruited into the SOE and underwent secret agent training. Her first trip to France was completed successfully even though she was arrested and then released by the French Police. On June 7th, 1944, Szabo was parachuted into Limoges. Her task was to co-ordinate the work of the French Resistance in the area in the first days after D-Day. She was captured by the SS 'Das Reich' Panzer Division and handed over to the Gestapo in Paris for interrogation. From Paris, Violette Szabo was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp where she was executed in January 1945. She was only 23 and for her courage was posthumously awarded The George Cross and the Croix de Guerre.
A Times Political Book of the Year 2022 A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war's echoing legacy. Elliot Ackerman left the American military ten years ago, but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and, later, as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indelibly. When the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August of 2021 and the Afghan regime began its death spiral, he found himself pulled back into the conflict. The official evacuation process was a bureaucratic failure that led to a humanitarian catastrophe. Ackerman was drawn into an impromptu effort to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds. These were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to America's longest war, but the success they achieved afforded a degree of redemption: and, for Ackerman, a chance to reconcile his past with his present. The Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week at its bitter end. Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice, Ackerman weaves in a personal history of the war's long progress, beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9/11. It is a play in five acts with a tragic denouement. Any reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the war's trajectory will find a trenchant accounting here. And yet The Fifth Act is not an exercise in finger-pointing: it brings readers into close contact with a remarkable group of characters, who fought the war with courage and dedication, in good faith and at great personal cost. Understanding combatants' experiences and sacrifices demands reservoirs of wisdom and the gifts of an extraordinary storyteller. In Elliot Ackerman, this story has found that author.The Fifth Act is a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic.
'Powerful . A humbling and important first-hand account of a brutal civil war in which as many as 500,000 people have died' Guardian 'A memoir of resistance and survival unique in the annals of modern war . If the shedding of blood can be beautiful in words, he makes it so' Wall Street Journal Born to Palestinian refugees, Kassem Eid grew up in the small town of Moadamiya on the outskirts of the ancient city of Damascus, playing in streets perfumed with jasmine. But it didn't take long for Kassem to realise that he was treated differently at school because of his family's resistance to the brutal government regime. When Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father in 2000, hopes that things might change for the better were swiftly crushed. When the 2011 Arab Spring protests in Syria were met with extreme violence, it was yet another blow - and as Kassem reached young adulthood, the country spiralled into civil war. Then, on 21 August 2013, Kassem nearly died in a sarin gas attack that killed hundreds of civilians. Later that day, he would pick up a gun for the first time, to join the Free Syrian Army as they fought government forces. For Kassem, this marked the moment that he and his country changed forever - even as the rest of the world turned its face away.
Austerlitz is W. G. Sebald's haunting novel of post-war Europe. In 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a Kindertransport and placed with foster parents. This childless couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity and he grows up ignorant of his past. Later in life, after a career as an architectural historian, Austerlitz - having avoided all clues that might point to his origin - finds the past returning to haunt him and he is forced to explore what happened fifty years before. Austerlitz is W.G. Sebald's melancholic masterpiece. 'Mesmeric, haunting and heartbreakingly tragic. Simply no other writer is writing or thinking on the same level as Sebald' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times 'Greatness in literature is still possible' John Banville, Irish Times, Books of the Year 'A work of obvious genius' Literary Review 'A fusion of the mystical and the solid ... His art is a form of justice - there can be, I think, no higher aim' Evening Standard 'Spellbindingly accomplished; a work of art' The Times Literary Supplement 'I have never read a book that provides such a powerful account of the devastation wrought by the dispersal of the Jews from Prague and their treatment by the Nazis' Observer 'A great book by a great writer' Boyd Tonkin, Independent W . G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgau, Germany, in 1944 and died in December 2001. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo, Unrecounted, A Place in the Country. His selected poetry is published in a volume called Across the Land and the Water.
President Trump's last secretary of defense shares harrowing stories of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, gives an insider look at the tumultuous final days of the Trump administration, and issues a stark warning about the readiness of the military under President Biden.If you know one thing about Chris Miller, it's that he was President Donald Trump's final Secretary of Defense, elevated to that position in the days after the 2020 election. If you know a second thing about Chris Miller, it's that he oversaw the U.S. Armed Forces during one of the most controversial and tumultuous periods the military has experienced in decades, culminating in the shocking events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Yet Chris Miller is no political partisan. On the contrary, Miller has spent his adult life in the crosshairs of America's most dangerous enemies--from Middle Eastern deserts to the bowels of U.S. intelligence agencies--and emerged as one of the leading national security minds of his generation.Needless to say, Chris Miller has stories to tell. In Soldier Secretary, he reveals for the first time everything he saw--in a book that is candid, thought-provoking, and like that of no Secretary of Defense before him. This book is not just the inside story of what happened during the Trump administration--it's the inside story of what happened to America, its military, and its institutions during the two decades after September 11, 2001.Part badass, part iconoclast, Miller is an irreverent, heterodox, and always-fascinating thinker whose personal journey through war and the White House has led him to some shocking conclusions about the state of American power in 2021. With a perspective that will surprise and interest both Republicans and Democrats, Miller argues for a radical rethinking of U.S. national security strategy unlike anything since the creation of the joint armed forces in the 1980s. He offers a roadmap for how the United States can win in the era of unrestricted warfare by shedding the bloated defense bureaucracy, bringing American forces home from endless conflicts, renewing our national unity, and beating China at its own game. Miller is a true American warrior whose incredible journey from Iowa to Afghanistan to Iraq to the White House endeared him to the troops, prepared him for the unprecedented crisis of January 6, and left him deeply concerned about the future of our military and the future of our nation.
Paul Bruce was a tough, idealistic young trooper in the SAS when he was dispatched to Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles. His top secret mission was to execute IRA suspects in cold blood. Bruce and his SAS comrades shot down one terrified victim after another, leaving their bodies to be buried in deep, unmarked woodland graves. In this historic book, the author reveals where his victims lie secretly buried as well as chronicling the mental breakdown of crack SAS troops ordered to carry out the dirtiest job in a secret war.
This book examines representations of war throughout American literary history, providing a firm grounding in established criticism and opening up new lines of inquiry. Readers will find accessible yet sophisticated essays that lay out key questions and scholarship in the field. War and American Literature provides a comprehensive synthesis of the literature and scholarship of US war writing, illuminates how themes, texts, and authors resonate across time and wars, and provides multiple contexts in which texts and a war's literature can be framed. By focusing on American war writing, from the wars with the Native Americans and the Revolutionary War to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this volume illuminates the unique role representations of war have in the US imagination.
'Highly readable . . . an intimate and varied account of fascinating stories of people at war' History of War War Stories is a fascinating account of ordinary men and women swept up in the turbulence of war. These are the stories - many untold until now - of thirty-four individuals who have pushed the boundaries of love, bravery, suffering and terror beyond the imaginable. They span three centuries and five continents. There is the courage of Edward Seager who survived the Charge of the Light Brigade; the cunning of Krystyna Skarbek, quick-thinking spy and saboteur during the Second World War; the skullduggery of Benedict Arnold, who switched sides in the American War of Independence and the compassion of Magdalene de Lancey who tenderly nursed her dying husband at Waterloo. Told with vivid narrative flair and full of unexpected insights, War Stories moves effortlessly from tales of spies, escapes and innovation to uplifting acts of humanity, celebrating men and women whose wartime experiences are beyond compare.
Generation Kill is about the young men sent to fight their nation's first open-ended war since Vietnam. Despite the flurry of media images to come of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you have never really met any of these people, who serve as front-line troops. For whatever reason, the media simply doesn't get them. As we all know, news accounts of the last two wars focused almost exclusively on battlefield imagery of high-tech weapons wreaking astounding destruction, comply with analysis from retired army grandees and other experts, punctuated by the odd heart-warming patriotic sound-bite. The troops themselves play a role in the media's presentation of recent wars rather like extras in The Triumph of the Will. They are everywhere yet somehow invisible. When they speak you get the sense that what they are saying has been carefully scripted. Now Generation Kill tells the soldiers' story in their own words. The narrative focuses on a platoon of 23 marines, many of them veterans of Afghanistan, whose elite reconnaissance unit spearheaded the blitzkrieg on Iraq. This is the story of young men that have been trained to become ruthless killers. It's about surviving death. It's about taking part in a war many questioned before it even began. Evan Wright was the only reporter with First Recon, which operated well ahead of most other forces, usually behind enemy lines. They were among the first marines sent into the fight and one of the last units still engaged on the outskirts of Iraq, even after the city centre fell. Generation Kill is not just a combat chronicle but an inside look at how people fighting in war actually experience it. It is both an action narrative like Black Hawk Down and a detailed portrait of a generation at war along the lines of Band of Brothers. It is not a book you are going to forget in a hurry...
'Combines elements of In Cold Blood and Black Hawk Down with Apocalypse Now as it builds towards its terrible climax...Extraordinary' New York Times Iraq's 'Triangle of Death', 2005. A platoon of young soldiers from a U.S. regiment known as 'the Black Heart Brigade' is deployed to a lawless and hyperviolent area just south of Baghdad. Almost immediately, the attacks begin: every day another roadside bomb, another colleague blown to pieces. As the daily violence chips away, and chips away at their sanity, the thirty-five young men of 1st Platoon, Bravo Company descend into a tailspin of poor discipline, substance abuse, and brutality -- with tragic results. Black Hearts is a timeless true story of how modern warfare can make or break a man's character. Told with severe compassion, balanced judgement and the magnetic pace of a thriller, it looks set to become one of the defining books about the Iraq War. 'Black Hearts is the obverse of Band of Brothers, a story not of combat unity but of disharmony and disarray' Chicago Sun-Times 'A riveting picture of life outside the wire in Iraq, where "you tell a guy to go across a bridge, and within five minutes he's dead."' Kirkus Reviews (starred)
Deep in the Congo's Garamba National Park in the dead of night, Joseph Kony - the notorious warlord wanted by the International Criminal Court - made a shocking admission. Loosened by home-made wine, exposing a vulnerability he could never show the world, Kony looked George Omona in the eye, 'You need to know that if I had a choice I would not be doing this ... I wish I could be a man of books, like you.' Three years earlier George was expelled from one of Uganda's best schools, just weeks before he was due to graduate with exemplary grades, destroying his dreams of becoming a teacher. In desperation, his uncle found him a role in Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). George's education and fluent command of English allowed him to rapidly rise through the ranks, eventually becoming one of Kony's bodyguards, before he finally made his escape. George's story - based on many hours of interviews with acknowledged LRA expert Ledio Cakaj - provides a vivid, personal and fascinating insight into the inner workings of the LRA, and the mind of Kony, its self-appointed prophet.
A Few Bad Men is the incredible true story of an elite team of U.S. Marines set up to take the fall for Afghanistan war crimes they did not commit-and their leader who fought for the redemption of his men. Ambushed in Afghanistan and betrayed by their own leaders-these elite Marines fought for their lives again, back home. A cross between A Few Good Men and American Sniper, this is the true story of an elite Marine special operations unit bombed by an IED and shot at during an Afghanistan ambush. The Marine Commandos were falsely accused of gunning down innocent Afghan civilians following the ambush. The unit's leader, Maj. Fred Galvin, was summarily relieved of duty and his unit was booted from the combat zone. They were condemned by everyone, from the Afghan president to American generals. When Fox Company returned to America, Galvin and his captain were the targets of the first Court of Inquiry in the Marines in fifty years. "Fred Galvin is the real deal. His dramatic retelling of his experience as commander of Fox Company reads like a thriller, full of twists and turns, filled with unassuming heroes and deceitful villains." - Rob Lorenz, Producer/Director, American Sniper, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, Mystic River, The Marksman "Fred Galvin has written a real 'page turner' that demonstrates how politics permeates The Pentagon and posts abroad...I highly recommend this book." - J.D. Hayworth, U.S. House of Representatives (Arizona), TV/Radio Host "This book is a must-read for every American who wants to know why, after twenty long years in Afghanistan, we did not win." - Jessie Jane Duff, USMC, Analyst, CNN and FOX "A Few Bad Men is a must-read story of valor, betrayal, and keeping the Marines' honor clean." - Jed Babbin, USAF Judge Advocate, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Journalist, National Review, Washington Post "An incredible account and history of the fighting spirit of the 'Marine Raiders' under fire and the relentless fourteen-year campaign by their leader to clear their names." - Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, U.S. Army (Ret.), Deputy Commander, U.S. Pacific Command
September 1940: In the midst of the Second World War, The Luftwaffe unleashed a series of devastating raids on Southampton, all but destroying its Spitfire factories. But production didn't stop. Instead, manufacturing of this iconic fighter moved underground, to secret locations staffed by women, children and non-combatant men. With little engineering experience between them, they built a fleet of one of the greatest war planes that has ever existed. This is their story.
A heart-breaking and moving story of love and sacrifice, set against the backdrop of the Blitz. Inspired by true events, and perfect for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Dear Mrs Bird *** Is love strong enough to survive a war? September 1940. As enemy fighter planes blacken the sky, Susan Shepherd finds comfort at her home in Epping Forest, where she and her grandfather raise homing pigeons. Of all Susan's birds, it's Duchess who is the most extraordinary, and the two share a special bond. Thousands of miles away, Ollie Evans, a young American pilot decides to travel to Britain to join the Royal Air Force. But Ollie doesn't expect his quest to bring him instead to the National Pigeon Service - a covert new operation involving homing pigeons - and to Susan. The National Pigeon Service has a dangerous mission to air-drop hundreds of pigeons into German-occupied France. Despite their growing friendship Ollie and Susan must soon be parted - but will Duchess's devotion and sense of duty prove to be an unexpected lifeline between them? Based on true events, The Long Flight Home is an uplifting and timeless wartime novel, that reminds us how, in times of hardship, hope is never truly lost.
In 1973, Sandy Sanderson attended School of Infantry in Gwelo, in what was then central Rhodesia, for officer training. Now, more than 40 years on, he has written a book based on the diary he kept. The result is a frank, detailed and sometimes humorous account of the training as it happened. The book will be intriguing to people from all parts of the world with an interest in the military. In June 1977, Time magazine commented, "Man for man, the Rhodesian Army ranks amongst the world's finest fighting units". If this were true the training must surely have contributed. Recruits were trained by some of the toughest and most experienced military instructors in the world, all of whom possessed a varied, if profane, vocabulary. As Sandy put it, "Any Rhodesian drill instructor could string a sentence together consisting entirely of expletives, apart from the odd indefinite article, and make perfect sense". In spite of this they were hugely respected and their expertise undoubtedly saved many lives.
From one of Bosnia's most prominent poets and writers: spare and haunting stories and poems that were written under the horrific circumstances of the recent war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Semezdin Mehmedinovic remained a citizen of Sarajevo throughout the Serbian nationalists' siege and was active throughout the war in the city's resistance movement, as one of the editor's of the magazine Phantom of Liberty. Sarajevo Blues was originally published at the end of 1992 and was the first book in the Biblioteka "egzil-abc" series, published in Ljubljana, which provided a forum for Bosnian writers and translators under siege or living in exile. Semezdin Mehmedinovic says that "writing is, finally, quite a personal thing that doesn't make much sense unless you are practicing for the last word." For those Bosnians emerging from the siege or still in exile, these "last words" remain intimate possessions, one of the last bastions left against the commodification of tragedy.
The author of this memoir of escape from Nazi occupied Europe was Carina Birman (1895-1996), the Conseil Juridique at the Austrian Embassy in Paris between 1926 and 1938. It tells of her escape with her friend Sophie Lippmann (1885-1975) over the Pyrenees through Spain and Portugal and eventually to New York.
The must-read thriller inspired by the true story of Nancy Wake, whose husband was kidnapped by the Nazis and became the most decorated servicewoman of the Second World War - soon to be a major blockbuster film. To the Allies she was a fearless freedom fighter, special operations super spy, a woman ahead of her time. To the Gestapo she was a ghost, a shadow, the most wanted person in the world with a five-million-Franc bounty on her head. Her name was Nancy Wake. Now, for the first time, the roots of her legend are told in a thriller about one woman's incredible quest to turn the tide of the war, save the man she loves and take brutal revenge on those who have wronged her.
In Bonzo's War, Clare Campbell told the fascinating story of what it was like for Britain's pets when the world was at war. This time, she follows the incredible journey of the dogs who conscripted to fight for their country, with some even returning with medals for their bravery. During the most dangerous days of the Second World War, the British government set out to recruit an army of canines - a 'Guard Dog Unit'. This experimental team of brave hounds would later use their incredible sense of smell to sniff out the anti-personnel mines that barred the way to reclaiming Europe. Dog owners countrywide shed tears as they bid farewell to their beloved 'Brian', 'Rex', or 'Molly' and packed them off to the War Dogs Training School to learn the skills they'd need to 'do their bit for Britain' on the very frontiers of the Third Reich. The soldiers waiting out in the field to greet their canine counterparts were under strict instructions: do not get too attached to your new four-legged companion. That bit proved disastrously impossible. Based on original documents, first-hand accounts and interviews, Dogs of Courage tells a story of human determination, heartbreak and uncompromising canine courage that has never been told before.
In July 2009, Geraint (Gez) Jones was sitting in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan with the rest of The Firm – Danny, Jay, Toby and Jake, his four closest friends, all junior NCOs and combat-hardened infantrymen. Thanks to the mangled remains of a Jackal vehicle left tactlessly outside their tent, IEDs were never far from their mind. Within days they’d be on the ground in Musa Qala with the rest of 3 Platoon – a mixed bunch of men Gez would die for. As they fight furiously, are pushed to their limits, hemmed in by IEDs and hampered by the chain of command, Gez starts to wonder what is the point of it all. The bombs they uncover on patrol, on their stomachs brushing the sand away, are replaced the next day. Firefights are a momentary victory in a war they can see is unwinnable. Gez is a warrior – he wants more than this. But then death and injury start to take their toll on The Firm, leaving Gez with PTSD and a new battle just beginning.
In one of the world's most intractable and under-reported rebellions, the Naxalites have been engaged in a decades-long battle with the Indian state. Presented in the media as a deadly terrorist group, the movement is made up of Marxist ideologues and lower-caste and tribal combatants who seek to overthrow a system that has abused them. In 2010, anthropologist Alpa Shah embarked on a seven-night trek with some of these communist guerrillas, walking 250 kilometres through the dense, hilly forests of eastern India. Speaking to leaders and living for years with villagers in guerrilla strongholds, Shah seeks to understand how and why some of India's poor have shunned the world's largest democracy and taken up arms to fight for a fairer society--and asks whether they might be undermining their own aims. Nightmarch is a compelling reflection on dispossession and conflict at the heart of contemporary India. SHORT-LISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING, 2019 SHORT-LISTED FOR THE NEW INDIA FOUNDATION BOOK PRIZE, 2019 WINNER OF THE 2020 ASSOCIATION FOR POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY BOOK PRIZE A 2018 New Statesman Book of the Year
Codebreaker in the Far East is the first book to describe how Bletchley Park and its Indian and Far Eastern outposts broke a series of Japanese codes and cipher systems of dazzling variety and complexity. Alan Stripp gives his first-hand account of the excitement of reading the enemy's mind, of working against the clock, hampered by one of the world's most daunting languages and the knowledge that they were facing an unyielding and resourceful enemy who had never known defeat. |
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