Against the frightening backdrop of World War II, a young Scottish woman took ten children by ship through the waters of the Atlantic from Scotland to South Africa, where she set up a home for them called Bairnshaven. An unusual portrayal of motherhood, nuclear family and love, Marjorie's story comes to life through diary pages, letters, telegrams and photographs. This true story is a fresh take on the role that women played during the war, highlighting the strength and courage shown, and focusing on hope and unconditional kindness.

An award-winning military journalist tells the amazing stories of twenty-five soldiers who've won the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award. In the Company of Heroes will feature in-depth narrative profiles of the twenty-five post-9/11 Medal of Honor awardees who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. This book will focus on the stories of these extraordinary people, expressed in their own voices through one-on-one interviews, and in the case of posthumous awards, through interviews with their brothers in arms and their families. The public affairs offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the individual armed services, as well as the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, have expressed their support for this project. Stories include Marine Corps Corporal William "Kyle" Carpenter, who purposely lunged toward a Taliban hand grenade in order to shield his buddy from the blast; Navy SEAL team leader Britt Slabinski, who, after being ambushed and retreating in the Hindu Kush, returned against monumental odds in order to try to save one of his team who was inadvertently lost in the fight; and Ranger Staff Sergeant Leroy Petry, who lunged for a live grenade, threw it back at the enemy, and saved his two Ranger brothers.

The Vietnam War was one of the most painful and divisive events in American history. The conflict, which ultimately took the lives of 58,000 Americans and more than three million Vietnamese, became a subject of bitter and impassioned debate. The most dramatic--and frequently the most enduring--efforts to define and articulate America's ill-fated involvement in Vietnam emerged from popular culture. American journalists, novelists, playwrights, poets, songwriters, and filmmakers--many of them eyewitnesses--have created powerful, heartfelt works documenting their thoughts and beliefs about the war. By examining those works, this book provides readers with a fascinating resource that explores America's ongoing struggle to assess the war and its legacies.

This encyclopedia includes 44 essays, each providing detailed information on an important film, song, or literary work about Vietnam. Each essay provides insights into the Vietnam-era experiences and views of the work's primary creative force, historical background on issues or events addressed in the work, discussion of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the work, and sources for further information. This book also includes an appendix listing of more than 275 films, songs, and literary works dealing with the war.

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.

An Irish Times book of the year 2022 A powerful, probing book about PTSD. As a journalist Keane has covered conflict and brutality across the world for more than thirty years, from Rwanda, Sudan, South Africa, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and many more. Driven by an irresistible compulsion to be where the night is darkest, he made a name for reporting with humanity and empathy from places where death and serious injury were not abstractions, and tragedy often just a moment's bad luck away. But all this time he struggled not to be overwhelmed by another story, his acute 'complex post-traumatic stress disorder', a condition arising from exposure to multiple instances of trauma experienced over a long period. This condition has caused him to suffer a number of mental breakdowns and hospitalisations. Despite this, and countless promises to do otherwise, he has gone back to the wars again and again. Why? In this powerful and intensely personal book, Keane interrogates what it is that draws him to the wars, what keeps him there and offers a reckoning of the damage done. PTSD affects people from all walks of life. Trauma can be found in many places, not just war. Keane's book speaks to the struggle of all who are trying to recover from injury, addiction and mental breakdown. It is a survivor's story drawn from lived experience, told with honesty, courage and an open heart.

A profound rumination on the concept of freedom from the bestselling author of The Perfect Storm 'Sebastian Junger bears witness to a hard-won and an uncertain new world, framed in vital and brilliant prose: a true and honest accounting of everything that underlies the frantic performance of life' Philip Hoare, author of Albert and the Whale Throughout history, humans have been driven by the quest for two cherished ideals: community and freedom. The two don't coexist easily: we value individuality and self-reliance, yet are utterly dependent on community for our most basic needs. In this intricately crafted and thought-provoking book, Sebastian Junger examines this tension that lies at the heart of what it means to be human. For much of a year, Junger and three friends-a conflict photographer and two Afghan war vets-walked the railroad lines of the east coast. It was an experiment in personal autonomy, but also in interdependence. Dodging railroad cops, sleeping under bridges, cooking over fires and drinking from creeks and rivers, the four men forged a unique reliance on one another. In Freedom, Junger weaves his account of this journey together with primatology and boxing strategy, the role of women in resistance movements and apache renegrades, and the brutal reality of life on the Pennsylvania frontier. Written in exquisite, razor-sharp prose, the result is a powerful examination of the primary desire that defines us.

Two years ago, when she was thirty years old, Anne Nivat decided to see first-hand what war was all about. Russia had just launched its second brutal campaign against Chechnya. And though the Russians strictly forbade Westerners from covering the war, the aspiring French journalist decided she would go.
There are two very real dangers in Chechnya: being arrested by the Russians and being kidnapped by the Chechens. Nivat strapped her satellite phone to her belly, disguised herself in the garb of a Chechen peasant, and sneaked across the border. She found a young guide, Islam, to lead her illegally through the war zone. For six months they followed the war, travelling with underground rebels and sleeping with Chechen families or in abandoned buildings. Anne trembled through air raids; walked through abandoned killing fields; and helped in the halls of bloody hospitals. She interviewed rebel leaders, government officials, young widows, and angry fighters, and she reported everything back to France. Her reports in "Liberation" led to antiwar demonstrations outside the Russian embassy in Paris.
Anne's words move. They are not florid, but terse, cool, dramatic. More than just a war correspondent's report, Chienne de Guerre is a moving story of struggle and self-discovery--the adventures of one young woman who repeatedly tests her own physical and psychological limits in the extremely dangerous and stressful environment of war.

In 2018 Captain Louis Rudd MBE walked into the history books when he finished a solo, unsupported crossing of Antarctica, pulling a 130 kg sledge laden with his supplies for more than 900 miles. Louis’ skills had been honed in the SAS, on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but now – in the most hostile environment on earth – they would be tested like never before. Alone on the ice, Louis battled through whiteouts, 50 mph gales and temperatures of -30 degrees Celsius. It would take all his mental strength to survive.

In this gripping book Louis reveals how a thirst for adventure saw him join the Royal Marines at sixteen and then pass the SAS selection course at only twenty-two. He describes his first gruelling polar expedition with legendary explorer Lieutenant Colonel Henry Worsley in 2011 and the leadership challenges he faced a few years later when he led a team of Army Reservists across Antarctica. And he takes us with him step by painful step as he pushes himself to the limit, travelling alone on his epic and lonely trek across the continent’s treacherous ice fields and mountains.

With edge-of-the-seat storytelling, Endurance is an awe-inspiring account of courage and resilience by a remarkable man.

'A darkly entertaining tale about American espionage, set in an era when Washington's fear and skepticism about the agency resembles our climate today.' New York Times At the end of World War II, the United States dominated the world militarily, economically, and in moral standing - seen as the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear - to some - that the Soviet Union was already executing a plan to expand and foment revolution around the world. The American government's strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly-formed CIA. The Quiet Americans chronicles the exploits of four spies - Michael Burke, a charming former football star fallen on hard times, Frank Wisner, the scion of a wealthy Southern family, Peter Sichel, a sophisticated German Jew who escaped the Nazis, and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. The four ran covert operations across the globe, trying to outwit the ruthless KGB in Berlin, parachuting commandos into Eastern Europe, plotting coups, and directing wars against Communist insurgents in Asia. But time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination of stupidity and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government - and more profoundly, the decision to abandon American ideals. By the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union had a stranglehold on Eastern Europe, the US had begun its disastrous intervention in Vietnam, and America, the beacon of democracy, was overthrowing democratically elected governments and earning the hatred of much of the world. All of this culminated in an act of betrayal and cowardice that would lock the Cold War into place for decades to come. Anderson brings to the telling of this story all the narrative brio, deep research, sceptical eye, and lively prose that made Lawrence in Arabia a major international bestseller. The intertwined lives of these men began in a common purpose of defending freedom, but the ravages of the Cold War led them to different fates. Two would quit the CIA in despair, stricken by the moral compromises they had to make; one became the archetype of the duplicitous and destructive American spy; and one would be so heartbroken he would take his own life. Scott Anderson's The Quiet Americans is the story of these four men. It is also the story of how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world.

Soldier Magazine's Book of the Month Fascinating... Incredibly dangerous. The Times Gripping. Adrenalin fuelled true-life account with all the makings of a military thriller. The action unfolds like a Le Carre novel. Soldier Magazine 'Jihad isn't a war. It's an objective. An aberration. If there are young women with children, lost boys... If they are trapped in that hell and we can get them out, don't we have a duty to do so? Every person we can bring back is living proof that Islamic State is a failure.' Ex-British Army soldier John Carney was running a close protection operation for oil executives in Iraq when the family of a young Dutch woman asked him to extract her from the collapsing 'Islamic State' in Syria. Hearing first-hand about the naive young girls, many from the West, who'd been tricked, sexually abused and enslaved by ISIS, he knew only one thing - he had to get them out of that living hell. This is the incredible true story of how - armed with AK-47s and 9mm Glocks - Carney launched a daring, dangerous and deadly operation to free as many of them as he could. From 2016 to 2019, he led his small band of committed Kurdish freedom fighters into the heart of the Syrian lead storm. Backed by humanitarian NGOs, and feeding intel to MI6, Carney and his men went behind enemy lines to deliver the women and their children to the authorities, to deradicalization programmes and fair trials. Carney, a born soldier, was moved to action by the women's terrifying stories. He and his men risked their lives daily, not always making it safely home... Gripping, shocking and thought-provoking, Operation Jihadi Bride tackles the complex issue of the jihadi brides head on - an essential read for our troubled times.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2020 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2021 A Times and Sunday Times Best Book of 2020 'A wake-up call ... These women's stories will make you weep, and then rage at the world's indifference.' Amal Clooney From award-winning war reporter and co-author of I Am Malala, this is the first major account to address the scale of rape and sexual violence in modern conflict. Christina Lamb has worked in war and combat zones for over thirty years. In Our Bodies, Their Battlefield she gives voice to the women of conflicts, exposing how in today's warfare, rape is used by armies, terrorists and militias as a weapon to humiliate, oppress and carry out ethnic cleansing. Speaking to survivors first-hand, Lamb encounters the suffering and bravery of women in war and meets those fighting for justice. From Southeast Asia where 'comfort women' were enslaved by the Japanese during World War Two to the Rwandan genocide, when an estimated quarter of a million women were raped, to the Yazidi women and children of today who witnessed the mass murder of their families before being enslaved by ISIS. Along the way Lamb uncovers incredible stories of heroism and resistance, including the Bosnian women who have hunted down more than a hundred war criminals, the Aleppo beekeeper rescuing Yazidis and the Congolese doctor who has risked his life to treat more rape victims than anyone else on earth. Rape may be as old as war but it is a preventable crime. Bearing witness does not guarantee it won't happen again, but it can take away any excuse that the world simply didn't know.

From master storyteller Andy McNab, this is the opening book in an adventure-filled and action-packed new series telling, for the first time ever, the true stories of Special Forces missions. 'McNab's first major non-autobiographical work of non-fiction ... The operation is told like a novel [...] and it is as refreshingly informal and compellingly immediate as his other books' Daily Express 'Part history lesson, part military manual, part fixed-bayonets thriller. A must for Special Forces fans' The Sun It is the early 2000s and 9/11 is fresh in the world's memory. The Taliban have taken over Afghanistan, and armed militants and explosive devices are terrorising the people. And now a new threat is emerging in the country: suicide bombings, ordered by military commander of the Taliban, Mullah Dadullah. Special Forces are sent in to stop him. The Hunt is the thrilling story of the secret mission to catch Dadullah, one of the most dangerous men alive. Using classified sources and his unique insight into the way the SAS works, Andy McNab gives a page-turning account of what it took the Special Forces to find their target and what they would have to do to take him down. An explosive story of hostage negotiations, undercovers missions and a final, epic assault on Dadullah's compound that could leave only one side alive, The Hunt is a powerful retelling of a real-life Special Forces mission.

**As seen on BBC news** **As featured on BBC Radio 4: Today with Frank Gardner** 'In order to defeat your enemy, you must first understand them.' - Tamer Elnoury Tamer Elnoury, a long-time undercover agent, joined an elite counterterrorism unit after September 11. Its express purpose is to gain the trust of terrorists whose goals are to take out as many people in as public and devastating a way as possible. It's a furious race against the clock for Tamer and his unit to stop them before they can implement their plans. Yet as new as this war still is, the techniques are as old as time. Listen, record and prove terrorist intent. Due to his ongoing work for the FBI, Elnoury writes under a pseudonym. An Arabic-speaking Muslim American, a patriot, a hero. To many people, it will be a revelation that he and his team even exist, let alone the vital and dangerous work they do keeping all of us safe. It's no secret that federal agencies are waging a broad, global war against terror. Now, for the first time, an active, Muslim American federal agent reveals his experience infiltrating and bringing down a terror cell in North America.

Black Tulip is the dramatic story of history's top fighter ace, Luftwaffe pilot Erich Hartmann. It's also the story of how his service under Hitler was simplified and elevated to Western mythology during the Cold War. Over 1,404 wartime missions, Hartmann claimed a staggering 352 airborne kills, and his career contains all the dramas you would expect. There were the frostbitten fighter sweeps over the Eastern Front, drunken forays to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, a decade of imprisonment in the wretched Soviet POW camps, and further military service during the Cold War that ended with conflict and angst. Just when Hartmann’s second career was faltering, he was adopted by a network of writers and commentators personally invested in his welfare and reputation. These men, mostly Americans, published elaborate, celebratory stories about Hartmann and his elite fraternity of Luftwaffe pilots. With each dogfight tale put into print, Hartmann’s legacy became loftier and more secure, and his complicated service in support of Nazism faded away. A simplified, one-dimensional account of his life – devoid of the harder questions about allegiance and service under Hitler – has gone unchallenged for almost a generation. Black Tulip locates the ambiguous truth about Hartmann and so much of the German Wehrmacht in general: that many of these men were neither full-blown Nazis nor impeccable knights. They were complex, contradictory, and elusive. This book portrays a complex human rather than the heroic caricature we’re used to, and it argues that the tidy, polished hero stories we’ve inherited about men like Hartmann say as much about those who've crafted them as they do about the heroes themselves.

'Both inspiring and disturbing, Sex Cult Nun unravels Jones' complicated upbringing, the trauma she endured as a result and her eventual path to liberation.' TIME 'A moving story about family, courage, religious oppression, and more, and readers will have their heads spinning.' SHONDALAND 'Her gripping memoir-like Educated-takes you inside a disturbing childhood and leaves you marvelling at the resilience of the human spirit' PEOPLE MAGAZINE Faith Jones was raised to be part of an elite army preparing for the End Times. Isolated on a farm in Macau, she practised devotions and read letters of prophecy written by her grandfather, the leader of the now infamous cult, The Children of God. A direct decedent of the founding family, Faith featured in international media coverage - she was celebrated as extraordinary and then published doubly as a sharp reminder that she was not. With indomitable grit, Faith created a world of her own, pilfering books and educating herself in secret. At the age of 23, she escaped, abandoning her history, her inheritance and her legacy. While her childhood friends succumbed to addiction, suicide and prostitution, Faith fought her way into Georgetown University and went on to establish a successful career in law. Sex Cult Nun is an enthralling coming-of-age story that gives fascinating insight into the closed and complex world of extreme belief. Exploring the issues of psychological and physical control, Faith draws on her hard-won insight to interrogate the binaries of good and evil, and shed light on the insidiousness of oppression. At its heart, this extraordinary story is a stark warning about the consequences of surrendering our rights and responsibilities.

A haunting ode to those who paid the ultimate price-through the prism of the Maoist insurgency, Ashutosh Bhardwaj meditates on larger questions of violence and betrayal, love and obsession, and what it means to live with and write about death. From 2011 to 2015, Ashutosh lived in the Red Corridor in India wherein the Ultra-Left Naxalites, taking inspiration from the Russian revolution and Mao's tactics, work to overthrow the Indian government by the barrel of the gun. He made several trips thereafter reporting on the insurgents, on police and governmental atrocities, and on the lives caught in the crossfire. Ashutosh chronicles his experiences and bears witness to the lives and deaths of the unforgettable men and women he meets from both sides of the struggle, bringing home the human cost of conflict with astonishing power. Narrated in multiple voices, the book is a creative biography of the region, Dandakaranya, that combines the rigour of journalism, the intimacy of a diary, the musings of a travelogue, and the craft of a novel. The Death Script is one of the most significant works of non-fiction to be published in recent times, bringing often overlooked perspectives and events to light with empathy. Praised by India's topmost scholars and critics, the book has already won various awards.

A broadly interdisciplinary work, this handbook discusses the best and most enduring literature related to the major topics and themes of World War II. Military historiography is treated in essays on the major theaters of military operations and the related themes of logistics and intelligence, while political and diplomatic history is covered in chapters on international relations, resistance movements, and collaboration. The volume analyzes themes of domestic history in essays on economic mobilization, the home fronts, and women in the military and civilian life. The book also covers the Holocaust.

This handbook approaches each topic from a global viewpoint rather than focusing on individual national communities. Except for nonprint material, the literature, research, and sources surveyed are primarily those available in English. The volume is aimed at both experts on the war and the general academic community and will also be useful to students and serious laymen interested in the war.

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning history The Dead Hand comes the riveting story of a spy who cracked open the Soviet military research establishment and a penetrating portrait of the CIA's Moscow station, an outpost of daring espionage in the last years of the Cold War

While driving out of the American embassy in Moscow on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station heard a knock on his car window. A man on the curb handed him an envelope whose contents stunned U.S. intelligence: details of top-secret Soviet research and developments in military technology that were totally unknown to the United States. In the years that followed, the man, Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer in a Soviet military design bureau, used his high-level access to hand over tens of thousands of pages of technical secrets. His revelations allowed America to reshape its weapons systems to defeat Soviet radar on the ground and in the air, giving the United States near total superiority in the skies over Europe.

One of the most valuable spies to work for the United States in the four decades of global confrontation with the Soviet Union, Tolkachev took enormous personal risks--but so did the Americans. The CIA had long struggled to recruit and run agents in Moscow, and Tolkachev was a singular breakthrough. Using spy cameras and secret codes as well as face-to-face meetings in parks and on street corners, Tolkachev and his handlers succeeded for years in eluding the feared KGB in its own backyard, until the day came when a shocking betrayal put them all at risk.

Drawing on previously secret documents obtained from the CIA and on interviews with participants, David Hoffman has created an unprecedented and poignant portrait of Tolkachev, a man motivated by the depredations of the Soviet state to master the craft of spying against his own country. Stirring, unpredictable, and at times unbearably tense, The Billion Dollar Spy is a brilliant feat of reporting that unfolds like an espionage thriller.

"'The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky' offers not only a panoramic view of a country poised between devastation and an uncertain future but a gripping self-portrait of a man poised between unresolved youthful bewilderment and a mature clarity of conviction." * Wall Street Journal In 1945 Melvin J. Lasky, serving in one of the first American divisions that entered Germany after the country's surrender, began documenting the everyday life of a defeated nation. Travelling widely across both Germany and post-war Europe, Lasky's diary provides a captivating eye-witness account colored by ongoing socio-political debates and his personal background studying Trotskyism. The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky reproduces the diary's vivid language as Lasky describes the ideological tensions between the East and West, as well as including critical essays on subjects ranging from Lasky's life as a transatlantic intellectual, the role of war historians, and the diary as a literary genre.

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.

A riveting collection of thirty-eight narratives by American soldiers serving in Afghanistan, "Outside the Wire" offers a powerful evocation of everyday life in a war zone. Christine Dumaine Leche--a writing instructor who left her home and family to teach at Bagram Air Base and a forward operating base near the volatile Afghan-Pakistani border--encouraged these deeply personal reflections, which demonstrate the power of writing to battle the most traumatic of experiences.

The soldiers whose words fill this book often met for class with Leche under extreme circumstances and in challenging conditions, some having just returned from dangerous combat missions, others having spent the day in firefights, endured hours in the bitter cold of an open guard tower, or suffered a difficult phone conversation with a spouse back home. Some choose to record momentous events from childhood or civilian life--events that motivated them to join the military or that haunt them as adults. Others capture the immediacy of the battlefield and the emotional and psychological explosions that followed. These soldiers write through the senses and from the soul, grappling with the impact of moral complexity, fear, homesickness, boredom, and despair.

We each, writes Leche, require witnesses to the narratives of our lives. "Outside the Wire" creates that opportunity for us as readers to bear witness to the men and women who carry the weight of war for us all.