**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.

War and Enlightenment in Russia explores how members of the military during the reign of Catherine II reconciled Enlightenment ideas about the equality and moral worth of all humans with the Russian reality based on serfdom, a world governed by autocracy, absolute respect for authority, and subordination to seniority. While there is a sizable literature about the impact of the Enlightenment on government, economy, manners, and literature in Russia, no analytical framework that outlines its impact on the military exists. Eugene Miakinkov's research addresses this gap and challenges the assumption that the military was an unadaptable and vertical institution. Using archival sources, military manuals, essays, memoirs, and letters, the author demonstrates how the Russian militaires philosophes operationalized the Enlightenment by turning thought into reality.

1961. The height of the Cold War. Just hours before work begins on the Berlin Wall, a KGB assassin and his young wife flee for the West before the Iron Curtain comes down and traps them in the East forever. This gripping story of real-life espionage and intrigue began when the Soviets invented a special weapon that killed without leaving a trace and put it in the hands of Bogdan Stashinsky. It is a tale of exploding parcels, fake identities, forbidden love and a man who knew the truth about the USSR's most classified programme. By the time Stashinsky had his day in court, the whole world was watching.

'Tony is the real deal.' Andy McNab The full, explosive, boots-on-the-ground story of the Falklands War, from a soldier at the heart of the action, published for the 40th anniversary of the conflict. Tony Hoare always knew he wanted to be in the SAS. Both his grandfather and father had been soldiers, and so Tony signed up for the Cadets at 13, then the Infantry at 17 and enlisted into the Royal Green Jackets before passing arduous SAS selection in 1978. Less than four years later, Tony and his team were sent to a collection of islands just off the coast of Argentina called the Falklands, where tensions were rising and war was on the horizon. No amount of training could prepare Tony for what happened over the course of the next twelve weeks, as the Falkland Islands became a battleground between British and Argentinian forces. As helicopters crashed and ships sank, Tony, at the centre of the action, battled across treacherous terrain and against a fearsome enemy, doing whatever it took to retake the islands. From one of the only soldiers who was on the frontline throughout the entire conflict, this is a thrilling account of what really happened in the Falklands, an explosive story of land, sea and air battles from a trooper who saw it all.

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 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.

In the terrifying summer of 1942 in Belgium, when the Nazis began the brutal roundup of Jewish families, parents searched desperately for safe haven for their children. As Suzanne Vromen reveals in Hidden Children of the Holocaust, these children found sanctuary with other families and schools--but especially in Roman Catholic convents and orphanages.
Vromen has interviewed not only those who were hidden as children, but also the Christian women who rescued them, and the nuns who gave the children shelter, all of whose voices are heard in this powerfully moving book. Indeed, here are numerous first-hand memoirs of life in a wartime convent--the secrecy, the humor, the admiration, the anger, the deprivation, the cruelty, and the kindness--all with the backdrop of the terror of the Nazi occupation. We read the stories of the women of the Resistance who risked their lives in placing Jewish children in the care of the Church, and of the Mothers Superior and nuns who sheltered these children and hid their identity from the authorities. Perhaps most riveting are the stories told by the children themselves--abruptly separated from distraught parents and given new names, the children were brought to the convents with a sense of urgency, sometimes under the cover of darkness. They were plunged into a new life, different from anything they had ever known, and expected to adapt seamlessly. Vromen shows that some adapted so well that they converted to Catholicism, at times to fit in amid the daily prayers and rituals, but often because the Church appealed to them. Vromen also examines their lives after the war, how they faced the devastating loss of parents to the Holocaust, struggled to regaintheir identities and sought to memorialize those who saved them.
This remarkable book offers an inspiring chronicle of the brave individuals who risked everything to protect innocent young strangers, as well as a riveting account of the "hidden children" who lived to tell their stories.

This book attempts to establish a more holistic approach to the rehabilitation of war-injured civilians, one that adjusts to the patients' long-term needs. Kovacic not only offers an insight into the daily realities of patients during and after rehabilitation, but seeks to develop a new way to perceive, respect and involve them in health care. Based on comprehensive interviews with patients and MSF staff, as well as extended field observations, Reconstructing lives follows Syrian and Iraqi war-injured civilians in their journey to recovery. From their improvised medical treatment in their home countries, to the MSF-run hospital in Amman Jordan, to their return home, Kovacic explores how individuals attempt to pick up the pieces of their previous lives, add new elements from their treatment and travel experiences, and finally establish a new reconstructed reality. The book explores how the interaction between MSF staff and their patients contributes to the immense task of healing that awaits victims of war. The reader visits the intimate medical and domestic spaces that usually remain closed to the outside observer, spaces rich with human contact, perceptions, emotions, conflicts and reconciliations. -- .

Many of the most famous escapes in history took place during the Second World War. These daring flights from Nazi-occupied Europe would never have been possible but for the assistance of a hitherto secret British service: MI9. This small, dedicated and endlessly inventive team gave hope to the men who had fallen into enemy hands, and aid to resistance fighters in occupied territory. It sent money, maps, clothes, compasses, even hacksaws - and in return coded letters from the prisoner-of-war camps and provided invaluable news of what was happening in the enemy's homeland. Understaffed and under-resourced, MI9 nonetheless made a terrific contribution to the Allied war effort. First published in 1979, this book tells the full, inside story of an extraordinary organisation.

'A vastly entertaining tale, bursting with astonishing stories and extraordinary characters ... A fascinating read' Sunday Telegraph 'Brilliant ... An amazing story, one I hadn't heard too much about' Dan Snow IT IS THE DEPTHS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. The Germans like to boast that there is 'no escape' from the infamous fortress that is Colditz. The elite British officers imprisoned there are determined to prove the Nazis wrong and get back into the war. As the war heats up and the stakes are raised, the Gestapo plant a double-agent inside the prison in a bid to uncover the secrets of the British prisoners. Captain Julius Green of the Army Dental Corps and Sergeant John 'Busty' Brown must risk their lives in a bid to save the lives of hundreds of Allied servicemen and protect the secrets of MI9. Drawn from unseen records, The Traitor of Colditz brings to light an extraordinary, never-before-told story from the Second World War, an epic tale of how MI9 took on the Nazis and exposed the traitors in their midst.

On a summer's day on the Somme in 1916, one brave battalion lost half its men to enemy fire in an hour. What went wrong? Martha Kearey dressed in black for the rest of her life in memory of the four sons she lost on that day in the First World War, proudly wearing each of their medals in turn on Sundays. Nearly a century on, her grandson Terence has set out to do justice to the memory of his uncles and their colleagues with a full account of the role of their Battalion, the Kensingtons, on the Somme in the summer of 1916. The Kensingtons, guardians of the right flank on the battlefront at Gommecourt, were ordered to march on the enemy without proper preparation in a move later condemned as foolhardy and suicidal. That summer's day, cut to pieces by enemy artillery, they lost half their men in less than an hour. Kearey sets out a candid account of the action, examining why this tragic and unnecessary slaughter was allowed to happen.

Collecting these excerpts from Wallace Chambers' Vancouver diary and World War I letters has been a labour of love for author John Gillis. The result is an extraordinary record of one ordinary young man's life just after the turn of the century. Wallace Chambers kept a diary from 1907 to 1913 while he lived in Vancouver. He filled each day with as much as he could, especially outdoors activities. Wallace was also passionate about cultural and social activities and enjoyed many of the events and venues Vancouver offered. His diary gives a rare glimpse into the world of middle-class young people in Vancouver of the early 1900s. Over the years a tender love story unfolded in Wallace's diary as he gradually fell in love with Cecie, the woman he hadn't seen since 1905. When Wallace went off to war in 1914, he and Cecie were briefly reunited in England before he left for the front. His letters home were graphic and poignant. Wallace was killed in 1915 at the age of 29.

In 1861, war between the United States and the Chiricahua seemed inevitable. The Apache band lived on a heavily traveled Emigrant and Overland Mail Trail and routinely raided it, organized by their leader, the prudent, not friendly Cochise. When a young boy was kidnapped from his stepfather's ranch, Lieutenant George Bascom confronted Cochise even though there was no proof that the Chiricahua were responsible. After a series of missteps, Cochise exacted a short-lived revenge. Despite modern accounts based on spurious evidence, Bascom's performance in a difficult situation was admirable. This book examines the legend and provides a new analysis of Bascom's and Cochise's behavior, putting it in the larger context of the Indian Wars that followed the American Civil War.

The Tartan Pimpernel is the remarkable autobiography of Donald Caskie, minister of the Scots Kirk in Paris at the time of the German invasion of France in 1940. Although he had several opportunities to flee, Caskie remained there to help establish a network of safe houses and escape routes for Allied soldiers and airmen trapped in occupied territory. The seamen's mission he set up in Marseilles was in fact the largest clearing-house in France for stranded British soldiers and airmen. This was dangerous work, but, despite the constant threat of capture and execution, Caskie showed enormous resourcefulness and courage as he aided thousands of servicemen to freedom.
Finally arrested and interrogated, he was sentenced to death at a Nazi showtrial, and it was only through the intervention of a German pastor that he was saved. After the war, Caskie returned to the Scots kirk, where served as minister until 1960.
This inspiring story of selfless commitment to others in extreme adversity is the truly brave man. 'More thrilling than any story' -The Scotsman

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.

William Morgan, a tough-talking ex-paratrooper, stunned family and friends when in 1957 he left Ohio to join freedom fighters in the mountains of Cuba. He led one band of guerrillas, and Che Guevara another, and together they swept through the country, ultimately forcing corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista from power. In just a year of fighting, the American revolutionary had altered the landscape of the Cold War. But Morgan believed they were fighting to liberate Cuba. Then Fidel Castro canceled elections, seized properties, and imprisoned Morgan's fellow freedom fighters. Even Morgan's own house mysteriously blew up. But The Comandante is about more than just the revolution. It's the story of two people in love, pressured by government agents and mobsters vying to control a nation that soon brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction. In the mountains, Morgan met Olga Rodriguez, a beautiful, fiery nurse, whom he soon married. Together, amid their firestorm romance, they decided to take a stand and take back the government from Castro and Guevara. The newlyweds began running arms to prepare for a counterrevolution, soon caught in a cloak-and-dagger web among Castro's forces; the Mob, which controlled Havana; and the CIA's preparations for the Bay of Pigs Invasion. But one of Morgan's guards betrayed him to Castro, who threw the counterrevolutionary in prison, placing his wife and their two daughters under house arrest. The couple smuggled secret messages to each other until Olga ultimately escaped by drugging her captors. Before she could free her husband, though, a junta tribunal tried and sentenced him to death by firing squad. Drawing on declassified FBI, CIA, and Army intelligence records as well as Olga's diaries, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss skillfully reveal the inner workings of the Cuban Revolution while detailing the incredible love story of a rebel nurse and an American street hero who left their mark on history.

How did the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) 'cavalry of the air' transform into the strategic RAF of the Cold War? The flying lives of these three pilots combine across the years to illustrate how it happened. Trained on Bristol Boxkites in 1912, Major Leonard Dawes helped shape the RFC in its infancy. Posted to France with BE2s, he saw action at the birth of battlefield reconnaissance and air fighting, then activated many new squadrons during the First World War. Joining the RAF in 1923, Group Captain Dickie Barwell became a fighter pilot and respected leader of men. As a Hurricane squadron commander, he routed the first major Luftwaffe air attack of the Second World War and flew with Bader's Wing in the Battle of Britain. While commanding RAF Biggin Hill, he flew combat operations over France before his death in a friendly-fire incident in 1942. Squadron Leader Brian Fern learned to fly at Ponca City, Oklahoma, in 1942, then trained hundreds of RAF bomber pilots during the Second World War. Post-war tours on Canberra bombers and spy flights in Chipmunks were followed by selection to the elite Valiant bomber force, where he became a leading exponent of in-flight refuelling, which finally gave the RAF its global reach. Combining these three stories into a narrative that explores the rise of the RAF through an era of dazzling technological breakthroughs and ever-changing operational requirements, Alastair Goodrum tells the story of a journey through adversity to the stars.

'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 STORY OF BRITAIN'S LEADING FORENSIC EXPLOSIVES SCIENTIST, WHO FOR NEARLY THREE-DECADES INVESTIGATED SOME OF THE MOST PROMINENT NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL BOMB ATTACKS IN HISTORY. Cliff Todd devoted his life to bringing bomb makers to justice. He and his colleagues at the Ministry of Defence's Forensic Explosives Laboratory are the unsung heroes of terrorist bomb attacks - the men and women in white suits who piece together who planted the bombs, what a device consisted of and how the perpetrators might give themselves away. They played a pivotal role in uncovering the secrets behind some of the world's most horrifying terrorist outrages. Explosive tells the stories of these high-profile cases and details, for the first time, the contribution Todd and his team made in tracking down bombers during a time when Britain was under attack first by the IRA and then by Islamic extremists inspired by al-Qaeda. Explosive takes the reader into the murky world of the amateur bomb maker, and reveals what Todd's department achieved in many now infamous attacks, including the device concealed in a radio cassette player that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, the IRA attacks on Warrington in Cheshire, the Bali nightclub bombings of 2002, and the 7/7 onslaught in central London that claimed 56 lives and injured 784 others in 2005. In Explosive, Todd takes us step by step through the investigations, explaining the chemistry, the forensic work and the emotional toll on him and his staff as they sought to recreate and understand what had happened at some of the most shocking tragedies in modern peacetime history.

In this gripping memoir, originally published in 1957, the Dutch author, codename 'Zip', recounts her extraordinary journey. A young fighter for the resistance during World War II, Zip is captured and held prisoner as part of the 'Night and Fog' unit, political prisoners who wait out the war in a crowded, secret cell. During their long days and nights, each creates a secret embroidery telling the story of their war, including when they are moved from place to place, writing each other's names in morse code out of contraband black thread. Upon liberation, Zip must find her way back to Holland with her three companions, scant belongings, and any food they can 'liberate' or are given by the goodwill of soldiers or villagers along the way. In cinematic, sweeping prose, Zip reveals all the details of the time, including the camaraderie of fellow political prisoners upon release: the Dutch prisoners of war who have kept their uniforms intact; the French p.o.w.s in threadbare yet debonair getups; the French women resistance fighters who break out in song ('La Marseillaise') to reunite a hungry mob; not to mention the Russian liberators, and the American soldiers. The world they enter has turned upside down. The jovial spirit and giddiness they share at being free is uplifting and unforgettable. An adroit, page-turning and heroic tale of humanity - after the darkness, there is so much light. The Walls Came Tumbling Down is a true World War II classic.

This biographical history tells the story of an American family in conflict and four brothers' attempts to regain the prestigious position their family once held. Loaded with never-before-published photos and little-known facts, this probing character study examines the men, the myths, and the legends of the Outlaw Youngers. The Youngers - Bob, Cole, Jim, and John - tested the boundaries of the violent and turbulent post-Civil War society in which they lived. The author investigates events from the Border and Civil Wars, details of the Youngers' attempts at legitimate ranching in Texas, and the frequent and often brutal murders and robberies. Using never-before-published accounts from Jim and Bob Younger, the author presents a new theory regarding the James-Younger gang and the actual Younger involvement - a theory which opposes the one held for over 100 years. She also offers insights into the Northfield robbery and gives reasons why the Youngers' parole was delayed.

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.