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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence
The extraordinary untold story of Ernest Hemingway's dangerous
secret life in espionage A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A finalist
for the William E. Colby Military Writers' Award "IMPORTANT" (Wall
Street Journal) - "FASCINATING" (New York Review of Books) -
"CAPTIVATING" (Missourian) A riveting international
cloak-and-dagger epic ranging from the Spanish Civil War to the
liberation of Western Europe, wartime China, the Red Scare of Cold
War America, and the Cuban Revolution, Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy
reveals for the first time Ernest Hemingway's secret adventures in
espionage and intelligence during the 1930s and 1940s (including
his role as a Soviet agent code-named "Argo"), a hidden chapter
that fueled both his art and his undoing. While he was the
historian at the esteemed CIA Museum, Nicholas Reynolds, a longtime
American intelligence officer, former U.S. Marine colonel, and
Oxford-trained historian, began to uncover clues suggesting Nobel
Prize-winning novelist Ernest Hemingway was deeply involved in
mid-twentieth-century spycraft -- a mysterious and shocking
relationship that was far more complex, sustained, and fraught with
risks than has ever been previously supposed. Now Reynolds's
meticulously researched and captivating narrative "looks among the
shadows and finds a Hemingway not seen before" (London Review of
Books), revealing for the first time the whole story of this hidden
side of Hemingway's life: his troubling recruitment by Soviet spies
to work with the NKVD, the forerunner to the KGB, followed in short
order by a complex set of secret relationships with American
agencies. Starting with Hemingway's sympathy to antifascist forces
during the 1930s, Reynolds illuminates Hemingway's immersion in the
life-and-death world of the revolutionary left, from his passionate
commitment to the Spanish Republic; his successful pursuit by
Soviet NKVD agents, who valued Hemingway's influence, access, and
mobility; his wartime meeting in East Asia with communist leader
Chou En-Lai, the future premier of the People's Republic of China;
and finally to his undercover involvement with Cuban rebels in the
late 1950s and his sympathy for Fidel Castro. Reynolds equally
explores Hemingway's participation in various roles as an agent for
the United States government, including hunting Nazi submarines
with ONI-supplied munitions in the Caribbean on his boat, Pilar;
his command of an informant ring in Cuba called the "Crook Factory"
that reported to the American embassy in Havana; and his
on-the-ground role in Europe, where he helped OSS gain key tactical
intelligence for the liberation of Paris and fought alongside the
U.S. infantry in the bloody endgame of World War II. As he examines
the links between Hemingway's work as an operative and as an
author, Reynolds reveals how Hemingway's secret adventures
influenced his literary output and contributed to the writer's
block and mental decline (including paranoia) that plagued him
during the postwar years -- a period marked by the Red Scare and
McCarthy hearings. Reynolds also illuminates how those same
experiences played a role in some of Hemingway's greatest works,
including For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea,
while also adding to the burden that he carried at the end of his
life and perhaps contributing to his suicide. A literary biography
with the soul of an espionage thriller, Writer, Sailor, Soldier,
Spy is an essential contribution to our understanding of the life,
work, and fate of one of America's most legendary authors.
Few escapades of the Second World War have captured the public's
imagination more than the successful abduction of German General
Kreipe from enemy-occupied Crete in 1944. It was an operation
instigated and daringly executed by two British SOE officers -
Patrick Leigh Fermor and William (Billy) Stanley Moss. The war
didn't stop for Billy Moss after this operation though, and it is
his continuing story that is told here. He reflects movingly on
what it means to fight and deal in death, how the success of
operations behind enemy lines in a foreign country is dependent on
the goodwill of local inhabitants, and, surprisingly, on moments of
high humour that punctuate the turmoil of war. War of Shadows is a
book in three parts - each displaying differing aspects of World
War II and its eventual conclusion, and all told with that
tell-tale blend of poignancy and humour so characteristic of the
time.
Prison Pens presents the memoir of a captured Confederate soldier
in northern Virginia and the letters he exchanged with his fiancee
during the Civil War. Wash Nelson and Mollie Scollay's letters, as
well as Nelson's own manuscript memoir, provide rare insight into a
world of intimacy, despair, loss, and reunion in the Civil War
South. The tender voices in the letters combined with Nelson's
account of his time as a prisoner of war provide a story that is
personal and political, revealing the daily life of those living in
the Confederacy and the harsh realities of being an imprisoned
soldier. Ultimately, through the juxtaposition of the letters and
memoir, Prison Pens provides an opportunity for students and
scholars to consider the role of memory and incarceration in
retelling the Confederate past and incubating Lost Cause
mythology.,br> This book will be accompanied by a digital
component: a website that allows students and scholars to interact
with the volume's content and sources via an interactive map,
digitized letters, and special lesson plans.
Despite recent attempts at 'negotiation', the attitudes of both Kim
Jong-un's regime and the West seem unchanged. North Korea is still
shrouded in mystery, and there are no clear plans for the future...
Can we trust either side to bring about peace? And if so, how? This
provocative insider's account blasts apart the myths which paint
North Korea as a rogue state run by a mad leader. Informed by
extraordinary access to the country's leadership, Glyn Ford
investigates the regime from the inside, providing game-changing
insights, which Trump and his administration have failed to do.
Acknowledging that North Korea is a deeply flawed and repressive
state, he nonetheless shows that sections of the leadership are
desperate to modernise and end their isolation. With chapters on
recent developments including the Trump / Kim summit, Ford supports
a dialogue between East and West, whilst also criticising Trump's
facile attempts. Talking to North Korea provides a road map for
averting a war in North East Asia that would threaten the lives of
millions.
The official Australian casualty statistics suffered by the men of
the Australian Imperial Force in the First World War are seriously
wrong, with significant inaccuracies and omissions. Groundbreaking
research exhaustively examining over 12,000 individual soldiers'
records has revealed that hospitalisations for wounding, illness
and injury suffered by men of the AIF are five times greater than
officially acknowledged today. Why has it taken nearly one hundred
years for this to come to light? Was it a conspiracy to suppress
the toll, incompetence of Australia's official war historians Bean
and Butler, or was it simply the unquestioning acceptance of the
official record? You are invited on the journey in this book to
find the truth. The findings are startling and will rewrite
Australia's casualty statistics of the First World War. Lest we
forget.
Van al die gebeure in die Kaapkolonie gedurende die Tweede Vryheidsoorlog het die teregstelling van Hans Lötter, asook dié van kmdt. Gideon Scheepers, die meeste emosie onder Afrikaners ontketen. Lötter en sy mederebelle in die Kolonie het die verbeelding van die plaaslike bevolking aangegryp en die Britte maande lank hoofbrekens besorg. Sy gevangeneming, verhoor en teregstelling deur ’n Britse vuurpeloton op Middelburg, Kaap, het groot woede en verontwaardiging veroorsaak en hom verewig as Boeremartelaar in die Afrikaner-volksoorleweringe. Nou word sy boeiende verhaal vir die eerste keer volledig vertel.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement was one of the defining moments in the
history of the modern Middle East. Yet its co-creator, Sir Mark
Sykes, had far more involvement in British Middle East strategy
during World War I than the Agreement for which he is now most
remembered. Between 1915 and 1916, Sykes was Lord Kitchener's agent
at home and abroad, operating out of the War Office until the war
secretary's death at sea in 1916. Following that, from 1916 to 1919
he worked at the Imperial War Cabinet, the War Cabinet Secretariat
and, finally, as an advisor to the Foreign Office. The full extent
of Sykes's work and influence has previously not been told.
Moreover, the general impression given of him is at variance with
the facts. Sykes led the negotiations with the Zionist leadership
in the formulation of the Balfour Declaration, which he helped to
write, and promoted their cause to achieve what he sought for a
pro-British post-war Middle East peace settlement, although he was
not himself a Zionist. Likewise, despite claims he championed the
Arab cause, there is little proof of this other than general
rhetoric mainly for public consumption. On the contrary, there is
much evidence he routinely exhibited a complete lack of empathy
with the Arabs. In this book, Michael Berdine examines the life of
this impulsive and headstrong young British aristocrat who helped
formulate many of Britain's policies in the Middle East that are
responsible for much of the instability that has affected the
region ever since.
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