Capital Wars

He was an enigma and a genius. He was perhaps the greatest chess strategist of all time. Unable to relate to his fellow human beings, he relied upon his pieces in rank and file for all his companionship and comfort. Though their friendship is decidedly one-sided, his long-suffering assistant tells how his mad genius would lead the nation out of the most costly and deadly war ever waged between men. The bloodiest conflict in history was in an endless state of stalemate. Only a mad genius could save humankind from itself, but the price for victory might be too high to pay.

Many brave men from Perry County answered the call of duty during the Civil War. Here is the story of three soldiers from Newport that preserved their experience and told their stories – In Their Own Words Perry County Boys were among the first to step into the line in the defence of the Stars and Stripes so gloriously preserved by the boys in blue … Oh Cesar, if it ever rained in this world, before or after, it did rain that afternoon and night. We marched on, but being drenched to the skin and mud to the neck… Lt. John H Crist, Company D, 2nd PA I had my horse shot from under me, ...

The White House is in flames, the Capitol a gutted shell. President Madison is in hiding. Organized resistance has collapsed, and British soldiers prowl the streets of Washington. Pennywhistle and Tracy are forced into an uneasy alliance that will try the resolve of both. Together, they will question the depth of their loyalties as heads and hearts argue for the fate of a nation.

The Belgrade Offensive of 1944, while not considered one of the greatest and most important battles of the Second World War, was definitively an important moment of the war in the Balkans and marked the final defeat of the Axis in Southeastern Europe.

The Blitz changed the landscape of the city. Many famous landmarks were hit, including Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London - even the Imperial War Museum. Some areas, such as Stepney, were so badly damaged that they had to be almost entirely rebuilt after the war. But it wasn't just the city's physical landscape that was transformed.

After a brief revival following World War I, during which it successfully defeated a Soviet attempt to invade in an effort to carry "international revolution" into Germany and Central Europe, Poland once again fell victim to its neighbors in 1939. Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and Josef Stalin's USSR collaborated in the conquest and then split Poland between them. The Germans instituted oppressive rule in their portion of Poland, executing some 7,000 people on political grounds and imprisoning thousands of others.

Perhaps no other single day in United States history was as threatening to the survival of the nation as August 24, 1814, when British forces captured Washington, DC. This unique moment might have significantly altered the nation's path forward, but the event and the reasons why it happened are little remembered by most Americans.

Set on capturing the elusive inner workings of the European Union, Robert Menasse, one of Austria's most creative thinkers, moved to the EU's headquarters in Brussels for an enthralling, wine-soaked tour of supranational institutions. The resulting novel has become an international sensation, translated from German into more than 20 languages and deemed "the first great EU novel" (Politico).

In a shocking, never-before-told story from the vaults of American history, Tonight We Bombed the US Capitol takes a close look at the explosive hidden history of M19 - the first and only domestic terrorist group founded and led by women - and their violent fight against racism, sexism, and what they viewed as Ronald Reagan’s imperialistic vision for America.

In Capital, Commonwealth Prize-winning author Rana Dasgupta examines one of the great trends of our time: The expansion of the global elite. Capital is an intimate portrait of the city of Delhi, which bears witness to the extraordinary transmogrification of India's capital. But it also offers a glimpse of what capitalism will become in the coming, post-Western world. The story of Delhi is a parable for where we are all headed.

Born to the street and abandoned by his paranoid, drug-addicted mother, a young boy struggles to evade vicious predators, who hope to exploit him, and insistent authorities, who hope to save him. His only ally is his extreme natural intelligence, and his only home is the public library. Daily, the noose tightens after his mother, his last link to childhood, goes missing. His future seems as bleak as the cold, hard streets. Then he meets Longbow. In a gritty, existential world rife with threats, a young boy fights to survive. One man has the power to save him.

He is a secret agent assigned to fight a war of time. He serves an alien overlord, which has subjugated humankind through untold generations. They use him to execute subtle manipulations of time and space by sending him on mysterious errands to faraway places and distant times in the past or future. Each journey erodes a bit of his mind, his memory, his personality, and his psyche. As his personality corrodes, he encounters another alien race intent on aiding his struggle for rebellion. Waging a genocidal war through time and space, can he preserve his sanity long enough to free his people?

While our understanding of the Holocaust is well developed, we know little about everyday life in Nazi Germany. In this vivid and important study, Roger Moorhouse portrays the German experience of the Second World War from the viewpoint of the capital's streets and homes, raising issues of consent and dissent, morality and authority and charting the violent humbling of a once-proud metropolis.

He is the most prolific sniper in a long, deadly war. In fact, he succeeds to the point that his own comrades have learned to shun him. Not even this form of isolation can prevent him from compiling a frightful tally of numbers though. Behind each number, a face and a name. It's his job. He's good at it. Too damned good.

A special agent with a special job, he's the janitor of all the unhappy, unpleasant, bleeding places of the world. He'll clean up your messes and leave nary a living witness in the muck that remains. Man, woman and child, his conscience is absent, his drive is relentless, and his soul is a ravenous void. Cyclic rates of cannon fire and napalm. Cluster bombs and poison gas. Ever the calm, cool professional, he feels nothing. He is nothing.

A ravaged, remnant human population claims the Earth's dismal daylight hours, while bloodthirsty savages rule the night. One aging warrior struggles to take back the darkness. He fights bloodlust with bloodlust, but his most powerful weapon is a terrible one that might turn on him at any moment. He knows his one-sided war is a fragile thing, because he understands his victory will be decided as a desperate race against time. Yet history leaves him no option but to fight. In a bleak post-apocalyptic future, monster confronts monster for ultimate control of the planet. One man and one beast ...

In a dystopian, apocalyptic future, he is the quintessential survivalist, a heartless loner. The only things that stand between him and death each day are his maxims. He relies on them to manage the violence inherent within a world gone mad, and they are as unforgiving as his soul. Nothing he witnesses or does can bend or break them, until a single unwilling act of kindness alters his philosophy and his outlook with the same stroke of mercy. His maxims keep him alive in a world of harm, no matter the cost or the consequence to those around him. Then she comes along.

How long can one sensitive youth tolerate the incessant shelling, the nerve-wracking eruptions, the slumber-slaying shockwaves of bombardment? How much terror can a soldier endure before he takes that last short walk beyond the trenches and coiled barbed wire into no-man's land to meet his violent fate? The bloodiest war of the bloodiest century in human history. For some, it never ends.

The Korengal Valley of Afghanistan was one of the most dangerous places in the world during 2008. There on a daily basis, brave Americans confronted the grim realities of a determined guerilla resistance as they opposed an all but invisible enemy exercising a ruthless determination to achieve their objectives at all costs and without heed to civilized rules of war. Using improvised explosive devices and ambush tactics, stubborn jihadists of the region worked fanatically to sap American will to fight by bleeding its forward forces white via use of the most brutal weapons on hand. Deployment ...

For Ed Sykes, aka World's Greatest Fighter Pilot, saying something is impossible only makes him want to do it more! The Patch and the Stream Where the American Fell tell his inspiring story of never giving up, whether that be achieving his dream of being a fighter pilot or fulfilling the oath: "Leave No Man Behind."