True Military

Di Di Mau is Darren’s unabashed personal account of warfare, survival, and brotherhood—and the enduring reflections that followed. It is unlike any book about the Vietnam War.

Assassination has been dramatized by literature and politicized by infamous murders throughout history, and for Robert Baer, one of the most accomplished agents to ever work for the CIA, it's a source of endless fascination, speculation, and intrigue. Over several decades, Baer served as an operative, from Iraq to New Delhi and beyond; notably, his career was the model for the acclaimed movie Syriana.

Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios. Conceiving every movie made, he acted as producer and screenwriter. Despite this control, he was underwhelmed by the available talent and took drastic steps, ordering the kidnapping of Choi Eun-Hee (Madam Choi) - South Korea's most famous actress - and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country's most famous filmmaker.

Stolen valor occurs when a person lies about receiving military decorations that he or she has in fact never earned. It has become a major societal problem that has been discussed numerous times in the news and, most recently, by the US Supreme Court. According to The New York Times, the Department of Veterans Affairs paid disability benefits to more than six hundred people falsely claiming to have been POWs in the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars.

Almost 10 times as many men died in the Civil War prison camps of the North and South as were killed at the Battle of Gettysburg. One such camp was Andersonville, where Union soldiers like Brigade Quartermaster John L. Ransom of the Ninth Michigan Cavalry, were subjected to hunger, disease, cruelty, and despair. Captured in November 1863, Ransom kept his spirits and courage up enough to survive and record this compelling true account of his experiences.

July 1943: The largest invasion fleet ever assembled sailed for fortress Europe, aiming to bulldoze its way onto Nazi shores. At its vanguard went a few hundred elite forces soldiers. The Royal Navy warship carrying them-a former passenger ferry transformed for battle-bore the iconic winged dagger emblem carved on its prow, plus the motto 'Who Dares Wins,' painstakingly fashioned with the most rudimentary tools by Sergeant William 'Bill' Deakins, the foremost explosives expert on board and a Royal Engineer by trade.

In the Vietnam War, 2,197 helicopter pilots and 2,717 crew members were killed. Black Cat 2-1 is the story of one pilot who made it home and the valiant men he served with who risked their lives for the troops on the ground. Bob Ford invites listeners into the Huey helicopters he flew on more than 1,000 missions when he and his men dared to protect and rescue. For those whose voices were silenced in that faraway place or who have never told their stories, he creates a tribute that plays like a thriller, captures the humor of men at war, and resounds with respect for those who served with honor.

Based on nearly 10 years of research in Italy, France, and Israel, including interviews with Gino Bartali's family, former teammates, a Holocaust survivor Bartali saved, and many others, Road to Valor is the first book ever written about the Italian cycling legend in English and the only book written in any language to fully explore the scope of Bartali's wartime work. An epic tale of courage, comeback, and redemption, it is the untold story of one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century.

Near the end of World War II, thousands of Allied ex-POWs were abandoned to wander the war-torn Eastern Front. With no food, shelter, or supplies, they were an army of dying men. The Red Army had pushed the Nazis out of Russia. As they advanced across Poland, the prison camps of the Third Reich were discovered and liberated. In defiance of humanity, the freed Allied prisoners were discarded without aid.

The remaining US aviation forces, along with the US Air Force and US Navy and Marine aviation assets, would not be easily removed from the battle. For the US forces still in-country, this is an untold story of heroism, dedication, and refusal to yield the battlefield despite being largely considered by US political leaders as "expendable."

1975: A young Irish-American man joins an elite US Marine unit to get the most intensive military training possible—then joins the Irish Republican Army, during the days of some of the bloodiest fighting ever in the Irish-British conflict. It is a story that will see him running guns with American mobster—and secret IRA fundraiser—Whitey Bulger; running from safe house to safe house in the Irish countryside, one step ahead of British troops; fending off a recruitment offer from the CIA; and being one of the masterminds behind a campaign to take out London's electrical system.

When a “neutral” United States becomes a trading partner for the Allies early in World War I, the Germans implement a secret plan to strike back. A team of saboteurs - including an expert on germ warfare, a Harvard professor, and a brilliant, debonair spymaster - devise a series of “mysterious accidents” using explosives and biological weapons, to bring down vital targets such as ships, factories, livestock, and even captains of industry like J. P. Morgan. New York Police Inspector Tom Tunney, head of the department’s Bomb Squad, is assigned the difficult mission of stopping them.

In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer in Vienna, was arrested by the Nazis. Along with his 16-year old son Fritz, he was sent to Buchenwald in Germany, where a new concentration camp was being built. It was the beginning of a five-year odyssey almost without parallel. They helped build Buchenwald, young Fritz learning construction skills which would help preserve him from extermination in the coming years. But it was his bond with his father that would ultimately keep them both alive. When the 50-year old Gustav was transferred to Auschwitz - a certain death sentence - Fritz was determined to go with him.

War of the Whales is the gripping tale of a crusading attorney who stumbles on one of the US Navy’s best-kept secrets: a submarine detection system that floods entire ocean basins with high-intensity sound - and drives whales onto beaches. As Joel Reynolds launches a legal fight to expose and challenge the Navy program, marine biologist Ken Balcomb witnesses a mysterious mass stranding of whales near his research station in the Bahamas.

The untold story of generations of Middle Eastern freedom fighters—horsewomen who safeguarded an ancient breed of Caspian horse—and their efforts to defend their homelands from the Taliban and others seeking to destroy them, Book of Queens reaches back centuries to the Persian Empire and a woman disguised as a man, facing an invading army, protected only by light armor and the stallion she sat astride. Mahdavi draws a thread from past to present.

Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began. In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman was parachuted into Britain with a revolver, a wireless, and a cyanide pill, with orders from the Abwehr to blow up an airplane factory. Instead, he contacted MI5, the British Secret Service.

Bronx-born top turret-gunner Arthur Meyerowitz was on his second mission when he was shot down in 1943. He was one of only two men on the B-24 Liberator known as Harmful Lil Armful who escaped death or immediate capture on the ground. After fleeing the wreck, Arthur knocked on the door of an isolated farmhouse, whose owners hastily took him in. Fortunately, his hosts not only despised the Nazis but had a tight connection to the French resistance group Morhange and its founder, Marcel Taillandier.

In June 1952 a woman was murdered by an obsessed colleague in a hotel in the South Kensington district of London. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising; that she had survived the Second World War was remarkable. The daughter of a feckless Polish aristocrat and his wealthy Jewish wife, Granville would become one of Britain's most daring and highly decorated special agents.

Fritz Kleinmann was fourteen when the Nazis took over Vienna. Kurt, his little brother, was eight. Under Hitler’s brutal regime, their Austrian-Jewish family of six was cruelly torn apart. Taken to Buchenwald concentration camp, Fritz and his Papa, Gustav, underwent hard labor and starvation. Meanwhile, Kurt made the difficult voyage, all alone, to America, to escape the war.

Are demons real? Do ghosts exist? Do some unresolved medical and mental health issues have a spiritual connection? In When Demons Surface, former senior military chaplain Steve Dabbs answers those questions and more. Exploring more than fifty true stories of supernatural encounters from pastoral and personal experiences as well as historical research, this book is scholarly yet simple, hair-raising and enlightening.