True Military

In 1982, a 20-something named Michael Ross left home to backpack across Europe. Little did he know that his vacation would set in motion a chain of events that would hurl him into a career where the bosses are seasoned spies, and the work is tracking the world’s most dangerous terrorists. The Volunteer is a fast-paced memoir that provides insight into our world, both pre- and post-9/11, told by a man on the front lines in the war against terror.

In his riveting debut, Where the Birds Never Sing, Jack Sacco recounts the realistic, harrowing, at times horrifying, and ultimately triumphant tale of an American GI in World War II. Told through the eyes of his father, Joe Sacco—a farm boy from Alabama who was flung into the chaos of Normandy and survived the terrors of the Bulge—this is no ordinary war story. As part of the 92nd Signal Battalion and Patton’s famed 3rd Army, Joe and his buddies found themselves at the forefront—often in front of the infantry or behind enemy lines—of the Allied push through France and Germany.

Mike and Kate Blaise fell in love during high school in small-town Macon, Missouri. Sharing a deep sense of patriotism, they both entered the US Army, she as a commissioned officer and he as an enlisted infantry soldier who later became a helicopter pilot with the Air Cavalry. Forced to accept the realities of a military marriage yet determined to stay with her husband, Kate passed up her dream assignment in the United States to be with Mike, who was deployed to Korea. But they never imagined a day like 9/11 or the military aftermath that sent them to Iraq.

The Skripal Files is the definitive account of how Skripal’s story fits into the wider context of the new spy war between Russia and the West. The Skripal Files explores the time Skripal spent as a spy in the Russian Military Intelligence, how he was turned to work as an agent by MI6, his imprisonment in Russia and his eventual release as part of a spy swap that would bring him to Salisbury, where on that fateful day he and his daughter found themselves fighting for their lives.

Here at last is the true story of the merchant fleet during World War II, the non-fighting service in which 32,000 men died yet whose essential role has never been fully appreciated. The author, himself a member of the service from 1941-47, relates the stories of merchantmen and their crews with unique insight. From the early days of the war to the day of victory on the Rhine, through combined operations in the Mediterranean and at Normandy, the complete operation of the fleet is examined, with vivid accounts of the horrific losses undergone, the heroism of the crews and the sacrifices ...

From 1951 to 1967 Egypt pursued a secret program to build military rockets that could have conceivably posed a threat to neighboring Israel. Because such an ambitious project required Western expertise, the Egyptian leader President Nasser hired West German scientists, many of them veterans of the Nazi rocket program at Peenemünde and elsewhere. These covert plans soon came to the attention of Israel’s legendary secret service, Mossad, and caused deep alarm in Tel Aviv.

In 2007, US Army Specialist Jorge G. Sandoval Jr. was charged with murder by the government he had sworn to serve. While deployed to the most dangerous area in Iraq, Sandoval, an airborne infantryman and elite sniper, was instructed to "take the shot" and kill an enemy insurgent wearing civilian clothes. Two weeks later, Army Criminal Investigation Command descended upon Sandoval's unit and began interrogating the soldiers, trying to link Sandoval and others to war crimes, including murder. Captain Craig W. Drummond was the JAG military defense attorney assigned to Sandoval's case.

The U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay - known to the public as Gitmo - has been called the American Gulag, a scene of medieval horrors where innocent farmers and goat herders swept up in Afghanistan and Iraq have been sequestered, tortured, and abused for years on end without access to legal counsel or basic medical services.

For 32 days, they were chased across the mountains as they headed for the coast and a rendezvous with a Royal Navy launch waiting to spirit the general to Cairo. Rick Stroud, whose Phantom Army of Alamein won plaudits for its meticulous research and its lightness of touch in the telling, brings these same gifts to bear in this new project.

At the end of the Second World War, some of the highest ranking Nazis escaped from justice, Aided and abetted by the Vatican, they travelled down secret 'rat lines' and were taken in by shady Argentine secret agents. Vengeful Holocaust survivors and inept politicains attempted to bring them to justice and there were daring plots to kidnap or assassinate the fugititives.

In Double Crossed, historian Matthew Avery Sutton tells the extraordinary story of the entwined roles of spy-craft and faith in a world at war. Missionaries, priests, and rabbis, acutely aware of how their actions seemingly conflicted with their spiritual calling, carried out covert operations, bombings, and assassinations within the centers of global religious power, including Mecca, the Vatican, and Palestine.

Tom spent years working covertly to stop those who want to do us harm. In his best-selling memoir Soldier Spy, he told how he was recruited and described some of his top-secret operations. In I Spy, he takes us deeper undercover as he puts his life on the line once more. I Spy plunges the listener straight into the action as Tom and his team race to prevent terrorists from causing carnage on our streets and outsmart Russian agents, blocking a daring plot that threatens the security of the nation.

Cairo, 1942: If you had asked a British officer who Colonel Clarke was, they would have been able to point him out: always ready with a drink and a story, he was a well-known figure in the local bars. If you then asked what he did, you would have less success. Clarke thought of himself as developing a new kind of weapon. Its components? Rumour, stagecraft, a sense of fun. Its target? The mind of Erwin Rommel, Hitler's greatest general. Throughout history, military commanders have sought to mislead their opponents. Dudley Clarke set out to do it on a scale no one had imagined before.

A Holocaust historian, archivist, and history blogger adds a new dimension to the story of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during World War II, shining a long overdue spotlight on five young, Polish Jewish women—champions who helped lead the resistance, sabotage the Nazis, and aid Jews in hiding across occupied Poland and Eastern Europe.

An extraordinary wartime memoir, combining the best kind of adventure story with a coming-of-age testimony of unforgettable resonance and poignancy.

September 2011, Halkidiki, Northern Greece: A solitary 86-year-old man gazes across an Aegean headland, knowing that he must finally confront his past. He begins to write...September 1939, Nieppe, Northern France:14 year-old Stephen is living with his family, 25 kilometres from Ypres. His French mother battles with her encroaching blindness.

In 1967, a retired army major and self-made millionaire named Paddy Roy Bates cemented his family’s place in history when he inaugurated himself ruler of the Principality of Sealand, a tiny dominion of the high seas. And so began the peculiar story of the world’s most stubborn micronation on a World War II anti-aircraft-gun platform off the British coast. Incorporating original interviews with surviving Sealand royals, Dylan Taylor-Lehman recounts the battles and schemes as Roy and his crew engaged with diplomats and even thwarted an attempted coup.

The Second World War changed the course of modern history. It is filled with incredible stories of daring risks and exceptional struggles, but in the popular imagination, these stories are more often than not the stories of men. There is, however, a hidden treasure trove of untold stories of heroic women who have risked their lives in the monumental battle against fascism. We’ve heard of women who became nurses treating soldiers with battlefield injuries, partisans who fought occupying armies, and skilled laborers who worked in wartime industries.

In March 2008, the public learned the news that Prince Harry had been fighting with British troops in Afghanistan. This amazing book gives the definitive inside story of Prince Harry's brave service and reveals, amongst other breathtaking stories, how the third in line to the throne was operating only 500 yards from enemy positions, calling in air strikes and carrying out surveillance of Taliban fighters in Helmand province.

Between the Monday after Abraham Lincoln was shot until the following week, Tom Jones hid John Wilkes Booth in the wilds of Maryland and then helped him get across the Potomac River to Virginia.

No turkey. No fruit to make a decent pudding. No money for presents. Your children away from home; your husband, father and brothers off fighting. How in the world does one celebrate Christmas? That was the situation facing the people of Britain for six years during the Second World War. From the family whose dog ate the Christmas roast, leaving them to enjoy “Spam with all the trimmings”, to the exhibition of handmade toys for children in a Singapore prison camp, these firsthand stories are by turns tragic, poignant and funny.