On 22 June 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union, onehundred fifty divisions advancing on three axes in a surpriseattack that overwhelmed and destroyed whatever opposition theRussians were able to muster. The German High Command was under theimpression that the Red Army could be destroyed west of the DneprRiver and that there would be no need for conducting operations incold, snow, and mud. They were wrong. In reality, the extreme conditions of the German war in Russiawere so brutal that past experiences simply paled before them.Everything in Russia--the land, the weather, the distances, andabove all the people--was harder, harsher, more unforgiving, andmore deadly than anything the German soldier had ever facedbefore. Based on the recollections of four veteran German commanders ofthose battles, FIGHTING IN HELL describes in detail what happenedwhen the world's best-publicized "supermen" met the world's mostbrutal fighting. It is not a tale for the squeamish.

Whether he is evoking the blind carnage of the Tet offensive,the theatrics of his fellow Americans, or the unraveling of his ownillusions, Wolff brings to this work the same uncanny eye fordetail, pitiless candor and mordant wit that made This Boy's Life amodern classic.

... [Kenneth M. Stampp] has woven the strands of a complicatedstory, and given the radical Reconstructionists a fair hearingwithout oversimplifying their motives. That this book is alsoexcellent reading will not surprise those who know Mr. Stampp'sother distinguished works about the Civil War. -- Willie Lee Rose, The New York Times Book Review "... [Mr. Stampp] knows his specialty holds vital information forour own time, and he feels an obligation to give it generalcurrency, especially the Reconstruction years 1865-1877 wheredangerous myths still abound. The result of his concern is thislucid, literate survey... Because he is not afraid to stateopinions and to draw contemporary parallels, he has providedconsiderable matter for speculation, especially in regard to theultimate cause of Radical failure to achieve equality for theNegro..." -- Martin Duberman, Book Week "... Carefully and judiciously, Professor Stampp takes us overthe old ground, dismantli

Georges Duby, one of this century's great medieval historians,has brought to life with exceptional brilliance and imaginationWilliam Marshal, adviser to the Plantagenets, knightextraordinaire, the flower of chivalry. A marvel of historicalreconstruction, William Marshal is based on a biographical poemwritten in the thirteenth century, and offers an evocation ofchivalric life -- the contests and tournaments, the rites of war,the daily details of medieval existence -- unlike any we have everseen. An enchanting and profoundly instructive book....Owing in signalpart to the imaginative scholarship of Georges Duby, darkness ismore and more receding from the Dark Ages." George Steiner New Yorker "A small masterpiece of its genre....It is a splendid story andProfessor Duby tells it splendidly....Duby has reconstructed aliving picture of a particular sector of society at a crucialmoment, at the brink of great change. The vividness, the intimacy,and the historical perception with which he presents his picture ofth

Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night. Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to amaniac's apparently random attack. Case three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of herown making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband -until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape. Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigatorJackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startlingconnections and discoveries emerge . . .

In 1971 a young French ethnologist named Francois Bizot wastaken prisoner by forces of the Khmer Rouge who kept him chained ina jungle camp for months before releasing him. Four years laterBizot became the intermediary between the now victorious KhmerRouge and the occupants of the besieged French embassy in PhnomPenh, eventually leading a desperate convoy of foreigners to safetyacross the Thai border. Out of those ordeals comes this transfixing book. At its centerlies the relationship between Bizot and his principal captor, a mannamed Douch, who is today known as the most notorious of the KhmerRouge’s torturers but who, for a while, was Bizot’s protector andfriend. Written with the immediacy of a great novel, unsparing inits understanding of evil, The Gate manages to be at oncewrenching and redemptive.

According to tradition Cervantes first conceived his comic masterpiece in jail - his avowed intent being to debunk the romances of chivalry. From first publication Don Quixote was a best-seller, initially taken as a knockabout account of a mad Spanish gentleman and his cowardly peasant squire, but later reinterpreted as an enlightenment text, a representation of universal human nature, a myth of a tragic hero defending man's nobler aspirations, a study in alienation, a spiritual autobiography, a metaphor for Spain's imperial decline, an experimental novel that shaped later prose fiction, a tragedy and comedy in one, and a demonstration that ambiguity and uncertainty can lie at the centre of great art and that great art can be comic. Smollet's vigorous and lively translation brilliantly catches the feeling and tone of the Spanish original. It is a comic novelist's homage to a comic novelist.

Here is an oral history of the Vietnam War by thirty-threeAmerican soldiers who fought it. A 1983 American Book Awardnominee.

A memoir by a World War II ordinance officer offers abehind-the-scenes account of his ordnance inspections during theEuropean campaign, detailing his experiences on the front line andhis job coordinating the recovery and repair of damaged Americantanks. Reprint.

For the first time in one enthralling book, here is theincredible true story of the numerous attempts to assassinate AdolfHitler and change the course of history. Disraeli once declared that “assassination never changed anything,”and yet the idea that World War II and the horrors of the Holocaustmight have been averted with a single bullet or bomb has remained atantalizing one for half a century. What historian Roger Moorhousereveals in Killing Hitler is just how close–and how often–historycame to taking a radically different path between Adolf Hitler’srise to power and his ignominious suicide. Few leaders, in any century, can have been the target of so manyassassination attempts, with such momentous consequences in thebalance. Hitler’s almost fifty would-be assassins ranged fromsimple craftsmen to high-ranking soldiers, from the apolitical tothe ideologically obsessed, from Polish Resistance fighters topatriotic Wehrmacht officers, and from enemy agents to his closestassociates. And yet, up to

David Herbert Donald, Lincoln biographer and winner of thePulitzer Prize, has revised and updated his classic and influentialbook on Lincoln and the era he dominated. When Lincoln Reconsidered was first published it ushered in theprocess of rethinking the Civil War that continues to this day. Inthe third edition, David provides two important new essays, onLincoln's patchy education—which we find was more extensive thaneven the great man realized—and on Lincoln's complex and conflictedrelationship to the rule of law. Together with a new preface and athoroughly updated bibliographical essay, Lincoln Reconsidered willcontinue to be a touchstone of Lincoln scholarship for decades tocome.

Herodotus (c480-c425) is 'The Father of History' and his Histories are the first piece of Western historical writing. They are also the most entertaining. Why did Pheidippides run the 26 miles and 385 yards (or 42.195 kilometres) from Marathon to Athens? And what did he do when he got there? Was the Battle of Salamis fought between sausage-sellers? Which is the oldest language in the world? Why did Leonidas and his 300 Spartans spend the morning before the battle of Thermopylae combing their hair? Why did every Babylonian woman have to sit in the Temple of Aphrodite until a man threw a coin into her lap, and how long was she likely to sit there? And what is the best way to kill a crocodile? This wide-ranging history provides the answers to all these fascinating questions as well as providing many fascinating insights into the Ancient World.

Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato ,Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year asa foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him toexperience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk theminefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and toexplore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war goneterribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, IfI Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre.

By the world-renowned novelist, playwright, critic, and authorof Wizard of the Crow, an evocative and affecting memoir ofchildhood. Ngugi wa Thiong’o was born in 1938 in rural Kenya to a fatherwhose four wives bore him more than a score of children. The manwho would become one of Africa’s leading writers was the fifthchild of the third wife. Even as World War II affected the lives ofAfricans under British colonial rule in particularly unexpectedways, Ngugi spent his childhood as very much the apple of hismother’s eye before attending school to slake what was thenconsidered a bizarre thirst for learning. In Dreams in a Time of War, Ngugi deftly etches a bygone era,capturing the landscape, the people, and their culture; the socialand political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war; andthe troubled relationship between an emerging Christianized middleclass and the rural poor. And he shows how the Mau Mau armedstruggle for Kenya’s independence against the British informed noton

In 1986, Charles Henderson first published Marine Sniper-theincredible story of Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, whose 93confirmed kills in Vietnam have never been matched by any sniperbefore or since. Now, the incredible story of a remarkable Marine continues-withharrowing, never-before-published accounts of courage andperseverance. These are the powerful stories of a man who rose togreatness not for personal gain or glory, but for duty and honor. Arare inside look at the U.S. Marine's most challenging missions-andthe one man who made military history.

In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and SebastianJunger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventurein which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a greathistorical mystery–and make history themselves. For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was morethan a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents,braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigatingthrough wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselvesto their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than oncein the rusting hulks of sunken ships. But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers wereprepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in thefrigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: aWorld War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wastelandof twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried underdecades of accumulated sediment. No identifying marks were visible on

There were no dry runs for Seawolves in Vietnam. They put their lives on the line—every time. In the Viet Cong-infested Mekong Delta, where smallSEAL teams were always outgunned and outnumbered, discovery broughtswift, deadly consequences— and a radio call for backup from theUnited States Navy’s very best: the Seawolves. The whir ofapproaching rotor blades signaled their arrival as they torethrough the jungle at treetop level, gunners hanging off the skids,shooting M-60s, raining down their lethal mix of high explosivesand incendiary death. Seawolf Dan Kelly describes the origins of this extraordinaryoutfit. Put through a training program unlike any other, these menemerged to perform unparalleled feats of courage. The stories ofthese elite warriors capture America’s real heroes in all theirguts and glory, and demonstrate why the Seawolves are known as themost successful and most decorated unit in the Vietnam War.

John Keegan, widely considered the greatest military historianof our time and the author of acclaimed volumes on ancient andmodern warfare--including, most recently, The First World War, anational bestseller--distills what he knows about the why’s andhow’s of armed conflict into a series of brilliantly conciseessays. Is war a natural condition of humankind? What are the origins ofwar? Is the modern state dependent on warfare? How does war affectthe individual, combatant or noncombatant? Can there be an end towar? Keegan addresses these questions with a breathtaking knowledgeof history and the many other disciplines that have attempted toexplain the phenomenon. The themes Keegan concentrates on in thisshort volume are essential to our understanding of why war remainsthe single greatest affliction of humanity in the twenty-firstcentury, surpassing famine and disease, its traditionalcompanions.

The veteran Wall Street Journal science reporterMarilyn Chase’s fascinating account of an outbreak of bubonicplague in late Victorian San Francisco is a real-life thriller thatresonates in today’s headlines. The Barbary Plague transports us to the Gold Rush boomtown in 1900, at the end of thecity’s Gilded Age. With a deep understanding of the effects onpublic health of politics, race, and geography, Chase shows how onecity triumphed over perhaps the most frightening and deadly of allscourges.

September 17, 1944. Thousands of Screaming Eagles–101stAirborne Division paratroopers–descend from the sky over Holland,dropping deep behind German lines in a daring daylight mission toseize and secure the road leading north to Arnhem and the Rhine.Their success would allow the Allied army to advance swiftly intoGermany. The Screaming Eagles accomplish their initial objectiveswithin hours, but keeping their sections of “Hell’s Highway” opentakes another seventy-two days of fierce round-the-clock fightingagainst crack German troops and tank divisions. Drawing on interviews with more than six hundred paratroopers,George E. Koskimaki chronicles, with vivid firsthand accounts, thedramatic, never-before-told story of the Screaming Eagles’ valiantstruggle. Hell’s Highway also tellsof the Dutch citizens andmembers of the underground who were liberated after five years ofNazi oppression and never forgot America’s airborne heroes. Thisrenowned force risked their lives for the freedom of a