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Blood and ruins : the last imperial war, 1931-1945 / by Overy, R. J.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A thought-provoking and original reassessment of World War II, from Britain's leading military historian Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins to recast the way in which we view the Second World War and its origins and aftermath. As one of Britain's most decorated and respected World War II historians, he argues that this was the "last imperial war," with almost a century-long lead-up of global imperial expansion, which reached its peak in the territorial ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, before descending into the largest and costliest war in human history and the end, after 1945, of all territorial empires. Overy also argues for a more global perspective on the war, one that looks broader than the typical focus on military conflict between the Allied and Axis states. Above all, Overy explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked the war and its protracted aftermath-which extended far beyond 1945. Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece, a new and definitive look at the ultimate struggle over the future of the global order, which will compel us to view the war in novel and unfamiliar ways. Thought-provoking, original and challenging, Blood and Ruins sets out to understand the war anew"--
Subjects: Imperialism.; World War, 1939-1945.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The making of Billy Bishop the First World War exploits of Billy Bishop, VC / by Greenhous, Brereton,1929-;
Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-224) and index.Table of Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter 1 -- "The Greatest Game in the World"; Chapter 2 -- A Pilot at the Front; Chapter 3 -- Tricks of the Trade; Chapter 4 -- Flight of Fancy; Chapter 5 -- Flying High; Chapter 6 -- A Statistical Interlude; Chapter 7 -- "I Have Never Been So Furious in My Life"; Epilogue; Appendix -- Bishop's Citations for British Decorations; Endnotes; Publisher's Afterword; Index.It's a war story that is told every time the career of Billy Bishop is discussed: On June 2, 1917, the young pilot single-handedly took out a German airfield in an early morning raid at the height of the Great War. For this, he was awarded the Victoria Cross, and a place in Canadian history. And yet, the attack never happened. In this explosive new biography, Brereton Greehous exposes the myth of Billy Bishop. While his bravery never comes into question (Bishop was as courageous as any of the men who risked their lives in those early warplanes) his credibility as a storyteller does. From exagger.
Subjects: Bishop, William Avery, 1894-1956.; Great Britain. Royal Flying Corps; World War, 1914-1918; Fighter pilots; Bishop, William Avery, 1894-1956.; Grande-Bretagne. Royal Flying Corps; Guerre mondiale, 1914-1918; Pilotes de chasse; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY; HISTORY;
© 2002., Dundurn Press,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The war we won apart : the untold story of two elite agents who became one of the most decorated couples of WWII / by Ayed, Nahlah,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Love, betrayal, and a secret war: the untold story of two elite agents, one Canadian, one British, who became one of the most decorated wartime couples of WWII. On opposite sides of the pond, Sonia Butt, an adventurous young British woman, and Guy d'Artois, a French-Canadian soldier and thunderstorm of a man, are preparing to go to war. From different worlds, they make their way to fight in Winston Churchill's secret army against the German forces and, unlike most involved in the world's deadliest conflict to date, to fight from behind enemy lines. Their lives first intersect during clandestine training to become agents with the Special Operations Executive. Sonia and Guy learn how to parachute into enemy territory, how to kill, blow up rail lines, support the French resistance, and eventually ... how to love each other. But not long after their hasty marriage, their love is tested by separation, by a titanic invasion -- and by indiscretion. Written in vivid, heart stopping prose, we follow their stories of uncommon courage -- as Sonia plunges into Nazi-occupied France and slinks into black market restaurants to throw off German forces who knew she'd arrived, while at the same time participating in sabotage operations against them by night; and as Guy, in another corner of France, trains hundreds into a resistance army, fashioning himself a military leader, weapons instructor, and peacemaker all at once. Reconstructed from hours of unpublished interviews and hundreds of archival and personal documents, Ayed tells a story of sacrifice and youthful folly; a story about the ravaging costs of war paid for disproportionately by the young. But more than anything, The War We Won Apart is a story about love: two secret agents who were supposed to land in enemy territory together, but were fated to fight the war apart."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Butt, Sonia.; Butt, Sonia; D'Artois, Guy.; D'Artois, Guy; Spies; Women spies; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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2034 : a novel of the next world war / by Ackerman, Elliot,author.; Stavridis, James,author.;
"From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic, geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034 -- and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration. On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the bridge of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea when her ship detects an unflagged trawler in clear distress, smoke billowing from its bridge. On that same day, US Marine aviator Major Chris "Wedge" Mitchell is flying an F35E Lightning over the Strait of Hormuz, testing a new stealth technology as he flirts with Iranian airspace. By the end of that day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Sarah Hunt's destroyer will lie at the bottom of the sea, sunk by the Chinese Navy. Iran and China have clearly coordinated their moves, which involve the use of powerful new forms of cyber weaponry that render US ships and planes defenseless. In a single day, America's faith in its military's strategic pre-eminence is in tatters. A new, terrifying era is at hand. So begins a disturbingly plausible work of speculative fiction, co-authored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral who has spent much of his career strategically out maneuvering America's most tenacious adversaries. Written with a powerful blend of geopolitical sophistication and literary, human empathy, 2034 takes us inside the minds of a global cast of characters - Americans, Chinese, Iranians, Russians, Indians - as a series of arrogant miscalculations on all sides leads the world into an intensifying international storm. In the end, China and the United States will have paid a staggering cost, one that forever alters the global balance of power. Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground combined with the authors' years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings: 2034 is all too close at hand, and this cautionary tale presents the reader a dark yet possible future that we must do all we can to avoid"--
Subjects: War fiction.; Naval battles; Cyberspace operations (Military science);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The oceans and the stars : a sea story, a war story, a love story : the seven battles and mutiny of Athena, Patrol Coastal Ship 15 / by Helprin, Mark,author.;
"A Navy captain near the end of a decorated career, Stephen Rensselaer is disciplined, intelligent, and determined to always do what's right. In defending the development of a new variant of warship, he makes an enemy of the president of the United States, who assigns him to command the doomed line's only prototype--Athena, Patrol Coastal 15--with the intent to humiliate a man who should have been an admiral. Rather than resign, Rensselaer takes the new assignment in stride, and while supervising Athena's fitting out in New Orleans, encounters a brilliant lawyer, Katy Farrar, with whom he falls in last-chance love. Soon thereafter, he is deployed on a mission that subjects his integrity, morality, and skill to the ultimate test, and ensures that Athena will live forever in the annals of the Navy. As in the Odyssey, Katy is the force that keeps him alive and the beacon that lights the way home through seven battles, mutiny, and court martial"--
Subjects: Sea fiction.; War fiction.; Novels.; United States. Navy; Warships; Man-woman relationships; Ship captains; Trials (Military offenses); Trials (Naval offenses);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The white darkness / by Grann, David,author.;
Henry Worsley was a devoted husband and father and a decorated British special forces officer who believed in honor and sacrifice. He was also a man obsessed. He spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the nineteenth-century polar explorer, who tried to become the first person to reach the South Pole, and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot. Shackleton never completed his journeys, but he repeatedly rescued his men from certain death, and emerged as one of the greatest leaders in history. Worsley felt an overpowering connection to those expeditions. He was related to one of Shackleton's men, Frank Worsley, and spent a fortune collecting artifacts from their epic treks across the continent. He modeled his military command on Shackleton's legendary skills and was determined to measure his own powers of endurance against them. He would succeed where Shackleton had failed, in the most brutal landscape in the world. In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of Shackleton's crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape, life-threatening physical exhaustion, and hidden crevasses. Yet when he returned home he felt compelled to go back. On November 13, 2015, at age 55, Worsley bid farewell to his family and embarked on his most perilous quest: to walk across Antarctica alone.
Subjects: Biographies.; Worsley, Henry; Explorers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Iceman / by Deutermann, Peter T.,1941-author.;
"The Iceman is an action-packed World War II military thriller featuring a daring United States Navy submarine commander during the Pacific war in 1942-43. In 1942, off the port city of St. Nazaire in occupied France, a United States Navy S-class submarine assigned to the Royal Navy lurks just outside the borders of the minefield protecting a German U-boat base. Lieutenant Commander Malachi Stormes, the boat's skipper, patrols dangerously close to the minefield entrance and manages to trap and sink three outbound U-boats in one spectacular attack. Britain decorates him, the U.S. Navy promotes him and then gives him command of a brand new class of submarine, a fleet boat called Firefish. Based in Perth, Australia, having been driven out of the Philippines by the Japanese juggernaut, the Perth boats are the only American forces capable of hitting the Japanese in the western Pacific. Stormes, with his cold, steely-eyed focus on killing Japanese ships, is an enigma to his officers and crew, especially when it becomes clear that he is willing to take huge chances to achieve results. Firefish sinks more ships than any Perth boat on her first war patrol, but Stormes' unconventional tactics literally frighten his crew. Driven by a past steeped in the whiskey-haunted violence of the Kentucky coal fields, whose psychological scars torment his sleep and close him off from personal relationships, Stormes is nicknamed The Iceman. His crew is proud of their boat's accomplishments, but wonder if their iron-willed skipper will bring them home alive. With intense action and featuring authentic submarine tactics in the early years of the Pacific war, The Iceman continues P. T. Deutermann's masterful, award-winning cycle of thrillers set during World War II"--
Subjects: War fiction.; Submarines (Ships); World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Every man a hero : a memoir of D-Day, the first wave at Omaha Beach, and a world at war / by Lambert, Ray,author.; DeFelice, Jim,1956-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Seventy-five years ago, he hit Omaha Beach with the first wave. Now Ray Lambert, ninety-eight years old, delivers one of the most remarkable memoirs of our time, a tour-de-force of remembrance evoking his role as a decorated World War II medic who risked his life to save the heroes of D-Day. At five a.m. on June 6, 1944, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Ray Lambert worked his way through a throng of nervous soldiers to a wind-swept deck on a troopship off the coast of Normandy, France. A familiar voice cut through the wind and rumble of the ship's engines. “Ray!” called his brother, Bill. Ray, head of a medical team for the First Division's famed 16th Infantry Regiment, had already won a silver star in 1943 for running through German lines to rescue trapped men, one of countless rescues he'd made in North Africa and Sicily. “This is going to be the worst yet,” Ray told his brother, who served alongside him throughout the war. “If I don't make it,” said Bill, “take care of my family.” “I will,” said Ray. He thought about his wife and son-a boy he had yet to see. “Same for me.” The words were barely out of Ray's mouth when a shout came from below. To the landing craft! The brothers parted. Their destinies lay ten miles away, on the bloodiest shore of Normandy, a plot of Omaha Beach ironically code named “Easy Red.” Less than five hours later, after saving dozens of lives and being wounded at least three separate times, Ray would lose consciousness in the shallow water of the beach under heavy fire. He would wake on the deck of a landing ship to find his battered brother clinging to life next to him. Every Man a Hero is the unforgettable story not only of what happened in the incredible and desperate hours on Omaha Beach, but of the bravery and courage that preceded them, throughout the Second World War-- from the sands of Africa, through the treacherous mountain passes of Sicily, and beyond to the greatest military victory the world has ever known.
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Lambert, Ray.; United States. Army. Infantry Regiment, 16th (1869-1957); World War, 1939-1945; Soldiers;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Accidental heroes : a novel / by Steel, Danielle,author.;
"A decorated former Air Force pilot. A pregnant flight attendant. A dedicated TSA agent.The fates of these three, and many others, converge in Danielle Steel's gripping new novel--a heart-stopping thriller that engages ordinary men and women in the fight of their lives during a flight from New York to San Francisco. On a beautiful May morning at New York's John F. Kennedy airport, two planes have just departed for San Francisco--one a 757, another a smaller Airbus A321. At a security checkpoint, TSA agent Bernice Adams finds a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge bearing an ambiguous--perhaps ominous--message. Her supervisor dismisses her concerns, but Bernice calls security and soon Ben Waterman arrives. A senior Homeland Security agent, still grappling with guilt after a disastrous operation in which hostages were killed, Ben too becomes suspicious. Who left the postcard behind, which flight is that person on, and what exactly does the message mean? As Ben scans the passenger manifests, his focus turns to the A321, with Helen Smith as its senior pilot. Helen's military service and her tenure with the airline have been exemplary. But her husband's savage death in Iraq was more than anyone should bear, leaving her widowed with three children. A major film star is on board. So is an off-duty pilot who has just lost his forty-year career. So is a distraught father, traveling with the baby son he has abducted from his estranged wife. Sifting through data and relying on instinct, Ben becomes convinced that someone on Helen's plane is planning something terrible. And he's right. Passengers, crew, and experts on the ground become heroes out of necessity to try to avert tragedy at the eleventh hour. In her stunning novel Danielle Steel combines intense action with stories of emotionally rich, intertwined lives. As the jet bears down on its destination of San Francisco, strangers are united, desperate choices are made, and futures will be changed forever by a handful of accidental heroes"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Domestic fiction.; Terrorism; Life change events;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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Accidental heroes [sound recording] : a novel / by Steel, Danielle,author.; Frangione, James,narrator.; Recorded Books, LLC,publisher.;
Read by Jim Frangione."A decorated former Air Force pilot. A pregnant flight attendant. A dedicated TSA agent.The fates of these three, and many others, converge in Danielle Steel's gripping new novel--a heart-stopping thriller that engages ordinary men and women in the fight of their lives during a flight from New York to San Francisco. On a beautiful May morning at New York's John F. Kennedy airport, two planes have just departed for San Francisco--one a 757, another a smaller Airbus A321. At a security checkpoint, TSA agent Bernice Adams finds a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge bearing an ambiguous--perhaps ominous--message. Her supervisor dismisses her concerns, but Bernice calls security and soon Ben Waterman arrives. A senior Homeland Security agent, still grappling with guilt after a disastrous operation in which hostages were killed, Ben too becomes suspicious. Who left the postcard behind, which flight is that person on, and what exactly does the message mean? As Ben scans the passenger manifests, his focus turns to the A321, with Helen Smith as its senior pilot. Helen's military service and her tenure with the airline have been exemplary. But her husband's savage death in Iraq was more than anyone should bear, leaving her widowed with three children. A major film star is on board. So is an off-duty pilot who has just lost his forty-year career. So is a distraught father, traveling with the baby son he has abducted from his estranged wife. Sifting through data and relying on instinct, Ben becomes convinced that someone on Helen's plane is planning something terrible. And he's right. Passengers, crew, and experts on the ground become heroes out of necessity to try to avert tragedy at the eleventh hour. In her stunning novel Danielle Steel combines intense action with stories of emotionally rich, intertwined lives. As the jet bears down on its destination of San Francisco, strangers are united, desperate choices are made, and futures will be changed forever by a handful of accidental heroes"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Audiobooks.; Domestic fiction.; Terrorism; Life change events;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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