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Winkle: The Extraordinary Life of Britain’s Greatest Pilot
By Paul Beaver. 2023
Discover the daring life story and astonishing adventures of Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown - Britain's greatest-ever pilotSmall in stature but…
immense in reputation and talent, there was more to Eric 'Winkle' Brown than met the eye.From shooting down Luftwaffe bombers from the deck of a carrier in the Battle of the Atlantic and narrowly escaping death when his ship was torpedoed, to accumulating a never-to-be repeated litany of world records and firsts as a test pilot, his unparalleled flying career saw him take the controls of over four hundred different kinds of aircraft - more than any other pilot in history.A rival to Chuck Yeager and hero to Neil Armstrong, by the time of his appearance on Desert Island Discs' 1000th episode Winkle had become a legend in his own lifetime, and by his death, a national treasure.But despite his enormous fame, there have always been mysteries at the heart of Winkle's story.Now, drawing on previously unseen documents and unfettered access to Winkle's own personal archive, Paul Beaver uncovers the complex and enigmatic man behind the legend - the real story of Britain's greatest pilot.A story Winkle insisted could only be told after his death . . .----------'Compelling, fascinating and frequently jaw-dropping. A brilliant and revelatory biography' JAMES HOLLAND'Beaver recounts the story of a man he regarded as a mentor in unshowy but fascinating detail, and restores a British hero to his rightful place' OBSERVER'[A] thumping great biography by Britain's leading aviation historian' DAILY MAIL, 'BOOK OF THE WEEK''Winkle Brown's astonishing adventures make for fascinating reading' SUNDAY TIMES'An excellent biography' PATRICK BISHOP, DAILY TELEGRAPH'The extraordinary story [of] a fearless pilot and decorated war hero. Epic' THE HERALD'A thrilling new biography' DAILY EXPRESS'A thumping great biography of the flying ace who made Top Gun look tame ... enthralling' DAILY MAIL'Riveting ... one of those must-read books, compelling and full of incidents that leave you gasping with surprise ... an incredible story' FLYER'An incredible life ... Brown took a secret to the grave that makes his story all the more remarkable' THE SUNThe Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945
By Saul Friedländer. 2007
"Establishes itself as the standard historical work on Nazi Germany’s mass murder of Europe’s Jews. . . . An account…
of unparalleled vividness and power that reads like a novel. . . . A masterpiece that will endure." — New York Times Book ReviewThe Years of Extermination, the completion of Saul Friedländer's major historical opus on Nazi Germany and the Jews, explores the convergence of the various aspects of the Holocaust, the most systematic and sustained of modern genocides.The enactment of the German extermination policies that resulted in the murder of six million European Jews depended upon many factors, including the cooperation of local authorities and police departments, and the passivity of the populations, primarily of their political and spiritual elites. Necessary also was the victims' willingness to submit, often with the hope of surviving long enough to escape the German vise.In this unparalleled work—based on a vast array of documents and an overwhelming choir of voices from diaries, letters, and memoirs—the history of the Holocaust has found its definitive representation.Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1: The Years of Perdecution, 1933–1939
By Saul Friedländer. 1997
A great historian crowns a lifetime of thought and research by answering a question that has haunted us for more…
than 50 years: How did one of the most industrially and culturally advanced nations in the world embark on and continue along the path leading to one of the most enormous criminal enterprises in history, the extermination of Europe's Jews? Giving considerable emphasis to a wealth of new archival findings, Saul Friedlander restores the voices of Jews who, after the 1933 Nazi accession to power, were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality. We hear from the persecutors themselves: the leaders of the Nazi party, the members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies, the university elites, and the heads of the business community. Most telling of all, perhaps, are the testimonies of ordinary German citizens, who in the main acquiesced to increasing waves of dismissals, segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence.In the tradition of Agent Zigzag comes this breathtaking biography, as fast-paced and emotionally intuitive as the very best spy…
thrillers, which illuminates an unsung hero of the French Resistance during World War II—Robert de La Rochefoucald, an aristocrat turned anti-Nazi saboteur—and his daring exploits as a résistant trained by Britain’s Special Operations Executive.A scion of one of the most storied families in France, Robert de La Rochefoucald was raised in magnificent chateaux and educated in Europe's finest schools. When the Nazis invaded and imprisoned his father, La Rochefoucald escaped to England and learned the dark arts of anarchy and combat—cracking safes and planting bombs and killing with his bare hands—from the officers of Special Operations Executive, the collection of British spies, beloved by Winston Churchill, who altered the war in Europe with tactics that earned it notoriety as the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” With his newfound skills, La Rochefoucauld returned to France and organized Resistance cells, blew up fortified compounds and munitions factories, interfered with Germans’ war-time missions, and executed Nazi officers. Caught by the Germans, La Rochefoucald withstood months of torture without cracking, and escaped his own death, not once but twice.The Saboteur recounts La Rochefoucauld’s enthralling adventures, from jumping from a moving truck on his way to his execution to stealing Nazi limos to dressing up in a nun’s habit—one of his many disguises and impersonations. Whatever the mission, whatever the dire circumstance, La Rochefoucauld acquitted himself nobly, with the straight-back aplomb of a man of aristocratic breeding: James Bond before Ian Fleming conjured him.More than just a fast-paced, true thriller, The Saboteur is also a deep dive into an endlessly fascinating historical moment, telling the untold story of a network of commandos that battled evil, bravely worked to change the course of history, and inspired the creation of America’s own Central Intelligence Agency.“This book grills up an enjoyable read for both avid foodies and novice diners alike! Perman’s sneak peek into the…
fascinating history of In-N-Out is as good as the delicious burgers themselves.”—Mario Batali, celebrity chef and author of Molto ItalianoA behind-the-counter look at the fast-food chain that breaks all the rules, Stacy Perman’s In-N-Out Burger is the New York Times bestselling inside story of the family behind the California-based hamburger chain with a cult following large enough to rival the Grateful Dead’s. A juicy unauthorized history of a small business-turned-big business titan, In-N-Out Burger was named one of Fast Company magazine’s Best Business Books of 2009, and Fortune Small Business insists that it “should be required reading for family business owners, alongside Rich Cohen’s Sweet and Low and Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks.”The Illusionist: The True Story of the Man Who Fooled Hitler
By Robert Hutton. 2024
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. Those who knew didn't tell, and almost no one really knew at all.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. Even afterwards, almost no one understood the magnitude of his achievement. Drawing on recently released documents and hugely expanding on the louche portrait of Clarke as seen in SAS: Rogue Heroes, journalist and historian Robert Hutton reveals the amazing story of Clarke's A Force, the invention of the SAS and the Commandos, and the masterful hoodwinking of the Desert Fox at the battle of El Alamein. The Illusionist tells for the first time the dazzling tale of how, at a pivotal moment in the war, British eccentricity and imagination combined to thwart the Nazis and save innumerable lives - on both sides.The Illusionist: The True Story of the Man Who Fooled Hitler
By Robert Hutton. 2024
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. Those who knew didn't tell, and almost no one really knew at all.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. Even afterwards, almost no one understood the magnitude of his achievement. Drawing on recently released documents and hugely expanding on the louche portrait of Clarke as seen in SAS: Rogue Heroes, journalist and historian Robert Hutton reveals the amazing story of Clarke's A Force, the invention of the SAS and the Commandos, and the masterful hoodwinking of the Desert Fox at the battle of El Alamein. The Illusionist tells for the first time the dazzling tale of how, at a pivotal moment in the war, British eccentricity and imagination combined to thwart the Nazis and save innumerable lives - on both sides.A Hell of a Bomb: How the Bombs of Barnes Wallis Helped Win the Second World War
By Stephen Flower. 2024
At the start of the Second World War, a little known aircraft designer came up with the idea of some…
new bombs. They were to change the fortunes of the British war effort. Barnes Wallis is most famous for his Dambuster bomb, used with great effect in 1943, and immortalized in the film of the same name, but he also designed three other bombs, the biggest of which was Grand Slam, a huge 'earthquake' bomb used to great effect against U-boat pens and other difficult targets in occupied Europe. This is the fascinating story of the man, his bombs, the trials of getting them in to service and the story of their effective use against the Nazis.Devil at My Heels: A Heroic Olympian's Astonishing Story of Survival as a Japanese POW in World War II
By David Rensin, Louis Zamperini. 2003
The bestselling autobiography of the legendary Louis Zamperini, hero of the blockbuster Unbroken.A modern classic by an American legend, Devil at…
My Heels is the riveting and deeply personal memoir by U.S. Olympian, World War II bombardier, and POW survivor Louis Zamperini. His inspiring story of courage, resilience, and faith has captivated readers and audiences of Unbroken, now a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie. In Devil at My Heels, his official autobiography (co-written with longtime collaborator David Rensin), Zamperini shares his own first-hand account of extraordinary journey—hailed as “one of the most incredible American lives of the past century” (People).A youthful troublemaker, a world-class NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a WWII bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a fuller life than most. But on May 27, 1943, it all changed in an instant when his B-24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean, leaving Louis and two other survivors drifting on a raft for forty-seven days and two thousand miles, waiting in vain to be rescued. And the worst was yet to come when they finally reached land, only to be captured by the Japanese. Louis spent the next two years as a prisoner of war—tortured and humiliated, routinely beaten, starved and forced into slave labor—while the Army Air Corps declared him dead and sent official condolences to his family. On his return home, memories of the war haunted him nearly destroyed his marriage until a spiritual rebirth transformed him and led him to dedicate the rest of his long and happy life to helping at-risk youth. Told in Zamperini’s own voice, Devil at My Heels is an unforgettable memoir from one of the greatest of the “Greatest Generation,” a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the power of faith.Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
By Antonio Garcia Martinez. 2016
The instant New York Times bestseller, now available in paperback and featuring a new afterword from the author—the insider's guide to the…
Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, the inner workings of the tech world, and who really runs Silicon Valley“Incisive.... The most fun business book I have read this year.... Clearly there will be people who hate this book — which is probably one of the things that makes it such a great read.”— Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York TimesImagine a chimpanzee rampaging through a datacenter powering everything from Google to Facebook. Infrastructure engineers use a software version of this “chaos monkey” to test online services’ robustness—their ability to survive random failure and correct mistakes before they actually occur. Tech entrepreneurs are society’s chaos monkeys. One of Silicon Valley’s most audacious chaos monkeys is Antonio García Martínez.After stints on Wall Street and as CEO of his own startup, García Martínez joined Facebook’s nascent advertising team. Forced out in the wake of an internal product war over the future of the company’s monetization strategy, García Martínez eventually landed at rival Twitter. In Chaos Monkeys, this gleeful contrarian unravels the chaotic evolution of social media and online marketing and reveals how it is invading our lives and shaping our future.The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz: A Powerful True Story of Hope and Survival
By Thomas Geve. 2021
An inspiring true story of hope and survival, this is the testimony of a boy who was imprisoned in Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen…
and Buchenwald and recorded his experiences through words and color drawings.In June 1943, after long years of hardship and persecution, thirteen-year-old Thomas Geve and his mother were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Separated upon arrival, he was left to fend for himself in the men’s camp of Auschwitz I.During 22 harsh months in three camps, Thomas experienced and witnessed the cruel and inhumane world of Nazi concentration and death camps. Nonetheless, he never gave up the will to live. Miraculously, he survived and was liberated from Buchenwald at the age of fifteen.While still in the camp and too weak to leave, Thomas felt a compelling need to document it all, and drew over eighty drawings, all portrayed in simple yet poignant detail with extraordinary accuracy. He not only shared the infamous scenes, but also the day-to-day events of life in the camps, alongside inmates' manifestations of humanity, support and friendship.To honor his lost friends and the millions of silenced victims of the Holocaust, in the years following the war, Thomas put his story into words. Despite the evil of the camps, his account provides a striking affirmation of life.The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz, accompanied with 56 of his color illustrations, is the unique testimony of young Thomas and his quest for a brighter tomorrow.Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day: My Autobiography - The Sunday Times No 1 Bestseller
By Captain Tom Moore. 2020
Embark on an enchanting journey into our country's past hundred years through the remarkable life of Captain Sir Tom MooreTHE…
NO. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'A wonderful life story with lessons for us all . . . beautifully written' DAILY TELEGRAPH'Gloriously enthralling' DAILY MAIL__________Captain Sir Tom Moore's story is all our stories . . .Born at the tail end of the Spanish flu epidemic, Tom Moore was raised in the Yorkshire Dales by a loving family that had not escaped tragedy. Yet when the clouds of war threatened, Tom raised his hand and joined up to fight.The Second World War took him to the Far East, where his can-do spirit was forged. Whether fighting for his life in Burma or helming a firm back home, racing motorbikes or raising a family, he always sought to do his very best. To make a difference to those around him.Captain Tom's story is that of our parents and our grandparents.It is the story of the past hundred years here in Britain.__________'Engaging . . . His upbeat nature shines through and reminds us how much worse this year would have been without him' Evening Standard'A wonderful read. Captain Tom is a beacon of light, and hope, and positivity' Piers Morgan, Life Stories, ITV'A great book' Good Morning Britain'A beautiful book. We have so much to learn from Captain Sir Tom' Chris Evans, Virgin Radio 'Fascinating. It's the life story of an ordinary man who is extraordinary' Michael Ball, BBC Radio 2To Lose a Battle: France 1940
By Alistair Horne. 1990
In 1940, the German army fought and won an extraordinary battle with France in six weeks of lightning warfare. With…
the subtlety and compulsion of a novel, Horne’s narrative shifts from minor battlefield incidents to high military and political decisions, stepping far beyond the confines of military history to form a major contribution to our understanding of the crises of the Franco-German rivalry.To Lose a Battle is the third part of the trilogy beginning with The Fall of Paris and continuing with The Price of Glory (already available in Penguin).Survivor on the River Kwai is the heartbreaking story of Reg Twigg, one of the last men standing from a…
forgotten war. Called up in 1940, Reg expected to be fighting Germans. Instead, he found himself caught up in the worst military defeat in modern British history - the fall of Singapore to the Japanese.What followed were three years of hell, moving from one camp to another along the Kwai river, building the infamous Burma railway for the all-conquering Japanese Imperial Army. Some prisoners coped with the endless brutality of the code of Bushido by turning to God; others clung to whatever was left of the regimental structure. Reg made the deadly jungle, with its malaria, cholera, swollen rivers, lethal snakes and exhausting heat, work for him. With an ingenuity that is astonishing, he trapped and ate lizards, harvested pumpkins from the canteen rubbish heap and with his homemade razor became camp barber.That Reg survived is testimony to his own courage and determination, his will to beat the alien brutality of camp guards who had nothing but contempt for him and his fellow POWs. He was a risk taker whose survival strategies sometimes bordered on genius. Reg's story is unique.Reg Twigg was born at Wigston (Leicester) barracks on 16 December 1913. He was called up to the Leicestershire Regiment in 1940 but instead of fighting Hitler he was sent to the Far East, stationed at Singapore. When captured by the Japanese, he decided he would do everything to survive.After his repatriation from the Far East, Reg returned to Leicester. With his family he returned to Thailand in 2006, and revisited the sites of the POW camps. Reg died in 2013, at the age of ninety-nine, two weeks before the publication of this book.Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933–1945: Abridged Edition
By Saul Friedländer, Orna Kenan. 2009
Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an abridged edition of Saul Friedländer's definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning two-volume history of the…
Holocaust: Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 and The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.The book's first part, dealing with the National Socialist campaign of oppression, restores the voices of Jews who were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality following the Nazi accession to power. Friedländer also provides the accounts of the persecutors themselves—and, perhaps most telling of all, the testimonies of ordinary German citizens who, in general, stood silent and unmoved by the increasing waves of segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, and violence. The second part covers the German extermination policies that resulted in the murder of six million European Jews—an official program that depended upon the cooperation of local authorities and police departments, the passivity of the populations, and the willingness of the victims to submit in desperate hope of surviving long enough to escape the German vise.A monumental, multifaceted study now contained in a single volume, Saul Friedländer's Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an essential study of a dark and complex history.The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company
By Michael S. Malone. 2014
Based on unprecedented access to the corporation’s archives, The Intel Trinity is the first full history of Intel Corporation—the essential…
company of the digital age— told through the lives of the three most important figures in the company’s history: Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove.Often hailed the “most important company in the world,” Intel remains, more than four decades after its inception, a defining company of the global digital economy. The legendary inventors of the microprocessor-the single most important product in the modern world-Intel today builds the tiny “engines” that power almost every intelligent electronic device on the planet.But the true story of Intel is the human story of the trio of geniuses behind it. Michael S. Malone reveals how each brought different things to Intel, and at different times. Noyce, the most respected high tech figure of his generation, brought credibility (and money) to the company’s founding; Moore made Intel the world’s technological leader; and Grove, has relentlessly driven the company to ever-higher levels of success and competitiveness. Without any one of these figures, Intel would never have achieved its historic success; with them, Intel made possible the personal computer, Internet, telecommunications, and the personal electronics revolutions.The Intel Trinity is not just the story of Intel’s legendary past; it also offers an analysis of the formidable challenges that lie ahead as the company struggles to maintain its dominance, its culture, and its legacy.With eight pages of black-and-white photos.All the Gallant Men: An American Sailor's Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor
By Donald Stratton, Ken Gire. 2016
The New York Times bestselling memoir of survival and heroism at Pearl Harbor“An unforgettable story of unfathomable courage.” —Reader’s DigestIn this, the…
first memoir by a USS Arizona sailor, Donald Stratton delivers an inspiring and unforgettable eyewitness account of the Pearl Harbor attack and his remarkable return to the fight. At 8:10 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Seaman First Class Donald Stratton was consumed by an inferno. A million pounds of explosives had detonated beneath his battle station aboard the USS Arizona, barely fifteen minutes into Japan’s surprise attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor. Near death and burned across two thirds of his body, Don, a nineteen-year-old Nebraskan who had been steeled by the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, summoned the will to haul himself hand over hand across a rope tethered to a neighboring vessel. Forty-five feet below, the harbor’s flaming, oil-slick water boiled with enemy bullets; all around him the world tore itself apart. In this extraordinary, never-before-told eyewitness account of the Pearl Harbor attack—the only memoir ever written by a survivor of the USS Arizona—ninety-four-year-old veteran Donald Stratton finally shares his unforgettable personal tale of bravery and survival on December 7, 1941, his harrowing recovery, and his inspiring determination to return to the fight. Don and four other sailors made it safely across the same line that morning, a small miracle on a day that claimed the lives of 1,177 of their Arizona shipmates—approximately half the American fatalaties at Pearl Harbor. Sent to military hospitals for a year, Don refused doctors’ advice to amputate his limbs and battled to relearn how to walk. The U.S. Navy gave him a medical discharge, believing he would never again be fit for service, but Don had unfinished business. In June 1944, he sailed back into the teeth of the Pacific War on a destroyer, destined for combat in the crucial battles of Leyte Gulf, Luzon, and Okinawa, thus earning the distinction of having been present for the opening shots and the final major battle of America’s Second World War.As the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack approaches, Don, a great-grandfather of five and one of six living survivors of the Arizona, offers an unprecedentedly intimate reflection on the tragedy that drew America into the greatest armed conflict in history. All the Gallant Men is a book for the ages, one of the most remarkable—and remarkably inspiring—memoirs of any kind to appear in recent years.*Library JournalQuarrel with the King: The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War
By Adam Nicolson. 2008
Spanning the most turbulent and dramatic years of English history—from the 1520s through 1650—Quarrel with the King tells the remarkable…
saga of one of the greatest families in English history, the Pembrokes, following their glamorous trajectory across three generations of change, ambition, resistance, and war. With vivid color and fascinating detail, acclaimed historian Adam Nicolson recounts the story of a century-long power struggle between England's richest family and the English Crown—a fascinating study of divided loyalties, corruption, rights and privilege, and all the ambiguities involved in the exercise and maintenance of power and status.The Forbidden Daughter: The True Story of a Holocaust Survivor
By Zipora Klein Jakob. 2021
The unforgettable true story of a girl born in the Kovno Ghetto, and the dangerous risk her parents faced in…
defying the barbarous Nazi law prohibiting childbirth.Elida Friedman was not supposed to have been born. In the Kovno Ghetto in Lithuania, Nazi law forbade Jewish women from giving birth. Yet despite the fear of death, Dr. Jonah Friedman and his wife Tzila, choose to bring a daughter into the world, a little girl they name Elida—meaning non-birth in Hebrew.To increase their child’s chance of survival, the Friedmans smuggle the baby out of the ghetto and into the arms of a non-Jewish farm family when Elida is only three months old. It is the beginning of a life marked by constant upheaval. When the Nazis raze the entire Kovno Ghetto, Jonah and Tzila are among those killed. Their only child is left orphaned and alone, dependent on the kindness of strangers.Despite her circumstances, Elida grows up, changing families, countries, continents, and even names, countless times. Surviving the war and the Holocaust that stole her parents, the young woman never gives up hope. In her lifelong pursuit to find love and belonging, she works to rebuild her identity and triumph over her terrible circumstances.A moving, powerful chronicle of overcoming impossible odds, The Forbidden Daughter is the true story of one unforgettable woman and her will to survive.Traitor By Default: The Trials of Kanao Inouye, the Kamloops Kid
By Patrick Brode. 2024
At the end of World War II, a young Japanese Canadian would stand trial and face execution for having committed…
war crimes and betraying his country.One of the most bizarre stories to emerge at the end of the Second World War was that of Kanao Inouye. Born in Kamloops, B.C., in 1916, he had relocated to his ancestral homeland of Japan, and by 1942 was a translator for the Japanese army. He was assigned to the prisoner of war camp in Hong Kong where he became infamous as one of the “most sadistic guards” over the Canadian survivors of the Battle of Hong Kong. Scores of prisoners would attest to his brutality administered in revenge for the treatment he had received growing up in Canada.His reputation was such that he was quickly apprehended after the war and faced charges of war crimes. But his subsequent trials became mired in questions as to who he really was. Was he a Canadian forced to serve in the Japanese military machine? Or was he a devoted soldier of his emperor obeying his superiors?