African Wars

An epic saga of hubris, cruelty, and redemption, Now the Hell Will Start tells the remarkable tale of the greatest manhunt of World War II. Herman Perry, besieged by the hardships of the Indo-Burmese jungle and the racism meted out by his white commanding officers, found solace in opium and marijuana. But on one fateful day, Perry shot his unarmed white lieutenant in the throes of an emotional collapse and fled into the jungle. Brendan I. Koerner spent nearly five years chasing Perry's ghost to the most remote corners of India and Burma.

In the early years of World War II, Germany shocked the world with a devastating blitzkrieg, rapidly conquered most of Europe, and pushed into North Africa. As the Allies scrambled to counter the Axis armies, the British Eighth Army confronted the experienced Afrika Corps, led by German field marshal Erwin Rommel, in three battles at El Alamein. In the first battle, the Eighth Army narrowly halted the advance of the Germans during the summer of 1942. However, the stalemate left Nazi troops within striking distance of the Suez Canal, which would provide a critical tactical advantage to the controlling force. War historian Glyn Harper dives into the story, vividly narrating the events, strategies, and personalities surrounding the battles and paying particular attention to the Second Battle of El Alamein, a crucial turning point in the war that would be described by Winston Churchill as "the end of the beginning."

Traumatised by his experiences as a war photographer, Aaron is drowning in guilt and tranquilisers. On a new assignment to document the civil conflict in the African country of Miberia, he is paralysed by the belief that terrible things only happen so that he can capture them on camera. When he meets Mary, a young woman in danger because she is intersex, he’s convinced that if he can just save her, it will redeem him for all the other deaths he’s witnessed. So begins a race to the border, one step ahead of the rebel army. But as love grows between them and the country is submerged in ...

Historian Bennett Parten provides a groundbreaking account of Sherman’s March to the Sea—the critical Civil War campaign that destroyed the Confederacy—told for the first time from the perspective of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who fled to the Union lines and transformed Sherman’s march into the biggest liberation event in American history.

The Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar which led to the establishment of Tanzania as a united republic was consummated at the height of the Cold War. After the Zanzibar revolution in January 1964, there were fears in the West that Zanzibar would become "another Cuba." And Western powers were determined to prevent that from happening. They felt that the revolution was communist-inspired and feared that if the leaders of Zanzibar consolidated their position, they would pose a threat to Western interests in the region because of their friendly ties to the Communist bloc. Americans and other ...

The political and military nature of the Revolutionary War was just as full of intrigue. While disorganized militias fought the Battles of Lexington & Concord, George Washington would lead the Continental Army in the field while men like Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia and Benjamin Franklin negotiated overseas in France.

In Wade in the Water, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America's contemporary moment both to our nation's fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith's signature voice - inquisitive, lyrical, and wry - turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence.

With War Comes Spoils. When top-contender for the heavyweight championship of the world, Clay Johnson, is drafted to fight in the war, his dazzling career is cut instantly short. However, when he's joined abroad by a once hated rival, might this instead be the start of an incredible new bromance taking place amidst the great cities of war-torn Europe? Owing to their special skills as fighters, the two men are soon elevated... ...And that's when the fun begins! Told through a series of powerful individual voices including the women he loved, War Booty presents the extraordinary life of one ...

On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists who demanded the release of 53 terrorists. The plane was forced to divert to Entebbe in Uganda - ruled by the murderous despot Idi Amin, who had no interest in intervening. Days later, Israeli commandos disguised as Ugandan soldiers assaulted the airport terminal, killed all the terrorists, and rescued all the hostages but three who were killed in the crossfire. The assault force suffered just one fatality.

The Underground Railroad was the passage to freedom for many slaves, but it was rife with dangers. There were dedicated conductors and safe houses, but also arduous nights in the mountains and days in threatening towns. For those who made it to Midnight (the code name given to Detroit), the Detroit River became a River Jordan and Canada became their land of Canaan - the Promised Land where they could live freely in black settlements under the protection of British law.

The Ku Klux Klan, which celebrated historian Fergus Bordewich defines as “the first organized terrorist movement in American history,” rose from the ashes of the Civil War. At its peak in the early 1870s, the Klan boasted many tens of thousands of members, no small number of them landowners, lawmen, doctors, journalists, and churchmen, as well as future governors and congressmen. And their mission was to obliterate the muscular democratic power of newly emancipated Black Americans and their white allies, often by the most horrifying means imaginable.

Africa is the world’s poorest continent and, arguably, its richest. In The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis takes listeners on a gripping journey into the world of the magnates and militiamen, the despots and jet-setting executives who gorge on Africa’s vast stocks of oil, gas, metals, and precious stones. Combining deep reporting with an action-packed narrative, Burgis presents a blistering investigation of the plunder of a continent and the terrible human toll.

Before the Second World War, Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was one of the most famous performers in the world. She made her name dancing on the Parisian stage, but when war broke out she decided not to return to America. Instead, Baker turned spy for the French Secret Services. In this engaging, deeply researched study, Hanna Diamond tells the full story of Baker’s actions for the French and Allied powers in World War Two.

It is impossible to imagine New Orleans, and by extension American history, without the vibrant and singular Creole culture. In the face of an oppressive white society, members of the Société d’Economie et d’Assistance Mutuelle built a community and held it together through the era of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow terrorism. Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood follows Ludger Boguille, his family, and friends through landmark events that shaped New Orleans and the United States.

Sweet Drop in Africa: Charity shows Emily Hobhouse's determination to ameliorate some of the cruelty the army has perpetrated in South Africa. She uses her writing skills to motivate relatives and friends to support the relief effort for the women and children who experience the horrendous living conditions in the concentration camps. The letters she receives from South Africa show the conditions in the camps are deteriorating faster than Emily had imagined. Emily decides to go to the camps. She travels to Cape Town and finds that getting to the camps is extremely difficult. Emily finally ...

Powerful, epic, and compelling, Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen shines light on a nearly forgotten figure in history. Cathy Williams was born and lived a slave - until the Union army comes and destroys the only world she’s known. Separated from her family, she makes the impossible decision - to fight in the army disguised as a man with the Buffalo Soldiers. With courage and wit, Cathy must not only fight for her survival and freedom in the ultimate man’s world, but never give up on her mission to find her family, and the man she loves.

In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.

Using first-hand accounts from pilots and other aircrew, Tom Cleaver describes how the USAAF units that landed in Morocco were forced to learn their own lessons in combat with veteran Luftwaffe units, and how the experience gained in the skies over North Africa and Sicily was invaluable in developing the air forces that would dominate the skies over Europe in the latter years of the war.

"Set several decades into the future, this book is reminiscent of, and every bit as avant garde as was George Orwell’s 1984." –R. Bruce Logan, award-winning author of Finding Lien Lareina Elliot discovered her idea for making students loyal to the government is being implemented to further the war. It has become her life’s work to undermine that effort. Agent Christian Deverell promised to protect Lareina, always. But, that was before he flipped sides, before their history got dirty, before he commissioned her adopted brother to assassinate her. Cpl. Silas McKade never misses. He has ...

The crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s is arguably the least examined crisis in American history. Beginning with the myths inspired by Reagan’s war on drugs, journalist Donovan X. Ramsey’s exacting analysis traces the path from the last triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement to the devastating realities we live with today: a racist criminal justice system, continued mass incarceration and gentrification, and increased police brutality.