True Military

Brought to life by the personal accounts of six Navy pilots and one British POW, this is the history of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong. Trawling through historic records, Steven K. Bailey discovered that the story of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong during the final year of World War II. Operation Gratitude involved nearly 100 U.S. Navy warships and close to a thousand planes. Target Hong Kong brings this operation down to a human scale by recounting the air raids through the experiences of seven men whose lives intersected at Hong Kong in January 1945.

Called "A significant Holocaust memoir," Edith's Story is often compared to Anne Frank's diary. In occupied Holland, Edith, from a lively, loving Jewish family in The Hague, went into hiding the same month as Anne Frank. Both Edith and Anne kept diaries, which are remarkably similar in their pre-war teen preoccupations with boys, school and parties. But Edith's world gradually darkens. When Nazi laws forbid her from attending school, riding her bike or even going to the beach, she wears the yellow star as a badge of honor, prompting people in the street to tell her to keep her chin up.

In the inspiring tradition of Black Hawk Down, this is the riveting real-life story of how an Australian SAS signalman's courage under fire saved more than 80 lives. It is an enthralling eyewitness account of the war on terror. Jock Wallace was pumped. It was the start of Operation Anaconda, the US-led military offensive to flush out al Qaeda and Taliban from their last stronghold in the Shahi Kot Valley in Afghanistan.

His mission was top secret: deliver mysterious components of some superweapon that would end this awful war to the island of Tinian, then return to the fleet to prepare for the invasion of Japan. Little did Captain Charles McVay III know that he would survive his ship's sinking, shark attacks, starvation, and five days adrift in the Pacific Ocean before being rescued. Discover this untold story of Captain McVay and his amazing men of courage: the crew of the USS Indianapolis.

In March 1944, as the Nazis occupied Paris, the French Police and Fire Brigade were called to investigate a vile-smelling black smoke that had been pouring from the chimney of 21 Rue Le Sueur for days. The thick black smoke was rising from a series of wood-burning stoves throughout the property that were stocked with human remains. The homeowner was Dr. Marcel Petiot, an admired and charismatic physician. When questioned, Dr. Petiot claimed that he was a part of the Resistance and the bodies they discovered belonged to Nazi collaborators that he killed for the cause.

A total of 1,843 days. That's how long I survived in that hellhole. They tried to break me, but I resisted. I owe it all to the memory of warm summer nights, the scent of peaches, and the one woman who loved me more than I ever deserved to be loved. Now, I'll do anything to get back to her. Only Shelby Eubanks isn't the girl I left behind all those years ago. She's someone else, a stranger.

Hungary, 1944. Almost half a million Jewish Hungarians are deported to Auschwitz. Among the few surviving Hungarian Jews from this era were young men who, like Ervin Wolf, were forced into the brutal Labor Service where they were cut off from the outside world and forced to endure inhumane brutalities and servitude. Once freed, a new oppression took hold as communist rule under Stalin turned friends to foes, enveloped the nation in fear and suspicion, and tested everyone’s character and strength.

The incredible true story of British special agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne, sisters who risked everything to fight for freedom during the Second World War. When elderly recluse Eileen Nearne died, few suspected that the quiet little old lady was a decorated WWII war hero. Volunteering to serve for British intelligence at age 21, Eileen was posted to Nazi-occupied France to send encoded messages of crucial importance for the Allies, until her capture by the Gestapo.

Compassionate Soldier illuminates some of the most fascinating and yet largely unknown stories of men and women whose humanity led them to perform courageous acts of mercy and compassion amid the chaos and carnage of war. Arranged by war from the American Revolution to the Iraq War and global in perspective, it features extraordinary stories of grace under fire from valiant soldiers and noncombatants who rose above the inhumanity of lethal conflict and chose compassion.

In Helmand province in July 2006, Major Adam Jowett was given command of Easy Company, a hastily assembled and understrength unit of Paras and Royal Irish rangers. Their mission was to hold the District Centre of Musa Qala at any cost. Easy Company found themselves in a ramshackle compound, cut off and heavily outnumbered by the Taliban in the town.

For as long as the UFO phenomenon has been a thing, the United States military has consistently denied any knowledge - or even interest - about the subject. But many suspect that Uncle Sam knows a lot more than he’s letting on, and this book explores all the possibilities - from the Roswell crash and Area 51, through foo fighters and rumors of possible reverse-engineered aircraft, all the way to the 2017 disclosure that the Pentagon is still investigating UFOs.

On November 8, 1943, U.S. Army nurse Agnes Jensen stepped out of a cold rain in Catania, Sicily, into a C-53 transport plane. But she and twelve other nurses never arrived in Bari, Italy, where they were to transport wounded soldiers to hospitals farther from the front lines. A violent storm and pursuit by German Messerschmitts led to a crash landing in a remote part of Albania, leaving the nurses, their team of medics, and the flight crew stranded in Nazi-occupied territory.

Ever since George Washington used them to help topple the British, spies and their networks have helped and hurt America at key moments in history. In this fascinating collection, Paul B. Janeczko probes such stories as that of Elizabeth Van Lew, an aristocrat whose hatred of slavery drove her to be one of the most successful spies in the Civil War; the "Choctaw code talkers," Native Americans who were instrumental in sending secret messages during World War I; and more.

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.

In 1942 the young soldier Arthur Dodd was taken prisoner by the German Army and transported to Oswiecim in Polish Upper Silesia. The Germans gave it another name, now synonymous with mankind’s darkest hours. They called it Auschwitz. Forced to do hard labour, starved and savagely beaten, Arthur thought his life would end in Auschwitz. Determined to go down fighting, he sabotaged Nazi industrial work, risked his life to alleviate the suffering of the Jewish prisoners and aided a partisan group planning a mass breakout.

Based on official American, French, and German documents, histories, personal memoirs, and the author's interviews with several of the story's key participants, Escape from Paris crosses the traditional lines of World War II history with tense drama of air combat over Europe, the intrigue of occupied Paris, and courageous American and Allied pilots and French resistance fighters pitted against Nazi thugs. All of this set in one of the world's most beautiful and captivating cities.

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.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of A Kim Jong-Il Production by Paul Fischer, read by Stephen Park. Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's film industry. He directed every film made in the country but knew they were nothing compared to Hollywood.

For Bill Fulton, being a soldier was his identity. After an involuntary medical discharge, Fulton was adrift until he started a military surplus store in Anchorage, where he also took on fugitive recovery missions. He took pride in his business. His life was happy and full. But when a customer revealed he planned to attack a military recruiting station, Fulton had to make a choice: turn a blind eye and hope for the best or risk his safety, his reputation, and his business by establishing contact with his customers' archnemesis: the FBI.

Jungle Hostages, CIA Ties, and a Ghost Helicopter The Shocking True Story of Operation Jaque Fifteen hostages. A fake NGO. A guerrilla army conned on live radio. This isn’t fiction. This is psychological warfare at its most daring. On July 2, 2008, a battered helicopter lifted off from the Colombian jungle. Inside were shackled hostages—three American contractors, a former Colombian presidential candidate, and others who had endured years of brutal captivity under the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). But something was wrong. The helicopter crew weren’t rebels—they were...