War Years

This eyewitness account reveals the truth about Baghdad's Red Zone during the American occupation, and describes the reality of daily life as the city descended into bloody civil war. How do you cheer on your national football team when you're terrified to step outside your front door? What's it like to go to the shops when your biggest fear is being blown up by a suicide bomber? Or risk being shot at a roadblock when you drive your pregnant wife to hospital? As the Daily Telegraph's Baghdad bureau chief, Oliver Poole first arrived in Iraq in 2003, crossing the Kuwait border in the bank of ...

When eight-year-old Harry Spencer’s father returns from WWI with a missing arm, his father’s bitterness shatters their relationship. Though confused and brokenhearted, Harry is determined to make something of himself. Endeavoring with heart and sometimes humorous results, he sets out on his path in life, working in his granddad’s store, selling medicinal salves, washing windows, and falling in love.

Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever. But this is one of the clearest and most informative ever put into audio. As a commander in Stonewall Jackson's brigade, John Casler experienced all the horrors and comedy of the American Civil War. His time was not so different from his countrymen on the other side, with the exception of point of view.

A humble tailor and apple-grower from New Jersey, John Woolman became one of the leading voices against the transatlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century. Simon Webb's highly accessible new biography takes a fresh look at the life of this inspirational figure.

In April 1975, Ralph White was asked by his boss to transfer from the Bangkok branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank to the Saigon Branch. He was tasked with closing the branch if and when it appeared that Saigon would fall to the North Vietnamese army and ensure the safety of the senior Vietnamese employees. But when he arrived, he realized the situation in Saigon was far more perilous than he had imagined. The senior staff members there urged him to evacuate the entire staff of the branch and their families, which was far more than he was authorized to do.

The war between the Protestant Netherlands, mostly led by William of Orange, and Catholic Spain was one of the marks in Dutch history. This war had determined the beliefs of many people who now lived along the three rivers that went through the country. Most of the people north of the rivers were Protestant, and most of the believers below them (even throughout Belgium as well) were Catholic. This was no coincidence. The war in the 1600s had become a symbol of Dutch resistance, independence, and the royal family (of Orange).

In 1965, Col. Thomas "Jerry" Curtis's helicopter was shot down over North Vietnam. He was immediately captured and spent seven and a half years confined in a filthy cell at the notorious Hanoi prison camp. Thousands of miles from home and unable to communicate with his wife and children, Jerry endured months of solitary confinement, suffocating heat, freezing cold, grueling physical and psychological torture, constant hunger, and unimaginable mental duress.

Before Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, there was 1924. This was the year of Hitler's final transformation into the self-proclaimed savior and infallible leader who would interpret and distort Germany's historical traditions to support his vision for the Third Reich. Everything that would come - the rallies and riots, the single-minded deployment of a catastrophically evil idea - all of it crystallized in one defining year.

In the heart of the Ottoman Empire as World War I rages, Stepan Miskjian's world becomes undone. He is separated from his family as they are swept up in the government's mass deportation of Armenians into internment camps. Gradually realizing the unthinkable - that they are all being driven to their deaths - he fights, through starvation and thirst, not to lose hope.

King Henry V’s victory over the French armies at Agincourt on 25 October 1415 is unquestionably one of the most famous battles in history. From Shakespeare’s ‘band of brothers’ speech to its appearances in numerous films, Agincourt rightfully has a place among a handful of conflicts whose names are immediately recognized around the world. Agincourt provides a new look at this battle. Mike Livingston goes back to the original sources, including the French battle plan that still survives today, to give a new interpretation, one that challenges the traditional site of the battlefield itself.

The Hundred Years' War changed language, national identity, weaponry, and even the way people think about war. It is part of the greater narrative of human history and gives a snapshot of how human nature can behave when pressed by the extremity of such a conflict - sometimes with unspeakable honor and courage and other times with cowardice, selfishness, and arrogance.

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. And yet, to Ukrainians, this attack was painfully familiar, the latest episode in a centuries-long Russian campaign to divide and oppress Ukraine. In Intent to Destroy, political scientist Eugene Finkel uncovers these deep roots of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Ukraine is a key borderland between Russia and the West, and, following the rise of Russian nationalism in the nineteenth century, dominating Ukraine became the cornerstone of Russian policy

“Sprightly and sparkling…dramatic incidents abound…a lively rendering of a life and mind that inspires.” In the year of grace 1396, Christine de Pizan is a young Parisian woman living in a tower overlooking the Seine, but hers is no fairy story. Since her beloved husband’s death, she struggles daily to support her aged mother and two small children. Seeking to ease her broken heart, Christine begins to write poetry in a delicate blend of form and emotion that provides a much-needed outlet for her loneliness and sorrow. In time, Christine begins reading her verses at court, ...

In his 80s, Peter William Tremayne recounts 60 years of high-risk adventures from all corners of the world: as far south as Antarctica, as deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia, as high as the peaks of the Himalaya, to name just a few. Often reckless, always challenging, Peter realizes it’s time to share his escapades before his luck, or time runs out. The incredible flying and climbing adventures of one of New Zealand’s most unique mountaineers and pilots, yet unsung and forgotten in his country of birth.

On the day after Halloween, in the year 1327, four children slip away from the cathedral city of Kingsbridge. They are a thief, a bully, a boy genius, and a girl who wants to be a doctor. In the forest they see two men killed. As adults, their lives will be braided together by ambition, love, greed and revenge. They will see prosperity and famine, plague and war.

As 1862 dawned, the American republic was at death’s door. The federal government appeared overwhelmed, the U.S. Treasury was broke, and the Union’s top general was gravely ill. The Confederacy - with its booming economy, expert military leadership, and commanding position on the battlefield - had a clear view to victory. To a remarkable extent, the survival of the country depended on the judgment, cunning, and resilience of the unschooled frontier lawyer who had recently been elected president. Twelve months later, the Civil War had become a cataclysm but the tide had turned.

In the fall of 1944, a massive American bomber carrying eleven men vanished over the Pacific islands of Palau, leaving a trail of mysteries. According to mission reports from the Army Air Forces, the plane crashed in shallow water - but when investigators went to find it, the wreckage wasn't there. Witnesses saw the crew parachute to safety, yet the airmen were never seen again. Some of their relatives whispered that they had returned to the United States in secret and lived in hiding. But they never explained why.

Berlin, November 1937. Adolf Hitler meets with his military commanders to impress upon them the urgent necessity for a war of aggression in Eastern Europe. Some generals are unnerved by the Führer’s grandiose plan, but these dissenters are silenced one by one, setting in motion events that will culminate in the most calamitous war in history.

LONDON, 1944. In advance of Operation OVERLORD, the British Secret Service devises an audacious gambit: the false-flag recruitment of a German admiral who secretly is a communist. There isn’t much time. The admiral will be approachable only during the brief window when he travels to neutral Sweden at the head of a Nazi delegation. For the daring scheme to succeed, the British first must borrow from the Americans a brilliant young analyst, Linnea Thorsell.

Based on a true story, Found at Sea is the account of how 19-year-old Pete O’Brien, while attempting to circumnavigate the globe, is interrupted on his journey by his arrest on drug charges in Bangkok, Thailand and incarcerated in a prison in the heart of that city, along as what follows when he is eventually deported to the custody of a U.S. Consul in Singapore. Once arrived there, he is offered employment aboard an American merchant vessel as an alternative to a flight back to the United States in disgrace and the day that he boards a consulate launch for a trip out into Singapore ...