Download or read book No Mean Soldier written by Peter McAleese and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2001-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Absolutely incredible, and brutally honest, this amazing story recounts the adventures of a British SAS soldier turned mercenary. McAleese fought in some of the world's most dangerous places, from Aden to Rhodesia (against the guerrillas of Zanla), and he nearly lost his life trying to assassinate Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar. Always in search of the "intense high" of battle, for 25 years he saw almost constant combat...putting him in a unique position to reveal the harsh realities of modern warfare.

Download or read book Beyond No Mean Soldier written by Peter McAleese and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2015-07-19 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The SAS veteran, mercenary and author of No Mean Soldier looks back on a life of combat in this revised and expanded edition of his classic memoir. Peter McAleese’s No Mean Soldier set the bar for the modern military memoir. This completely revised and expanded edition sees a philosophical McAleese revisiting his time with Britain's Parachute Regiment, the SAS, Rhodesia's SAS and the South African Defense Force's 44 Para Brigade. Peter also recounts a range of other adventures, from his experiences with private military companies to near fatal skydiving accidents. With previously unpublished photos from McAleese’s private collection, Beyond No Mean Soldier delves deeper and further into the author’s wide-ranging experiences, the men he's served with, and the operations he'd conducted. Here in startling detail are the Aden insurgency; covert operations with the Rhodesian SAS; one of the first ever operational HALO inserts in British military history; assaults on SWAPO positions with 44 Para's Pathfinder Company; a botched assassination attempt in Colombia; and much more.

Download or read book WHEREAS written by Layli Long Soldier and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The astonishing, powerful debut by the winner of a 2016 Whiting Writers' Award WHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota therein the question: What did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces? Until a friend comforted, Don’t worry, you and your daughter will learn together. Today she stood sunlight on her shoulders lean and straight to share a song in Diné, her father’s language. To sing she motions simultaneously with her hands; I watch her be in multiple musics. —from “WHEREAS Statements” WHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations. “I am,” she writes, “a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation—and in this dual citizenship I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.” This strident, plaintive book introduces a major new voice in contemporary literature.

Download or read book Soldier Boys written by Dean Hughes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spencer Morgan And Dieter Hedrick, one American, one German, are both young and eager to get into action in the war. Dieter, a shining member of the Hitler Youth movement, has actually met the Führer himself and was praised for his hard work. Now he is determined to make it to the front lines, to push back the enemy and defend the honor of the Fatherland. Spencer, just sixteen, must convince his father to sign his induction papers. He is bent on becoming a paratrooper -- the toughest soldiers in the world. He will prove to his family and hometown friends that he is more than the little guy with crooked teeth. He?ll prove to his father that he can amount to something and keep his promises. Everyone will look at him differently when he returns home in his uniform, trousers tucked into his boots in the paratrooper style. Both boys get their wishes when they are tossed into intense conflict during the Battle of the Bulge. And both soon learn that war is about a lot more than proving oneself and one?s bravery. Dean Hughes offers young readers a wrenching look at parallel lives and how innocence must eventually be shed.

Download or read book No Surrender Soldier written by Christine Kohler and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing up on Guam in 1972, fifteen-year-old Kiko is beset by worries: He's never kissed a girl, the popular guys get all the attention at school--but the worst part is the serious problems at home. His older brother is missing in Vietnam, his grandfather is losing it to dementia, and he just learned that his mother was raped by a Japanese soldier during World War II. It all comes together when he discovers an old man, a Japanese soldier, hiding in the jungle behind his house. It's not the same man who raped his mother, but, in his rage, Kiko cares only about protecting his family and avenging his mom--no matter what it takes. And so, a shy, peaceable boy begins to plan a murder. But how far will Kiko go to prove to himself that he's a man? Based on a true incident in history, No Surrender Soldier is the story of a boy grappling with ancient questions of courage and manhood before he can move on.

Download or read book The Winter Soldier written by Daniel Mason and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic story of war and medicine from the award-winning author of North Woods and The Piano Tuner is "a dream of a novel...part mystery, part war story, part romance" (Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See). Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains. But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon's scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient, and nurse forever. From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front; from hardscrabble operating rooms to battlefields thundering with Cossack cavalry, The Winter Soldier is the story of war and medicine, of family, of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and finally, of the mistakes we make, and the precious opportunities to atone. "The Winter Soldier brims with improbable narrative pleasures...These pages crackle with excitement... A spectacular success." —Anthony Marra, New York Times Book Review

Download or read book Testament written by Benson Bobrick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bobrick tells the story of Benjamin "Webb" Baker, his great-grandfather. Webb enlisted in the Union Army in 1861 and thereafter suffered through horrid conditions in camp and absolute hell in combat. Bobrick's fascinating look at the Civil War also contains a heretofore unreleased collection of Webb's letters.

Download or read book Soldier s Heart written by Elizabeth D. Samet and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2004-08-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth D. Samet and her students learned to romanticize the army "from the stories of their fathers and from the movies." For Samet, it was the old World War II movies she used to watch on TV, while her students grew up on Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Unlike their teacher, however, these students, cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, have decided to turn make-believe into real life. West Point is a world away from Yale, where Samet attended graduate school and where nothing sufficiently prepared her for teaching literature to young men and women who were training to fight a war. Intimate and poignant, Soldier's Heart chronicles the various tensions inherent in that life as well as the ways in which war has transformed Samet's relationship to literature. Fighting in Iraq, Samet's former students share what books and movies mean to them—the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the fiction of Virginia Woolf and J. M. Coetzee, the epics of Homer, or the films of James Cagney. Their letters in turn prompt Samet to wonder exactly what she owes to cadets in the classroom. Samet arrived at West Point before September 11, 2001, and has seen the academy change dramatically. In Soldier's Heart, she reads this transformation through her own experiences and those of her students. Forcefully examining what it means to be a civilian teaching literature at a military academy, Samet also considers the role of women in the army, the dangerous tides of religious and political zeal roiling the country, the uses of the call to patriotism, and the cult of sacrifice she believes is currently paralyzing national debate. Ultimately, Samet offers an honest and original reflection on the relationship between art and life.

Download or read book The Scout Mindset written by Julia Galef and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...an engaging and enlightening account from which we all can benefit."—The Wall Street Journal A better way to combat knee-jerk biases and make smarter decisions, from Julia Galef, the acclaimed expert on rational decision-making. When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a "soldier" mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalizing in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe—and shoot down those we don't. But if we want to get things right more often, argues Galef, we should train ourselves to have a "scout" mindset. Unlike the soldier, a scout's goal isn't to defend one side over the other. It's to go out, survey the territory, and come back with as accurate a map as possible. Regardless of what they hope to be the case, above all, the scout wants to know what's actually true. In The Scout Mindset, Galef shows that what makes scouts better at getting things right isn't that they're smarter or more knowledgeable than everyone else. It's a handful of emotional skills, habits, and ways of looking at the world—which anyone can learn. With fascinating examples ranging from how to survive being stranded in the middle of the ocean, to how Jeff Bezos avoids overconfidence, to how superforecasters outperform CIA operatives, to Reddit threads and modern partisan politics, Galef explores why our brains deceive us and what we can do to change the way we think.

Download or read book Twenty One Steps Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier written by Jeff Gottesfeld and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With every step, the Tomb Guards pay homage to America’s fallen. Discover their story, and that of the unknown soldiers they honor, through resonant words and illustrations. Keeping vigil at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in Arlington National Cemetery, are the sentinel guards, whose every step, every turn, honors and remembers America’s fallen. They protect fellow soldiers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice, making sure they are never alone. To stand there—with absolute precision, in every type of weather, at every moment of the day, one in a line uninterrupted since midnight July 2, 1937—is the ultimate privilege and the most difficult post to earn in the army. Everything these men and women do is in service to the Unknowns. Their standard is perfection. Exactly how the unnamed men came to be entombed at Arlington, and exactly how their fellow soldiers have come to keep vigil over them, is a sobering and powerful tale, told by Jeff Gottesfeld and luminously illustrated by Matt Tavares—a tale that honors the soldiers who honor the fallen.

Download or read book The Adventures of a Revolutionary Soldier written by Joseph Plumb Martin and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-11-13 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joseph Plumb Martin (1760 – 1850) was a soldier in the Continental Army and Connecticut Militia during the American Revolutionary War, holding the rank of private for most of the war. His published narrative of his experiences has become a valuable resource for historians in understanding the conditions of a common soldier of that era, as well as the battles in which Martin participated. "My intention is to give a succinct account of some of my adventures, dangers and sufferings during my several campaigns in the revolutionary army." Contents: Campaign of 1776. Campaign of 1777. Campaign of 1778. Campaign of 1779. Campaign of 1780. Campaign of 1781. Campaign of 1782. Campaign of 1783.

Download or read book The Things They Carried written by Tim O'Brien and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Download or read book Shaman s Crossing written by Robin Hobb and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nevare Burvelle is the second son of a second son, destined from birth to carry a sword. The wealthy young noble will follow his father—newly made a lord by the King of Gernia—into the cavalry, training in the military arts at the elite King's Cavella Academy in the capital city of Old Thares. Bright and well-educated, an excellent horseman with an advantageous engagement, Nevare's future appears golden. But as his Academy instruction progresses, Nevare begins to realize that the road before him is far from straight. The old aristocracy looks down on him as the son of a "new noble" and, unprepared for the political and social maneuvering of the deeply competitive school and city, the young man finds himself entangled in a web of injustice, discrimination, and foul play. In addition, he is disquieted by his unconventional girl-cousin Epiny—who challenges his heretofore unwavering world view—and by the bizarre dreams that haunt his nights. For twenty years the King's cavalry has pushed across the grasslands, subduing and settling its nomads and claiming the territory in Gernia's name. Now they have driven as far as the Barrier Mountains, home to the Speck people, a quiet, forest-dwelling folk who retain the last vestiges of magic in a world that is rapidly becoming modernized. From childhood Nevare has been taught that the Specks are a primitive people to be pitied for their backward ways—and feared for their indigenous diseases, including the deadly Speck plague, which has ravaged the frontier towns and military outposts. The Dark Evening brings the carnival to Old Thares, and with it an unknown magic, and the first Specks Nevare has ever seen . . .

Download or read book Watches Without Time written by Matt Zeller and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For eight months in 2008, U.S. Army Capt. Matt Zeller served as an embedded combat adviser with Afghan security forces in Ghazni, Afghanistan. Watches Without Time is a compilation of the emails he sent home to family and friends during that period--so that, as he writes in the Preface, "should anything have ever happened to me, they would know what I went through."Watches Without Time gives a granular account of the challenges Zeller and his men encountered in Ghazni, and of the complex missions they undertook there. Written in clear and searingly intimate prose, it highlights the many emotion-laden experiences he underwent both during his tour and after his return to the United States.

Download or read book Soldier Spy written by Tom Marcus and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soldier Spy is the first true story told by an MI5 officer. A shocking, honest account revealing never-before-seen detail into MI5's operation. 'I do it because it is all I know. I'm a hunter of people and I'm damn good at it.' Bestselling author Tom Marcus is the first MI5 officer to tell the true story of British counter terrorism operations on our streets. Recruited after the 7/7 attacks on London, Tom quickly found himself immersed in the tense world of watching, following and infiltrating networks of terrorists, spies and foreign agents. It was a job that took over his life for months at a time and cost him dear, taking him to the limit of physical and mental endurance. Filled with extraordinary, searing accounts of operations that saved countless lives, Soldier Spy is the only authentic account by an ex-MI5 officer of the round-the-clock battle to keep this country's streets safe. 'Very well written, gives a startling amount of operational detail, the biggest shock of all - MI5 agreed to its publication' Sunday Times 'A blistering, visceral insight into life on the front line against terror, revealed in remarkable detail' Daily Telegraph 'Startling, absolutely fascinating. A footsoldier's account out on the street. A vivid picture of surveillance'Midweek, Radio 4 'Gripping. One of the most successful MI5 undercover surveillance officers of his time' Sun

Download or read book American Soldier written by Tommy R. Franks and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To America, he was a hero. To his troops, he was a soldier. Now hear his story. Each new era in American history has given rise to a military leader who defines the nation’s proudest traditions—of leadership and honor, of vision and commitment and courage in the face of any challenge. From Washington and U.S. Grant to Dwight D. Eisenhower and Norman Schwarzkopf, these men have captured the nation’s imagination, and entered the small pantheon of

Download or read book The Boy Colonel written by John J. Horn and published by Vision Forum. This book was released on 2012-09-24 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year is 1836. A mysterious young English soldier known as the ''Boy Colonel'' commands a crack regiment in the snowy wastelands of Siberia. No one knows his history. No one knows his name. The Cossacks want him dead -- but are they the only ones? It seems his worst enemy may wear an English uniform. The Boy Colonel strives to perform his duty, but when that duty becomes mixed he must decide which sovereign is greater -- the king of England, or the God of the Bible. Treachery, intimidation, and deceit block his path. His choice of allegiance may mean the difference between life and death. Is he prepared to risk all to protect his loved ones?