Download or read book First Casualty written by Toby Harnden and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning journalist reveals the dramatic true story of the CIA's Team Alpha, the first Americans to be dropped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan after 9/11. America is reeling; Al-Qaeda has struck and thousands are dead. The country scrambles to respond, but the Pentagon has no plan for Afghanistan—where Osama bin Laden masterminded the attack and is protected by the Taliban. Instead, the CIA steps forward to spearhead the war. Eight CIA officers are dropped into the mountains of northern Afghanistan on October 17, 2001. They are Team Alpha, an eclectic band of linguists, tribal experts, and elite warriors: the first Americans to operate inside Taliban territory. Their covert mission is to track down Al- Qaeda and stop the terrorists from infiltrating the United States again. First Casualty places you with Team Alpha as the CIA rides into battle on horseback alongside the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum. In Washington, DC, few trust that the CIA men, the Green Berets, and the Americans’ outnumbered Afghan allies can prevail before winter sets in. On the ground, Team Alpha is undeterred. The Taliban is routed but hatches a plot with Al-Qaeda to hit back. Hundreds of suicidal fighters, many hiding weapons, fake a surrender and are transported to Qala-i Jangi—the “Fort of War.” Team Alpha’s Mike Spann, an ex-Marine, and David Tyson, a polyglot former Central Asian studies academic, seize America’s initial opportunity to extract intelligence from men trained by bin Laden—among them a young Muslim convert from California. The prisoners revolt and one CIA officer falls—the first casualty in America’s longest war, which will last two decades. The other CIA man shoots dead the Al-Qaeda jihadists attacking his comrade. To survive, he must fight his way out against overwhelming odds. Award-winning author Toby Harnden gained unprecedented access to all living Team Alpha members and every level of the CIA. Superbly researched, First Casualty draws on extensive interviews, secret documents, and deep reporting inside Afghanistan. As gripping as any adventure novel, yet intimate and profoundly moving, it tells how America found a winning strategy only to abandon it. Harnden reveals that the lessons of early victory and the haunting foretelling it contained—unreliable allies, ethnic rivalries, suicide attacks, and errant US bombs—were ignored, tragically fueling a twenty-year conflict. "Masterful, complex, and heartfelt, from the deeply personal to the critically strategic. Captures many lessons on many levels." —Ambassador Hank Crumpton, former senior CIA officer
Download or read book The First Casualty written by Ben Elton and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-11-08 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A work of formidable imaginative scope' Daily Telegraph The first casualty when war comes is truth . . . Flanders, June 1917: a British officer and celebrated poet, is shot dead. , He is killed not by German fire, but while recuperating from shell shock well behind the lines. A young English soldier is arrested and, although he protests his innocence, charged with his murder. Douglas Kingsley is a conscientious objector, previously a detective with the London police, now imprisoned for his beliefs. He is released and sent to France in order to secure a conviction. Forced to conduct his investigations amidst the hell of The Third Battle of Ypres, Kingsley soon discovers that both the evidence and the witnesses he needs are quite literally disappearing into the mud that surrounds him. Ben Elton's tenth novel is a gut-wrenching historical drama which explores some fundamental questions: What is murder? What is justice in the face of unimaginable daily slaughter? And where is the honour in saving a man from the gallows if he is only to be returned to die in a suicidal battle?
Download or read book The First Casualty written by Ricky D. Phillips and published by . This book was released on 2019-04 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Truth is the First Casualty written by Joseph C. Goulden and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author's note: Historians who walk through what the late President Kennedy called the "minefield" of contemporary events must tread carefully lest their own reputations, or those of perons about whom they write, be blown skyward by misstatement or misinterpretation. Truth is the First Casualty is a reconstruction of an event that will remain politically volatile for years; unsurprisingly therefore, the Johnson Adminsitration and its officials are anxious that as little as possible be said about it. ... Arlington, Virginia, April 16, 1969 [page 1].
Download or read book Last Call at the Hotel Imperial written by Deborah Cohen and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE • A prize-winning historian’s “effervescent” (The New Yorker) account of a close-knit band of wildly famous American reporters who, in the run-up to World War II, took on dictators and rewrote the rules of modern journalism “High-speed, four-lane storytelling . . . Cohen’s all-action narrative bursts with colour and incident.”—Financial Times NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE PROSE AWARD ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, BookPage, Booklist They were an astonishing group: glamorous, gutsy, and irreverent to the bone. As cub reporters in the 1920s, they roamed across a war-ravaged world, sometimes perched atop mules on wooden saddles, sometimes gliding through countries in the splendor of a first-class sleeper car. While empires collapsed and fledgling democracies faltered, they chased deposed empresses, international financiers, and Balkan gun-runners, and then knocked back doubles late into the night. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial is the extraordinary story of John Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson. In those tumultuous years, they landed exclusive interviews with Hitler and Mussolini, Nehru and Gandhi, and helped shape what Americans knew about the world. Alongside these backstage glimpses into the halls of power, they left another equally incredible set of records. Living in the heady afterglow of Freud, they subjected themselves to frank, critical scrutiny and argued about love, war, sex, death, and everything in between. Plunged into successive global crises, Gunther, Knickerbocker, Sheean, and Thompson could no longer separate themselves from the turmoil that surrounded them. To tell that story, they broke long-standing taboos. From their circle came not just the first modern account of illness in Gunther’s Death Be Not Proud—a memoir about his son’s death from cancer—but the first no-holds-barred chronicle of a marriage: Sheean’s Dorothy and Red, about Thompson’s fractious relationship with Sinclair Lewis. Told with the immediacy of a conversation overheard, this revelatory book captures how the global upheavals of the twentieth century felt up close.
Download or read book First Casualty written by A. W. Powers and published by Psychic Guardian Angel. This book was released on 2023-06-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reluctant psychic, a missing woman, and vengeance from beyond the grave. Rachel Thompson is missing, and the police have no leads. The serial killer who has taken her is efficient, elusive, and seemingly invisible. Her only hope is Jacob Daniels, a man tormented by his second sight. Jacob is driven to search for his friend in the slim hope that she is still alive. However, that means accepting he must use his gift and ask the spirits for their help. Assistance from beyond can be a double-edged blade. When Jacob follows the advice given to him, he finds Rachel. He also finds her killer and becomes his next target. Jacob fights for his life as he is thrust into a mind-warping maelstrom of vengeful spirits and plans gone astray. It's his life or the killer's. Only one can survive the day. Will Jacob survive a second encounter with a man determined to eliminate the only person who can identify him?
Download or read book Not a Gentleman s War written by John R. Milam and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A combat veteran of the Vietnam War draws on oral histories, after-action reports, diaries, letters, and other archival sources to debunk the view that the junior officers who served in Vietnam were poorly trained, unmotivated soldiers typified by Lt. William Calley of My Lai infamy.
Download or read book On American Soil written by Jack Hamann and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the 1944 lynching murder of an Italian POW at Seattle's Fort Lawton, the international outcry that followed, and the court-martial, the largest of World War II, that accused more than forty African-American soldiers of the crime.
Download or read book Counting Civilian Casualties written by Taylor B. Seybolt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Counting Civilian Casualties aims to promote open scientific dialogue by high lighting the strengths and weaknesses of the most commonly used casualty recording and estimation techniques in an understandable format.
Download or read book Casualty Figures written by Michele Barrett and published by Verso. This book was released on 2007 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells about the countless thousands of men who lived as long-term casualties in the First World War - not of shrapnel and gas, but of the bleak trauma of the slaughter they escaped. This book uncovers the lives of five soldiers who endured the "war to end all wars," and how they dealt with its horrors, both at the front and after the war's end.
Download or read book A Casualty of War written by Charles Todd and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd comes a haunting tale that explores the impact of World War I on all who witnessed it—officers, soldiers, doctors, and battlefield nurses like Bess Crawford. Though the Great War is nearing its end, the fighting rages on. While waiting for transport back to her post, Bess Crawford meets Captain Alan Travis from the island of Barbados. Later, when he’s brought into her forward aid station disoriented from a head wound, Bess is alarmed that he believes his distant English cousin, Lieutenant James Travis, shot him. Then the Captain is brought back to the aid station with a more severe wound, once more angrily denouncing the Lieutenant as a killer. But when it appears that James Travis couldn’t have shot him, the Captain’s sanity is questioned. Still, Bess wonders how such an experienced officer could be so wrong. On leave in England, Bess finds the Captain strapped to his bed in a clinic for brain injuries. Horrified by his condition, Bess and Sergeant Major Simon Brandon travel to James Travis’s home in Suffolk, to learn more about the baffling relationship between these two cousins. Her search will lead this smart, capable, and compassionate young woman into unexpected danger, and bring her face to face with the visible and invisible wounds of war that not even the much-longed for peace can heal.
Download or read book Dead Men Risen written by Toby Harnden and published by Quercus Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE 2012. This is the tale of the Welsh Guards in Helmand in 2009. Underequipped and overstretched, guardsmen from the coal mining valleys and slate quarry villages of Wales found themselves in Helmand in some of the most intense fighting by British troops for more than a generation. They were confronted by a Taliban enemy they seldom saw, facing the constant threat of Improvised Explosive Devices and ambush. Leading them into battle was Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, destined for the highest ranks. He was a passionate believer in the war but was dismayed by how it was being conducted. Dead Men Risen will unnerve politicians and generals alike. In chilling detail, Toby Harnden reveals how and why Thorneloe was killed by an IED during Operation Panther's Claw. Harnden, who had known Thorneloe since they met in Northern Ireland in 1996, was on the ground in Helmand with the Welsh Guards. He draws on a trove of military documents, including many by Thorneloe, the first British battalion commander to die in action since the Falklands war of 1982. Major Sean Birchall left behind an unvarnished account of the shortcomings of the Afghan forces that represent Nato's exit strategy. Lieutenant Mark Evison wrote a diary that raises questions from beyond the grave. It was more than half a century since a British battalion had lost officers at these three key levels of leadership. By the time the fighting was over, almost no rank had been spared. A visceral and timeless account of men at war, Dead Men Risen conveys what it is like to be a soldier who has to kill, face paralysing fear and watch comrades perish in agony. Given unprecedented access to the Welsh Guards, Harnden conducted more than 300 interviews in Afghanistan, England and Wales. The searing heat of the poppy fields and mud compounds of Helmand to the dreaded knock on the door back home, the reader is transported there. Harnden weaves the experiences of the guardsmen and their loved ones into an unsparing narrative that sits alongside a piercing analysis of military strategy. No other book about modern conflict succeeds on so many levels. Dead Men Risen is essential for anyone who wants to learn the reality of Britain's war in Afghanistan.
Download or read book Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century written by G. F. Krivosheev and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A technical reference book covering Soviet personnel and equipment losses in wars and other military actions, from the 1918 civil war to Afghanistan.
Download or read book Fallen Soldier written by Andrew Roy and published by Black Belt Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True story of a Civil War soldier's struggle to survive a terrible wound.
Download or read book The War Correspondent written by Greg McLaughlin and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2002-03-20 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Courageous reporting - read this book!' Michael Moore_x000B_Original hardback edition of this New York Times bestseller.
Download or read book Casualties of the German Air Service 1914 20 written by Norman L. R. Franks and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From A-Z and in chronological order, researchers and historians can now check to find what deaths occurred among the German Air Service any day during World War I.
Download or read book The First Casualty written by Phillip Knightley and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2004-10-05 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The first casualty when war comes, is truth," said American Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917. In his gripping, now-classic history of war journalism, Phillip Knightley shows just how right Johnson was. From William Howard Russell, who described the appalling conditions of the Crimean War in the Times of London, to the ranks of reporters, photographers, and cameramen who captured the realities of war in Vietnam, The First Casualty tells a fascinating story of heroism and collusion, censorship and suppression. Since Vietnam, Knightley reveals, governments have become much more adept at managing the media, as highlighted in chapters on the Falklands War, the Gulf War, and the conflict between NATO and Serbia over Kosovo. And in a new chapter on the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Knightley details even greater degrees of government manipulation and media complicity, as evidenced by the "embedding" of reporters in military units and the uncritical, openly patriotic coverage of these conflicts. "The age of the war correspondent as hero," he concludes, "appears to be over." Fully updated, The First Casualty remains required reading for anyone concerned about freedom of the press, journalistic responsibility, and the nature of modern warfare.
