Showing results for "declan power"

Siege at Jadotville is Declan Power’s acclaimed book on the men of A Company, 35th Battalion of the Defence Forces, who were deployed to protect the inhabitants of the village of Jadotville in the Congo in 1961.Days after their deployment, A Company found themselves out-numbered and engaged in a pitched battle with native Congolese soldiers led by white mercenary officers. In addition to the overwhelming odds, A Company also had to contend with being strafed by a jet with no anti-a...

The Irish soldier has never been a stranger to fighting the enemy with the odds stacked against him. The notion of charging into adversity has been a cherished part of Ireland’s military history. In September 1961, another chapter should have been written into the annals, but it is a tale that lay shrouded in dust for years.The men of A Company, Thirty-Fifth Irish Infantry Battalion, arrived in the Congo as a United Nations contingent to help keep the peace. For many it would be th...

At the funeral, several priests remarked how appropriate it was that Father Conroy should have returned on his last day to Rosnagree, the parish in which he was born.Father Tom Conroy – a spiky, difficult man – dies at a reunion of his seminary colleagues. As this masterly novel unfolds, we are taken through the years that formed this troublesome priest, who knew his life had been a failure. The Hungry Grass is a sharply witty and moving novel of a world on the cu...

A penetrating biography of one of the most infamous members of the Nazi high command.In Goering, Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel use firsthand testimonies and a variety of historical documents to tell the story of a monster lurking in Hitler's shadows. After rising through the ranks of the German army, Hermann Goering became Hitler's right hand man and was hand-picked to head the Luftwaffe, one of history's most feared fighting forces. As he rose in po...

A Green Beret's gripping memoir of American Special Forces in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam WarIn 1970, on his second tour to Vietnam, Nick Brokhausen served in Recon Team Habu, CCN. Officially, it was known as the Studies and Observations group. In fact, this Special Forces squad, which Brokhausen calls "an unwashed, profane, ribald, joyously alive fraternity," undertook some of the most dangerous and suicidal reconnaissance missions ever in the enemy-controll...

From legendary comedian D.L. Hughley comes a bitingly funny send-up of the Obama years, as “told” by the key political players on both sides of the aisle.What do the Clintons, Republicans, fellow Democrats, and Obama’s own family really think of President Barack Obama? Finally, the truth is revealed in this raucously funny “oral history” parody.There is no more astute—and hilarious—critic of politics, entertainment, and race in America than D. L. Hughley, famed comedian, ra...

One fateful week in June 1967 redrew the map of the Middle East. Many scholars have documented how the Six-Day War unfolded, but little has been done to explain why the conflict happened at all. As we approach its fiftieth anniversary, Guy Laron refutes the widely accepted belief that the war was merely the result of regional friction, revealing the crucial roles played by American and Soviet policies in the face of an encroaching global economic crisis, and restoring Syria’s often overloo...

The little-known story of an eighteenth-century Quaker dwarf who fiercely attacked slavery and imagined a new, more humane way of lifeIn The Fearless Benjamin Lay, renowned historian Marcus Rediker chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular man—a Quaker dwarf who demanded the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. Mocked and scorned by his contemporaries, Lay was unflinching in his opposition to slavery,...

Very few British soldiers could lay claim to such a full war as Leslie Young. Having survived the retreat to and evacuation from Dunkirk, he volunteered for the newly formed Commandos and took part in their first operation, the raid on the Lofoten Islands. He fought and was captured in Tunisia. He went on the run before his POW camp at Fontanellato was taken over by the Nazis after the September 1943 Italian armistice. He spent six months on the run in the Apennine mountains aided by brave...

November 1950, the Korean Peninsula. After General MacArthur ignores Mao's warnings and pushes his UN forces deep into North Korea, his 10,000 First Division Marines find themselves surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by 100,000 Chinese soldiers near the Chosin Reservoir. Their only chance for survival is to fight their way south through the Toktong Pass, a narrow gorge in the Nangnim Mountains. It will need to be held open at all costs. The mission is handed to Captain William Barber an...

Civilization was born eight thousand years ago, between the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, when migrants from the surrounding mountains and deserts began to create increasingly sophisticated urban societies. In the cities that they built, half of human history took place.In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements seven thousand years ago to the eclipse of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Bringing the people of ...

A biography of a Special Forces soldier who battled the forces of Mugabe and Nkomo, earning a reputation as a military maestro.During the West's great transition into the post-colonial age, the country of Rhodesia refused to succumb quietly, and throughout the 1970s, fought back almost alone against Communist-supported elements that it did not believe would deliver proper governance. During this long war, many heroes emerged, but none more skillful and courageous t...