TO HELL AND BACKFor the U.S., Guadalcanal was a bloody seven-month struggle under brutal conditions against crack Japanese troops deeply entrenched and determined to fight to the death. For Charles Walker, this horrific jungle battle–one that claimed the lives of 1,600 Americans and more than 23,000 Japanese–was just the beginning. On the eve of battle, 2nd Lt. Walker was ordered back to the States for medical reasons. But there was a war to be won, and he had no intention of missi...

Two decades have now passed since the revolutions of 1989 swept through Eastern Europe and precipitated the collapse of state socialism across the region, engendering a period of massive social, economic and political transformation. This book explores the ways in which young people growing up in post-socialist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union negotiate a range of identities and transitions in their personal lives against a backdrop of thoroughgoing transformation in their societ...

On a mission to the Czech Carpathian Mountains,to investigate rumors of vampire activity. Carl meets Alexi, his homophobic translator. they visit the bucolic valley where they fall in love with the people still living in the 14th Century. They eventually discover their love for each other, and are determined to free the beleagured valley from the terror of Vlad and his 2-demons. First they must help them economically.

Are you a newcomer to computer programming?Do you want to learn a simple programming language that will get you started?Python could be the one for you!Computers are amazing tools that we would find it hard to live without since they have become a feature in almost every home. Many people, however, struggle with anything that is slightly complex and when it comes to computer programming, most would admit to being completely lost by even the thought of trying it....

This book explores the changing nature of growing-up working-class in post-Soviet Russia, a country dislocated by the experience of neo-liberal economic reform. Based on extensive ethnographic research in a provincial Russian region, it follows the experiences of vocational education graduates whose colleges continue to channel them into the ailing industrial and agricultural sectors. Rather than settling for transitions into ‘poor work’, the book shows how these young men and women develo...

"The Biter Bit" is a humorous short story by British writer Wilkie Collins. Originally published as "Who is the Thief?" in the April 1858 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, it was retitled and published with nine other short stories in the 1859 book, The Queen of Hearts. The tale is told in epistolary form, recounting a comedy of errors involving a young wannabe police detective -- with an exaggerated sense of his own investigatory skills -- and a minor theft of banknotes. Can you spot the gui...

This memoir by painter Francis Bicknell Carpenter includes observations he made during his time at the White House from February-July 1864, while painting Abraham Lincoln's portrait. We see him in this book of Mr, Carpenter’s to that advantage which perfect unaffectedness and sincerity can never lose. During the time that Mr. Carpenter was making studies for his picture of the President signing the Emancipation Proclamation, he was in daily contact with him,—saw him in consultation with hi...

'One of the best half-dozen personal accounts of the Normandy campaign' - Richard HolmesStuart Hills embarked his Sherman DD tank on to an LCT at 6.45 a.m., Sunday 4 June 1944. He was 20 years old, unblooded, fresh from a public-school background and Officer Cadet training. He was going to war. Two days later, his tank sunk, he and his crew landed from a rubber dinghy with just the clothes they stood in. After that, the struggles through the Normandy bocage in a re...

"A fantastic read . . . Whether your interest is armour or history I would highly recommend this book" ( Military Modelling).The tank destroyer was a bold—though some would say flawed—answer to the challenge posed by the seemingly unstoppable German Blitzkrieg. The TD was conceived to be light and fast enough to outmaneuver panzer forces and go where tanks could not. At the same time, the TD would wield the firepower needed to kill any German tank on the b...

in this memoir of his experiences as a teenage infantryman in the US Third Army during World War II, Kotlowitz brings to life the harrowing story of the massacre of his platoon in northeastern France, in which he--by playing dead--was the only one to survive. 208 pp. 15,000 print.

"If you survive your first day, I'll promote you."So promised George Wilson's World War II commanding officer in the hedgerows of Normandy -- and it was to be a promise dramatically fulfilled. From July, 1944, to the closing days of the war, from the first penetration of the Siegfried Line to the Nazis' last desperate charge in the Battle of the Bulge, Wilson fought in the thickest of the action, helping take the small towns of northern France and Belgium building by building....

As a young enlisted man, Randy Kington served on the front line with some of the first Marine combat units in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966. Kington describes his transformation from boy to man and the training that allowed him to survive nine months of some of the fiercest fighting of the Vietnam War. The good times of comradeship and of helping the underprivileged are contrasted with the life and death experiences that involved three major battles, countless ambushes, and search and destroy m...