Take an exhilarating ride through the history of the American bike, biker, and the biker nation in this fascinating and comprehensive chronicle of the biker era and today's ever-expanding legion of motorcycle enthusiasts. Impassioned, idiosyncratic, and razor sharp, Born to Be Wild traces a century's worth of the culture, the bikers, and the bikes themselves.Who are these bikers? Are they those hard-living, leather-clad, tattooed guys often associated with images of the He...

From birth, Nazi propaganda bombarded children with images romanticising war and a glorious death for the Fuehrer and Fatherland. Third Reich social planners emphasised physical activity over the intellect, all toward ensuring absolute loyalty to the Fuehrer and to Nazi ideology, ultimately in preparation for military service. Well over 3 million boys and girls were involved in organisations such as the Hitler Youth. Evidence of the intensity of the indoctrination programme can be seen in ...

Of the millions of German soldiers who went to war, many were armed with their personal cameras and intent on photographically chronicling their Dienstzeit, or military service, via meticulously prepared albums or by turning their photos into postcards sent to family and friends or as a single photo to carry into battle. Others were professional photographers and film makers recruited by the military and the Nazi State propaganda ministry to produce images for their agendas. In the era bef...

The men featured in this book originally came from Germany’s big city police forces, where they had previously dealt with traffic control, street crime and the often violent street demonstrations occurring during Germany’s politically turbulent 1920s. They shared their long-standing police traditions and comradeship and held the safety and security of their homeland at heart. With the rise to power of the Nazi Party and the assimilation of the German police under Himmler’s SS and military ...

Through both World Wars, young African conscripts from Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, the Congo and elsewhere found themselves fighting for their colonial rulers, facing unknown enemies in unknown lands. German soldiers regarded their African enemies with a mixture of curiosity and malice, sometimes posing for snapshots with black POWs, sometimes summarily executing them on the battlefield. Mistreated by their own commanders during wartime, African troops had to fight for equal postwar compens...

No other combatant nation employed motorcycles on the scale produced by the Third Reich. During Nazi Germany’s campaigns, first of invasion, then of the retreat that followed, motorcycles served a variety of functions: as couriers, for reconnaissance, for medical evacuation, as assault shock troops taking the brunt of battle, even as tank destroyers and for delivering hot meals to the frontline. As the Third Reich gained absolute control of Germany and sought to spread its domain by fire a...

While many films have attempted to convey the experience of the Second World War European battlefield, none adequately portray the mayhem and suffering that befell untold thousands of horses, their bodies impacted by bullet, flame and bomb as well as disease, starvation and backbreaking toil in the searing heat of summer and the freezing winds and snows of winter. In great part, the role of the horse in the Second World War, and in particular their use by the Third Reich, has been eclipsed...

“The baddest man on two wheels.”—Rolling StoneOne of the founders and the most famous member of the infamous Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club, Ralph “Sonny” Barger says, “Let’s Ride” with this ultimate guide to motorcycling. With expert co-author Darwin Holmstrom—former writer for Motorcyclist magazine and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Motorcycles—Barger, “The archangel of all Hells Angels” (New York Post) is ready to take you on the ride of your life with this exhil...

Step inside the inner workings of a biker gangYou’ll never meet the bikers in this novel, or visit the mythical rust-belt city of Springfield. But through the eyes of Ned “Crash” Aiken, you will experience the world of the outlaw biker gang—a world shaped by desperation, casual brutality, and fascinating rites of passage.Biker follows the career trajectory of “Crash” from his days as a small-time high school drug dealer to his rapid rise through the ranks ...

The inside story of the street war between Canada's most violent biker gangs-the Outlaws and the Hell's Angels Once bikers who road together, Mario Parente and Walter Stadnick, are now mortal enemies, chiefs, respectively, of the Outlaws and Hell's Angels, embroiled in a bloody turf war over control of the lucrative drug, prostitution, and vice markets in Ontario's Golden Horseshoe. Written with the cooperation of Mario Parente, Showdown describes the biker gang equivalent of the ...

There comes a time in every man's life when he has to decide whether to conform or break out. Ninety-nine percent of us choose to accept the constraints imposed by society. The rest become outlaws. For this one percent-those who set their own standards, follow their own values, pursue their own esthetic-the outlaw motorcyclist community offers sanctuary. Motorcyclists have always been outlaws, just by choosing such a dangerous and flamboyant sport. But the one percenters live the outlaw li...

The Outlaws Motorcycle Club's story is told here for the first time in paperback, by the #1 national bestselling criminal underworld author and former infiltrator Alex Caine. They are the original biker gang, and their 60 years of war with the Hells Angels is the stuff of legend.Right down to their signature logo (a skull known as "Charlie"), the McCook Outlaws Motorcycle Club, formed in 1935, defined the look and sensibility of the twentieth-century biker. In the ...