Author: David Rooney
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781081303006
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
"The true military maverick combines a fixated dedication to his cause with an heroic ability to lead troops into battle." Kirkus Review Praise for David Rooney: "I thought I had read all the good books on the war in Burma, but this is the best yet." Brigadier Michael Calvert What makes a maverick? Is it simply an unorthodox mind? Or is it more than that - a flagrant disregard for convention? Is there a place for the maverick in a disciplined military hierarchy? If so, is the military maverick more likely to win, or lose, a battle? In an absorbing study of military figures who broke the rules, David Rooney shows how it is so often the maverick who turns challenges into opportunities - and snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. Here are the stories of twelve mavericks, from Alexander the Great and Stonewall Jackson, through Garibaldi and Lawrence of Arabia - and to Second World War commanders such as Heinz Guderian, Orde Wingate and George S. Patton. Each had flaws that would have brought down a lesser man, but each proved their bravery and leadership in battle. Full of insight into the nature of the military mind, this book reveals by how much, and how often, success in battle depends on the irreplaceable presence of just one man.
Author: Robert Harvey
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 9781602393561
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
In 16 riveting portraits, bestselling historian Harvey offers the definitive, one-volume account of some of history's most important and surprising battlesand the commanders who won the field. 16 b&w photographs.
Author: Jason S Ridler
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811767760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448
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Book Description
During World War I, Oxford-trained archeologist Lawrence of Arabia used his knowledge of the Middle East to help organize the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. In this entertaining and insightful book, Jason Ridler profiles the intellectuals, outsiders, and eccentrics who followed in Lawrence’s footsteps across the next hundred years of warfare and who relied on creativity, curiosity, and outside-the-box thinking to shape battlefields from World War II and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. They were Ivy Leaguers and Oxford scholars, anthropologists and archeologists, an ad executive, an international activist, a Peace Corps veteran, an émigré journalist (and former teenage member of the French Resistance), a diplomat—mavericks and oddballs, men and women—who, not always heralded or heeded and sometimes hated, challenged traditional military thought and helped win wars, secure peace, and change the face of modern war.
Author: Craig Alanson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781717768186
Category : Aliens
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
"The remnants of the Expeditionary Force stranded on the alien-controlled planet 'Paradise' get a chance to prove themselves, in a simple off-world training mission with a ship full of teenage alien cadets. When the mission goes horribly wrong and the survival of everyone on Paradise is at risk, the Merry Band of Pirates may have to come to the rescue. Unless they get killed first..." -- Page [4] of cover.
Author: Giles Milton
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1250119049
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
Six gentlemen, one goal: the destruction of Hitler's war machine In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now, his talents were put to more devious use: he built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler's favorite, Reinhard Heydrich. Another, William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world's leading expert in silent killing, hired to train the guerrillas being parachuted behind enemy lines. Led by dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, these men—along with three others—formed a secret inner circle that, aided by a group of formidable ladies, single-handedly changed the course Second World War: a cohort hand-picked by Winston Churchill, whom he called his Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Giles Milton's Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a gripping and vivid narrative of adventure and derring-do that is also, perhaps, the last great untold story of the Second World War.
Author: Scott Taylor
Publisher: D & M Publishers
ISBN: 1926685881
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
In September 2004, Canadian journalist Scott Taylor was taken hostage in northern Iraq. While awaiting execution by beheading, he reflected on the events that had brought him to a torture chamber in a remote Iraqi village, from his early years as a Canadian Forces infantryman to his later career as a frontline reporter in Africa, the former Yugoslavia, and in 21 trips to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq before, during, and after the U.S.-led invasion. After his kidnapping ordeal, Taylor resumed his unembedded war reporting in Afghanistan. He recounts his adventures in this action-packed and brutally honest memoir. With searing criticism, Taylor exposes the deceit of the politicians and media cheerleaders who, at little cost to themselves, are ultimately responsible for waging the senseless wars that cause so much needless suffering for so many innocent people.
Author: Elizabeth Babcock
Publisher: Department of the Navy
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 660
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Book Description
Magnificent Mavericks tells the story of the creative military/civilian team who worked at the Naval Ordnance Test Station and its Pasadena Annex from 1948 to 1958. Projects developed there include Sidewinder, the world's first successful heat-homing guided missile; Polaris, for which NOTS provided conceptual studies as well as major T&E programs; the 6.5-Inch Antitank Aircraft Rocket (Ram), developed and delivered in a month to meet urgent needs in Korea; the 2.75-Inch Folding-Fin Aircraft Rocket (Mighty Mouse) introduced in Korea and used in every conflict since then; and many other products developed at NOTS to meet the needs of the fleet. Also addressed are propellant technology and other significant innovations in applied research. Improvements to the station's unexcelled facilities R&D laboratories and T&E tracks and ranges are described, as is the community of China Lake, which played an important role in employee morale and productivity.
Author: Phil Keith
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1488036039
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 405
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Book Description
The incredible story of the first African American military pilot, who became a spy in the French Resistance and an American civil rights pioneer. Winner of the Gold Medal for Memoir/Biography from the Military Writers Society of America A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Eugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the twentieth century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of eleven to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. When his journey led him to Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African American fighter pilot in history. After the war, Bullard returned to Paris a celebrated hero. But little did he know that the dramatic, globe-spanning arc of his life had just begun. All Blood Runs Red is the inspiring untold story of an American hero, a thought-provoking chronicle of the twentieth century and a portrait of a man who came from nothing and by his own courage, determination, gumption, intelligence and luck forged a legendary life. “A whale of a tale, told clearly and quickly. I read the entire book in almost one sitting.” —Thomas E. Ricks, The New York Times Book Review “All Blood Runs Red should be required reading for anyone who has ever dreamed big. A truly inspiring and uplifting story of courage and triumph, and an opus for an unsung hero.” —Nelson DeMille “Dazzling . . . This may be a biography, but it reads like a novel.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Author: Tom Clavin
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250214599
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
THE INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Tombstone is written in a distinctly American voice." —T.J. Stiles, The New York Times “With a former newsman’s nose for the truth, Clavin has sifted the facts, myths, and lies to produce what might be as accurate an account as we will ever get of the old West’s most famous feud.” —Associated Press The true story of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the famous Battle at the OK Corral, by the New York Times bestselling author of Dodge City and Wild Bill. On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, eight men clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in thirty seconds, killing three men and wounding three others. The fight sprang forth from a tense, hot summer. Cattle rustlers had been terrorizing the back country of Mexico and selling the livestock they stole to corrupt ranchers. The Mexican government built forts along the border to try to thwart American outlaws, while Arizona citizens became increasingly agitated. Rustlers, who became known as the cow-boys, began to kill each other as well as innocent citizens. That October, tensions boiled over with Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne confronting the Tombstone marshal, Virgil Earp, and the suddenly deputized Wyatt and Morgan Earp and shotgun-toting Doc Holliday. Bestselling author Tom Clavin peers behind decades of legend surrounding the story of Tombstone to reveal the true story of the drama and violence that made it famous. Tombstone also digs deep into the vendetta ride that followed the tragic gunfight, when Wyatt and Warren Earp and Holliday went vigilante to track down the likes of Johnny Ringo, Curly Bill Brocius, and other cowboys who had cowardly gunned down his brothers. That "vendetta ride" would make the myth of Wyatt Earp complete and punctuate the struggle for power in the American frontier's last boom town.
Author: Thomas Settles
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807149624
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 363
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Book Description
Of all the major figures of the Civil War era, Confederate general John Bankhead Magruder is perhaps the least understood. The third-ranking officer in Virginia's forces behind Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, Magruder left no diary, no completed memoirs, no will, not even a family Bible. There are no genealogical records and very few surviving personal papers. Unsurprisingly, then, much existing literature about Magruder contains incorrect information. In John Bankhead Magruder, an exhaustive biography that reflects more than thirty years of painstaking archival research, Thomas M. Settles remedies the many factual inaccuracies surrounding this enigmatic man and his military career. Settles traces Magruder's family back to its seventeenth-century British American origins, describes his educational endeavors at the University of Virginia and West Point, and details his early military career and his leading role as an artillerist in the war with Mexico. Tall, handsome, and flamboyant, Magruder earned the nickname "Prince John" from his army friends and was known for his impeccable manners and social brilliance. When Virginia seceded in April of 1861, Prince John resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and offered his services to the Confederacy. Magruder won the opening battle of the Civil War at Big Bethel. Later, in spite of severe shortages of weapons and supplies and a lack of support from Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, Samuel Cooper, and Joseph E. Johnston, Prince John, with just 13,600 men, held his position on the Peninsula for a month against George B. McClellan's 105,000-man Federal army. This successful stand, at a time when Richmond was exceedingly vulnerable, provided, according to Settles, John Magruder's greatest contribution to the Confederacy. Following the Seven Days' battles, however, his commanders harshly criticized Magruder for being too slow at Savage Station, then too rash at Malvern Hill and they transferred him to command the District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. In Texas, he skillfully recaptured the port of Galveston in early 1863 and held it for the Confederacy until the end of the war. After the war, he joined the Confederate exodus to Mexico but eventually returned to the United States, living in New York City and New Orleans before settling in Houston, where he died on February 18, 1871. John Bankhead Magruder offers fresh insight into many aspects of the general's life and legacy, including his alleged excesses, his family relationships, and the period between Magruder's death and his memorialization into the canon of Lost Cause mythology. With engaging prose and impressive research, Settles brings this vibrant Civil War figure to life.
