Author: John Wooten
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781507547779
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Vinnie Depasquale is a budding young boxer in Sicily when a woman visits him in a dream and tells him to go to the sacred mountainside. When Vinnie obeys, the woman visits him again, and this time Vinnie knows who it is-the Virgin Mary. She tells him that she has seven requests for him and that in seven years, miracles will happen in Sicily for the people of the world. But when Vinnie's brother is killed and his father assumes leadership of part of a local crime family, Vinnie and his family are forced to flee the violent Mafia war in Sicily to save their lives. Vinnie arrives in America and meets Don Marenzano, who takes the young pugilist under his wing. Marenzano trains Vinnie at his own gym and does everything he can to promote Vinnie's boxing career. But Vinnie isn't so sure he can trust Marenzano; he wears a devil ring on his finger. As deceptions unravel and the body count of those close to Vinnie continues to rise, tenuous alliances form between the Depasquale and Marenzano families. And watching over everyone is the Virgin Mary, who still has a part to play in the forging of this miracle fighter.
Author: Library of Congress. Office for Subject Cataloging Policy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Subject headings, Library of Congress
Languages : en
Pages : 1636
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Book Description
Author: Leon Hunt
Publisher: Wallflower Press
ISBN: 9781903364635
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Chinese Martial Arts films have captured audiences' imaginations around the world. In this wide-ranging study, Hunt looks at the mythic allure of the Shaolin Temple, the 'Clones' of Bruce Lee, gender-bending swordswomen, and the knockabout comedy of Sammo Hung, bringing new insights to a hugely popular and yet critically neglected genre. 12 photos.
Author: Steven J. Zaloga
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472848578
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 97
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Book Description
A new illustrated history of one of the key air campaigns of late World War II – the American effort to cripple Germany's oil production, and grind its armed forces to a halt. With retreating German forces losing their oilfields on the Eastern Front, Germany was reliant on its own facilities, particularly for producing synthetic oil from coal. However, these were within range of the increasingly mighty Allied air forces. In 1944 the head of the US Strategic Air Forces, General Carl Spaatz was intent on a new campaign that aimed to cripple the German war machine by depriving it of fuel. The USAAF's Oil Campaign built up momentum during the summer of 1944 and targeted these refineries and plants with its daylight heavy bombers. Decrypted German communications made it clear that the Oil Campaign was having an effect against the Wehrmacht. Fuel shortages in the autumn of 1944 forced the Luftwaffe to ground most of its combat units except for fighters involved in the defense of the Reich. Fuel shortages also forced the Kriegsmarine to place most of its warships in harbor except for the U-boats and greatly hampered German army campaigns such as the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944–45. This fascinating book packed with key photos and illustrations examines the controversies and debates over the focus of the US bombing campaign in the final year of the war, and the impact it had on the war effort overall.
Author: Gordon W. Prange
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 148048945X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359
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Book Description
New York Times bestseller: The true story of the WWII naval battle portrayed in the Roland Emmerich film is “something special among war histories” (Chicago Sun-Times). Six months after Pearl Harbor, the seemingly invincible Imperial Japanese Navy prepared a decisive blow against the United States. After sweeping through Asia and the South Pacific, Japan’s military targeted the tiny atoll of Midway, an ideal launching pad for the invasion of Hawaii and beyond. But the US Navy would be waiting for them. Thanks to cutting-edge code-breaking technology, tactical daring, and a significant stroke of luck, the Americans under Adm. Chester W. Nimitz dealt Japan’s navy its first major defeat in the war. Three years of hard fighting remained, but it was at Midway that the tide turned. This “stirring, even suspenseful narrative” is the first book to tell the story of the epic battle from both the American and Japanese sides (Newsday). Miracle at Midway reveals how America won its first and greatest victory of the Pacific war—and how easily it could have been a loss.
Author: John Killen
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1781591105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
John Killen's exhaustive work is a study of German air power between 1915 and 1945, from the early days of flying when Immelmann, Boelke, Richtofen and other First World War aces fought and died to give Germany air supremacy, to the nightmare existence of the Luftwaffe as the Third Reich plunged headlong to destruction. Here are the aircraft: the frail biplanes and triplanes of the Kaiser's war; the great Lufthansa aircraft and airships of the turbulent Thirties; the monoplanes designed to help Hitler in his conquest of Europe. Here are the generals who forged the air weapon of the Luftwaffe - the swaggering Goering, the playboy Udet, the ebullient Kesselring and the scapegoat Jeschonnek; here, too, are the pilots who tried to keep faith with their Fatherland despite overwhelming odds; Adolf Galland, Werner Molders, Joachim Marseille and Hanna Reitsch. Not least are the actions fought by the Luftwaffe from the Spanish Civil War to the Battle of Britain, through the bloody struggle for Crete and the siege of Stalingrad to the fearful twilight over Berlin.
Author: Naoki Hyakuta
Publisher: Vertical Inc
ISBN: 1647290465
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 383
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Book Description
Your grandfather was a coward. That is the angry recollection with which a former Zero fighter pilot greets two Japanese siblings who, typically, despite being educated, know next to nothing about a defining war in the Pacific that took place within living memory. The testimony rattles and confuses aspiring lawyer Kentaro and newly minted journalist Keiko since virtually the only fact they’ve grown up hearing about Kyuzo Miyabe is that he died a kamikaze. When the young pair digs deeper into the man’s past, other surviving comrades only seem to confirm the verdict, but its very import begins to shift in surprising ways. In addition to providing a window into the experiences of the losing side’s flyboys and a frank look at contemporary Japan’s amnesia regarding the war, this novel also undertakes a blistering critique of the folly and inhumanity of the Imperial Navy and Army and a nuanced exploration of the differences between kamikaze pilots and today’s suicide bombers. At its core, however, it is a mystery of sorts about a long-dead man’s actions and intentions and a reconfiguration of the meaning of wartime loyalty and sacrifice. A debut novel that was published when the author was fifty, The Eternal Zero has become Japan’s all-time top-selling mass-market paperback and the basis of a blockbuster film of the same name.
Author: Norbert Hanning
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811744485
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
Action-packed memoir of aerial combat. Inside the cockpits of Bf 109, Fw 190, and Me 262 fighters. Candid photos taken by the author himself.
Author: Stephen Teo
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474403883
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive, fully-researched account of the historical and contemporary development of the traditional martial arts genre in the Chinese cinema known as wuxia (literal translation: martial chivalry) - a genre which audiences around the world became familiar with through the phenomenal 'crossover' hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). The book unveils rich layers of the wuxia tradition as it developed in the early Shanghai cinema in the late 1920s, and from the 1950s onwards, in the Hong Kong and Taiwan film industries. Key attractions of the book are analyses of:*The history of the tradition as it began in the Shanghai cinema, its rise and popularity as a serialized form in the silent cinema of the late 1920s, and its eventual prohibition by the government in 1931.*The fantastic characteristics of the genre, their relationship with folklore, myth and religion, and their similarities and differences with the kung fu sub-genre of martial arts cinema.*The protagonists and heroes of the genre, in particular the figure of the female knight-errant.*The chief personalities and masterpieces of the genre - directors such as King Hu, Chu Yuan, Zhang Che, Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou, and films such as Come Drink With Me (1966), The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), A Touch of Zen (1970-71), Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006).
Author: Laszlo Mero
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300238487
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
“Consistently surprising…The Logic of Miracles breaks new ground in the relationship of probability, fate, and the ability of human beings to behold them."—Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human We live in a more turbulent world than we like to think. Yet the science we use to analyze economic, financial, and statistical events mostly disregards the world’s essentially chaotic nature. We need to get used to the idea that wildly improbable events are actually part of the natural order. Here, a renowned mathematician and psychologist explains how the wild and mild worlds (which he names Wildovia and Mildovia) coexist, and that different laws apply to each. Even if we live in an ultimately wild universe, he argues, we’re better off pretending that it obeys Mildovian laws. Doing so may amount to a self-fulfilling prophecy and create an island of predictability in a very rough sea. Perched on the ragged border between economics and complexity theory, the author proposes to extend the reach of science to subjects previously considered outside its grasp: the unpredictable, unrepeatable, highly improbable events we commonly call “miracles.” “It's hard to see how miracles and math fit together. But if you accept László Mérö's invitation, you will enter a world where miracles are normal and the predictable sits side-by-side with the unpredictable. Along the way, he unveils the mathematics of the stock market and explains, in a playful yet mathematically accurate way, the roots of market crashes and earthquakes, and why ‘black swans’ are not just calamities but opportunities.”—Albert-László Barabási, author of Linked
