''One of the greatest adventure stories in recent years.'' - Chris Patten ''The drama, excitement, and color of a good guts-and-glory thriller.'' - Dr. Henry Kissinger The French Foreign Legion - mysterious, romantic, deadly - is filled with men of dubious character, and hardly the place for a proper Englishman just nineteen years of age. Yet in 1960, Simon Murray traveled alone to Paris, Marseilles, and ultimately Algeria to fulfill the toughest contract of his life: a five-year stint in the Legion. Along the way, he kept a diary. Legionnaire is a compelling, firsthand account of Murray''s experience with this legendary band of soldiers. This gripping journal offers stark evidence that the Legion''s reputation for pushing men to their breaking points and beyond is well-deserved. In the fierce, sun-baked North African desert, strong men cracked under brutal officers, merciless training methods, and barbarous punishments. Yet Murray survived, even thrived. For he shared one trait with these hard men from all nations and backgrounds: a determination never to surrender.
A compellingly readable, critically acclaimed, agenda-setting account of how and why cities function as they do and why so many of us choose to live in them
B>San Pedro is Bolivia's most notorious prison. Small-time drug smuggler Thomas McFadden found himself on the inside. Marching Powder is the story of how he navigated this dark world of gangs, drugs and corruption to come out on top./b>Thomas found himself in a bizarre world, the prison reflecting all that is wrong with South American society. Prisoners have to pay an entrance fee and buy their own cells (the alternative is to sleep outside and die of exposure), prisoners' wives and children often live inside too, high quality cocaine is manufactured and sold from the prison.Thomas ended up making a living by giving backpackers tours of the prison - he became a fixture on the backpacking circuit and was named in the Lonely Planet guide to Bolivia. When he was told that for a bribe of $5000 his sentence could be overturned, it was the many backpackers who'd passed through who sent him the money. Written by lawyer Rusty Young, Marching Powder - sometimes shocking, sometimes funny - is a riveting story of survival.
Brings fresh insight into the panorama of the Roman Empire's end, from the bejewelled splendour of the imperial court to the dripping forests of 'Barbaricum'. This title examines the extraordinary success story that was the empire and shows how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome, eventually pulled it apart.
B>Revolution, the fourth volume of Peter Ackroyd's enthralling History of England begins in 1688 with a revolution and ends in 1815 with a famous victory. /b>In it, Ackroyd takes readers from William of Orange's accession following the Glorious Revolution to the Regency, when the flamboyant Prince of Wales ruled in the stead of his mad father, George III, and England was - again -at war with France, a war that would end with the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.Late Stuart and Georgian England marked the creation of the great pillars of the English state. The Bank of England was founded, as was the stock exchange, the Church of England was fully established as the guardian of the spiritual life of the nation and parliament became the sovereign body of the nation with responsibilities and duties far beyond those of the monarch. It was a revolutionary era in English letters, too, a time in which newspapers first flourished and the English novel was born. It was an era in which coffee houses and playhouses boomed, gin flowed freely and in which shops, as we know them today, began to proliferate in our towns and villages. But it was also a time of extraordinary and unprecedented technological innovation, which saw England utterly and irrevocably transformed from a country of blue skies and farmland to one of soot and steel and coal.
B>The sensational Sunday Times #1 Bestseller about taking on the mafia, the Clintons and Trump./b>'An urgent clarion call.' - The Financial TimesIn his massive Number One bestselling memoir, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader. Mr. Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017, appointed to the post by President Barack Obama. He previously served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. deputy attorney general in the administration of President George W. Bush. From prosecuting the Mafia and Martha Stewart to helping change the Bush administration's policies on torture and electronic surveillance, overseeing the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation as well as ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Comey has been involved in some of the most consequential cases and policies of recent history.
B>In King of Spies, prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden, reveals one of the most astonishing - and previously untold - spy stories of the twentieth century./b>Donald Nichols was 'a one man war', according to his US Air Force commanding general. He won the Distinguished Service Cross, along with a chest full of medals for valor and initiative in the Korean War. His commanders described Nichols as the bravest, most resourceful and effective spymaster of that forgotten war. But there is far more to Donald Nichols' story than first meets the eye . . .Based on long-classified government records, unsealed court records, and interviews in Korea and the U.S., King of Spies tells the story of the reign of an intelligence commander who lost touch with morality, legality, and even sanity, if military psychiatrists are to be believed. Donald Nichols was America's Kurtz. A seventh-grade dropout, he created his own black-ops empire, commanding a small army of hand-selected spies, deploying his own makeshift navy, and ruling over it as a clandestine king, with absolute power over life and death. He claimed a - 'legal license to murder' - and inhabited a world of mass executions and beheadings, as previously unpublished photographs in the book document.Finally, after eleven years, the U.S. military decided to end Nichols's reign. He was secretly sacked and forced to endure months of electroshock in a military hospital in Florida. Nichols told relatives the American government was trying to destroy his memory.King of Spies looks to answer the question of how an uneducated, non-trained, non-experienced man could end up as the number-one US spymaster in South Korea and why his US commanders let him get away with it for so long . . .
B>'A scrupulous piece of reporting, necessary, timely and very sobering' John Le Carr/b>b>e/b>A Sunday Times Best Book of 2018Agent. Prisoner. Target.br>Who is Sergei Skripal?4 March 2018, Salisbury, England. A man and his daughter are found slumped on a bench, poisoned by the deadly nerve agent Novichok. He was a Russian national that became a MI6 spy.Russia are publicly accused of carrying out the attack by the British government, sparking a diplomatic crisis between Russia and the West.Then two innocent people find a discarded perfume bottle used in the attack and one of them, Dawn Sturgess, tragically dies. It is now a murder investigation. How exactly did we get here?In The Skripal Files Mark Urban explains the most shocking espionage incident in a decade. Based on interviews with Sergei before his poisoning, Urban describes precisely how an otherwise loyal Russian intelligence officer was turned into an agent by MI6, how Skripal was betrayed so that he found himself in a Siberian prison, and why, years later, was he was targeted for assassination.
''Stop talking about bringing your values to work and learn how to actually DO it!'' - Kim Scott, bestselling author of Radical Candor Silicon Valley expert and former General Counsel of Airbnb, Intentional Integrity provides an excellent roadmap for any organization looking to create a clear set of values and then actually live those values. At a time when workplaces are becoming more diverse, spread across multiple locations as people work from home more and more, global, and connected, the importance of integrity as a tool for progress have never been more important. With trust in most traditional institutions is at an all-time low and there''s a dark cloud hovering over technology, it is up to companies to re-establish faith in establishment and for employers to provide stability to their employees. The power to act with integrity is the key to developing this culture. Drawing on his background as former General Counsel for Airbnb, Rob Chesnut explains the rationale and legal context for the ethics and practices, and presents scenarios to illuminate the nuances of thinking deeply and objectively about workplace culture. Intentional Integrity is the handbook to revolutionising your workplace by providing the right environment for people to do good work. ''Smart, practical advice for anyone looking to do good and do well.'' - Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin and author of Blitzscaling
Between the death of Queen Victoria and the end of the Second World War, Britian was shaken by war and peace. The two wars were the worst we had ever know. This title presents a look on the life in Britain during the first half of the 20th century as the country recovered from the wreckage of the British Empire.
A non-fiction thriller by international bestselling author Blaine Harden (Escape from Camp 14) that explores the world's most repressive state through the intertwined lives of two North Koreans, one infamous, one obscure: Kim Il Sung, the former North Korean leader and No Kum Sok, once the state's youngest jet fighter pilot.Shortly before the Korean War ended, No Kum Sok met Kim Il Sung, who congratulated him for his flying skill and his courage. A few months later, No Kum Sok stole a Soviet-made MiG-15 and flew it to a US airfield in South Korea. Beginning with the arbitrary division of Korea in 1945 and ending two months after the shaky armistice that halted combat in the Korean War, The Great Leader & the Fighter Pilot is an ambitious and gripping book which digs deeply into the character of the Kim family dictatorship.At once an irresistible adventure story and an authoritative guide to the notorious state, it explains why North Korea remains so isolated, why it created and maintains a vast gulag of concentration camps, and why it is still so angry at the western world.
Die Angst rückt immer näher. Schon vor einiger Zeit hat sie offenbar die kosmische Barriere um unsere Galaxie überwunden und rückt immer näher vor. Eine respektvolle Entfernung, nichts, um das man sich Sorgen machen müsste - sollte man meinen, doch mittlerweile sind die Auswirkungen auch auf der Erde zu spüren - besonders in Prag ...
In Civil War, Peter Ackroyd continues his dazzling account of England's history, beginning with the progress south of the Scottish king, James VI, who on the death of Elizabeth I became the first Stuart king of England, and ends with the deposition and flight into exile of his grandson, James II. The Stuart dynasty brought together the two nations of England and Scotland into one realm, albeit a realm still marked by political divisions that echo to this day. More importantly, perhaps, the Stuart era was marked by the cruel depredations of civil war, and the killing of a king.Ackroyd paints a vivid portrait of James I and his heirs. Shrewd and opinionated, the new King was eloquent on matters as diverse as theology, witchcraft and the abuses of tobacco, but his attitude to the English parliament sowed the seeds of the division that would split the country in the reign of his hapless heir, Charles I. Ackroyd offers a brilliant - warts and all - portrayal of Charles's nemesis Oliver Cromwell, Parliament's great military leader and England's only dictator, who began his career as a political liberator but ended it as much of a despot as 'that man of blood', the king he executed.England's turbulent seventeenth century is vividly laid out before us, but so too is the cultural and social life of the period, notable for its extraordinarily rich literature, including Shakespeare's late masterpieces, Jacobean tragedy, the poetry of John Donne and Milton and Thomas Hobbes' great philosophical treatise, Leviathan. Civil War also gives us a very real sense of the lives of ordinary English men and women, lived out against a backdrop of constant disruption and uncertainty.
Bringing together ground-breaking forensic discoveries - including vital DNA evidence - and gripping historical detective work, Naming Jack the Ripper constructs the first truly convincing case for identifying the world's most notorious serial killer.In 2007, businessman Russell Edwards bought a shawl believed to have been left beside the body of the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes. He knew that, if genuine, the shawl would be the only piece of crime scene evidence still in existence. It was the start of an extraordinary seven-year quest for Russell as he sought to authenticate the shawl and learn its secrets. He had no idea that this journey would take him so far.After undergoing extensive forensic testing by one of the country's top scientists, the shawl was not only shown to be genuine, and stained with Catherine Eddowes' blood, but in a massive breakthrough the killer's DNA was also discovered - DNA that would allow Russell to finally put a name to Jack the Ripper . . .
The conventional narrative of the Second World War is well known. Bringing a fresh eye to bear on a story we think we know, this title reminds us that the war in Europe was dominated by two evil monsters - Hitler and Stalin - whose fight for supremacy consumed the best people in Germany and in the USSR.
From one of Britain's military historians, this title concerns one of the greatest military feats during World War II, the transformation of the German force's activities in the weeks following the battles in Holland and the German border.
