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By the summer of 1863, following Chancellorsville, it was clear to everyone on both sides of the Civil War that the Army of Northern Virginia was the most formidable force Americans had ever put in the field. It could only be ÒtiedÓ in battle, if against great odds, but would more usually vanquish its opponents. A huge measure of that armyÕs success was attributable to its cavalry arm, under Major General J.E.B. Stuart, which had literally Òrun ringsÓ around its enemies. But Northern arithmetic and expertise were gradually catching up. In this work, the sequel to his acclaimed Year of Glory, author Monte Akers tracks Stuart and his cavalry through the following year of the war, from Gettysburg to the Overland Campaign, concluding only when Jeb himself succumbs to a gunshot while fending off a force three times his size at the very gates of Richmond. Gettysburg put paid to the aura of unstoppable victory surrounding the Army of Northern Virginia. But when Grant and Sheridan came east they found that Lee, Stuart, Longstreet, and the rest still refused to be defeated. It was a year of grim casualties and ferocious fightingÑin short, a year of Òdesperate struggleÓ with the gloves off on both sides. This work picks up where Year of Glory left off, with a minute examination of StuartÕs cavalry during the controversial Gettysburg campaign, followed by the nine months of sparring during which the Army of Potomac declined to undertake further major thrusts against Virginia. But then the UnionÕs western chieftains arrived and the war became one huge Òfuneral procession,Ó as Grant and Sheridan found that their prior victories had by no means prepared them for meeting the Army of Northern Virginia. In this work Akers provides a fascinating, close-in view of the ConfederacyÕs cavalry arm during this crucial period of the war. After StuartÕs death the Army of Northern Virginia would eventually be cornered, but while he was alive it was often the Northerners who most needed to look to their security.
The shocking true story of a woman pushed to homicidal rage by the hands of her violent husband . . . Long before there were abuse hot lines and shelters for battered women, June Briand fired four bullets into her husband's head and was sentenced to fifteen years to life. This is the shocking true story of survival--and the intense bond June shared with her pathologically violent husband, a monster who physically and sexually tortured, degraded, and dominated her so relentlessly that she refused to believe he was dead even after she killed him. What kind of woman would slay her own husband? What kind of man would drive her to do it? Why didn't she just leave him? Based on extensive interviews with June Briand, FIGHTING BACK explores these difficult questions while exposing the twisted sadomasochistic dynamics of a relationship that enslaves a woman--and drives her to kill. At once terrifying and maddening, heartrending and ultimately exhilarating-- including an unforgettable glimpse at life inside a maximum security prison--FIGHTING BACK is a book you will never forget.
World War II began for the United States with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, followed by the invasion of the Philippine Islands the next day. Unlike the rapid capture of Hong Kong, Wake Island and Singapore, the war in the Philippines lasted for seven months before the unprepared American and Filipino forces--cut off from supplies and fighting with obsolete equipment and without air or naval support--were overwhelmed. Drawing on diaries and personal accounts, this book chronicles forgotten actions in the fall of the Philippines through the recollections of American servicemen. The author covers the 90 day perseverance of Bataan's tiny air force, the first PT boat raid of the war, the last U.S. horse cavalry charge in history, a lone U.S. submarine's attack on a Japanese invasion fleet, the deliberate bombing of Bataan's main field hospital by the Japanese, the difficult and uneasy surrender of Bataan, Corregidor's doomed resistance and the surrender of the Southern Islands of the archipelago.
Set in Appalachian coal country, this “superb” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) legal drama follows one determined lawyer as he faces a coal industry giant in a seven-year battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community. For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo County didn’t look, smell, or taste right. Could the water be the root of the health problems—from kidney stones to cancer—in this Appalachian community? Environmental lawyer Kevin Thompson certainly thought so. For seven years, Thompson waged an epic legal battle against Massey Energy, West Virginia’s most powerful coal company, helmed by CEO Don Blankenship. While Massey’s lawyers worked out of a gray glass office tower in Charleston known as “the Death Star,” Thompson set up shop in a ramshackle hotel in the fading coal town of Williamson. Working with fellow lawyers and a crew of young activists, Thompson would eventually uncover the ruthless shortcuts that put the community’s drinking water at risk. Retired coal miners, women whose families had lived in the area’s coal camps for generations, a respected preacher and his brother, all put their trust in Thompson when they had nowhere else to turn. Desperate is a masterful work of investigative reporting about greed and denial, “both a case study in exploitation of the little guy and a playbook for confronting it” (Kirkus Reviews). Maher crafts a revealing portrait of a town besieged by hardship and heartbreak, and an inspiring account of one tenacious environmental lawyer’s mission to expose the truth and demand justice.
The bestselling first authoritative account of the first colossal World War II battle between Germany and the USSR—based on previously unavailable documents, this is the battle that decided the war, and the one that Stalin tried to cover up. The battle for Moscow was the biggest battle of World War II—the biggest battle of all time. And yet it is far less known than Stalingrad, which involved about half the number of troops. From the time Hitler launched his assault on Moscow on September 30, 1941, to April 20, 1942, seven million troops were engaged in this titanic struggle. The combined losses of both sides—those killed, taken prisoner, or severely wounded—were two and a half million, of which nearly two million were on the Soviet side. But the Soviet capital narrowly survived, and for the first time the German Blitzkrieg ended in failure. This shattered Hitler's dream of a swift victory over the Soviet Union and radically changed the course of the war. The full story of this epic battle has never been told because it undermines the sanitized Soviet accounts of the war, which portray Stalin as a military genius and his people as heroically united against the German invader. Stalin's blunders, incompetence, and brutality made it possible for German troops to approach the outskirts of Moscow. This triggered panic in the city—with looting, strikes, and outbreaks of previously unimaginable violence. About half the city's population fled. But Hitler's blunders would soon loom even larger: sending his troops to attack the Soviet Union without winter uniforms, insisting on an immediate German reign of terror, and refusing to heed his generals' pleas that he allow them to attack Moscow as quickly as possible. In the end, Hitler's mistakes trumped Stalin's mistakes. Drawing on declassified documents from Soviet archives, including files of the dreaded NKVD; on accounts of survivors and of children of top Soviet military and government officials; and on reports of Western diplomats and correspondents, The Greatest Battle finally illuminates the full story of a clash between two systems based on sheer terror and relentless slaughter. Even as Moscow's fate hung in the balance, the United States and Britain were discovering how wily a partner Stalin would turn out to be in the fight against Hitler—and how eager he was to push his demands for a postwar empire in Eastern Europe. In addition to chronicling the bloodshed, Andrew Nagorski takes the reader behind the scenes of the early negotiations between Hitler and Stalin, and then between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill. This is a remarkable addition to the history of World War II.
September 1962: On a moonless night over the raging Atlantic Ocean, a thousand miles from land, the engines of Flying Tiger flight 923 to Germany burst into flames, one by one. Pilot John Murray didn’t have long before the plane crashed headlong into the 20-foot waves at 120 mph. As the four flight attendants donned life vests, collected sharp objects, and explained how to brace for the ferocious impact, 68 passengers clung to their seats: elementary schoolchildren from Hawaii, a teenage newlywed from Germany, a disabled Normandy vet from Cape Cod, an immigrant from Mexico, and 30 recent graduates of the 82nd Airborne’s Jump School. They all expected to die. Murray radioed out “Mayday” as he attempted to fly down through gale-force winds into the rough water, hoping the plane didn’t break apart when it hit the sea. Only a handful of ships could pick up the distress call so far from land. The closest was a Swiss freighter 13 hours away. Dozens of other ships and planes from 9 countries abruptly changed course or scrambled from Canada, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, and Cornwall, all racing to the rescue—but they would take hours, or days, to arrive. From the cockpit, the blackness of the Atlantic grew ever closer. Could Murray do what no pilot had ever done—“land” a commercial airliner at night in a violent sea without everyone dying? And if he did, would rescuers find any survivors before they drowned or died from hypothermia in the icy water? The fate of Flying Tiger 923 riveted the world. Bulletins interrupted radio and TV programs. Headlines shouted off newspapers from London to LA. Frantic family members overwhelmed telephone switchboards. President Kennedy took a break from the brewing crises in Cuba and Mississippi to ask for hourly updates. Tiger in the Sea is a gripping tale of triumph, tragedy, unparalleled airmanship, and incredibly brave people from all walks of life. The author has pieced together the story—long hidden because of murky Cold War politics—through exhaustive research and reconstructed a true and inspiring tribute to the virtues of outside-the-box-thinking, teamwork, and hope.
The never-before-told story of one of the most decorated units in the war in Afghanistan and its fifteen-month ordeal that culminated in the 2008 Battle of Wanat, the war's deadliest A single company of US paratroopers--calling themselves the "Chosen Few"--arrived in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 hoping to win the hearts and minds of the remote mountain people and extend the Afghan government's reach into this wilderness. Instead, they spent the next fifteen months in a desperate struggle, living under almost continuous attack, forced into a slow and grinding withdrawal, and always outnumbered by Taliban fighters descending on them from all sides. Month after month, rocket-propelled grenades, rockets, and machine-gun fire poured down on the isolated and exposed paratroopers as America's focus and military resources shifted to Iraq. Just weeks before the paratroopers were to go home, they faced their last--and toughest--fight. Near the village of Wanat in Nuristan province, an estimated three hundred enemy fighters surrounded about fifty of the Chosen Few and others defending a partially finished combat base. Nine died and more than two dozen were wounded that day in July 2008, making it arguably the bloodiest battle of the war in Afghanistan. The Chosen Few would return home tempered by war. Two among them would receive the Medal of Honor. All of them would be forever changed.
Based on previously secret documents and eyewitness testimony, this shocking account chronicles the most massive and deadliest battle of World War II that ended in Hitlers first defeat and changed the course of the war. 16 pages of b&w photographs.
The disturbing true crime story about what drove an abused New Hampshire wife to kill her violent husband, and the chaos that followed. Before domestic violence hot lines and safe houses were widespread, June Briand shot four bullets into her husband’s head in 1987 and was sentenced to fifteen years to life. This is the shocking true story of survival—and the intense bond June shared with her pathologically violent husband, a monster who physically and sexually tortured, degraded, and dominated her so relentlessly that she refused to believe he was dead even after she killed him. What kind of woman would slay her own husband? What kind of man would drive her to do it? Why didn’t she just leave him? Based on hundreds of hours interviewing June Briand, speaking with her lawyers, and poring over countless pages of court transcripts, police and hospital records, and interviews with virtually every key person involved with this case, the author explores those difficult questions while exposing the twisted dynamics of a relationship that enslaves a woman—and drives her to kill the beast she loved when she was finally out of hope, out of time, and out of her mind. “As gripping as The Burning Bed.”—John Saul, New York Times–bestselling author of Creature “A superbly written, riveting—often horrifying—story urgently needed for our time….A powerhouse page-turned about the limits of what a human being can endure.”—Susan Page, bestselling author