On a moonless night just weeks after September 11, 2001, U.S. Special Forces team ODA 574 infiltrates the mountains of southern Afghanistan with a seemingly impossible mission: to foment a tribal revolt and force the Taliban to surrender. Armed solely with the equipment they can carry on their backs, shockingly scant intelligence, and their mastery of guerrilla warfare, Captain Jason Amerine and his men have no choice but to trust their only ally, a little-known Pashtun statesman named Hamid Karzai who has returned from exile and is being hunted by the Taliban as he travels the countryside raising a militia. The Only Thing Worth Dying For chronicles the most important mission in the early days of the Global War on Terror, when the men on the ground knew little about the enemy—and their commanders in Washington knew even less. With unprecedented access to surviving members of ODA 574, key war planners, and Karzai himself, award-winning author Eric Blehm cuts through the noise of politicians and high-level military officials to narrate for the first time a story of uncommon bravery and terrible sacrifice, intimately exposing the realities of unconventional warfare and nation-building in Afghanistan that continue to shape the region today.
With a balance of wisdom, candor, and scholarly rigor the beloved archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia takes on life’s central questions: why are we here, and how can we live and die meaningfully? In Things Worth Dying For, Chaput delves richly into our yearning for God, love, honor, beauty, truth, and immortality. He reflects on our modern appetite for consumption and individualism and offers a penetrating analysis of how we got here, and how we can look to our roots and our faith to find purpose each day amid the noise of competing desires. Chaput examines the chronic questions of the human heart; the idols and false flags we create; and the nature of a life of authentic faith. He points to our longing to live and die with meaning as the key to our search for God, our loyalty to nation and kin, our conduct in war, and our service to others. Ultimately, with compelling grace, he shows us that the things worth dying for reveal most powerfully the things worth living for.
“For curious children ages 7–15, Prisoners of Geography has lots to fascinate.”—The Wall Street Journal The secret world history written in the mountains, rivers, and seas that shape every country’s politics, economy, and international relations—and our own lives—is revealed in this illustrated young readers edition of Prisoners of Geography, the million-copy international bestseller. History is a story—and it’s impossible to tell the whole tale without understanding the setting. In this eye-opening illustrated edition of the international bestseller Prisoners of Geography, you’ll learn to spot connections between geography and world affairs in ways you never noticed before. How did the US’s rivers help it become a superpower? Why are harsh, cold and swampy Siberia and the Russian Far East two of that country’s most prized regions? How come Japan prefers to trade along the coasts instead of across its land? What do the Himalayas have to do with war? With colorful maps that capture every continent and region, plus hundreds of illustrations that illuminate how our surroundings shape us, this one-of-a-kind atlas will inspire curious minds of all ages!
From the Norman Invasion in 1066 to the eve of the First World War, Stick a Flag in It is a thousand-year jocular journey through the history of Britain and its global empire. The British people have always been eccentric, occasionally ingenious and, sure, sometimes unhinged – from mad monarchs to mass-murdering lepers. Here, Arran Lomas shows us how they harnessed those traits to forge the British nation, and indeed the world, we know today. Follow history’s greatest adventurers from the swashbuckling waters of the Caribbean to the vast white wasteland of the Antarctic wilderness, like the British spy who infiltrated a top-secret Indian brothel and the priest who hid inside a wall but forgot to bring a packed lunch. At the very least you’ll discover Henry VIII’s favourite arse-wipe, whether the flying alchemist ever made it from Scotland to France, and the connection between Victorian coffee houses and dildos. Forget what you were taught in school – this is history like you’ve never heard it before, full of captivating historical quirks that will make you laugh out loud and scratch your head in disbelief.
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Prisoners of Geography, a fascinating, “refreshing, and very useful” (The Washington Post) follow-up that uses ten maps to explain the challenges to today’s world powers and how they presage a volatile future. Tim Marshall’s global bestseller Prisoners of Geography offered us a “fresh way of looking at maps” (The New York Times Book Review), showing how every nation’s choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas, and walls. Since then, the geography hasn’t changed, but the world has. Now, in this “wonderfully entertaining and lucid account, written with wit, pace, and clarity” (Mirror, UK), Marshall takes us into ten regions set to shape global politics. Find out why US interest in the Middle East will wane; why Australia is now beginning an epic contest with China; how Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the UK are cleverly positioning themselves for greater power; why Ethiopia can control Egypt; and why Europe’s next refugee crisis looms closer than we think, as does a cutting-edge arms race to control space. Innovative, compelling, and delivered with Marshall’s trademark wit and insight, this is “an immersive blend of history, economics, and political analysis that puts geography at the center of human affairs” (Publishers Weekly).
The last of the devastating series of conflicts resulting from the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the Kosovo War saw more than 13,500 fatalities, with reports of atrocities, amid controversial intervention and bombing by NATO. Twenty years have passed since the war's end on 11 June 1999, yet Kosovo's status remains uncertain and questions remain about the possibility of future conflict on European soil. Tim Marshall, then diplomatic editor at Sky News, was on the ground covering the war. This is his captivating account of how events unfolded, exploring the inside story of the way MI6 and the CIA helped the Serbian people to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Yugoslavia. It is also a thrilling journalistic memoir, revealing key strategic insights that went on to shape the ideas behind the million-copy international and no.1 Sunday Times bestseller Prisoners of Geography. Drawing on personal experience, eyewitness accounts, and interviews with intelligence officials from five countries, this is the definitive account of one of the major events in recent geopolitical history, the repercussions of which continue to be felt today.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America In this unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history, James Bradley has captured the glory, the triumph, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America. In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima—and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag. Now the son of one of the flagraisers has written a powerful account of six very different young men who came together in a moment that will live forever. To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of Easy Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island—an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man. But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what happened after the victory. The men in the photo—three were killed during the battle—were proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only James Bradley's father truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: “The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn't come back. ” Few books ever have captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well as Flags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.
New from the No. 1 Sunday Times We feel more divided than ever. This riveting analysis tells you why. Walls are going up. Nationalism and identity politics are on the rise once more. Thousands of miles of fences and barriers have been erected in the past ten years, and they are redefining our political landscape. There are many reasons why we erect walls, because we are divided in many ways: wealth, race, religion, politics. In Europe the ruptures of the past decade threaten not only European unity, but in some countries liberal democracy itself. In China, the Party's need to contain the divisions wrought by capitalism will define the nation's future. In the USA the rationale for the Mexican border wall taps into the fear that the USA will no longer be a white majority country in the course of this century. Understanding what has divided us, past and present, is essential to understanding much of what's going on in the world today. Covering China; the USA; Israel and Palestine; the Middle East; the Indian Subcontinent; Africa; Europe and the UK, bestselling author Tim Marshall presents a gripping and unflinching analysis of the fault lines that will shape our world for years to come.