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Author: Michael Digby
Publisher: Booklocker.com
Published: 2016-12-10
Total Pages: 402
ISBN-13: 9781634917612
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPresented as a series of well-researched historical case studies, a veteran detective and bomb technician offers a revealing look at just a few of the many bombs, bombers and bombings that have plagued the Los Angeles area every decade for more than a century.
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 2021-04-27
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 0316296937
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA “truly compelling” (Good Morning America) New York Times bestseller that explores how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war—from the creator and host of the podcast Revisionist History. In The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history. Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal? In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?” Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.
Author: Randall Hansen
Publisher: Anchor Canada
Published: 2009-09-15
Total Pages: 386
ISBN-13: 0307372383
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNational Bestseller An enlightening and utterly convincing re-examination of the allied aerial bombing campaign and of civilian German suffering during World War II–an essential addition to our understanding of world history. During the Second World War, Allied air forces dropped nearly two million tons of bombs on Germany, destroying some 60 cities, killing more than half a million German citizens, and leaving 80,000 pilots dead. Much of the bombing was carried out against the expressed demands of the Allied military leadership. Hundreds of thousands of people died needlessly. Focusing on the crucial period from 1942 to 1945, and using a compelling narrative approach, Fire and Fury tells the story of the American and British bombing campaign through the eyes of those involved: military and civilian command in America, Britain, and Germany, aircrew in the sky, and civilians on the ground. Acclaimed historian Randall Hansen shows that the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, Arthur Harris, was wedded to an outdated strategy whose success had never been proven; how area bombing not only failed to win the war, it probably prolonged it; and that the US campaign, which was driven by a particularly American fusion of optimism and morality, played an important and largely unrecognized role in delivering Allied victory.
Author: Richard Overy
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2015-04-28
Total Pages: 609
ISBN-13: 0143126245
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“An essential part of the literature of World War II.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post From acclaimed World War II historian Richard Overy comes this startling new history of the controversial Allied bombing war against Germany and German-occupied Europe. In the fullest account yet of the campaign and its consequences, Overy assesses not just the bombing strategies and pattern of operations, but also how the bombed communities coped with the devastation. This book presents a unique history of the bombing offensive from below as well as from above, and engages with moral questions that still resonate today.
Author: John Chappell
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-12-14
Total Pages: 353
ISBN-13: 0813193540
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAlmost forgotten in the haze of events that followed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the summer of 1945 witnessed an intense public debate over how best to end the war against Japan. Weary of fighting, the American people were determined to defeat the imperial power that had so viciously attacked them in December 1941, but they were uncertain of the best means to accomplish this goal. Certain of victory—the "inevitable triumph" promised by Franklin Roosevelt immediately after Pearl Harbor—Americans became increasingly concerned about the human cost of defeating Japan. Particularly after the brutal Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns, syndicated columnists, newspaper editorialists, radio commentators, and others questioned the necessity of invasion. A lengthy naval and aerial siege would have saved lives but might have protracted the war beyond the public's patience. Advertisers filled the media with visions of postwar affluence even as the government was exhorting its citizens to remain dedicated to the war effort. There was heated discussion as well about the morality of firebombing Japanese cities and of using poison gas and other agents of chemical warfare. Chappell provides a balanced assessment of all these debates, grounding his observations in a wealth of primary sources. He also discusses the role of racism, the demand for unconditional surrender, and the government's reaction to public opinion in the decision to drop the atomic bomb. Compelling and controversial, this is the first work to examine the confusing and contradictory climate of the American home front in the months leading up to V-J Day.
Author: Kirk Yeager
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2024-05-21
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA rare peek behind the curtain into boots-on-the-ground, in-the-lab scientific bomb forensics—told with humanity, heart, and even a bit of humor. This is not CSI. What you encounter as a true bomb detective—or “Bomb Doctor,” as some in the FBI call me—are fields of twisted metal containing soot-covered fragments intermingled with human remains. You have carnage and chaos. As you wade into that sea of wailing sirens and screaming survivors awash with the stench of diesel fuel and decaying bodies, your job is to ferret out forensic clues in a type of macabre scavenger hunt to ultimately reconstruct the scene and the explosive device and determine what happened and what the bomb looked like before it was torn asunder. None of this happens overnight. Nor does it happen in a timeframe that can be neatly packaged in an hour-long made-for-TV drama. The scavenger hunt can take months—or, in the case of the infamous Collar Bomber, seven painstaking years. The work is worth every second and every horrific image that etches itself into your brain because it helps prevent new horrors. Not all, obviously. We are not superheroes. But unlike shooters, who often just “snap” or seem to act out in random ways, bombers almost always have a story—one that follows an arc. In The Bomb Doctor, my goal is to explain that arc, explode myths, reconstruct reality, and build an understanding of the reason and means behind the mayhem, as well as pull back the curtain on the investigative process that brings bombers to justice.
Author: Gary D. Rhodes
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2012-01-01
Total Pages: 384
ISBN-13: 144113610X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRecaptures the lost history of the physical and moral perils that faced audiences at American movie theatres during the first fifty years of the cinema.
Author: Richard Esposito
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2010-07-05
Total Pages: 370
ISBN-13: 1401396410
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the men who protect us from the most frightening prospect of life in the age of terrorism "In my mind it's all business; I don't worry about my family, I don't worry about a function that I'm doing after work, I just worry about what's at hand. And what's at hand is that package." -- Detective First Grade Joe Putkowski, NYPD Bomb Squad The New York City Police Department Bomb Squad is the oldest such squad in the nation, founded in 1903. Each year its thirty-three members make more than two hundred stress-filled "bomb runs," in which they check suspicious briefcases, defuse hand grenades, and even respond to "art" projects constructed with real explosives. The public rarely sees these men--and when they do, it's usually from a distance, telephoto pictures of helmeted figures in ninety-pound suits of Kevlar armor. Starting on December 31, 2003, in the heart of the New Year's Eve action in Times Square, journalists Richard Esposito and Ted Gerstein had exclusive access to the nation's most elite police unit for an entire year. Their often chilling, never-before-told tales from the front line provide an extraordinary view of the domestic war on terrorism.
Author: Charles H. McCormick
Publisher: University Press of America
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 188
ISBN-13: 9780761831334
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHopeless Cases describes the futile search for those responsible for a series of apparently related terrorist attacks and plots in the World War I-Red Scare era during the final surge of early twentieth-century anarchist violence in the United States. The most brazen attacks occurred in 1919 when bombs mailed to thirty-six public figures nationwide in May were followed in June by coordinated nearly simultaneous bombings aimed at public figures and institutions in eight cities. The end of the campaign was the Wall Street explosion (September 16, 1920) that killed forty and injured hundreds. Scores were arrested (thirty for the Wall Street explosion alone), but lawmen never caught the culprits. Fears aroused by bomb blasts gave the Justice Department carte blanche to roundup and deport alien radicals, particularly Bolsheviks, in 1919-1920. The bombings raised issues, including the fear of an unknown enemy and the government's need for accurate intelligence, that mirror today's post 9/11 era. The book profiles the suspects but focuses on the investigators, especially the Bureau of Investigation and its spies and informants. Based largely upon FBI files, it explores the Bureau's relationship with British Intelligence in New York City, and to the Sacco-Vanzetti case, as well as a privately funded search for the bombers. Throughout, the manhunt was handicapped by disputes with other law enforcement agencies and by intra-Bureau jealousies and rivalries, agent job insecurity and high turnover, inadequate training and resources, and morale problems, particularly in the New York and Boston field offices.
Author: Mark Shaw
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Published: 2023-09-18
Total Pages: 314
ISBN-13: 1776191528
DOWNLOAD EBOOK'Mark Shaw is the foremost analyst of organised crime in SA.' – Jonny Steinberg At the dawn of the country's brave new democracy, Cape Town was at war. Pagad, which began as a community protest action against crime, had mutated into a sinister vigilante group wreaking death and destruction across the city. Between 1996 and 2001, there were hundreds of bomb blasts – most infamously at the Planet Hollywood restaurant at the V&A Waterfront – and countless targeted hits on druglords and gang bosses. The police scrambled desperately to respond. The new ANC government was shaken. Citizens of Cape Town lived in fear. Who could save the city? Mark Shaw tells the incredible tale of how former foes – struggle cadres and the apartheid security apparatus – pulled together to break the Pagad death squads. Out of this crisis emerged the elite law enforcement unit, the Scorpions. It is a story that has never been told in full. Now many involved have broken their silence about this pivotal chapter in South Africa's history, which offers far-reaching lessons on how to deal with organised crime today.
