NOW A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MINISERIES EVENT ABC News’ Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz shares remarkable tales of heroism, hope, and heartbreak in her account of “Black Sunday”—a battle during one of the deadliest periods of the Iraq war. The First Cavalry Division came under surprise attack in Sadr City on Sunday, April 4, 2004. More than seven thousand miles away, their families awaited the news for forty-eight hellish hours—expecting the worst. In this powerful, unflinching account, Martha Raddatz takes readers from the streets of Baghdad to the home front and tells the story of that horrific day through the eyes of the courageous American men and women who lived it. “A masterpiece of literary nonfiction that rivals any war-related classic that has preceded it.”—The Washington Post
After losing his leg—and his trademark helmet—B.D. returns home from Iraq to begin a remarkable journey of healing in this Doonesbury book. On a road outside Fallujah, an RPG blows apart a Humvee and upends the life of a former football star named B.D. As a medevac chopper swoops down, the wounded Guardsman hears “Not your time, bro. Not today”. The Long Road Home: One Step at a Time chronicles seven months of cutting-edge cartooning, during which B.D.—and readers of the strip—experienced the kind of personal transformation no one seeks. B.D. survives first-response Baghdad triage, evacuation to Landstuhl, and visits by innumerable celebs, both red and blue in hue. He's awed in turn by morphine, take-no-guff nurses, his fellow amps, high-tech prostheses that cost more than luxury cars, and his family, including the daughter who hand-delivers succor, one aspirin at a time. From rebuilding tissue to rebuilding social skills to rebuilding lives, B.D's inspiring, insightful, and darkly humorous story confirms that it can take a village, or at least a ward, to raise a soldier when he's gone down. “Thank you for getting blown up,” offers one of B.D.'s visiting players. Replies the coach, “Just doing my job.”
At the end of World War II, long before an Allied victory was assured and before the scope of the atrocities orchestrated by Hitler would come into focus or even assume the name of the Holocaust, Allied forces had begun to prepare for its aftermath. Taking cues from the end of the First World War, planners had begun the futile task of preparing themselves for a civilian health crisis that, due in large part to advances in medical science, would never come. The problem that emerged was not widespread disease among Europe’s population, as anticipated, but massive displacement among those who had been uprooted from home and country during the war. Displaced Persons, as the refugees would come to be known, were not comprised entirely of Jews. Millions of Latvians, Poles, Ukrainians, and Yugoslavs, in addition to several hundred thousand Germans, were situated in a limbo long overlooked by historians. While many were speedily repatriated, millions of refugees refused to return to countries that were forever changed by the war—a crisis that would take years to resolve and would become the defining legacy of World War II. Indeed many of the postwar questions that haunted the Allied planners still confront us today: How can humanitarian aid be made to work? What levels of immigration can our societies absorb? How can an occupying power restore prosperity to a defeated enemy? Including new documentation in the form of journals, oral histories, and essays by actual DPs unearthed during his research for this illuminating and radical reassessment of history, Ben Shephard brings to light the extraordinary stories and myriad versions of the war experienced by the refugees and the new United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration that would undertake the responsibility of binding the wounds of an entire continent. Groundbreaking and remarkably relevant to conflicts that continue to plague peacekeeping efforts, The Long Road Home tells the epic story of how millions redefined the notion of home amid painstaking recovery.
Kim Yong shares his harrowing account of life in a labor camp a singularly despairing form of torture carried out by the secret state. Although it is known that gulags exist in North Korea, little information is available about their organization and conduct, for prisoners rarely escape both incarceration and the country alive. Long Road Home shares the remarkable story of one such survivor, a former military official who spent six years in a gulag and experienced firsthand the brutality of an unconscionable regime. As a lieutenant colonel in the North Korean army, Kim Yong enjoyed unprecedented privilege in a society that closely monitored its citizens. He owned an imported car and drove it freely throughout the country. He also encountered corruption at all levels, whether among party officials or Japanese trade partners, and took note of the illicit benefits that were awarded to some and cruelly denied to others. When accusations of treason stripped Kim Yong of his position, the loose distinction between those who prosper and those who suffer under Kim Jong-il became painfully clear. Kim Yong was thrown into a world of violence and terror, condemned to camp No. 14 in Hamkyeong province, North Korea's most notorious labor camp. As he worked a constant shift 2,400 feet underground, daylight became Kim's new luxury; as the months wore on, he became intimately acquainted with political prisoners, subhuman camp guards, and an apocalyptic famine that killed millions. After years of meticulous planning, and with the help of old friends, Kim escaped and came to the United States via China, Mongolia, and South Korea. Presented here for the first time in its entirety, his story not only testifies to the atrocities being committed behind North Korea's wall of silence but also illuminates the daily struggle to maintain dignity and integrity in the face of unbelievable hardship. Like the work of Solzhenitsyn, this rare portrait tells a story of resilience as it reveals the dark forms of oppression, torture, and ideological terror at work in our world today.
Gunslinger Roland Deschain is pursued, along with Cuthbert and Alain, by the Big Coffin Hunters, and they are forced into the desert while Roland is in a coma with his consciousness held captive by Maerlyn's mystical sphere.
A collection of emotionally gripping and powerful stories about loss, sin, and redemption. Written during the darkest period of the author's life, The Long Road Home tells the story of men who have nowhere to turn but the highway. Incredibly well crafted and laced with humor, wit, and desperation, Gordon promises to be a name to remember.
The honest account of one prisoner-of-war's struggle to survive through five years of Nazi imprisonment. An essential book for readers of Horace Greasley, Alistair Urquhart and Heather Morris. On a cold May morning in 1940, Adrian Vincent arrived in France with his battalion. His war didn't last long. Within five days the Siege of Calais was over and nearly all his comrades were killed, wounded or, like him, taken prisoner. After a brutal journey across the breadth of Germany, Vincent and his fellow survivors began their life in Stalag VIIIB, set to work in terrible conditions down a Polish mine. For the next five years they waged a war not against enemy soldiers, but instead versus monotony, disease, cruelty, starvation and hopelessness. "The most honest prisoner-of-war story I have read in the last ten years." Leicester Mercury "Mr. Vincent has the admirable intention of entertaining the reader, and this he does very successfully. His style is deft and concise. He has a nice wit and his characters emerge as life-like and life-size figures" Times Literary Supplement "Vincent tells his story with humour, sympathy and observation." The Sphere The Long Road Home is a remarkably truthful memoir of what it was like to be a prisoner during the Second World War. Vincent does not portray himself or his comrades as heroes, but instead what they really were: survivors.
"No matter how far and how fast you run, the truth is never far behind." CIA counter-terrorism expert Manual Ramirez has spent the last three years looking for the woman he loves, who disappeared without a trace while on a post-graduate trip to France. Then, as suddenly as she disappeared, Jules Trehan turns up in a small-town Colorado hospital bed, injured in an explosion that killed her parents. Manny is shocked by the change in the woman he once knew. Kidnapped by a shadowy organization, Jules has been forced to become the very thing he's pledged his life to defeat--a terrorist assassin. Knowing her testimony will finally bring down the organization, Manny races to get her to Washington, D.C. in one piece. Just when there's a glimmer of hope of overcoming her past, Jules must pull off one last job or Manny's life will be forfeit. It's a mission she must complete...even if it means betraying the only man she has ever loved. "Warning, this title contains the following: Explicit sex, adult language, violence."
For the lonesome soldier voices in the night brings regret and depression in the daylight. For some it's a legacy of pain, for some its pride, for all PTSD can be torture. My name is Jackson and I am only one of the many returning soldiers that suffer from invisible wounds. "Step into my life, for a few minutes. I am an American soldier in the Army, just back from Iraq. This is where I lived and fought beside my friends, my family as we grew to think of one another, as we battled insurgents. Try to understand our dilemma when we return home. I am a son, I am a father, I am a husband, I am a soldier, I am a man that is conflicted, I am, I was, I hope to be again." Follow my journey. If you ask any soldier that has experienced the loss of a fellow soldier, the pelleting rain of shrapnel or the onset of relentless machine gun fire, they will tell you that all they really want is peace, to be safe at home. A soldier knows what the risk and cost are, but we all willingly fight for freedom for all.
