The unique and harrowing account of the bloodiest battle of the Falkland War - the 1982 battle for Mount Longdon, as seen through the eyes of eight ordinary Argentine soldiers from the Seventh Infantry Regiment and five British paratroopers.
In August 1992, a Public Enquiry was launched by the MOD and Malcolm Rifkind, headed by the Serious Crime Squad, into war crimes allegedly committed by one of the members of 2 Para Regiment during the Falklands War. To counter-balance the findings of the enquiry, the author wrote this book to help civilians understand the reality of being a common soldier in the heat of war - the time when the rule book and common morality are most likely to be abandoned. Perhaps the most shocking truth of all to emerge from these first-person accounts concerns the appalling treatment that the Argentinian conscripts recieved at the hands of their own officers. The book is based on interviews with eight Argentinian soldiers and five British paratroopers.
As the firing died down and the merciless bombardment ended, the Argentine forces in and around Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, were forced to surrender. As the detritus of war was burned or buried over time, healing the scars across the land, which faded faster than the scars in the minds of the men who fought in this terrible conflict, one bundle of papers survived. They were the letters which never made it home on the last flight out of the war zone before the final battle ended: the letters of a group of Argentine soldiers who recount the hope and the horror of their daily lives alongside some of the most dramatic and famous events in the war's history, telling the story as it is - gritty and visceral - against the backdrop of the war which the junta's press machine tells their families they are winning. Carrying the hopes of their nation on their shoulders, the men who fought the war for a place they called "Malvinas" - a place they were taught to love but never knew - tell the untold story of the war first hand. As veteran historian Ricky D Phillips fills in the canvas around them and tells the story of the Argentine army at war, of the men who fought in the conflict, and attempts to track down the authors of the Last Letters from Stanley.
A comparison of nine leaders who led their nations through the greatest wars the world has ever seen and whose unique strengths—and weaknesses—shaped the course of human history, from the bestselling, award-winning author of Churchill, Napoleon, and The Last King of America “Has the enjoyable feel of a lively dinner table conversation with an opinionated guest.” —The New York Times Book Review Taking us from the French Revolution to the Cold War, Andrew Roberts presents a bracingly honest and deeply insightful look at nine major figures in modern history: Napoleon Bonaparte, Horatio Nelson, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, George C. Marshall, Charles de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Margaret Thatcher. Each of these leaders fundamentally shaped the outcome of the war in which their nation was embroiled. Is war leadership unique, or did these leaders have something in common, traits and techniques that transcend time and place and can be applied to the essential nature of conflict? Meticulously researched and compellingly written, Leadership in War presents readers with fresh, complex portraits of leaders who approached war with different tactics and weapons, but with the common goal of success in the face of battle. Both inspiring and cautionary, these portraits offer important lessons on leadership in times of struggle, unease, and discord. With his trademark verve and incisive observation, Roberts reveals the qualities that doom even the most promising leaders to failure, as well as the traits that lead to victory.
"Escape... escape... escape... by God!"' was his constant exhortation. "Never mind hunger pains, discomfort, or any other agony. Let escape become your passion, your one and only obsession until you finally reach home."' Shot down over Berlin in 1941, Richard Pape's saga of captivity is a story of courage unmatched in the annals of escape. Four escapes took him across the breadth of German-occupied Europe; to Poland and Czechoslovakia; to Austria and Hungary. Aggressive and impetuous, his adventures sweep the reader along on a torrent of excitement.
Hailed by the New Yorker as "a superlative study of a president and his presidency," Lou Cannon's President Reagan remains the definitive account of our most significant presidency in the last fifty years. Ronald Wilson Reagan, the first actor to be elected president, turned in the performance of a lifetime. But that performance concealed the complexities of the man, baffling most who came in contact with him. Who was the man behind the makeup? Only Lou Cannon, who covered Reagan through his political career, can tell us. The keenest Reagan-watcher of them all, he has been the only author to reveal the nature of a man both shrewd and oblivious. Based on hundreds of interviews with the president, the First Lady, and hundreds of the administration's major figures, President Reagan takes us behind the scenes of the Oval Office. Cannon leads us through all of Reagan's roles, from the affable cowboy to the self-styled family man; from the politician who denounced big government to the president who created the largest peace-time deficit; from the statesman who reviled the Soviet government to the Great Communicator who helped end the cold war.