This is the story of a special breed of warrior, the fighter-bomber pilot; the story of valiant men who flew the F-105 Thunderchief ‘Thud’ Fighter-Bomber over the hostile skies of North Vietnam.The book is based on Broughton’s tour of duty between September 1966 and June 1967 as Vice Commander of the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing, based at Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand. The narrative is anecdotal in nature, a commentary of his observations of persons, aircraft, and events during his tour, more or less chronologically, but without dated references. Few individuals are identified by other than first or nicknames, but Broughton develops most as characters through descriptions of their career backgrounds. Broughton’s accounts of missions “up north” were enhanced in both accuracy and verisimilitude by verbatim transcriptions of radio transmissions he recorded using a small tape recorder mounted in the cockpit of his aircraft.In Thud Ridge Broughton is highly critical of the U.S. command structure directing air operations against North Vietnam. He blames micromanagement by the highest levels in Washington down to the Thirteenth Air Force, a command echelon based in the Philippines, for losses of men and aircraft that he characterizes as “astronomical” and “worthless”. He is particularly critical, however, of the “bomber mentality” management by generals who came up through the Strategic Air Command and then occupied key command slots in the war, which was being fought by pilots of the Tactical Air Command.The book came about when, at the completion of his tour of duty, Broughton and two of his pilots were court martialed by the USAF for allegedly conspiring to violate the rules of engagement regarding U.S. air operations. Although acquitted of the most serious charges, Broughton, who had been personally relieved of duty by Pacific Air Forcescommander Gen. John D. Ryan, was subsequently transferred to an obscure post in the Pentagon, allegedly as a vendetta because his punishment was so slight. Required by office protocol to work only two or three days a month, he used both his extra time and his bitterness at the Air Force to compose Thud Ridge while he awaited approval of an application to appeal of his conviction to the Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records.After his conviction was overturned and expunged from his record because of “undue command influence”, Broughton retired from the Air Force in August 1968 and had the memoir published by J.B. Lippincott. The book appeared soon after as a Bantam paperback, with reprint editions in 1985, 2002, and 2006.

Internationally bestselling novelist and American icon Tom Robbins's long-awaited tale of his wild life and times, both at home and around the globe.Tom Robbins's warm, wise, and wonderfully weird novels — including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Another Roadside Attraction, and Jitterbug Perfume—provide an entryway into the frontier of his singular imagination. Madcap but sincere, pulsating with strong social and philosophical undercurrents, his irreverent classics have introduced countless readers to hitchhiking cowgirls, born-again monkeys, a philosophizing can of beans, exiled royalty, and problematic redheads.In Tibetan Peach Pie, Robbins turns that unparalleled literary sensibility inward, weaving together stories of his unconventional life — from his Appalachian childhood to his globe-trotting adventures — told in his unique voice, which combines the sweet and sly, the spiritual and earthy. The grandchild of Baptist preachers, Robbins would become, over the course of half a century, a poet interruptus, a soldier, a meteorologist, a radio DJ, an art-critic-turned-psychedelic-journeyman, a world-famous novelist, and a counterculture hero, leading a life as unlikely, magical, and bizarre as those of his quixotic characters.Robbins offers intimate snapshots of Appalachia during the Great Depression, the West Coast during the sixties' psychedelic revolution, international roving before Homeland Security monitored our travels, and New York publishing when it still relied on trees.Written with the big-hearted comedy and mesmerizing linguistic invention for which Robbins is known, Tibetan Peach Pie is an invitation into the private world of a literary legend.

Although Nicholas Mosley has written two volumes of family biography and a volume of memoirs, he has, until now, avoided writing about his World War Two experiences.The son of Sir Oswald Mosley who, as the leader of the British Union of Fascists, had been jailed with his second wife, Diana (one of the Mitford sisters), early on in the war ostensibly as a security risk. Despite this, Nicholas was dispatched to join his regiment, the Rifle Brigade, as the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula. He came of age in the forcing house of war, surrounded by the constant threat of capture by the Germans.At one point in the Italian campaign this very nearly happened. How Nicholas got away and survived is an example of how sometimes fact can be more bizarre than fiction.Time at War is both an absorbing memoir and an intriguing account of a relationship unlike any other in World War Two. How do you live your life as a soldier fighting the Axis powers when your father is the self-proclaimed British fascist leader?

Charles Herbert Lightoller (30 March 1874 — 8 December 1952) was a British merchant seaman and naval officer. He was the second officer on board the RMS Titanic and the most senior member of the crew to survive the Titanic disaster. As the officer in charge of loading passengers into lifeboats on the port side, Lightoller strictly enforced the women and children only protocol, not allowing any male passengers to board the lifeboats unless they were needed as auxiliary seamen. Lightoller served as a commanding officer in the Royal Navy during World War I and was twice decorated for gallantry. During World War II, in retirement, he provided and sailed as a volunteer on one of the "little ships" that played a part in the Dunkirk evacuation.

Gregori Rasputin is probably one of the best known, but least understood of the key figures in the events which ultimately led to the downfall of the Russian Tsars some 90 years ago. His political role as the power behind the throne is as much obscured today, as it was then, by the fascination with his morality and private life. Andrew Cook’s re-investigation of Rasputin’s death will reveal for the first time the real masterminds behind the murder of the “mad monk.”

Early in her literary career Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, born in St. Petersburg in 1872, adopted the pen-name of Teffi, and it is as Teffi that she is remembered. In prerevolutionary Russia she was a literary star, known for her humorous satirical pieces; in the 1920s and 30s, she wrote some of her finest stories in exile in Paris, recalling her unforgettable encounters with Rasputin, and her hopeful visit at age thirteen to Tolstoy after reading War and Peace. In this selection of her best autobiographical stories, she covers a wide range of subjects, from family life to revolution and emigration, writers and writing.

Like Nabokov, Platonov, and other great Russian prose writers, Teffi was a poet who turned to prose but continued to write with a poet's sensitivity to tone and rhythm. Like Chekhov, she fuses wit, tragedy, and a remarkable capacity for observation; there are few human weaknesses she did not relate to with compassion and understanding.

Winner of the 2012 Libris Literature Prize — the Dutch equivalent of the Booker Prize — and a bestseller in Holland and Germany, this is a mesmerising rendition of grief and love.On Pentecost 2010, Tonio — the only son of writer Adri van der Heijden — is hit by a car. He dies of his injuries that same day. Tonio is only 21. His parents are faced with the monstrous task of forging ahead with their lives in the knowledge that their only child will never again come home, never again stop by just to catch up, never again go out shopping with his mother and bitch about passers-by, never again ask his father: 'Did you work well today?' Never again.Adri van der Heijden is driven by two compelling questions: what happened to Tonio during the final days and hours before the accident, and how could this accident happen? This search takes in various eyewitnesses, friends, police officers, doctors, and the mysterious Jenny — who turns out to have played a crucial role in Tonio's life during those final weeks.

RAF Flight lieutenants John Peters and John Nichol were shot down over enemy territory on their first airbourne mission of the Gulf War. Their capture in the desert, half a mile from their blazing Tornado bomber, began a nightmare seven-week ordeal of torture and interrogation which brought both men close to death.In Tornado Down, John Peters and John Nichol tell the incredible story of their part in the war against Saddam Hussien’s regime. It is a brave and shocking and totally honest story: a story about war and its effects on the hearts and minds of men.

One of the most anticipated autobiographies of this generation, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall is the candid story by one of the world’s most remarkable actors, businessmen, and world leaders.Born in the small city of Thal, Austria, in 1947, Arnold Schwarzenegger moved to Los Angeles at the age of twenty-one. Within ten years, he was a millionaire businessman. After twenty years, he was the world’s biggest movie star. In 2003, he was elected governor of California and a household name around the world.Chronicling his embodiment of the American Dream, Total Recall covers Schwarzenegger’s high-stakes journey to the United States, from creating the international bodybuilding industry out of the sands of Venice Beach, to breathing life into cinema’s most iconic characters, and becoming one of the leading political figures of our time. Proud of his accomplishments and honest about his regrets, Schwarzenegger spares nothing in sharing his amazing story.THE GREATEST IMMIGRANT SUCCESS STORY OF OUR TIMEHis story is unique, and uniquely entertaining, and he tells it brilliantly in these pages.He was born in a year of famine, in a small Austrian town, the son of an austere police chief. He dreamed of moving to America to become a bodybuilding champion and a movie star.By the age of twenty-one, he was living in Los Angeles and had been crowned Mr. Universe.Within five years, he had learned English and become the greatest bodybuilder in the world.Within ten years, he had earned his college degree and was a millionaire from his business enterprises in real estate, landscaping, and bodybuilding. He was also the winner of Golden Globe Award for his debut as a dramatic actor in Stay Hungry.Within twenty years, he was the world’s biggest movie star, the husband of Maria Shriver, and an emerging Republican leader who was part of the Kennedy family.Thirty-six years after coming to America, the man once known by fellow bodybuilders as the Austrian Oak was elected governor of California, the seventh largest economy in the world.He led the state through a budget crisis, natural disasters, and political turmoil, working across party lines for a better environment, election reforms, and bipartisan solutions.With Maria Shriver, he raised four fantastic children. In the wake of a scandal he brought upon himself, he tried to keep his family together.Until now, he has never told the full story of his life, in his own voice.Here is Arnold, with total recall.

«Touching From A Distance» — это первое погружение в жизнь вокалиста Joy Division Йена Кертиса, задокументированное его вдовой Деборой. Эта книга — взгляд от первого лица, рассказ о юности манчестерского музыканта с момента А первой встречи до последних суток. Отношения Деборы и Йена — холодная война длиной в десять лет, кончившаяся суицидом и посмертной славой. На русском языке публикуется впервые.

According to Mark Phillips and Cathy O'Brien, the United States is run by an elite group of New World Order fanatics who are involved in the abduction of sexually abused children. These children are brainwashed and turned into slaves by the US Government. Cathy O'Brien claims that she was abducted into the CIA's MK Ultra mind control project, suffered years of torture and abuse and would have been killed if not for her rescue by Mark Phillips. Written in a lucid hallucinatory style, Trance is hard to put down. The names named and the crimes sighted are of a magnitude beyond anything you can imagine.

According to Mark Phillips and Cathy O'Brien, the United States is run by an elite group of New World Order fanatics who are involved in the abduction of sexually abused children. These children are brainwashed and turned into slaves by the US Government. Cathy O'Brien claims that she was abducted into the CIA's MK Ultra mind control project, suffered years of torture and abuse and would have been killed if not for her rescue by Mark Phillips. Written in a lucid hallucinatory style, Trance is hard to put down. The names named and the crimes sighted are of a magnitude beyond anything you can imagine.

Chil Rajchman, a Polish Jew, was arrested with his younger sister in 1942 and sent to Treblinka, a death camp where more than 750,000 were murdered before it was abandoned by German soldiers. His sister was sent to the gas chambers, but Rajchman escaped execution, working for ten months under incessant threats and beatings as a barber, a clothes-sorter, a corpse-carrier, a puller of teeth from those same bodies. In August 1943, there was an uprising at the camp, and Rajchman was among the handful of men who managed to escape. In 1945, he set down this account, a plain, unembellished and exact record of the raw horror he endured every day. This unique testimony, which has remained in the sole possession of his family ever since, has never before been published in English. For its description of unspeakably cruelty, Treblinka is a memoir that will not be superseded. In addition to Rajchman’s account, this volume will include the complete text of Vasily Grossman’s “The Hell of Treblinka”, one of the first descriptions of a Nazi extermination camp; a powerful and harrowing piece of journalism written only weeks after the camp was dissolved.

“My bat-like thought-wings would beat painfully in that sudden searchlight,” H.D. writes in Tribute to Freud, her moving memoir. Compelled by historical as well as personal crises, H.D. underwent therapy with Freud during 1933–34, as the streets of Vienna were littered with tokens dropped like confetti on the city stating “Hitler gives work,” “Hitler gives bread.” Having endured World War I, she was now gathering her resources to face the cataclysm she knew was approaching. The first part of the book, “Writing on the Wall,” was composed some ten years after H.D.’s stay in Vienna; the second part, “Advent,” is a journal she kept during her analysis. Revealed here in the poet’s crystal shard-like words and in Freud’s own letters (which comprise an appendix) is a remarkably tender and human portrait of the legendary Doctor in the twilight of his life. Time double backs on itself, mingling past, present, and future in a visionary weave of dream, memory, and reflections.

Авторы рассказывают нам о судьбах самых дальних родственников Тупака с 18-ого века и вплоть до века 20-ого. Параллельно авторы исследуют историю самих США. Читателю становится понятно почему чёрное сообщество так или иначе реагировало на действия властей США. Большую часть книги занимает биография самого Тупака. Она составлена в хронологическом порядке с момента его рождения и вплоть до гибели. Над созданием книги работали родственники, друзья и коллеги Тупака по музыкальному бизнесу. Здесь есть воспоминания его матери Офени, сестры Секивы, близкой подруги Джады Пинкетт, первого продюсера и подруги Лейлы Штайнберг, рэперов Shock G, Warren G, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre и многих других. Подробно охвачен каждый период его жизни. В книгу включены его интервью, письма из тюрьмы, записи судебных заседаний, воспоминания телохранителей, одноклассников и преподавателей Балтиморской Школы Искусств. Таким образом, эта книга является наиболее подробным и увлекательным исследованием жизни самого великого рэпера всех времён и народов.

Best remembered for being one of the leading figures in the school of fiction writing known as naturalism, American author Theodore Dreiser got his professional start as a journalist, and he brings his love of research and detail to this collection of biographical essays celebrating the lives and contributions of 12 people who influenced him.

When Nicholson Baker, one of the most linguistically talented writers in America, set out to write a book about John Updike, the result was no ordinary biography. Instead Baker's account of his relationship with his hero is a hilarious story of ambition, obsession, talent and neurosis, alternately self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing. More memoir than literary criticism, Baker is excruciatingly honest, and U & I reveals at least as much about Baker himself as it does about his idol. Written twenty years before Updike's death in 2009, U & I is a very smart and extremely funny exploration of the debts we owe our heroes.