Creator: Philip Boehm
Edition: New
Publication date: 2006-04-06
RRP: £7.99
Price: £2.96
Review A Woman in Berlin: Diary 20 April 1945 to 22 June 1945 / Virago Press Ltd:
Edition: 1st Pocket Books Pbk. Ed
Publication date: 2008-03-08
Dewey code: 364.15230973
RRP: £7.99
Price: £1.52
Review Smoke, Mirrors and Murder: And Other True Cases (Ann Rule's Crime Files) / Pocket Books:
Edition: Reissue
Publication date: 1991-09-30
Dewey code: 959.70434
RRP: £7.99
Price: £1.15
Review Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills / Atlantic Books:
Authors
- Tony Barnes
- Richard Elias
- Peter Walsh
RRP: £6.99
Price: £2.44
Review Cocky: The Rise and Fall of Curtis Warren, Britain's Biggest Drugs Baron / Milo Books:
Publication date: 2007-06-04
RRP: £7.99
Price: £1.30
Review Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: Lover, Traitor, Hero, Spy / Bloomsbury Publishing PLC:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2003-05-01
Dewey code: 355
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.57
Review First Light / Penguin Books Ltd:Surviving Battle of Britain fighter aces were thin on the ground even in 1941, so any new book more than 60 years later from a previously unknown pilot is bound to get noticed. And First Light is not just any book. It might not turn out to be a lasting classic, like Richard Hillary's The Last Enemy or Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, but it is a cut well above the bog standard wartime reminiscences of many retired military bods. For a start Wellum can write, but more than this he has an instinctive feel for a good story. He begins First Light as a fresh-faced, rather obnoxious public schoolboy keen to blag his way into the RAF in March 1939; just three years, two full tours on Spitfires, the Battle of Britain, nearly 100 escorts and fighter sweeps over occupied France and a Malta convoy later, Wellum was physically and mentally burnt out before the age of 22. An old man in a boy's body. His descriptions of the excitement, freedom and, at times, sheer terror of operating in a three-dimensional airspace are vividly powerful, but perhaps his greatest gift is to get across the way the fatigue and the emotional shutting off creeps up unnoticed. At the start, the death of a friend leaves Wellum devastated and wondering when his turn will come; within the space of a few hundred pages, the failure of a pilot to return is dropped in almost as an afterthought. This is not the response of a man who cares too little, but of one who cares too much. Without being aware of it, he has experienced and felt too much and his mind and body have involuntarily separated. [+]This comes into even sharper relief at the end when Wellum is stood down from active service; he is the only one not to see-quite literally, as his vision has become impaired-that his ailments are rooted in his psyche rather than his body. The only one false note is his desire to see his role as part of a bigger picture; written many years after the events he describes, Wellum sometimes interjects thoughts and feelings about the war that simply do not ring true. That aside, one is left wondering what became of Wellum the man between the war ending and the book's publication. What sense did the prematurely aged fighter pilot make of the post-war age and did he learn to love again? But that, maybe, is the subject for another book. -John Crace.
Publication date: 2008-02-28
Dewey code: 940.5475410922
RRP: £20.00
Price: £8.45
Review Sisters In Arms: British Army Nurses Tell Their Story / Weidenfeld & Nicolson:
Publication date: 2007-05-03
Dewey code: 909
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.56
Review The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left / Penguin Books Ltd:
Creator: Suzie Fleming
Publication date: 2006-11-16
Dewey code: 305
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.50
Review Nella Last's War: The Second World War Diaries of 'Housewife 49' / Profile Books Ltd:
Edition: 3rd Edition
Publication date: 2007-06-01
RRP: £8.99
Price: £5.50
Review Sod That for a Game of Soldiers / Kenton Publishing:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2008-06-20
Dewey code: 363.325092
RRP: £7.99
Price: £3.66
Review One Unknown: A Powerful Account of Survival and One Woman's Inspirational Journey to a New Life / Rodale International Ltd:
Creator: Anthea Bell
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2002-07-04
Dewey code: 940
RRP: £8.99
Price: £4.66
Review Austerlitz / Penguin Books Ltd:WG Sebald's Austerlitz has something of the fractured narrative and wanderlust of his novels The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn, and continues to develop their obsession with history, loss and memory-or more precisely in this case, forgetting. In the decade since the original German publication of Vertigo, Sebald has established himself as indisputably one of Europe's most interesting and lauded writers. In 1967, the narrator bumps into a man in the salle de pas perdus of Antwerp's Central Station. Thus begins a long if intermittent acquaintance, during which he learns the life story of this stranger, retired architectural historian Jacques Austerlitz. Raised as Dafydd Elias by a strict Welsh Calvinist ministry family, it is only at school that Austerlitz learns his true name-and only years later, by a series of chance encounters, that he allows himself to discover the truth of his origins, as a Czech child spirited away from his mother and out of Nazi territory on the Kindertransport. He returns to confront the childhood traumas that have made him feel that "I must have made a mistake, and now I am living the wrong life. " In this writer's hands, Austerlitz's tale of personal emotional repression becomes a metaphor for Europe's smothered past. Sebald wittily explores the tricks of time and space, unearthing Europe as an unconscious palimpsest. Delighting in lists and unfeasibly lengthy descriptions, Sebald can turn anything to poetry-even the alleged health benefits of Marienbad's Auschowitz springs become "a positive verbal coloratura of medical and diagnostic terms" (luckily, all his characters seem to be able to hold forth this way). Indeed, Sebald writes with such preternatural lucidity that even a harrowing account of writer's block ironically becomes a celebration of his own quite clearly unblockable virtuosity. [+]At heart, though, Austerlitz is a serious indictment of modern Europe's "avoidance system", its repeated patterns of personal and institutional forgetting that, even within Austerlitz's own lifetime, have contrived to obscure, ignore and render irretrievable his past and the source of his pain. And yet, despite the bleakness of that picture, the book ends with its hero-and its readers-committed to trying, at least, to remember. -Alan Stewart.
Publication date: 2008-05-15
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.78
Review Fusiliers: How the British Army Lost America but Learned to Fight / Faber and Faber:
Publication date: 2006-03-31
Dewey code: 940.548243
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.18
Review Blood Red Snow Memoirs German / Motorbooks International:
Publication date: 2005-03-03
Dewey code: 327
RRP: £10.99
Price: £5.83
Review Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden / Penguin Books Ltd:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1999-02-25
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £8.99
Price: £4.00
Review Goodbye to All That (Essential Penguin) / Penguin Books Ltd:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 1997-06-01
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £3.99
Price: £1.47
Review Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) / Wordsworth Editions Ltd:
Publication date: 1999-10
Dewey code: 940.547243094386
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.80
Review Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chamber / Ivan R Dee, Inc:
Creator: William Davies
Publication date: 2008-02-11
RRP: £17.99
Price: £9.95
Review Somme Mud / Doubleday:
Publication date: 2008-05-01
Dewey code: 940.5486410922
RRP: £19.99
Price: £8.98
Review Forgotten Voices of the Secret War: An Inside History of Special Operations in the Second World War (Forgotten Voices) / Ebury Press:
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A Woman in Berlin: Diary 20 April 1945 to 22 June 1945, Smoke, Mirrors and Murder: And Other True Cases (Ann Rule's Crime Files), Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills, Cocky: The Rise and Fall of Curtis Warren, Britain's Biggest Drugs Baron, Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: Lover, Traitor, Hero, Spy, First Light, Sisters In Arms: British Army Nurses Tell Their Story, The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left, Nella Last's War: The Second World War Diaries of 'Housewife 49', Sod That for a Game of Soldiers, One Unknown: A Powerful Account of Survival and One Woman's Inspirational Journey to a New Life, Austerlitz, Fusiliers: How the British Army Lost America but Learned to Fight, Blood Red Snow Memoirs German, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, Goodbye to All That (Essential Penguin), Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature), Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chamber, Somme Mud, Forgotten Voices of the Secret War: An Inside History of Special Operations in the Second World War (Forgotten Voices)Top headlines: Google in deal with Brazil to fight child porn: Internet search company Google signed an agreement with Brazilian public prosecutors on Wednesday to help combat child pornography on its social networking site Orkut, an accord that the company believes is the first of its kind internationally. ›17:26, 3.07 School's pregnancy spike stirs day care debate: Just four factors can predict with 70 percent accuracy whether a woman will become pregnant through "test-tube" baby technology known as in vitro fertilization, researchers said. ›01:24, 2.07 100 homeless after Ohio apartment fire: A fast-moving fire early Saturday at an apartment complex in Toledo, Ohio, destroyed eight buildings and left more than 100 people homeless, authorities said. ›17:57, 5.07 Are you smart? Take our weekly news quiz: How much do you remember about the week in news? Take msnbc.com's weekly quiz and find out what you can recall. ›19:43, 20.03 Get this weeks News of the Weird: D.C. seeks new rules after gun ruling: Dale Metta, who manages a gun shop just outside the District of Columbia limits in Maryland, has had to turn away dozens of city residents wanting to buy a gun. ›01:46 U.S. share of foreign visitors slips, experts say: Despite the weak U.S. dollar, a boom in international travel around the world hasn't translated into an explosion of foreign tourists to the United States. ›15:36, 5.07 A century ago, Americans marveled at flight: On a steamy Fourth of July evening a century ago, a wood-and-fabric biplane lifted off and stayed airborne for almost a mile, in a stupendous triumph over gravity witnessed by more than 2,000 people. ›23:17, 3.07 Mystery cave opened at Mexican pyramid: Archaeologists are opening a cave sealed for more than 30 years deep beneath a Mexican pyramid to look for clues about the mysterious collapse of one of ancient civilization's largest cities. ›21:21, 3.07 NYT: McCain orders campaign shake-up: Responding to Republican concerns, John McCain placed a veteran of President Bushs 2004 re-election in charge of day-to-day operations. ›04:00, 3.07 Police: Former Chargers safety Terrence Kiel dies: Former Chargers safety Terrence Kiel was killed after he was thrown from a Chevy sedan he was driving, police said Saturday. ›15:07, 5.07 Analysis: McCain struggles to regain footing: John McCain calls himself an underdog. That may be an understatement. ›21:07, 5.07 Blumenthal: Why such disparity between polls?: The differences between trackers such as Gallup Daily and Rasmussen and the more traditional polls are smaller than they seem. ›15:42, 3.07 Service sector contracts as orders fall: Higher oil prices caused service businesses to shrink in June, as falling new orders and rising costs hit the nation's coffee shops, paper mills and corner stores. ›18:33, 3.07 Race for Trent Lott's old seat competitive: Roger Wicker leaned up against the rails of the oyster schooner Mike Sekul, enjoying the slight Mississippi Sound breeze and some scrumptious, bone-sucking ribs with his son McDaniel. ›19:59, 3.07 Obama opens door to altering his Iraq policy: Democrat Barack Obama struggled Thursday to explain how his upcoming trip to Iraq might refine, but not basically alter, his promise to quickly remove U.S. combat troops from the war. ›22:58, 3.07 Post 9/11 dragnet turns up surprises: Increased use of fingerprinting to identify foreign detainees reveals many have U.S. arrest records. ›06:49 Message board: Discuss the strangeness: Bring a bib to America's best barbecue joints: A quest for the top spot makes a heck of a good excuse to get out and explore our country's little towns and back-road byways. ›13:53, 3.07 Privacy advocates decry YouTube court order: A U.S. judge's order to Google to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom sparked an outcry on Thursday from privacy advocates in the midst of a legal showdown over video piracy. ›23:51, 3.07 McCain to meet Mexican president: Immigration and trade are high on the presidential hopeful's agenda as he wraps up a three-day Latin American visit Thursday with a meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon. ›16:09, 3.07 Chinese arrive on historic flights to Taiwan: Hundreds of Chinese tourists flew into Taiwan Friday in the first wave of regular cross-straits commercial flights in nearly six decades that could transform ties between the old foes. ›15:20, 5.07 Newsweek: Bad news awaits the next president: There's a grim gathering of America's elites in Aspen to talk about the problems the next president will face. ›16:15, 3.07 Mosquito threat multiplies after Midwest floods: A Filipino teenager who came to New York so doctors could perform surgery to untwist her severely clubbed feet took her first unaided steps Wednesday. ›23:17, 2.07 |
