Autobiography: historical, political and military Books
Casemate Publishers Nam Sense: Surviving Vietnam with 101st Airborne
Book SynopsisNam Sense is the memoir of a combat squad leader in the 101st Airborne Division. Arthur Wiknik was drafted by the army in 1969 at the age of nineteen, promoted to sergeant ‘without ever setting foot in a combat zone’, and sent to Vietnam. He was flown north to Camp Evans, a mixed-unit outpost near Phong Dien, only a few miles from Laos. Wiknik was then thrown straight into the action: he was the first man in his unit to reach the top of Hamburger Hill during one of the last offensives launched by US forces, and later discovered a weapons cache that prevented a sneak attack on his advance fire support base. Between the sporadic episodes of combat he mingled with the locals and defrauded an unwitting US supplier to provide his platoon with a year of good food. This book offers a perfect blend of candour and humour – and it spares nothing and no one in its attempt to convey what really happened during this unpopular war. Nam Sense is not about heroism, mental breakdowns and haunting flashbacks: the GIs Wiknik lived and fought with during his year-long tour were there to do their duty, support their comrades and get home alive. ‘The soldiers I knew’, explains the author, ‘demonstrated courage, principle, kindness, and friendship – all the elements found in other wars Americans have proudly fought in.’ About the AuthorARTHUR WIKNIK was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1968, selected to be trained as an Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) and went to war in Vietnam.Trade ReviewThis memoir has it all. Its powerful prose sears into the reader the pathos of war-the loneliness, hopelessness, fear, anger, loathing of oneself and ones' enemy-while generating laughs, a better understanding of the Vietnam veteran, and a sense of pride in our armed forces. * AdvanceBookReviews.com *Nam Sense is written in an accessible and ironic style, whether describing whores or horrors, it provides an unflinching look at a year in the life of a Grunt in Vietnam. * Military History of the West *
£17.92
Little Creek Press Still Burning: Half a Century of Chicago, from the Streets to the Corridors of Power: A Memoir
£20.66
Bohlau Verlag Schreiben für die Weiße Sache: General Aleksej
Book SynopsisEin russischer General 50 Jahre Tagebuch. Aleksej von Lampe hat am Schreibtisch und nicht auf dem Schlachtfeld für die Weiße Bewegung gekämpft und ein umfassendes Archiv hinterlassen. Er verfolgte zwei Ziele: die Schaffung eines Gegennarrativ zu dem der Bolschewiki und die Deutungshoheit über den Kampf der Weißen und die Geschichte des russischen Exils nach 1917. Sein Tagebuch bietet nicht nur Einblicke in das Innenleben eines zarischen Offiziers in der Emigration, sondern ein faszinierendes Panorama der russischen Lebenswelt im Berlin der 1920er und 1930er Jahre sowie der Pariser Nachkriegszeit. Diese biographische Mikrostudie untersucht die autobiographische Praxis eines zentralen Akteurs des Russischen Berlins, das Selbstverständnis eines Emigranten sowie seine Strategien und Handlungsspielräume in Zeiten radikaler politischer Umbrüche.
£84.43
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co KG Fragmente aus der Endzeit: Negatives
Book SynopsisWie lässt sich Geschichte von ihrem möglichen Ende her begreifen? Der deutsch-jüdische Schriftsteller und Philosoph Günther Anders (1902-1992) ist für seine Deutungen der atomaren Endzeit bekannt. Anna Pollmann rekonstruiert aus Anders' philosophischen und literarischen Schriften sein negatives Geschichtsdenken von der Genese in den 1930er Jahren bis hin zur Rezeption seiner Endzeitdiagnosen in den neuen sozialen Bewegungen. Das Buch erzählt von der Zerrüttung des Geschichtsbewusstseins im 20. Jahrhundert. Es macht sichtbar, wie sehr sich diese auch in der Form seines Werkes spiegelt. Die Zäsuren von Auschwitz und Hiroshima werden dabei in ihrer jeweils unterschiedlichen Bedeutung für die Grenzen historischen Denkens behandelt. Die Topografie von Anders' Emigration und Remigration nachzeichnend, führt die Studie an biografische Stationen wie Paris, Los Angeles, Berlin und Wien und in die ideengeschichtlichen Kontexte seines Geschichtsdenkens.
£999.99
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co KG Lady Charlotte Blennerhassett (1843--1917):
Book SynopsisWhen Lady Charlotte Blennerhassett died in the middle of the First World War in 1917, she was mourned by contemporaries on both sides of the front as the "last European". In fact, her life was shaped by the great religious-cultural and political-social lines of conflict between the founding of the Reich and World War II - and this from a genuinely European transnational perspective: the Bavarian noblewoman and Anglo-Irish woman by marriage led a life between Munich, Paris and London, that should make her an "enemy alien" in her own hometown during the World War. Her constant struggle for self-assertion as an author and scientist was not only intellectually motivated, but also an economic imperative given the family's economic and social decline. Last but not least, the student of the controversial church historian Ignaz von Döllinger was committed for life as a combative liberal Catholic for freedom of science and conscience.
£102.10
Schwabe Verlagsgruppe AG Mit Dem Kinderheim Auf Der Flucht: Annemarie
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Schwabe Verlagsgruppe AG Life Writing Zwischen Republik Und Prinzipat:
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Lexxion The Survival of an Incorrigible Optimist: From
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£25.66
Peeters Publishers A Curious and Convivial Traveller: Edward Roger
Book SynopsisIn 2001 the British Museum acquired the first of two ancient Egyptian stelae from the collection of the traveller Edward Roger Pratt (1789-1863) of Ryston Hall, Norfolk, and discovered his 1832-34 unpublished journals for Greece and Egypt and the 136-page album with his own drawings, watercolours, and paper impressions of bas-reliefs from a solo Nile voyage to the Second Cataract. Pratt recorded ancient monuments and sites, many later damaged or destroyed. In Greece Pratt travelled widely and adventurously with scholarly architects and artists studying ancient Greek sites, while in Egypt his guides were the works of the French Egyptologists Jean-François Champollion and Dominique Vivant Denon. A gregarious and enthusiastic traveller, Pratt was supported by extensive consular networks, expatriate communities and other travellers. In this volume his life and travels are reconstructed from his many journals, the travel journals for Greece and Egypt are transcribed and annotated, his maps and plans reproduced, his dispersed antiquities collection reconstructed, and the album drawings are identified and published in colour.
£140.06
Ridge Books the lives & times of hrh
Book SynopsisHerman Hochstadt, or hrh, as he is better known, joined Singapore’s civil service in 1960, rising quickly to the position of principal secretary for Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, and later serving as Permanent Secretary in key ministries like Finance and Defense. hrh had an unusual ability to inspire those working for him, and his signature wit and charm are on display in this winning memoir, which deftly weaves together stories of his career and some of the key moments of Singapore’s development. He begins with his Eurasian family’s history in Singapore, including that of his grandfather, John Hochstadt, who founded the Singapore Casket Company. He continues through his childhood, detailing an education that was interrupted by the Japanese occupation, before moving on to his working life, which included influential positions throughout the public and private sectors. Full of warmth and humor, the lives and times of hrh traces a life dedicated to public service in Singapore, from its time as a crown colony through its evolution to the Republic of Singapore.Trade Review“His amusing and frank accounts of how he worked with Lee Kuan Yew during his long career in the Singapore civil service make his autobiography valuable to readers interested in knowing more about Lee’s relationship with his civil service. . . . From reading Hochstadt’s autobiography, the reader gets a sense of how crucial the well-educated University of Malaya graduates were to maintaining and increasing the civil service’s efficiency and expertise, working with the political leaders to implement their policies in an era of early nation-building.” * Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society *Best Nonfiction Title, 2021 * Singapore Book Awards *Table of Contents 1. The Hochstadt Family: Early History 2. Pre-War Years and the Japanese Occupation 3. The Hochstadt House at 14 Parkstone Road 4. Schooldays 5. University Days 6. Working Life: The Early Years 7. PMO & More 8. United Nations in New York, London, Nairobi, Dar-es-Salaam, Lusaka, Blantyre, Cairo, Tunis, Algiers, Paris, Belgrade, Moscow, New Delhi, Rangoon, Phnom Penh & Bangkok 9. Ministry of Interior & Defence 10. Ministry of Finance: First Homecoming 11. Ministry of Communication 12. Ministry of Education 13. Monetary Authority of Singapore, Ministry of Finance - Final Homecoming - Ministry of Law & Retirement 14. Afterlife: Non-Resident High Commissioner 15. Afterlife: Singapore Turf Club 16. Afterlife: Export Credit Insurance Corporation 17. Afterlife: Neptune Orient Lines & Maritime Holdings 18. Afterlife: Singapore Casket Company 19. Afterlife: Eurasian Association 20. Epilogue
£27.95
NUS Press Home Is Not Here
Book SynopsisOne of Asia’s most important public intellectuals, Wang Gungwu is best-known for his explorations of Chinese history in the long view, and for his writings on the Chinese overseas. Here the historian of grand themes turns to the intimate scale of a single life history: his own. "As someone who has studied history for much of my life, I have found the past fascinating. But it has always been some grand and even intimidating universe that I wanted to unpick and explain to myself.... While we talk grandly of the importance of history, we can be insensitive to what people felt and thought.... In time, I realized how partial my understanding of the past was." Wang was born in Surabaya, Java, but his parents’ orientation was always to China; they had travelled to Southeast Asia to help in the education of the Chinese overseas. Wang grew up in the plural, multiethnic town of Ipoh, Malaya, now Malaysia, was educated at home in the Confucian classics and in English medium schools as a colonial subject. He proceeded from Ipoh to National Central University in Nanjing to study alongside some of the finest of his generation of Chinese undergraduates. The victory of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party interrupted his education, and he ends this volume with his return to Malaya. Wise and moving, this is a fascinating reflection on family, identity and belonging, and on the ability of the individual to find a place amidst the historical currents that have shaped Asia and the world.Trade Review"A charming, intimate, and modest autobiography of the childhood and schooling of a great historian of China." -Ezra Vogel, Harvard University"The book is neither overly dramatic nor flowery, but straightforward and written with measured sentimentality and reflection." — Asian Review of Books
£18.00
