The Junior Officers Reading Club

Download or read book The Junior Officers' Reading Club written by Patrick Hennessey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed as a classic of war writing in the U.K., The Junior Officers' Reading Club is a revelatory first-hand account of a young enlistee's profound coming of age. Attempting to stave off the tedium and pressures of army life in the Iraqi desert by losing themselves in the dusty paperbacks on the transit-camp bookshelves, Hennessey and a handful of his pals from military academy form the Junior Officers' Reading Club. By the time he reaches Afghanistan and the rest of the club are scattered across the Middle East, they are no longer cheerfully overconfident young recruits, hungering for action and glory. Hennessey captures how boys grow into men amid the frenetic, sometimes exhilarating violence, frequent boredom, and almost overwhelming responsibilities that frame a soldier's experience and the way we fight today. Watch a Video

Download or read book KANDAK written by Patrick Hennessey and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the top ten bestseller The Junior Officers' Reading Club. When Patrick Hennessey returned home from Afghanistan, battle-worn, exhilarated, unsure if he'd see anything like it in his life again, he left behind him bands of friendship forged in the heat of the moment between living and dying. The comrades he left furthest behind were Qiam, Syed and Majhib. They are still there in the dust and heat of Helmand, soldiers fighting for their homeland. KANDAK is the story of how these lasting bonds were made. Written in the spare and lucid prose of Junior Officers' Reading Club, Patrick Hennessey tells of their comically bad first meetings, the mutual suspicion, incomprehension and cultural divides that characterise early interactions between British and Afghan soldiers, to the moments under fire when those divides can, sometimes, cross chaos and culture shocks to turn into brotherhood. An account of friendship and loss, of warriors and soldiers, KANDAK explores the reasons men pick up the sword, and how in the intensity of battle, unlikely alliances can be formed.

Download or read book Why We Fight written by Mike Martin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Why are we willing to die for our countries? How can ideology persuade someone to blow themselves up? When we go to war, morality, religion and ideology often take the blame. But Mike Martin boldly argues that the opposite is true: rather than driving violence, these things help to reduce it. While we resort to ideas and values to justify or interpret warfare, something else is really propelling us towards conflict: our subconscious desires, shaped by millions of years of evolution.

Download or read book One Bullet Away written by Nathaniel Fick and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ex-Marine captain shares his story of fighting in a recon battalion in both Afghanistan and Iraq, beginning with his brutal training on Quantico Island and following his progress through various training sessions and, ultimately, conflict in the deadliest conflicts since the Vietnam War.

Download or read book Breakfast with the Dirt Cult written by Samuel Finlay and published by . This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I'm going to make a pinkie-swear with you right here and now, Tom Walton; when, not if, you return from Afghanistan, you must come up here and I will have a mad passionate affair with you..." With this proposal, Thomas Walton, an infantry soldier in Alpha Company, Second Platoon, arrives at the threshold of events that will change his life forever. Breakfast with the Dirt Cult chronicles the days of love and war in the life of Tom Walton. Torn between a beautiful, bibliophilic, Canadian ex-stripper and the hunt for Al-Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan, Walton finds himself forced to grapple with being a young man in the days of modernity. While Breakfast with the Dirt Cult has been written as a novel, it is based on a true story. The names have been changed and the chronology has been condensed for the sake of editing.

Download or read book Losing Small Wars written by Frank Ledwidge and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of Frank Ledwidge’s eye-opening analysis of British involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan unpicks the causes and enormous costs of military failure. Updated throughout, and with fresh chapters assessing and enumerating the overall military performance since 2011—including Libya, ISIS, and the Chilcot findings—Ledwidge shows how lessons continue to go unlearned. “A brave and important book; essential reading for anyone wanting insights into the dysfunction within the British military today, and the consequences this has on the lives of innocent civilians caught up in war.”—Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book The Thursday Murder Club written by Richard Osman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soon to be a Major Motion Picture The first installment in the beloved and New York Times bestselling series from Richard Osman, also author of We Solve Murders Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves A female cop with her first big case A brutal murder Welcome to... THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late? “Witty, endearing and greatly entertaining.” —Wall Street Journal