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Baghdad Express
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Book Synopsis Baghdad Express by : Joel Turnipseed
Download or read book Baghdad Express written by Joel Turnipseed and published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early summer of 1990, Joel Turnipseed was homeless--kicked out of his college's philosophy program, dumped by his girlfriend. He had been AWOL from his Marine Corps Reserve unit for more than three months, spending his days hanging out in coffee shops reading Plato and Thoreau. Then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Turnipseed's unit was activated for service in Operation Desert Shield. By January of '91, he was in Saudi Arabia driving tractor-trailers for the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion--the legendary "Baghdad Express." The greatest logistical operation in Marine Corps history, the Baghdad Express hauled truckloads of explosives and ammunition across hundreds of miles of desert. But on the brink of war, Turnipseed's greatest struggles are still within. Armed with an M-16 and a seabag full of philosophy books, he is a wise-ass misfit, an ironic observer with a keen eye for vivid detail, a rebellious Marine alive to the moral ambiguity of his life and his situation. Developed from Turnipseed's 1997 feature article for GQ Magazine, this innovative memoir--simultaneously terrifying and hilarious, equal parts Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye--explores both the absurdities of war and the necessity of accepting our flawed world of shadows. With expansive humanity and profane grace, Turnipseed finds the real-world answers to his philosophical questions and reaches the hardest peace for any young man to achieve--with himself.
Book Synopsis The Berlin-Baghdad Express by : Sean McMeekin
Download or read book The Berlin-Baghdad Express written by Sean McMeekin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern Middle East was forged in the crucible of the First World War, but few know the full story of how war actually came to the region. As Sean McMeekin reveals in this startling reinterpretation of the war, it was neither the British nor the French but rather a small clique of Germans and Turks who thrust the Islamic world into the conflict for their own political, economic, and military ends. The Berlin-Baghdad Express tells the fascinating story of how Germany exploited Ottoman pan-Islamism in order to destroy the British Empire, then the largest Islamic power in the world. Meanwhile the Young Turks harnessed themselves to German military might to avenge Turkey’s hereditary enemy, Russia. Told from the perspective of the key decision-makers on the Turco-German side, many of the most consequential events of World War I—Turkey’s entry into the war, Gallipoli, the Armenian massacres, the Arab revolt, and the Russian Revolution—are illuminated as never before. Drawing on a wealth of new sources, McMeekin forces us to re-examine Western interference in the Middle East and its lamentable results. It is an epic tragicomedy of unintended consequences, as Turkish nationalists give Russia the war it desperately wants, jihad begets an Islamic insurrection in Mecca, German sabotage plots upend the Tsar delivering Turkey from Russia’s yoke, and German Zionism midwifes the Balfour Declaration. All along, the story is interwoven with the drama surrounding German efforts to complete the Berlin to Baghdad railway, the weapon designed to win the war and assure German hegemony over the Middle East.
Book Synopsis The 8:55 to Baghdad by : Andrew Eames
Download or read book The 8:55 to Baghdad written by Andrew Eames and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2006-05-02 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A winning blend of travelogue and literary biography” by a British journalist who travels the journey Agatha Christie once did from London to Iraq. (Entertainment Weekly) With her marriage to her first husband over, Agatha Christie decided to take a much needed holiday; the Caribbean had been her intended destination, but a conversation at a dinner party with a couple who had just returned from Iraq changed her mind. Five days later she was off on a completely different trajectory. Merging literary biography with travel adventure, and ancient history with contemporary world events, Andrew Eames tells a riveting tale and reveals fascinating and little-known details of this exotic chapter in the life of Agatha Christie. His own trip from London to Baghdad--a journey much more difficult to make in 2002 with the political unrest in the Middle East and the war in Iraq, than it was in 1928--becomes intertwined with Agatha's, and the people he meets could have stepped out of a mystery novel. Fans of Agatha Christie will delight in Eames' description of the places and events that appeared in and influenced her fiction--and armchair travelers will thrill in the exotica of the journey itself. “Agatha Christie fans, as well as connoisseurs of fine travel writing, will relish British journalist Eames's gripping, humorous and eye-opening account of his train and bus trip across Europe and the Middle East on the eve of the second Gulf War.” Publisher’s Weekly Second;Iraq;Gulf;war;Kurds;Armenians;Palestinians;English;travel;writer;writing;1928;bestselling;mystery;author;English;crime;writer;Europe;passenger;train;memoir;literary;biography;adventure;travel;history;autobiography;holiday;Middle;East;Damascus;Ur;Syria;archaeology TRV026090 TRAVEL / Special Interest / Literary BIO007000 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures BIO026000 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs TRV015000 TRAVEL / Middle East / General 9781468306415 Candlemoth Ellory, R.J.
Book Synopsis The Baghdad Express by : R. W. Greenacre
Download or read book The Baghdad Express written by R. W. Greenacre and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 2003 and two private security companies, Redline in the UK and Eagle in the US are preparing to go to Iraq. Redline’s leader Westerby is dreaming of a world where the sun never sets on the Empire and has bought himself a pith helmet and a monocle. Eagle’s boss, Flint, wants to make up for not going to Vietnam, while his second in command TJ is dreaming of a new boat. Westerby’s reluctant recruit, Carlingford, wants to escape his dead end job and sense of failure and find some meaning in his life.Once in Iraq our characters meet in a compound in a Baghdad suburb to build a theme park. Carlingford finds love amongst the dust and the madness but his loyalties are divided when Larry McKinley, the bombastic, six shooter toting U.S television reporter he is protecting is kidnapped. McKinley came to straighten out the ‘liberal media’s lies’ about Iraq but instead finds himself chained up in the cellar of librarian-turned-unlikely-insurgent Samir.As Iraq descends into chaos, an unsafe second-hand roller coaster, to be renamed the Baghdad Express, is rising from the ashes, but not everyone is fooled by this low culture masquerading as freedom and progress. When Carlingford finally rides the Baghdad Express he can see from its summit the truth about the war; the violence, incompetence, greed and deceit. The only thing keeping him in Iraq now is his love for CPA spin doctor Suria, but even his love is dying before the truth of what they have done to a country.The Baghdad Express is in turns bawdy, satirical, farcical and downright funny but ultimately, like the war itself, a story of tragedy and waste. Come ride The Baghdad Express – what will you see?
Book Synopsis The Berlin-Baghdad Express by : Sean McMeekin
Download or read book The Berlin-Baghdad Express written by Sean McMeekin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-07 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern Middle East was forged in the crucible of the First World War, but few know the full story of how war actually came to the region. As Sean McMeekin reveals in this startling reinterpretation of the war, it was neither the British nor the French but rather a small clique of Germans and Turks who thrust the Islamic world into the conflict for their own political, economic, and military ends. The Berlin-Baghdad Express tells the fascinating story of how Germany exploited Ottoman pan-Islamism in order to destroy the British Empire, then the largest Islamic power in the world. Meanwhile the Young Turks harnessed themselves to German military might to avenge Turkey’s hereditary enemy, Russia. Told from the perspective of the key decision-makers on the Turco-German side, many of the most consequential events of World War I—Turkey’s entry into the war, Gallipoli, the Armenian massacres, the Arab revolt, and the Russian Revolution—are illuminated as never before. Drawing on a wealth of new sources, McMeekin forces us to re-examine Western interference in the Middle East and its lamentable results. It is an epic tragicomedy of unintended consequences, as Turkish nationalists give Russia the war it desperately wants, jihad begets an Islamic insurrection in Mecca, German sabotage plots upend the Tsar delivering Turkey from Russia’s yoke, and German Zionism midwifes the Balfour Declaration. All along, the story is interwoven with the drama surrounding German efforts to complete the Berlin to Baghdad railway, the weapon designed to win the war and assure German hegemony over the Middle East.
Download or read book Orient Express written by John Dos Passos and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The journal of the author on a trip through Russia and the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean, including Syria and Lebanon), published in 1927.
Download or read book July 1914 written by Sean McMeekin and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, the world seemed unmoved. Even Ferdinand's own uncle, Franz Josef I, was notably ambivalent about the death of the Hapsburg heir, saying simply, "It is God's will." Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that the episode would lead to conflict -- much less a world war of such massive and horrific proportions that it would fundamentally reshape the course of human events. As acclaimed historian Sean McMeekin reveals in July 1914, World War I might have been avoided entirely had it not been for a small group of statesmen who, in the month after the assassination, plotted to use Ferdinand's murder as the trigger for a long-awaited showdown in Europe. The primary culprits, moreover, have long escaped blame. While most accounts of the war's outbreak place the bulk of responsibility on German and Austro-Hungarian militarism, McMeekin draws on surprising new evidence from archives across Europe to show that the worst offenders were actually to be found in Russia and France, whose belligerence and duplicity ensured that war was inevitable. Whether they plotted for war or rode the whirlwind nearly blind, each of the men involved -- from Austrian Foreign Minister Leopold von Berchtold and German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov and French president Raymond Poincaré- sought to capitalize on the fallout from Ferdinand's murder, unwittingly leading Europe toward the greatest cataclysm it had ever seen. A revolutionary account of the genesis of World War I, July 1914 tells the gripping story of Europe's countdown to war from the bloody opening act on June 28th to Britain's final plunge on August 4th, showing how a single month -- and a handful of men -- changed the course of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Baghdad Diaries written by Nuha al-Radi and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this often moving, sometimes wry account of life in Baghdad during the first war on Iraq and in exile in the years following, Iraqi-born, British-educated artist Nuha al-Radi shows us the effects of war on ordinary people. She recounts the day-to-day realities of living in a city under siege, where food has to be consumed or thrown out because there is no way to preserve it, where eventually people cannot sleep until the nightly bombing commences, where packs of stray dogs roam the streets (and provide her own dog Salvi with a harem) and rats invade homes. Through it all, al-Radi works at her art and gathers with neighbors and family for meals and other occasions, happy and sad. In the wake of the war, al-Radi lives in semi-exile, shuttling between Beirut and Amman, travelling to New York, London, Mexico and Yemen. As she suffers the indignities of being an Iraqi in exile, al-Radi immerses us in a way of life constricted by the stress and effects of war and embargoes, giving texture to a reality we have only been able to imagine before now. But what emanates most vibrantly from these diaries is the spirit of endurance and the celebration of the smallest of life’s joys.
Book Synopsis Yet There Isn't a Train I Wouldn't Take by : William D. Middleton
Download or read book Yet There Isn't a Train I Wouldn't Take written by William D. Middleton and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yet there isn't a train goes by all day But I hear its whistle shrieking.... Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, No matter where it's going. —Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Travel" "Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take" is a collection of stories about favorite train journeys by an inveterate railway enthusiast and train traveler. A half century career as an engineer, Naval officer, and university administrator took Bill Middleton to almost every part of the globe, and everywhere he took with him an abiding interest in railways, and a notebook and camera to record his experiences. His North American journeys have included experiences as diverse as the long journey north through Manitoba to polar bear country on Hudson Bay, a trip to Minnesota's Mesabi Range to haul a boatload of iron ore to Lake Superior behind a giant Yellowstone articulated steam locomotive, and the trip between Costa Rica's Atlantic and Pacific coasts by narrow gauge railway. His European travels have ranged from a Pullman seat on the crack London-Paris Golden Arrow to the slow trip across Thrace on one of the last runs of the celebrated Simplon-Orient Express. In Asia he traveled through the Toros Mountains of Turkey on the famous Istanbul-Baghdad Toros Express, experienced modern high-speed railroading in the cab of Japan's Bullet Train, and rode to Asia's highest mountain east of the Himalayas on the little trains of Taiwan's Ali Shan Forestry Railway.
Book Synopsis The Russian Origins of the First World War by : Sean McMeekin
Download or read book The Russian Origins of the First World War written by Sean McMeekin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-06 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The catastrophe of the First World War, and the destruction, revolution, and enduring hostilities it wrought, make the issue of its origins a perennial puzzle. Since World War II, Germany has been viewed as the primary culprit. Now, in a major reinterpretation of the conflict, Sean McMeekin rejects the standard notions of the war’s beginning as either a Germano-Austrian preemptive strike or a “tragedy of miscalculation.” Instead, he proposes that the key to the outbreak of violence lies in St. Petersburg. It was Russian statesmen who unleashed the war through conscious policy decisions based on imperial ambitions in the Near East. Unlike their civilian counterparts in Berlin, who would have preferred to localize the Austro-Serbian conflict, Russian leaders desired a more general war so long as British participation was assured. The war of 1914 was launched at a propitious moment for harnessing the might of Britain and France to neutralize the German threat to Russia’s goal: partitioning the Ottoman Empire to ensure control of the Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Nearly a century has passed since the guns fell silent on the western front. But in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, World War I smolders still. Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Jews, and other regional antagonists continue fighting over the last scraps of the Ottoman inheritance. As we seek to make sense of these conflicts, McMeekin’s powerful exposé of Russia’s aims in the First World War will illuminate our understanding of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Marrakech Express written by Peter Millar and published by Arcadia Books. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Back in 1969 when Morocco's ancient capital was a hashish clouded happy mecca, Crosby, Stills and Nash recorded their cheesy (and hopelessly inaccurate) foot-tapping anthem 'Marrakech Express'. A generation on, award-winning journalist, author, and one-time glamrock fan Peter Millar uses what is now the country's best visited tourist destination as the embarkation point for a literally reverse-engineered train journey through this still exotic, diverse and challenging North African country, struggling to maintain its unique blend of tradition and tolerance in the turbulent winds of the Arab Spring.
Book Synopsis The Caliph's Splendor by : Benson Bobrick
Download or read book The Caliph's Splendor written by Benson Bobrick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the story of the celebrated late-eighth and early ninth-century caliph from "The Thousand and One Nights" against a backdrop of Baghdad's cosmopolitan culture and its complex influence on the Byzantine Empire and Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne.
Book Synopsis The Majestic Twelve by : Jack W. Lynch, II
Download or read book The Majestic Twelve written by Jack W. Lynch, II and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-01-19 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As leader of the unit dubbed “The Majestic Twelve,” the author led his team on what some might call the most dangerous duty in the Iraq War—convoy escort. Lynch tells how he formed and commanded his all-volunteer unit, consisting of wildly varying personalities who nevertheless shared an unshakeable com mit - ment to each other and their missions. This action-packed narra tive, taking place between February and August 2004: • Describes how the Twelve performed 230 missions while never once losing a member of his team or escorts • Provides a poignant look at brave soldiers who pay for gun sights and body armor out of their own pockets • Offers a fascinating look at military life and camaraderie • Reveals how the Twelve were even criticized among their own ranks for doing their jobs—i.e., following the Rules of Engagements and engaging the enemy when called for This gripping military narrative shows how Lynch and his team fought the war one way: to win.
Book Synopsis The Woman on the Orient Express by : Lindsay Jayne Ashford
Download or read book The Woman on the Orient Express written by Lindsay Jayne Ashford and published by Charnwood. This book was released on 2018-05 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hoping to make a clean break from a fractured marriage, Agatha Christie boards the Orient Express in disguise. But unlike her famous detective Hercule Poirot, she can't neatly unravel the mysteries she encounters on this fateful journey. And Agatha isn't the only passenger on board with secrets. Her cabinmate Katharine Keeling's first marriage ended in tragedy, propelling her toward a second relationship mired in deceit. Nancy Nelson, newly married but carrying another man's child, is desperate to conceal the pregnancy and teeters on the brink of utter despair. Each woman hides her past from the others, ferociously guarding her secrets. But as the train bound for the Middle East speeds down the track, the parallel courses of their lives shift to intersect - with lasting repercussions.
Book Synopsis Baghdad Underground Railroad by : Steve Miska
Download or read book Baghdad Underground Railroad written by Steve Miska and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the war's worst fighting in 2006 and 2007, a handful of Iraqi interpreters put their lives on the line to help American troops. Families threatened, a bounty on their heads, ignored by the powers that be, they faced execution as collaborators with the enemy if they remained in their homeland. A Task Force Commander decides a promise made should be a promise kept. After the murders of several Iraqi allies, Lt. Col Steve Miska decides to slice through the bureaucratic red tape to get interpreters to safety. His team creates the Baghdad Underground Railroad to get the "terps" and other allies out of the country to Jordan for their Embassy interviews. Soldiers also tap their own families in the United States to serve as sponsors to house and assist the new immigrants. For the Iraqis, they face the struggle of adapting to a culture vastly different from their own. One of them even joins the U.S. Army and returns to Iraq as an American soldier. In this compelling memoir that illustrates humanity and compassion in the midst of war, Steve Miska highlights the plight of local allies, who are essential to the American cause in foreign wars but are often left behind. He also offers an insider's look at the complex and frustrating political reality of Iraq facing U.S. commanders and policymakers following the downfall of Saddam Hussein.
Book Synopsis The Thirty-Year Genocide by : Benny Morris
Download or read book The Thirty-Year Genocide written by Benny Morris and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-24 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1894 to 1924 three waves of violence swept across Anatolia, targeting the region’s Christian minorities. Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi’s impeccably researched account is the first to show that the three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia’s Christian population and create a pure Muslim nation.
Author :Gerald de Cruz Publisher :Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd ISBN 13 :9814634913 Total Pages :241 pages Book Rating :4.8/5 (146 download)
Book Synopsis Colliding Worlds by : Gerald de Cruz
Download or read book Colliding Worlds written by Gerald de Cruz and published by Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd. This book was released on 2009-04-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning the years from the 30s to the 80s, Colliding Worlds is an illuminating portrait of a passionate idealist. Through a crazy paving of anecdotes and essays, Gerald takes the reader into the flow of his variegated world. Whether it is an evocation of his childhood days in Katong or a recounting of his escapes from the Japanese and the Communists, his is a fascinating, sometimes touching, story told with wit and eloquence. Colliding Worlds was first published as Rojak Rebel in 1991.
