Showing results for "Travel" in Military

When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, Orwell, like many other European socialists, was quick to join the fight against fascism. And so, in December that year, he found himself in Catalonia with a 40-year-old rifle, no helmet, uniform, maps or tools, and a platoon of near children under his command.

In 1768, John Long set out from Gravesend in England, bound for Canada and a position as a clerk. Quickly developing an affection for the First Nations people he encountered, he determined to learn native languages and thereby make him useful in the 'Indian Trade' living first among Mohawks at Cahnuaga (Kahnawake) and later, among Ojibwa and Cree people north of Lake Superior. Long's journal provides a thrilling depiction the life of a fur trader in the late 18th century. It is a dangerous world, where starvation, torture, murder, war, disease and misfortune are constant threats.

This is not a book about Iraq's history, nor an inventory of the many Middle Eastern wars that have spun out over the past twenty years, though both wars and history are part of its narrative, from the American invasion to the Arab Spring, ISIS and beyond. This is the story of a people who once lived under the rule of a megalomaniac leader who shaped the state in his own image. Then one day, after yet another war, a foreign army invaded, toppled the leader, destroyed the state, and proceeded to invent a new country. 

When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger". Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war.

Colm Tóibín's Homage to Barcelona celebrates one of Europe’s greatest cities – a cosmopolitan hub of vibrant architecture, art, culture and nightlife. It moves from the story of the city’s founding and its huge expansion in the nineteenth century to the lives of Gaudí, Miró, Picasso...

Take four friends, put them on two Ural motorcycles (complete with sidecars), send them off on a 2,500-mile odyssey retracing history’s most famous retreat, add what some might consider an excessive amount of Vodka, and you’ve got Sylvain Tesson’s Berezina, a riotous and erudite book that combines travel, history, comradery, and adventure.

In 1864 William Tecumseh Sherman led a throbbing, hooting, violent river of 62,000 soldiers through the heart of the American South, looting, pillaging, trailing plunder, stealing animals, and dazing civilians. More than a hundred years later, Jerry Ellis, inveterate traveler, storyteller, and adventurer, set off to walk from Atlanta to Savannah using Sherman's route as his guide.