The popular author of Dirty Little Secrets, Dirty Little Secrets of World War II, and Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War offers a comprehensive look at what really happened in our century, exposing the real stories behind what we've always assumed as fact. In a concise, easy-to-read format, Dunnigan divulges 150 of the biggest misconceptions about the twentieth century, organizing them under a broad range of such categories as the military, entertainment, technology, and politics. In the same thoughtful but slightly irreverent style that has characterized the Dirty Little Secrets series, Dunnigan explains why nongovernment organizations are actually more powerful than many governments and how the use of droids or combat robots has gone largely unnoticed. He reports the real reason the human life span is so much longer now, and reveals that this century has been as plagued as the Middle Ages by religious wars. And while we might think that wars or epidemics have been the primary cause of death in the twentieth century, Dunnigan reveals that more people have been killed by their own governments than any other means. Perfectly timed for the approach of a new millennium, Dirty Little Secrets of the Twentieth Century reveals the shape of the past and direction of our future through the best-kept secrets and surprises of the century.

Unlike any conflict before or since, World War II was a truly worldwide war, with dozens of nations participating in significant battles in virtually every corner of the globe. In this definitive guide, military analyst James F. Dunnigan chooses fifty titles out of the many thousands of books published on the subject as being the most worthy of a place in your library. He includes incisive commentary on such important volumes as General George S. Patton Jr.'s classic tome War As I Knew It -- a personal and brutally honest narrative of the famed leader's march across Western Europe -- and Studs Terkel's acclaimed oral history A Good War, with its riveting day-to-day accounts of the fighting men of many nations.

A collection of nearly nine hundred items covering various aspects of war making around the world exposing just how the military does--and does not--work.

James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi's Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War allows us to see what really happened to American forces in Southeast Asia, separating popular myth from explosive reality in a clear, concise manner. Containing more than two hundred examinations of different aspects of the war, the book questions why the American military ignored the lessons taught by previous encounters with insurgency forces; probes the use of group think and mind control by the North Vietnamese; and explores the role technology played in shaping the way the war was fought. Of course, the book also reveals the "dirty little secrets," the truth behind such aspects of the conflict as the rise of the Montagnard mercenaries--the most feared group of soldiers participating in the secret war in Laos-and the details of the hidden struggle for the Ho Chi Minh Trail. With its unique and perceptive examination of the conflict, Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War by James F. Dunnigan & Albert A. Nofi offers a critical addition to the library of Vietnam War history.

Charlotte Schleswig, the delightful narrator of Liz Jensen's latest novel, supports herself and the lumpen Fru Schleswig (who may or may not be her mother) as a prostitute in 1890s Copenhagen. While she is no small success at the trade, she leaps at a new job opportunity for herself and Fru Schleswig, as cleaning ladies for the wealthy widow Krak. But mysteries abound at Fru Krak's dark old mansion. The basement appears to be haunted, townspeople claim to have seen the dead Professor Krak walking the streets as a ghost, and there are stories of desperate souls who paid the professor a visit and never emerged. In fact, as Charlotte will discover, there is a simple explanation for all this: the basement is home to a time machine. When their cunning investigations land them in trouble, Charlotte and Fru Schleswig find themselves catapulted through time and space to modern-day London, and there their adventures truly begin. With the minxy, intrepid Charlotte, Liz Jensen introduces a heroine every bit as memorable as Louis Drax. And with My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time, she delivers yet another outlandishly entertaining novel, in which the seemingly insurmountable obstacle of spacetime proves no match for human ingenuity and earthly passion.

Perfectly timed for the approach of the new millennium, this book offers a smart, quirky collection of the myths, misinformation, and unknown truths about the 20th century.

The MacArthur grant–winning environmental justice activist’s riveting memoir of a life fighting for a cleaner future for America’s most vulnerable A Smithsonian Magazine Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020 Catherine Coleman Flowers, a 2020 MacArthur “genius,” grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that’s been called “Bloody Lowndes” because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it’s Ground Zero for a new movement that is also Flowers’s life’s work—a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets and, as a consequence, live amid filth. Flowers calls this America’s dirty secret. In this “powerful and moving book” (Booklist), she tells the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that foster Third World conditions not just in Alabama, but across America, in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest, and on Native American reservations in the West. In this inspiring story of the evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion at Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative, Flowers shows how sanitation is becoming too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards—not only those of poor minorities.

For disgruntled music fans wondering why music played on the radio is not only worse now than in the past but also not nearly as revelatory as it once was, this book presents a detailed discussion of how the record business fouled its own livelihood. This insightful dissection covers numerous aspects of the industry's failures and shortcomings, including why stockholders play an important role, how radio went from an art to a science and what was lost in that change, how the record companies alienated their core audience, why file sharing might not be the bogeyman that the record industry would have people think, technology's effects on what and how music is heard, and dozens of other reasons that add up to the record industry's current financial and artistic woes. With eye-opening observations culled from extensive interviews, this expose offers insights into how this multi-billion-dollar industry is run and why it's losing so much money.

'Dark, funny, well-plotted, sinister. Superb' WILL DEAN Six neighbours. Six secrets. Six reasons to want Olive Collins dead. In the exclusive gated community of Withered Vale, people's lives appear as perfect as their beautifully manicured lawns. Money, success, privilege - the residents have it all. Life is good. There's just one problem. Olive Collins' dead body has been rotting inside number four for the last three months. Her neighbours say they're shocked at the discovery but nobody thought to check on her when she vanished from sight. The police start to ask questions and the seemingly flawless façade begins to crack. Because, when it comes to Olive's neighbours, it seems each of them has something to hide, something to lose and everything to gain from her death. ********* PRAISE FOR JO SPAIN 'Loved, loved, loved' Caz Frear 'A chilling, addictive read' 5* reader review 'Sensational' Chris Whitaker 'Gripping, page-turning, unpredictable, loved it' 5* reader review 'I absolutely loved it' Liz Nugent 'Jo Spain is such a fantastic writer' 5* reader review 'You certainly look at your neighbours with fresh eyes after reading this' Yours 'Couldn't put it down' 5* reader review