Herbert Martin Massey was by any measure, a remarkable man. He was wounded three times in three separate conflicts, the first of which, in the First World War, almost killed him. Brought down in flames by one of Germany’s great aces, Werner Voss, he somehow recovered from his horrific, life-threatening injuries to continue his flying career in the Royal Air Force, only to be nearly killed once more in the Palestine Emergency of 1936, when his life was saved by the thin metal of his cigarette case. Then, at the age of 44 and having risen through the ranks to Group Captain, he was shot down over Holland on the second of the Thousand Bomber Raids in June 1942. Massey was taken prisoner by the Germans and sent to Stalag Luft III at Sagan. Here, he was to excel as the Senior British Officer, vigorously defending the rights of his fellow prisoners of war, the men now under his command. Respected and admired by his comrades and captors alike, fate handed to him the decision to authorize the Great Escape, the famous breakout from Sagan in March 1944. Too badly wounded to join the escape himself, Martin Massey was the man to whom the Germans first broke the news of the execution of fifty of those who had been recaptured. Repatriated to Britain because of his wounds shortly afterwards, it was Massey who brought home the details of the murders which began the process of bringing the perpetrators to justice post-war. Decorated for his gallantry and leadership six times, men like Martin Massey come along only rarely. This book, using previously unseen documents and photographs, tells his story.

This volume explores the ways that Charles Dickens appropriated and made central to his novels the dominant symbol of his age. The author argues that Dickens' contribution to the iconographic and narrative traditions was to fuse the classical image of the wheel - fortune - with the industrial one.

Surgeon, explorer, and masterful storyteller, Kenneth Kamler takes us to the farthest reaches of the earth as well as into the uncharted territory within the human brain. Surviving the Extremes is a scientific nail-biter no reader will forget. Physiological constraints confine our bodies to less than one-fifth of the earth's surface. Beyond that fraction lie the extremes. What happens when we go to them? Dr. Kenneth Kamler has spent years observing exactly what happens. A vice president of the legendary Explorers Club, he has climbed, dived, sledded, floated, and trekked through some of the most treacherous and remote regions in the world. A consultant for NASA, Yale University, and the National Geographic Society, he has explored undersea caves, crossed the frozen Antarctic wastelands, and stitched a boy's hand back together while kneeling in knee-deep Amazonian mud. He was the only doctor on Everest during the tragic expedition documented in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and helped treat its survivors. Kamler has devoted his life to investigating how our bodies respond to "environmental insults"-a nice way of saying the things that can kill us-and watched while some succumbed to them and others, sometimes miraculously, overcome them. Words like "extreme" and "survival" have lost some of their value from overuse and media hype. By showing us what happens when life itself is at stake, and the body's capacities put to their greatest test, this book reminds us what they truly mean. Divided into six sections-jungle, open sea, desert, underwater, high altitude, and outer space-Surviving the Extremes uses first-hand testimony and documented accounts to illustrate what happens in environments where our instinctive survival strategies must become fully engaged. These stories reveal how infinitely complex are the workings of the human body-and also how heartbreakingly fragile. At the heart of this book is a quest for the source of our will to survive and the haunting question of why some can, and others cannot, summon its awesome and nearly mystical power at their moment of greatest need.