Nothing prepares a man for war and Private Charles Waite, of the Queen’s Royal Regiment, was ill-prepared when his convoy took a wrong turning near Abbeville and met 400 German soldiers and half a dozen tanks. ‘The day I was captured, I had a rifle but no ammunition.’ He lost his freedom that day in May 1940 and didn’t regain it until April 1945 when he was rescued by Americans near Berlin, having walked 1,600 kms from East Prussia. Silent for seventy years, Charles writes about his five lost years: the terrible things he saw and suffered; his forced work in a stone quarry and on farms; his period in solitary confinement for sabotage; and his long journey home in one of the worst winters on record, across the frozen river Elbe, to Berlin and liberation. His story is also about friendship, of physical and mental resilience and of compassion for everyone who suffered. Part of that story includes the terrible Long March, or Black March, when 80,000 British POWs were forced to trek through a vicious winter westwards across Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany as the Soviets approached. Thousands died. There are simply no memoirs of that terrible trek – except this one.

Nothing prepares a man for war and Private Charles Waite, of the Queen's Royal Regiment, was ill-prepared when his convoy took a wrong turning near Abbeville and met 400 German soldiers and half a dozen tanks. 'The day I was captured, I had a rifle but no ammunition.' He lost his freedom that day in May 1940 and didn't regain it until April 1945 when he was rescued by Americans near Berlin, having walked 1,600 kms from East Prussia. Silent for seventy years, Charles writes about his five lost years: the terrible things he saw and suffered; his forced work in a stone quarry and on farms; his period in solitary confinement for sabotage; and his long journey home in one of the worst winters on record, across the frozen river Elbe, to Berlin and liberation. His story is also about friendship, of physical and mental resilience and of compassion for everyone who suffered. Part of that story includes the terrible Long March, or Black March, when 80,000 British POWs were forced to trek through a vicious winter westwards across Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany as the Soviets approached. Thousands died. There are simply no memoirs of that terrible trek – except this one.

Recounts the events of China's Long March, describing the odyssey of thousands of Chinese Communists from their bases to the remote north of China and discussing stories behind the March, including ruthless purges, hunger and disease, and mistreatment ofwomen.

From a brave American veteran comes an eyewitness account of a gruesome chapter in World War II history. Captured when America surrendered the PhilippinesBataan Peninsula, James Bollich experienced first-hand the march that cost more than 8,000 American and Filipino lives. Now, he shares the unforgettable experience of his three and a half years of Japanese imprisonment.This journal relates his personal experience, first focusing on the sixty-five-mile march that deprived prisoners of food, water, and rest. Prisoners received harsh punishments for any infraction, one of the most brutal of these being the policy of beheading them for taking a sip of water. Rather than force him to give up, these things made Bollich fight for life even more. Witnessing his comrades falling beside him and watching his own body waste away to ninety pounds, he never yielded his will to survive. After completing the march, he remained a prisoner of war, first at an old Philippine army base, then in another camp at Mukden, Manchuria. He relates his imprisonment in detail, from starvation and torture to digging their own comrades graves in the hot sun, without hats or water. Through it all, he remained courageous and hopeful that he would one day make it back home. His story reminds both past and present generations of the horror and brutality of the Pacific war, all the while providing an inspiring testament to the will ofthe human spirit.

Original publication and copyright date: 2007.

In October 1934, the Chinese Communist Army found itself facing annihilation, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Nationalist soldiers. Rather than surrender, 86,000 Communists embarked on an epic flight to safety. Only thirty were women. Their trek would eventually cover 4,000 miles over 370 days. Under enemy fire they crossed highland awamps, climbed Tibetan peaks, scrambled over chain bridges, and trudged through the sands of the western deserts. Fewer than 10,000 of them would survive, but remarkably all of the women would live to tell the tale. Unbound is an amazing story of love, friendship, and survival written by a new master of adventure narrative.

The hopeless yet determined resistance of American and Filipino forces against the Japanese invasion has made Bataan and Corregidor symbols of pride, but Bataan has a notorious darker side. After the U.S.-Filipino remnants surrendered to a far stronger force, they unwittingly placed themselves at the mercy of a foe who considered itself unimpaired by the Geneva Convention. The already ill and hungry survivors, including many wounded, were forced to march at gunpoint many miles to a harsh and oppressive POW c& many were murdered or died on the way in a nightmare of wanton cruelty that has made the term "Death March" synonymous with the Bataan peninsula. Among the prisoners was army pilot William E. Dyess. With a few others, Dyess escaped from his POW camp and was among the very first to bring reports of the horrors back to a shocked United States. His story galvanized the nation and remains one of the most powerful personal narratives of American fighting men. Stanley L. Falk provides a scene-setting introduction for this Bison Books edition. William E. Dyess was born in Albany, Texas. As a young army air forces pilot he was shipped to Manila in the spring of 1941. Shortly after his escape and return to the United States, Colonel Dyess was killed while testing a new airplane. He did not survive long enough to learn that he had been awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor.

Like many other young American men during the depression-era 1930s, Gene Boyt entered Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. Later, after receiving an ROTC commission in the Army Engineers and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Missouri School of Mines, Boyt joined the Allied forces in the Pacific Theater. While building runways and infrastructure in the Philippines in 1941, Boyt enjoyed the regal life of an American officer stationed in a tropical paradise--but not for long. When the United States surrendered the Philippines to Japan in April 1942, Boyt became a prisoner of war, suffering unthinkable deprivation and brutality at the hands of the ruthless Japanese guards. One of the last accounts to come from a Bataan survivor, Boyt’s story details the infamous Bataan Death March and his subsequent forty-two months in Japanese internment camps. In this fast-paced narrative, Boyt’s voice conveys the quiet courage of the generation of men who fought and won history’s greatest armed conflict.

How the cultural revolution of the 1960s changed America.

Foreword by Janet Yellen Weijian Shan's Out of the Gobi is a powerful memoir and commentary that will be one of the most important books on China of our time, one with the potential to re-shape how Americans view China, and how the Chinese view life in America. Shan, a former hard laborer who is now one of Asia's best-known financiers, is thoughtful, observant, eloquent, and brutally honest, making him well-positioned to tell the story of a life that is a microcosm of modern China, and of how, improbably, that life became intertwined with America. Out of the Gobi draws a vivid picture of the raw human energy and the will to succeed against all odds. Shan only finished elementary school when Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution tore his country apart. He was a witness to the brutality and absurdity of Mao’s policies during one of the most tumultuous eras in China’s history. Exiled to the Gobi Desert at age 15 and denied schooling for 10 years, he endured untold hardships without ever giving up his dream for an education. Shan’s improbable journey, from the Gobi to the “People’s Republic of Berkeley” and far beyond, is a uniquely American success story – told with a splash of humor, deep insight and rich and engaging detail. This powerful and personal perspective on China and America will inform Americans' view of China, humanizing the country, while providing a rare view of America from the prism of a keen foreign observer who lived the American dream. Says former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen: “Shan’s life provides a demonstration of what is possible when China and the United States come together, even by happenstance. It is not only Shan’s personal history that makes this book so interesting but also how the stories of China and America merge in just one moment in time to create an inspired individual so unique and driven, and so representative of the true sprits of both countries.”