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  Laura Trott and Jason Kenny -...

  Laura Trott, Jason Kenny

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  To achieve an Olympic gold is impressive; to be part of a couple doing this in the same sport is rare; to do it 10 times between you is unprecedented. Britain's most successful female and male Olympians give us the inside track on becoming a champion. Hear their take on how they became the best in the world while finding in each other the perfect partner.

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  Dog Man - An Uncommon Life on a...

  Martha Sherrill

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  As Dog Man opens, Martha Sherrill brings us to a world that Americans know very little about-the snow country of Japan during World War II. In a mountain village, we meet Morie Sawataishi, a fierce individualist who has chosen to break the law by keeping an Akita dog hidden in a shed on his property.During the war, the magnificent and intensely loyal Japanese hunting dogs are donated to help the war effort, eaten, or used to make fur vests for the military. By the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945, there are only sixteen Akitas left in the country. The survival of the breed becomes Morie's passion and life, almost a spiritual calling.Devoted to the dogs, Morie is forever changed. His life becomes radically unconventional-almost preposterous-in ultra-ambitious, conformist Japan. For the dogs, Morie passes up promotions, bigger houses, and prestigious engineering jobs in Tokyo. Instead, he raises a family with his young wife, Kitako-a sheltered urban sophisticate-in Japan's remote and forbidding snow country.Their village is isolated, but interesting characters are always dropping by-dog buddies, in-laws from Tokyo, and a barefoot hunter who lives in the wild. Due in part to Morie's perseverance and passion, the Akita breed strengthens and becomes wildly popular, sometimes selling for millions of yen. Yet Morie won't sell his spectacular dogs. He only likes to give them away.Morie and Kitako remain in the snow country today, living in the traditional Japanese cottage they designed together more than thirty years ago-with tatami mats, an overhanging roof, a deep bathtub, and no central heat. At ninety-four years old, Morie still raises and trains the Akita dogs that have come to symbolize his life.In beautiful prose that is a joy to read, Sherrill opens up the world of the Dog Man and his wife, providing a profound look at what it is to be an individualist in a culture that reveres conformity-and what it means to live life in one's own way-while expertly revealing Japan and Japanese culture as we've never seen it before.

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  The Things They Cannot Say -...

  Kevin Sites

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  What is it like to kill?  What is it like to be under fire? How do you know what's right? What can you never forget? 
  In The Things They Cannot Say, award-winning journalist and author Kevin Sites asks these difficult questions of eleven soldiers and marines, who—by sharing the truth about their wars—display a rare courage that transcends battlefield heroics. 
  For each of these men, many of whom Sites first met while in Afghanistan and Iraq, the truth means something different. One struggles to recover from a head injury he believes has stolen his ability to love; another attempts to make amends for the killing of an innocent man; yet another finds respect for the enemy fighter who tried to kill him. Sites also shares the unsettling narrative of his own failures during war—including his complicity in a murder—and the redemptive powers of storytelling that saved him from a self-destructive downward spiral.

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  Saint George for England

  G. A. Henty

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  A tale written for children in 1885.It tells of a child of noble birth whose parents have fallen foul of the current royalty. He is placed in hiding and grows up with a bowyer and then apprenticed to an armourer just outside the gates of the City of London.He becomes accomplished in arms and joins the campaign in France where we see the battles of Crecy and Poitiers through his eyes.A tale of heroism and 14th century viciousness.Great fun.(summary by jimmowatt)

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  The Greatest Generation - Diary...

  Albert Childs, Albert Jack

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  The Greatest Generation is the first hand account of an English soldier who began his army career with the Long Range Desert Group in 1940, raided with David's Sterling's Special Air Service, volunteered for the 1st Airborne Division and took part in their first ever jump.  
  He then transferred to the 6th Airborne in 1943 and with them he dropped at Pegasus Bridge, battled the Bulge, jumped the Rhine and fought through northern Germany to meet the Russians on the Baltic Coast, where they celebrated together with vodka.  
  Albert arrested Joseph Kramer, the Beast of Belsen, escorted Prince Olaf of Norway during peacekeeping duties and finally confronted Jewish nationalists in Palestine.  
  Now, for the first time, his personal account is available and provides a fascinating insight into the minds of the men of the parachute brigade who carried out such dangerous war-time operations. 
  Narrated by his grandson Albert Jack

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  Panzer Ace - The Memoirs of an...

  Richard Freiherr von Rosen

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  Richard Freiherr von Rosen was a highly decorated Wehrmacht soldier and outstanding panzer commander. 
  After serving as a gunlayer on a Pz.Mk.III during Barbarossa, he led a Company of Tigers at Kursk. Later he led a company of King Tiger panzers at Normandy and in late 1944 commanded a battle group (12 King Tigers and a flak Company) against the Russians in Hungary in the rank of junior, later senior lieutenant (from November 1944, his final rank). 
  Only 489 of these King Tiger tanks were ever built. They were the most powerful heavy tanks to see service, and only one kind of shell could penetrate their armor at a reasonable distance. 
  Every effort had to be made to retrieve any of them bogged down or otherwise immobilized, which led to many towing adventures. The author has a fine memory and eye for detail. His account is easy to listen to and not technical, and adds substantially to the knowledge of how the German Panzer Arm operated in the Second World War.

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