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  At the Center of the Storm - My...

  George Tenet, Bill Harlow

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  #1 New York Times Bestseller: The former CIA director’s “remarkable” personal account of the mistakes and failures that led to 9/11 and the Iraq War (Bob Woodward, The Washington Post). 
   
  In this candid memoir, George Tenet recounts his time at the Central Intelligence Agency in the dramatic years between 1997 and 2004. With unparalleled access to the highest echelons of government and raw intelligence from the field, he illuminates the CIA’s painstaking attempts to prepare the country against new and deadly threats, disentangles the interlocking events that led to 9/11, and reveals information on the deliberations and strategies that culminated in the invasion of Iraq. 
   
  Tenet unfolds momentous events as he experienced them: his declaration of war on al-Qa’ida; the CIA’s covert operations inside Afghanistan; the worldwide operational plan to fight terrorists; his warnings of imminent attacks against American interests to White House officials in the summer of 2001; and the plan for a coordinated and devastating counterattack against al-Qa’ida laid down just six days after the attacks. 
   
  Tenet’s compelling narrative then turns to the run-up to the Iraq War, including a firsthand account of the fallout from the inclusion of “sixteen words” in the president’s 2003 State of the Union address; the true context of Tenet’s own famous “slam dunk” comment regarding Saddam’s WMD program; and the CIA’s critical role in an administration predisposed to take the country to war. In doing so, he sets the record straight about CIA operations and shows that the truth is more complex than many believe. 
   
  Throughout, Tenet paints an unflinching self-portrait of a man caught between the warring forces of the administration’s decision-making process, the reams of frightening intelligence pouring in from around the world, and his own conscience—in a moving, revelatory profile of both an individual and a nation in crisis, and a revealing look at the inner workings of the world’s most important intelligence organization at an extraordinarily challenging time. 
   
  “Tenet does not shy away from acknowledging his own responsibility in controversies involving terrorism and the Iraq War, but he also takes several key political leaders to task for scapegoating the intelligence community in the wake of unpopular policy.” —Publishers Weekly

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  Under Swiss Protection - Jewish...

  Agnes Hirschi, Charlotte Schallié

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  This volume retraces Carl Lutz’s diplomatic wartime rescue efforts in Budapest, Hungary, through the lens of Jewish eyewitness testimonies. Together with his wife, Gertrud Lutz-Fankhauser, the director of the Palestine Office in Budapest, Moshe Krausz, fellow Swiss citizens Harald Feller, Ernst Vonrufs, Peter Zürcher, and the underground Zionist Youth Movement, Carl Lutz led an extensive rescue operation between March 1944 and February 1945. It is estimated that Lutz and his team of rescuers issued more than 50,000 lifesaving letters of protection (Schutzbriefe) and placed persecuted Jews in 76 safe houses—annexes of the Swiss Legation. Based on interviews with Holocaust survivors in Canada, Hungary, Israel, Switzerland, the UK, and the United States, this volume shines a light on the extraordinary scope and scale of Carl Lutz’s humanitarian response.

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  E Street Shuffle - The Glory...

  Clinton Heylin

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  Before he was the swaggering, stadium-packing megastar, Bruce Springsteen was a brooding introvert, desperate to strike a balance between his nuanced songwriting and the heft of his backing band. Clinton Heylin's revelatory biography, E Street Shuffle, chronicles the evolution and influence of Springsteen's E Street Band as they rose from blue-collar New Jersey to the heights of rock stardom. The band's players—most notably saxophonist Clarence "Big Man" Clemons, guitarist "Little" Stevie Van Zandt, and drummer Max Weinberg—became Springsteen's comrades in concert, helping him find the elusive sound and sonic punch that highlighted The Boss's most creative period, including Darkness on the Edge of Town, Born to Run, and Born in the USA. Fans will also learn another side of Springsteen, one punctuated with his clashes with studio executives seeking a commercially viable, radio-friendly album, and  his  temporary disbanding of the E Street Band to pursue projects like the eerie acoustic of Nebraska. Coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of Springsteen's debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, drawing on interviews and access to new recordings and shows, Heylin paints a bold picture of The Boss.

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  Kiss and Make-up

  Gene Simmons

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  Exploding on the music scene in the early 1970s, the rock group KISS combined raw energy with theatrical showmanship—not to mention face painting! Founding member Gene Simmons—an outrageous star whose superlong tongue, legendary sexual exploits, and demonic makeup have made him a rock icon—recounts his own story as well as the history of the band. In KISS and Make-Up, Simmons shares a wild, shocking, and unbelievable tale about an immigrant boy from Israel who studied to be a rabbi but was saved by rock and roll and became one of the most notorious rock stars in the world.  In his irreverent voice, Gene talks about the girls (more than 4,000!); his bond with KISS cofounder Paul Stanley; the struggles he and Paul had with Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, and the untimely death of Eric Carr. He also details his love life, including stories about his relationships with Cher, Diana Ross, and Shannon Tweed—the mother of his son and daughter and companion for almost forty years.  And, of course, Simmons expresses his enormous love and affection for the people who put him there in the first place—the KISS Army and the ever-loyal KISS fans around the world!

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  Teenage Tommy - Memoirs of a...

  Richard van Emden

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  Benjamin Clouting was just sixteen years old when he embarked with the British Expeditionary Force for France in August 1914. The youngest man in the 4th Dragoon Guards, he took part in the BEF's celebrated first action at Casteau on August 22nd, and, two days later, had his horse shot from under him during the famous cavalry charge of the 4th Dragoon Guards and the 9th Lancers at Audregnies. Ben served on the Western front during every major engagement of the war except Loos, was wounded twice, and in 1919 went with the Army of Occupation to Cologne. The son of a stable groom, Ben was brought up in the beautiful Sussex countryside near Lewes and from his earliest years was, as he often said himself, "crazy to be a soldier". He worked briefly as a stable boy before joining up in 1913; his training was barely completed when war broke out. The Regiment, knowing Ben to be under age, tried to stop him embarking for France, but he flatly refused to be left behind. During the next four years, he served under officers immortalized in Great War history, including Major Tom Bridges, Captain Hornby, and Lieutenant-Colonel Adrien Carton de Wiart VC.Teenage Tommy is a detailed account of a trooper's life at the front, vividly recalling, for example, the privations suffered during the retreat from Mons. and later, the desperate fighting to hold back the German onslaught at 2nd Ypres. But this is more than just a memoir about trench warfare. Ben's lively sense of humor and healthy disrespect for petty restrictions make this an entertaining as well as a moving story of life at the front.

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  Erich Hartmann: The Life and...

  Charles River Editors

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  The Third Reich's Luftwaffe began World War II with significant advantages over other European air forces, playing a critical role in the German war machine's swift, powerful advance. By war's end, however, the Luftwaffe had been decimated by combat losses and crippled by poor decisions at the highest levels of military decision-making, and it proved unable to challenge Allied air superiority despite a last-minute upsurge in German aircraft production. 
  When Erich Hartmann joined the Luftwaffe, it was a highly advanced, confident, and powerful weapon of war, and Hartmann was perhaps in the “sweet spot” of the Luftwaffe’s training program. He was surrounded by an organization and men with real combat experience, including in Spain, Poland, France and the first brutal 15 months on the Russian front, and all of that helped shape him into the fighter ace that he was to become. He went on to fly 1,404 combat missions and engage in aerial combat on 825 occasions. He crash-landed 16 times, but, never, as he liked to point out in post-war interviews, due to enemy action. As he put it, “I never became another pilot’s victory.” 
  Over the course of the war, Hartmann was credited with shooting down 352 enemy aircraft, 345 of which were Russian and seven being American, making him the most successful combat fighter of all time. In fact, the number is so incredible that it has inevitably come under intense criticism and scrutiny over the years, with some suggesting outright that the figure is falsified, while others have pointed to the unique combat circumstances of the Russian front and suggested that aerial combat there was somehow easier. 
  Either way, Hartmann was in continuous combat for 32 months of the most brutal conflict in history and came out of it almost entirely unscathed, perhaps his most remarkable feat of all.

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