The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, began a war that lasted nearly four years and created by far the bloodiest theater in World War II. In the conventional narrative of this war, Hitler was defeated by Stalin because, like Napoleon, he underestimated the size and resources of his enemy. In fact, says historian John Mosier, Hitler came very close to winning and lost only because of the intervention of the western Allies. Stalin’s great triumph was not winning the war, but establishing the prevailing interpretation of the war. The Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia, would eventually prove fatal, setting in motion events that would culminate in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Deathride argues that the Soviet losses in World War II were unsustainable and would eventually have led to defeat. The Soviet Union had only twice the population of Germany at the time, but it was suffering a casualty rate more than two and a half times the German rate. Because Stalin had a notorious habit of imprisoning or killing anyone who brought him bad news (and often their families as well), Soviet battlefield reports were fantasies, and the battle plans Soviet generals developed seldom responded to actual circumstances. In this respect the Soviets waged war as they did everything else: through propaganda rather than actual achievement. What saved Stalin was the Allied decision to open the Mediterranean theater. Once the Allies threatened Italy, Hitler was forced to withdraw his best troops from the eastern front and redeploy them. In addition, the Allies provided heavy vehicles that the Soviets desperately needed and were unable to manufacture themselves. It was not the resources of the Soviet Union that defeated Hitler but the resources of the West. In this provocative revisionist analysis of the war between Hitler and Stalin, Mosier provides a dramatic, vigorous narrative of events as he shows how most previous histories accepted Stalin’s lies and distortions to produce a false sense of Soviet triumph. Deathride is the real story of the Eastern Front, fresh and different from what we thought we knew.

Four veteran male bicycling buddies decide to take on The Death Ride, a one-day bike ride near Lake Tahoe in California. Training over the various popular roads of the San Francisco Bay Area, they encounter steep climbs, bad weather, vexatious wives, flirtatious female bikers, hot tubs and road rash before setting off for the Sierra Nevada hamlet of Markleeville and the single day 129-mile ordeal. Separate chapters are dedicated to various San Francisco Bay Area road climbs: Tunitas Creek, Old La Honda, Kings Mountain, Sierra, Mount Hamilton, Mount Diablo and several others, including the history behind each. Interweaving their lives and loves, the group, now expanded to eight, eventually saddle up before dawn on the second Saturday in July to join 3,000 other riders starting the day's journey of 129 miles over 5 mountain passes, each rising over 8,000 feet.

Death Ride of the Panzers is a unique guide to the Nazi tanks, vehicles, and crews of World War II. It features never-before-seen photographs from the US National Archives and the author's personal collection, annotated artist renderings, and detailed explanations and historical context for each collection of images. Readers will also be able to trace the combat histories of these subjects through orders of battle, maps and organizational diagrams, vehicle allocation charts, and unit biographies. The forensic approach for which Dennis Oliver is known creates a broad, comprehensive record of German soldiers and hardware from early 1944 to the end of the conflict in 1945. Death Ride of the Panzers provides the context and chronology necessary for the general reader and the primary sources and hardware specifics that appeal to the expert, making this book perfect for the readers with historical interest, modelers, and WWII buffs alike.

Death Ride is a riveting account of the brutal murders of Mike and Frieda Kuntz and the attempted murder of their five-year-old son, Larry, who witnessed the tragic deaths of his parents. This is an amazing true story of survival and the ability to overcome unspeakable cruelty.In 1937, the young Kuntz family had made Wheat Basin, Montana, their new home. A neighbor, Frank Robideau, had come on especially hard times and decided to take action to remedy his situation. Frank forced Mike K

An unwelcome face from the past at a local fair leads Henry Christie on a white-knuckled race against time to find a missing girl. On the third day of the Kendleton Country Fair, thirteen-year-old Charlotte Kirkham goes missing. Retired Detective Superintendent Henry Christie is there as a volunteer steward, but Charlotte's sudden disappearance isn't the only thing troubling him. The man with the burger van looks familiar . . . for all the wrong reasons. Leonard Lennox was jailed for twelve years for abducting a young girl. Henry rescued her, unharmed, and helped put Leonard behind bars. Now he's out, with his own criminal outfit, old scores to settle, and a son who was last seen talking to Charlotte at the fair. Is history about to repeat itself? Henry is soon drawn into another hair-raising, pulse-pounding race against time, and the stakes couldn't be higher. Can he find Charlotte before tragedy strikes?

Death Ride of the Panzers is a unique guide to the Nazi tanks, vehicles, and crews of World War II. It features never-before-seen photographs from the US National Archives and the author's personal collection, annotated artist renderings, and detailed explanations and historical context for each collection of images. Readers will also be able to trace the combat histories of these subjects through orders of battle, maps and organizational diagrams, vehicle allocation charts, and unit biographies. The forensic approach for which Dennis Oliver is known creates a broad, comprehensive record of German soldiers and hardware from early 1944 to the end of the conflict in 1945. Death Ride of the Panzers provides the context and chronology necessary for the general reader and the primary sources and hardware specifics that appeal to the expert, making this book perfect for the readers with historical interest, modelers, and WWII alike.