A fascinating insight into Breaker Morant and the question of morality and human life. The question of "The Breaker's" innocence is still being fiercely debated more than a century after Lieutenant Harry Morant and Lieutenant Peter Handcock were shot on a lonely veldt outside Pretoria at dawn on 27 February, 1902, by a British military firing squad. Shoot Straight, You Bastards! is a universal account of greed, ambition and the power of the political machine that crushes anyone who gets in the way. In much the same way that Bruce Beresford's award-winning feature film Breaker Morant captured the popular imagination, Shoot Straight, You Bastards! is an explosive read, as controversial an event today as it was 101 years ago. In every war there is a character like Morant - a rebellious spirit who ends up on the wrong side of the "great cause". This updated edition includes an appendix containing dramatic new evidence that Kitchener gave orders to "take no prisoners". Expert legal opinion supporting the Breaker's innocence and a strong campaign to secure a proper judicial review combine here in a story Australians have waited more than a century to read!

Scapegoats of the Empire is an autobiography by George Witton. Witton was a lieutenant in the Bushveldt Carbineers in the Boer War in South Africa during the early 20th century. Excerpt: "Life in camp at Beira was almost a repetition of Langwarrin, being principally occupied in attending to and exercising the horses. On my arrival in camp I was instructed by Captain Dallimore to act as squadron-quartermaster-sergeant; my duties were to see that rations and forage were drawn daily and all camp equipment kept in order. Occasionally I went out on the veldt when exercising the horses; there appeared to be plenty of game about, and whenever a small buck rose up close to us there would be a hue-and-cry after it. Sometimes we would succeed in running it down in the long grass."

Minnesota’s toughest farm boys take on Iraqi insurgents in one of the most irreverent and outrageous memoirs to come out of the Iraq War. When they deployed for Iraq, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 136th Infantry Regiment of the Minnesota National Guard, was mostly composed of farm kids from the Midwest. But make no mistake—these boys could replace a tank track on the side of the road using nothing but a crescent wrench, Zippo lighter, and a two-by-four. Once they arrived, they fought alongside the Marine Corps in Anbar province through the deadliest period of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bravo Company earned the nickname “Bristol’s Bastards” after USMC Colonel George Bristol, commanding officer of the IMEF Headquarters Group, adopted this band of fierce warriors as one of his own. Specialist Nick Maurstad, a member of Bristol’s Bastards, brings to life the experience of fighting in Iraq: kicking down doors, dodging IEDs, battling insurgents in the small towns surrounding Fallujah, and trying to help one another survive in the deadliest place on earth.

'Don't make a mess of it.' Of such stuff are legends built, heroes made, and plays written. The popularity of Harry 'Breaker' Morant survives still, in this play written by Kenneth Ross. Here Ross, in theatrical terms, has created the last days of 'Breaker' Morant based on what is known of the characters involved, the circumstances leading up to the arrests, and a number of events known to have occurred at the time. Originally performed by the Melbourne Theatre Company at the Athenaeum Theatre on 2 February 1978. The script of the film Breaker Morant, produced by the S.A. Film Corporation was adapted from Kenneth Ross's play.

A powerful tale of betrayal and vengeance, this title tells the story of Ben Hall, a hero in the great outlaw tradition.

A stroke of the pen and history is changed. In 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, determined to avoid war, signed the Munich Accord, ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. But the following spring, Hitler snatched the rest of that country, and England, after a fatal act of appeasement, was fighting a war for which it was not prepared. Now, in this thrilling alternate history, another scenario is played out: What if Chamberlain had not signed the accord? In this action-packed chronicle of the war that might have been, Harry Turtledove uses dozens of points of view to tell the story: from American marines serving in Japanese-occupied China and ragtag volunteers fighting in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain to an American woman desperately trying to escape Nazi-occupied territory—and witnessing the war from within the belly of the beast. A tale of powerful leaders and ordinary people, at once brilliantly imaginative and hugely entertaining, Hitler’s War captures the beginning of a very different World War II—with a very different fate for our world today. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Harry Turtledove's The War that Came Early: West and East.

Whether Inspiring, Incomprehensible, insightful, bleak, or absurd, last words can be spoken by the living as well as the dying. Among the dying, last words are truly final, as was the case with Dylan Thomas, who uttered "I've just had eighteen straight whiskeys. I think that's the record." Famous Last Words records the parting shots of dozens of folks no longer with us, from those dead for political reasons to those who themselves decided to end it all. And it records the words of those who went on with their lives after uttering a memorable farewell but whose reputation was made by their words, often to their lasting frustration, such as the infamous Richard Milhous Nixon: "You won't have me to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." Famous Last Words also preserves the last words of those inhabiting the world of fiction, whether in a book, on the stage, in a movie or on TV. Blanche DuBois's "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers" ranks right alongside Charles Foster Kane's "Rosebud" and Sidney Carton's "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. . . ." The mutterings of the imagined are always floating around in our culture's consciousness, kicking lustily. Author Alan Bisbort consulted unimpeachable sources and original texts in compiling this compendium of 140 choice good-byes. But not only the farewells capture our attention: Bisbort's concise, witty, and informative text adds revealing context to the quoted words. Famous Last Words is fascinating, illuminating, and immensely rewarding. Reading through the pages may reveal some unifying impulse behind all those bye-byes; if so, you have truly stumbled uponthe meaning of life.