Jon E. Lewis

Emma Daffern

The one hundred conspiracy theories of all time

The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

In London: The Autobiography the life of the capital is told, for the first time, by those who made it and saw it at first hand. From Roman times to the 21st century, Londoners and visitors to the city have recounted the extraordinary events, everyday life and character of this unique and influential city - from politics, culture, sport, religion, and reportage. This book brings to vivid life the human trial of the capital including invasions by the Vikings, the brutal execution of Sir Thomas More, the sight of a whale swimming up the Thames and the rebuilding of St Paul's by Sir Christopher Wren, as well as the everyday life of the city. Includes contributions from George Orwell, Martin Amis, Dr Johnson, Karl Marx, Winston Churchill, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Virginia Woolfe, George Melly, Tacitus, Samuel Pepys and many others. Packed with personality and character, this book is a must-buy for anyone interested in London as well as a wonderful story of the city at the heart of the nation. Praise for Jon E Lewis: 'A triumph' Saul David, author of Victoria's Army 'Harrowing, funny and often unbelievable book.' Daily Express [A] compelling tommy's eye view of war from Agincourt to Iraq' Daily Telegraph

The Autobiography : 2000 Years of the Capital's History by Those who Saw it Happen

London

The Western, though a singularly American art form, is one of the great genres of world literature with a truly global readership. It is also durable despite being often unfairly maligned. Ever since James Fenimore Cooper transformed frontier yarns into a distinct literary form, the Western has followed two paths: one populist - what Time magazine famously billed 'the American Morality Play' - capable of taking many points of view, from red to redneck, but always populist, with a sentimental attachment to the misfit; the other literary - eschewing heroism, debunking with unsettling candour many of the myths of the West. It can sometimes be difficult to draw a sure line between the two forms, but both are represented in this outstanding collection which includes stories by Rick Bass, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Larry McMurtry, Mari Sandoz, Christopher Tilghman, and Mark Twain, among many others.

The Mammoth Book of Westerns

Twenty-eight firsthand memoirs and contemporary reports of some of history's most infamous pirates covers the sixteenth-century Caribbean buccaneers through more recent periods and includes profiles of such figures as Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and Henry Morgan. Original.

The Mammoth Book of Pirates

Native Americans make up less than one per cent of the total US population but represent half the nation's languages and cultures. Here, in one grand sweep, is the full story of Native American society, culture and religion. Here is everything from the land-based spirituality of their early creation myths and the late rise of Indian Pride, to the 88 uses to which the Sioux put the flesh and bones of the buffalo and the practice of berdache (men adopted as women). The book offers a chronological history of America's indigenous peoples. It covers their dramatic early entry into North America, out of the now submerged continent of Beringia, then in more recent times the 'forgotten wars' of the 16th and 17th centuries, which wiped many tribes from the face of the East Coast, and finally describes to the last struggles of the Cheyenne and the Comanche. Celebrating these peoples' way of life rather than focusing narrowly on the manner of their genocide, it does not ignore uncomfortable facts of the Amerindian past - including the cannibalism believed to have been practised by some tribes and the Native Americans' part in the decimation of North America's buffalo herds.

The Mammoth Book of Native Americans

Penny Stempel

From Emergency Ward 10 to ER and Quatermass to the X Files, cult television programmes have held viewers in their thrall for 40 years. In the '90s, satellite broadcasters have fuelled viewers' hunger for cult shows, while the terrestrial stations have muscled in with timewarp re-runs and new classics. Shows that a few years ago could only be played in the memory are back to entertain new audiences as well as those who remember their first time on air.

The Essential Critical Guide

Cult TV

Revised and expanded edition of Jon E. Lewis's ever-popular account of the American West. The book is at once a history and a compendium of western lore. It tells what life on the frontier was really like and gives a human portrait of the tough and sometimes violent way of life experienced by the early pioneers. The gunfighters and the cowboys, women, Indians and others, all have their part to play - and as well as the historical accounts there are intriguing anecdotes of everyday life on the plains, from how Montana cowboys warmed up their horses' bits, to the words of the Navajo medicine chants.

New edition

The Mammoth Book of the West

Four years in the writing, 1250 entries, 320,000 words. All forms of TV fiction covered. This is the Halliwell of TV Guides, updated for the 21st century digital age.

Lewis and Stempel's Ultimate TV Guide

In 1930, the editor of Everyman Magazine requested entries for a new anthology of Great War accounts. The result was a revolutionary book unlike any other of the period; for as Malcolm Brown notes in his introduction 'I believe it might fairly be described as a rediscovered classic'. It was the very first collection to reveal the many dimensions of the war through the eyes of the ordinary soldier and offers heart-stopping renditions of the very first gas attack; aerial dogfights above the trenches; the moment of going over the top. Told chronologically, from the first scrambles of 1914, the drudgery of the war of attrition once the trenches had been dug, to the final joy of Armistice.

True World War I Stories

On the Front Line

The Mammoth Book of Private Lives

Culled from the first-hand reports of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the English Channel, this extraordinary document of D-Day includes classic accounts from Field Marshal Rommel, General Bradley, Ernest Hemingway, Alan Melville, and many other eyewitnesses. Original.

D-Day as They Saw it

In this encyclopedic book, Lewis provides insights into the origins, training, tactics, weapons and achievements of special forces and special mission units throughout the world, focusing particularly on US and UK forces. He also looks at the codes that that bind the members of these elite units together. He reveals training secrets in everything from wilderness survival to hand-to-hand combat. In doing so, he draws extensively on biographies, autobiographies, training manuals, interviews and press coverage of key operations. The elite forces covered include: The British Army’s Special Air Service (SAS), established in 1950, which has served as a model for the special forces of many countries. Its counter-terrorist wing famously took part in the hostage rescue during the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980. The Parachute Regiment, the airborne infantry element of 16 Air Assault Brigade, which spearheads the British Army’s rapid intervention capability. It is closely linked to United Kingdom Special Forces. The US Navy’s SEALS (Sea, Air, Land Teams), trained to conduct special operations in any environment, but uniquely specialised and equipped to operate from and in the sea. Together with speedboat-operating Naval Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen, they form the operational arm of the Naval Special Warfare community, the Navy component of the US Special Operations Command. Their special operations include: neutralizing enemy forces; reconnaissance; counter-terrorism (famously in the killing of Osama bin Laden); and training allies. The US Army’s Delta Force: The Special Mission Unit, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D), known simply as Delta Force, the Army component of Joint Special Operations Command. Its role is counter-terrorism, direct action and national intervention operations, though it has the capability to conduct many different kinds of clandestine missions, including hostage rescues and raids. The US Army Rangers, a light infantry combat formation under the US Army Special Operation Command. The Green Berets – motto: ‘to free the oppressed’ – trained in languages, culture, diplomacy, psychological warfare and disinformation. Russia’s Spetsnaz, whose crack anti-terrorist commandos ended the Moscow theatre siege, and who have a reputation for being among the world’s toughest and most ruthless soldiers. Spetsnaz units saw extensive action in Afghanistan and Chechnya, often operating far behind enemy lines. Israeli Special Forces, especially Shayetet 13 (Flotilla 13), whose motto, in common with the rest of the Israeli military, is ‘Never again’, a reference to the Holocaust. They are particularly adept at the specifically Israeli martial art Krav Maga, which they dub ‘Jew-jitsu’.

Physical and Mental Secrets of Elite Military Units

The Mammoth Book Of Special Forces Training

The newspaper has recorded and influenced modern history like nothing else on earth. From The Washington Post's exposure of Watergate, Tom Wolfe's 1960's social documentary in The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test to Robert Fisk uncovering the slaugher at Chatila, all the articles included here are reportage from the frontline of life. These are the editorials that have changed our thinking and the criticisms that have penetrated most deeply into contemporary culture. Most of all, they offer a snapshot of these modern times.

The Mammoth Book of Journalism

Even 100 years on from the First World War it haunts us still. No other conflict has revealed so dramatically the senselessness of war, and none has shaped the modern world to the same extent, from its impact on the Russian Revolution and the rise of Hitler to the final break-up of the British Empire and the supremacy of America. These compelling eyewitness accounts - over 180 of them - of the War to End All Wars cover every facet of the war, from the Flanders trenches to the staffrooms of the Imperial German Army, from T. E. Lawrence ('Lawrence of Arabia') in the desert to German figher ace the Red Baron in the air, and from English Land Girls to German U-boat crews in the North Atlantic. There are contributions from all combatant nations, including the UK, USA, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Australia, Russia, Serbia, and India and the book includes a detailed timeline and maps.

Eyewitness Accounts of the War to End All Wars, 1914–18

A Brief History of the First World War

Exerting a magnetic pull our imaginations, the poles have been the object of many gripping first-hand accounts of exploration - literally, journeys to the ends of the earth A passport to the last wildnernesses of Earth, this is the definitive collection of first-hand accounts of polar exploration - 50 true stories of intrepid travel through the desolate and dangerous regions of both Arctic and Antarctic. Beginning with Sir John Franklin's starvation trek through Alaska in 1821 and ending with Vassilli Gorshkovsky's northern expedition aboard a creaking ice-breaker in 2005, these true stories encompass every kind of triumph and disaster. The inspired but doomed courage of Captain Scott, and the marvellous leadership of Shackleton are well known, but here are many other stories including: The Bear, by Frederick A. Cook, 1908 Meeting with Polar Eskimos by Knud Rasmussen, 1932 By Dog-Sledge to the Top of the World, by Wally Herbert, 1968 Hell on Earth by Reinhold Messner, 1989-90 Solo by Pen Haddow, 2003 And many more.

The Mammoth Book of Polar Journeys

The extraordinary and compelling story of the 6th of June, 1944, Operation Overlord and the Battle for Normandy is told here through first-hand testimonies from civilians and soldiers on both sides. It features classic accounts by soldiers such as Rommel and Bradley, together with frontline reports by some of the world?s finest authors and war correspondents, including Ernest Hemingway and Alan Melville. Highlights of this unique collection include the break-out from Omaha beach as told by the GI who led it, a French housewife?s story of what it was like to wake up to the invasion, German soldiers? accounts of finding themselves facing the biggest seaborne invasion in history, a view from the command post by a member of Eisenhower?s staff, combat reports, diaries and letters of British veterans of all forces and services, and accounts of the follow-up battle for Normandy, one of the bloodiest struggles of the war. The Allied armada involved over 5,000 craft, which had by the end of `the longest day? succeeded in landing 156,000 men, and in breaching Hitler?s much vaunted defensive wall. Dramatic and historic though the events of D-Day were, they were but the opening shots of a much larger and equally remarkable battle ? the battle for Normandy. It took the Allies ten weeks of bloody fighting to get out of Normandy, during which the infantry casualty rate rivalled that of the Western Front in the First World War. This book is the story of that fateful day, the preparations which led up to it, and the ten weeks of fighting in Normandy which followed it, told by the men and women who were there, who witnessed it at first hand. It is compiled from interviews with scores of veterans, from diaries, memoirs and letters. Occasionally, exact chronology has been sacrificed in the interests of communicating better the experience of Normandy, for above all this is a book about how the invasion looked and felt to those who were there. It is often brutally honest, far removed from the comfortable romantic version of D-Day and the battle for Normandy. (For example, there are accounts here of crimes committed against German POWs by Allied soldiers.)

Eyewitness accounts from the Battles of Normandy

Voices from D-Day

Step 1: Turn off the TV, the PC, the PS3, the Wii... Step 2: Open up The Mammoth Book of Boy's Own Stuff and get into boyhood like it's meant to be ... A guide to life, the universe and pretty much everything The Mammoth Book of Boy's Own Stuff is full of fun as well as important facts on how to be top and an all round great person - from essential Latin to making your own volcano, from SAS survival skills to basic movie making. Read about heroes of war and exploration, find out how to make secret ink, check ALL the capitals of the world, learn and adhere to the 10 virtues, discover the means to make your brain go faster. There are even stories by such cool writers as Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice 'Tarzan' Burroughs. Amaze your friends, impress your teachers (and even girls)! And included for no extra cost - the world's official funniest joke. 100% guaranteed against boredom!! Contents include: SAS Survival Skills; 10 Books Every Boy Should Read before Age 12; How to make invisible ink; Comic Book Superheroes, Villains and Their Inventors; A Boy Hero: Jack Travers VC; The World's 12 Decisive Battles; The Plains Indians of America; How to perform a banana kick; and much much more ...

The Mammoth Book of Boys Own Stuff

Chronicles the career and early death of the kung fu instructor who became a world-wide legend as the star of the some of the greatest martial arts movies ever made.

Bruce Lee

Eyewitness Accounts of the War to End All Wars, 1914-18

More than 40 vivid, eyewitness accounts of the defining conflict of the second half of the 20th century By 1969, following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, more than 500,000 US troops were "in country" in Vietnam. Before America's longest war had ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975, 450,000 Vietnamese had died, along with 36,000 Americans. The Vietnam War was the first rock 'n' roll war, the first helicopter war with its doctrine of "airmobility," and the first television war; it made napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange infamous, and gave us the New Journalism of Michael Herr and others. It also saw the establishment of the Navy SEALs and Delta Force. At home, America fractured, with the peace movement protesting against the war; at Kent State University, Ohio National Guardsmen fired on unarmed students, killing four and injuring nine. Lewis's compelling selection of the best writing to come out of a war covered by some truly outstanding writers, both journalists and combatants, includes an eyewitness account of the first major battle between the United States Army and the People's Army of Vietnam at Ia Drang; a selection of letters home; Nicholas Tomalin's famous 'The General Goes Zapping Charlie Cong'; Robert Mason's 'R&R', Studs Terkel's account of the police breaking up an anti-war protest; John Kifner on the shootings at Kent State; Ron Kovic's 'Born on the Fourth of July'; John T. Wheeler's 'Khe Sanh: Live in the V Ring'; Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh on the massacre at My Lai; Michael Herr's 'It Made You Feel Omni'; Viet Cong Truong Nhu Tang's memoir; naval nurse Maureen Walsh's memoir, 'Burning Flesh'; John Pilger on the fall of Saigon; and Tim O'Brien's 'If I Die in a Combat Zone'.

Jon E. Lewis

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