Joshua Levine
Список книг автора Joshua LevineFighter Heroes of WWI
The first heroes of the air.Rewriting the rules of military engagement and changing the course of modern history as a result, the pioneering airmen of the First World War took incredible risks to perform their vital contribution to the war effort.Fighter Heroes of WWI is a narrative history that conveys the perils of early flight, the thrills of being airborne, and the horrors of war in the air at a time when pilots carried little defensive armament and no parachutes.The men who joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1914 were the original heroes of flying, treading into unknown territory, and paving the way for later aerial combat. They became icons for the soldiers in the trenches, and a stark contrast to the thousands on the ground fighting faceless thousands as men fought aircraft to aircraft and man to man – for the first time the air became a battlefield of its own.The war changed flying forever. In 1914 aircraft were a questionable technology, used for only basic reconnaissance. But by 1918, hastened by the terrible war, aircraft were understood to be the future of modern warfare.The Wright brothers' achievements of a mere ten years earlier and Blériot's crossing of the Channel just a few years before the war seemed a distant memory as aircraft became killing machines – the war becoming the ancestor of the fearsome air wars of later years.The stories reveal the feelings of those who defended the trenches from above and witnessed the war from a completely different perspective -the men who were the first fighter heroes of the air.
Fighter Heroes of WWI: The untold story of the brave and daring pioneer airmen of the Great War
The first heroes of the air.Rewriting the rules of military engagement and changing the course of modern history as a result, the pioneering airmen of the First World War took incredible risks to perform their vital contribution to the war effort.Fighter Heroes of WWI is a narrative history that conveys the perils of early flight, the thrills of being airborne, and the horrors of war in the air at a time when pilots carried little defensive armament and no parachutes.The men who joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1914 were the original heroes of flying, treading into unknown territory, and paving the way for later aerial combat. They became icons for the soldiers in the trenches, and a stark contrast to the thousands on the ground fighting faceless thousands as men fought aircraft to aircraft and man to man – for the first time the air became a battlefield of its own.The war changed flying forever. In 1914 aircraft were a questionable technology, used for only basic reconnaissance. But by 1918, hastened by the terrible war, aircraft were understood to be the future of modern warfare.The Wright brothers' achievements of a mere ten years earlier and Blériot's crossing of the Channel just a few years before the war seemed a distant memory as aircraft became killing machines – the war becoming the ancestor of the fearsome air wars of later years.The stories reveal the feelings of those who defended the trenches from above and witnessed the war from a completely different perspective -the men who were the first fighter heroes of the air.
Beauty and Atrocity: People, Politics and Ireland’s Fight for Peace
An ambitious and powerful account of modern Irish history through the eyes of those who experienced it at first hand.Forty years after the Provisional IRA was formed and British troops arrived in Ireland, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness sit together as leaders of a devolved Northern Irish government, in which Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists share power. The Troubles appear to be over; the future promises to be quite different from the past. But recent events perhaps suggest otherwise, as old tensions rise to the forefront once more.Through countless interviews with the people from both sides that lived through, participated in and were victims of the Troubles, the author builds a picture of the attitudes and the beliefs that shaped three decades of Ireland's history. There are those whose lives have been shattered, those who have tried to ignore the realities, those who have attempted to bridge the divide, those who do not accept the peace, and some who refuse to look back at all.What emerges is a balanced and wide-ranging account that explores the struggle between ideology and compassion, how the battles and politics of centuries ago still define people's attitudes towards their neighbours today, and how political injustice and the course of time can make a complex reality seem like simple history.
