Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's brutally honest account of his experience as a militiaman during the Spanish Civil War. In the last days of 1936, Spain was five months into a bitter civil war, in which volunteers from many countries were helping the elected government of the Spanish Republic battle a military coup led by General Francisco Franco and backed by Hitler and Mussolini. Some foreigners flocking to Spain had come for another reason:...

First hand chronicle of the ordeal of the Balkan people during the continuing breakup of Yugoslavia.

When Sgt. Dan Mills and the rest of the 1st Battalion, The Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment flew into Iraq in April 2004, they were supposed to be winning hearts and minds. They were soon fighting for their lives. Within hours of their arrival in Iraq, a grenade bounced off one of the battalion's Land Rovers, rolled underneath and detonated. The ambush marked the beginning of a full-scale firefight during which Mills killed a man with a round...

In his classic book, T.E. Lawrence—forever known as Lawrence of Arabia—recounts his role in the origin of the modern Arab world. At first a shy Oxford scholar and archaeologist with a facility for languages, he joined and went on to lead the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks while the rest of the world was enmeshed in World War I.

Zahra, age three, and Hawra, only a few months old, were the only survivors of a missile strike in Baghdad in 2003 that killed the rest of their family. In London, foreign correspondent Hala Jaber was preparing to head to Iraq to cover the emerging war. After ten years spent trying to conceive, Jaber and her husband had finally resigned themselves to a childless future. Now she intended to bury her grief in her work, with some unusually dangerous...

Eric Newby escaped through a hospital window to become a POW on the run in Italy in 1943. With the Nazis moving in from the north and no certain way back to England, his situation appears grim. Hiding in shepherds' huts and even a cave, he achieves three precious months of freedom--and meets the determined and courageous young woman who would become his wife. [From publisher's description]