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Dispatches from the Edge
Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world than Anderson Cooper, whose groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the way we watch the news. In this gripping, candid, and remarkably powerful memoir, he offers an unstinting, up-close view of the most harrowing crises of our time, and the profound impact they have had on his life. After growing up on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Cooper felt a magnetic pull toward the unknown, an attraction to the far corners of the earth. If he could keep moving, and keep exploring, he felt he could stay one step ahead of his past, including the fame surrounding his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the tragic early deaths of his father and older brother. As a reporter, the frenetic pace of filing dispatches from war-torn countries, and the danger that came with it, helped him avoid having to look too closely at the pain and loss that was right in front of him. But recently, during the course of one extraordinary, tumultuous year, it became impossible for him to continue to separate his work from his life, his family's troubled history from the suffering people he met all over the world. From the tsunami in Sri Lanka to the war in Iraq to the starvation in Niger and ultimately to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi, Cooper gives us a firsthand glimpse of the devastation that takes place, both physically and emotionally, when the normal order of things is violently ruptured on such a massive scale. Cooper had been in his share of life-threatening situations before -- ducking fire on the streets of war-torn Sarejevo, traveling on his own to famine-stricken Somalia, witnessing firsthand the genocide in Rwanda -- but he had never seen human misery quite like this. Writing with vivid memories of his childhood and early career as a roving correspondent, Cooper reveals for the first time how deeply affected he has been by the wars, disasters, and tragedies he has witnessed, and why he continues to be drawn to some of the most perilous places on earth. Striking, heartfelt, and utterly engrossing, Dispatches from the Edge is an unforgettable memoir that takes us behind the scenes of the cataclysmic events of our age and allows us to see them through the eyes of one of America's most trusted, fearless, and pioneering reporters. -
Band of Brothers
在线阅读本书 Through soldiers' journals and letters, describes Easy Company's contributions to the campaigns in western Europe and recounts their stories of survival. Amazon.co.uk Review As grippingly as any novelist, preeminent World War II historian Stephen Ambrose uses Band of Brothers to tell the horrifying, hallucinatory saga of Easy Company, whose 147 members he calls the nonpareil combat paratroopers on earth circa 1941-45. Ambrose takes us along on Easy Company's trip from gruelling basic training to Utah Beach on D-day, where a dozen of them turned German cannons into dynamited ruins resembling "half-peeled bananas", on to the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of part of the Dachau concentration camp, and a large party at Hitler's "Eagle's Nest", where they drank the his (surprisingly inferior) champagne. Of Ambrose's main sources, three soldiers became rich civilians; at least eight became teachers; one became Albert Speer's jailer; one prosecuted Robert Kennedy's assassin; another became a mountain recluse; the despised, sadistic CO who first trained Easy Company (and to whose strictness many soldiers attributed their survival of the war) wound up a suicidal loner whose own sons skipped his funeral. The Easy Company survivors describe the hell and confusion of any war: the senseless death of the nicest kid in the company when a souvenir Luger goes off in his pocket; the execution of a GI by his CO for disobeying an order not to get drunk. Despite the gratuitous horrors it relates, Band of Brothers illustrates what one of Ambrose's sources calls "the secret attractions of war ... the delight in comradeship, the delight in destruction ... war as spectacle". --Tim Appelo Amazon.com Audibook Review The men of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, volunteered for this elite fighting force because they wanted to be the best in the army--and avoid fighting alongside unmotivated, out-of-shape draftees. The price they paid for that desire was long, arduous, and sometimes sadistic training, followed by some of the most horrific battles of World War II. Actor Cotter Smith--a veteran of numerous TV movies and Broadway plays--spins Stephen Ambrose's tale with almost laconic ease. Anecdote by anecdote, he lets the power of the story build. By the time the company has gotten through D-day and seized Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Bavaria, we feel we know as much about the men and their missions as we do about our own brothers. (Running time: 5 hours, 4 cassettes) --Lou Schuler Book Dimension Height (mm) 234 Width (mm) 157 -
The Diary of a Young Girl
《THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL(安妮日记)》Anne Frank's extraordinary diary, written in the Amsterdam attic where she and her family hid from the naxis for two years, has become a world classic and a timeless testament to the human spirit. Nowk, in a new edition enriched by many passages originally withheld by her father, we meet and Anne more real ,more human, and more vital than ever. Here she is first and foremost a teenage girl-stubbornly honest ,touchingly vulnerable, in love with life. She imparts her deeply secet world of sous-searching and hungering for affection,m rebllious clashes with her mother, romance and newly discovered sexuality, and wry candid observations of her companions. Facing hunger, fear of discovery and death ,and the petty frustrations of such confined puarters Anne writes with adult wisdom and views beyond her yeras. Her story is that of every teenager,lived out in conditions few teenagers have ever known. -
All Quiet on the Western Front
Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other--if only he can come out of the war alive."The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first trank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure."THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW -
Cold Mountain
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美國狙擊手【限量電影書衣版】
他是美國海豹部隊的狙擊手 2,100碼 (1,920米)外,可以一槍神準擊斃敵人 十年間,射殺了166名敵人 克里斯•凱爾被譽為美國「最致命的神射手」 由布萊德利庫柏主演、克林伊斯威特執導的同名電影,將於2015年1月中旬於台灣上映! 《紐約時報》暢銷書排行榜第一名 克里斯.凱爾是美國德克薩斯州奧德薩人,美軍海豹部隊狙擊手,四次前往伊拉克參戰,期間他共射殺160名敵人,有美國「最致命的神射手」稱號。凱爾最著名的戰績是在二○○八年從2,100碼(1,920米)遠距離外,以狙擊步槍用一發子彈擊斃敵人。可就是這麼一位傳奇的人物,卻在二○一三年二月二日,在射擊場被槍殺身亡。 凱爾獲選進入美國海軍海豹部隊,成為了最優秀的神槍手。做爲狙擊手,第一次扣動扳機奪取別人生命時,克里斯•凱爾面對的是一名企圖用手榴彈襲擊美國海軍陸戰隊的女人。 首次開槍時,凱爾有些猶豫。但在接下來的四個服役期中,凱爾學會了如何阻止猶豫,立即射擊。一九九九年至二○○九年,克里斯•凱爾共成功狙擊兩百五十五人,其中美國五角大廈承認的有一六六人,但這不妨礙凱爾成爲美國歷史上狙殺敵人最多的狙擊手。 在費盧傑的一次戰鬥中,海軍陸戰隊面對上千的武裝分子,陷入艱苦的巷戰,在這次戰役中,凱爾一個人就狙殺了四十人。 二○○八年,凱爾到薩德爾城外執行任務,他看到2,100碼(約合1,920米)外一個武裝分子正扛著火箭發射器靠近一支美軍車隊,凱爾立刻扣下扳機,準確地擊斃武裝分子。 服役期間,他曾被射中兩次,但凱爾都挺了過來,並被隊友譽爲不死的神槍手。 伊拉克叛亂勢力稱他「撒旦」,曾經懸賞兩萬美元,要他的人頭。而對於取敵人首級的心情,凱爾曾表示「我不把那些人當人,不去想他是否有家庭。我只想著要同袍安全」。 二○一三年二月二日,他在德州靶場參與慈善活動,與另一名朋友一同遭人射殺,行凶者動機不明。兇手為愛迪•魯斯(Eddie Ray Routh),也曾是美軍士兵,參與過伊拉克戰爭,退伍後長期失業,患有創傷後壓力症候群。 在凱爾的自傳上市後,布萊德利庫柏就嗅覺靈敏地買下了這本書的電影版權。庫柏除了會主演本片外,更以製片人的身分參與其中,特別邀到金獎導演克林伊斯威特執導,。兩人的合作,是否能挑戰下一座的小金人,相當令人期待!電影「爛番茄」網站,截至目前為止,已有近萬名使用者投票,其中99%對這部電影有興趣,期待值為 4.4 / 5顆星。 名人推薦 ★本年度最得我心的書是克里斯‧凱爾所著的《美國狙擊手》,難能可貴地記載了伊拉克戰爭的點滴——充滿人性及勇氣的故事,非常好讀。——《紐約時報》書評 ★文筆流暢……犀利地描述前線戰鬥的紀錄,充滿動作感。——美國Kirkus書評雜誌 ★讀來很像狙擊手第一人稱的身歷其境,露骨的事實讓人不免吃驚……一等一的軍人回憶錄。——美國Booklist書評 ★克里斯,凱爾非常了不起,是我們這一代最有名的戰爭英雄,是個不折不扣的美國英雄。——D雜誌 ★特種部隊菁英分子中,被視為獨一無二的好漢,那個人就是克里斯‧凱爾。其槍法之厲害,相信將傳頌好幾世代。——榮獲海軍十字勳章的前美國海豹特種部隊隊員、暢銷書《紅翼部隊》作家查爾斯‧薩森