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  Achaemenid Persian Empire’s Most...

  Charles River Editors

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  At one point in antiquity, the Achaemenid Persian Empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen, but aside from its role in the Greco-Persian Wars and its collapse at the hands of Alexander the Great, it has been mostly overlooked. When it has been studied, the historical sources have mostly been Greek, the very people the Persians sought to conquer. Needless to say, their versions were biased. 
  It was not until excavations in the region during the 20th century that many of the relics, reliefs, and clay tablets that offer so much information about Persian life could be studied for the first time. Through archaeological remains, ancient texts, and work by a new generation of historians, a picture can today be built of this remarkable civilization and their most famous leaders. 
  When considering this empire’s rulers, the two most often referenced are Xerxes, the leader of the Persian invasion of Greece which caused the heroic sacrifice of the Spartans and their allies at Thermopylae, or Cyrus the Great, the man who created the empire. While he was one of the most influential men in the ancient world, research on Cyrus the Great is simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. The Persians’ ancestors did not write (in fact, in their epic poems and myths, they claim that it was something taught to man by demons and therefore something to be avoided), and though the Iranians had taken up writing in their governmental and administrative functions by the time Cyrus lived, the kings still did not learn to write. Put simply, it was considered a functional skill, but not of the greatest importance. 
  As a result, while plenty of ancient sources mention the great Persian king, Persian sources themselves are rare, and those sources that do exist, such as the Babylonian Chronicle, are largely dry and state only the basic facts and large events.

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  The Sporting Gun's Bedside...

  Douglas Butler

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  Thirty shooting stories in pursuit of pheasant, mallard, geese, hares, mink, even an old wild goat, these modern tales involve bi-lingual dogs, an ignominious goose, red-letter days and disappointments, days on boglands, grouse moors, smart shoots and estuaries.
  
  Punt gunning, rough shooting and wildfowling, dawns and dusks and assorted brushes with ecstasy and near-death. Douglas Butler has an ear for a good shooting story and, as an inveterate shooter himself, knows just what curious, unexpected, dramatic things can sometimes happen when out in the fields, woods and marshes with fellow guns and dogs.

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  Touhy vs Capone - The Chicago...

  Don Herion

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  In this true crime history, a Chicago cop uncovers the epic gangland saga that led to a former bootlegger’s assassination in 1959.   When beat cop Don Herion and his partner responded to shots fired on December 16, 1959, they didn't know that they had heard the final, fatal salvo in one of the most contorted conflicts in the history of organized crime. Back in the 1930s, bootlegger and Irish mob boss Roger Touhy went to war with Al Capone and his Chicago Outfit. Then he was framed for a fake kidnapping. After twenty-six years in prison, Touhy was finally released. Less than a month later, he was murdered in an ambush.    Touhy’s epic story of crime and punishment involves nearly all the notorious men of his day: Frank Nitti, John "Jake the Barber" Factor, Mayor Cermak, Melvin Purvis, J. Edgar Hoover, Baby Face Nelson, Dan "Tubbo" Gilbert, FDR and JFK. As Touhy's life was ending on his sister's front porch, Herion's quest to unravel the tangle of events that led to his assassination had just begun.

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  Behind the Fireplace - Memoirs...

  Andrew Scott, Grietje Okma Scott

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  As World War 2 progressed, the Okma family took six Jewish refugees into their house, hiding them in a secret room behind their fireplace. The youngest daughter, Kieks, joined the Resistance, delivering illegal newspapers, guiding British parachutists around The Hague and preparing safe houses for Special Forces who were dropped in from England. As the War continued, she fell in love with a Resistance commander, and worked with him to rescue wounded colleagues, steal weapons from German arms dumps, and move weapons around the country. They had a tumultuous parting and she continued her work, acting as a courier with a two hundred km bike ride to the north of Holland. When she returned home, she appreciated how much the war had changed her and her boyfriend, and prepared to try a reconciliation. 
   
   
   
  She escaped a firing squad four times, and survived the war, mentally scarred by her experiences. She sought help, but the help she was offered came in a poisoned chalice, and she kept her secret to herself for almost fifty years. Her family in Holland was recognized by Yad Vashem, the Israeli organization that records those who saved Jews from the Holocaust, and she was awarded a pension for her work in the Resistance by the Dutch foundation Stichting 1940–1945.

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  The Romance of Missionary...

  John C. Lambert

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  Product text: The Romance of Missionary Heroism unites travelogues, ethnographies and biographies in the form of accounts of the experiences of Christian missionaries worldwide. Contents: In the Steppes and Deserts of Mongolia In the Country of the Telugus A Japanese Romance A Heroine of Tibet The Saviour of Liao-Yang The Hero of Uganda The Lion-Hearted Bishop Pioneers in Nyasaland Vortrekkers in Barotseland A Pioneer in Garenganze A Tramp through the Great Pygmy Forest Among the Indians and Eskimo of Hudson Bay The "Praying Master" of the Redskins In the Land of the Dakotas In the Forests of Guiana The Sailor Missionary of Tierra Del Fuego The Schooner of Keppel Island The Martyr-Bishop of Melanesia One of the Unreturning Brave Father Damien of Molokai Among the Cannibal Islands The Apostle of the New Hebrides Kapiolani and the Goddess of the Volcano.

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  Hello Shadowlands - Inside the...

  Patrick Winn

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  Essential to understanding Southeast Asia in the 21st century, Hello, Shadowlands reveals a booming underworld of organised crime across a region in flux? a $100 billion trade that deals in narcotics, animals and people ?and the staggering human toll that is being steadily ignored by the West. From Myanmar's anarchic hills to the swamplands of Vietnam, jihadis are being pitted against brothel workers, pet thieves against vigilantes and meth barons against Christian vice squads. Hello, Shadowlands takes a deep plunge into crime rings both large and small. It also examines how China's rise and America's decline is creating new opportunities for transnational syndicates to thrive. Focusing on human stories on both sides of this crime wave, the acclaimed Bangkok-based broadcaster and journalist Patrick Winn intimately profiles the men and women of the region who are forced to make agonizing choices in the absence of law.“Reads like a thriller you can't put down.” BUZZFEED NEWS

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