Monte Cassino

 

MONTE CASSINO

by Matthew Parker

 

‘One of the true epics of infantry war in world war two – a griping story of incompetence, courage, cowardice, and almost every other human emotion that war can excite – can only make your heart ache.’ – Sir Anthony O’ Reilly.

Parker’s book examines Monte Cassino through the eyes of those who were there, Allied and German , down to the details such as boredom when men were driven to reading the labels on the cars for some thing to do.

He is also good at covering the stress of the battle, demonstrating that of the British and American soldiers who fought the battle of world war two, the battle for Monte Cassino, which blocked the Allies’ road to Rome in early 1944, was fought over terrible terrain and in appealing conditions, and saw human sacrifice and privation almost beyond imagination.

Based on first hand accounts from veterans around the world, rarely has the agony and futility of a mis managed campaign been better expressed than here.

Great machine guns of this world

 

WORLD’S GREAT MACHINE GUNS

from 1860 to the present day

by Roger Ford

No sooner had the gun been invented than men went about trying to make it more effective.

The first multiple firing weapons were the volley types, which were simply many barrels discharged either simultaneously or one after another.

These were of limited use, as they had to be reloaded after each volley which is a lengthly procedure.

The perfection of the unitary cartridge containing projectile, charge and primer was the catalyst for modern machine guns.

Manually operated machine guns such as those made by Gatling, Gardner and Nordenfelt became an established part of every advanced army but these were rendered obsolete overnight by the genius of Hiram Maxwell, who produced the first truly automatic gun.

His 1866 idea for a gun that used the physical energy of its recoil to eject a spent cartridge will feed in a new one, close the breech , cock the action and release the fringe pin and carry on for as long as the trigger was held or the ammo ran out did not actually go into production for nearly twenty years later in London.

This principle along with those that use the pressure of gas in the chamber to achieve the same end, which is still the basic for automatic weapons today.

 

Bottles and pot lids

 

MILLER’S BOTTLES AND POT LIDS

A collection guide

by Alan Blakeman

Here is a useful introduction as to how you can value and pick out the best examples for building an enviable collection of ginger beer bottles, eye baths, ointment pots and many more.

Fact files feature details on manufacturers, techniques and functions and price guides are given for every item shown

There are sections as to how to start, where to buy, how to identify fakes and forgeries, and details of clubs, magazines and shows.

To have and to hold

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD

An intimate history of collectors and collecting

by Phillip Blom

 

A literary look at the collecting world from medieval times onwards.

 

People have always had a magpie instinct ; a sixteenth century Italian collector had an amassed items like: horns, crocodiles, birds’ eggs, plants and stones; which he installed in a scientific museum. The most exciting exhibit was a dragon, which he killed as author noted ‘ with a simple bop on the head with a walking stick’, but sadly, it has disappeared so long time ago.

Some collectors are ruthless, such as tycoon , William Randolph Hearst with his unquenchable need for possession and control. Hearst not only had ware houses filled with millions of dollars worth of art and antiques but also owned a private zoo with tigers and polar bears.

Today many a collectors hoard kitsch or follow modern fads for items such as Beanie Babies.

Where will it all end?

 

Root and flowers

 

ROOT AND THE FLOWER

by L. H. Myers

According to Ursula K Le Guin: this book is a beautiful and enduring vision of the India alongside ‘Kim’ and ‘A passage to India’.

Set In war torn Mughal India and first published in the 1930’s, it is an epic story of intrigue, murder, and romance, of Tantric abandonment and Buddhist renunciation and spiritual adventure.

The cast of characters include Hari, a reckless and Passionate warrior; Sita, in love with both: Hari and her husband Amar, and their son Jail, who precocious encounters violence threatening him with madness.

An unsung glory of literature, this book is at once a dream and a vision of India driven by political, ethnic, and religious conflicts.

Post cards from no man’s land

 

POST CARDS FROM NO MAN’S LAND

by Aidan Chambers

Jacob Todd is seventeen and has arrived in Amsterdam as part of a back packing journey in the honor of his grand father, a soldier who was killed in a town nearby during the world war two.

However, Jacob is not prepared for Amsterdam’s upfront. He receives a scribbled note from a stranger which reads as nothing in Amsterdam is what it appears to be. Looking back in time Geertrul is the teen aged girl whose family hides from the Germans in 1994 with another Jacob Todd, a British soldier. These two and their union has repercussions for their families down the years, told in an extra ordinary dual narrative that encompasses family secrets, art, ideas, and a war torn foreign city.

Q: dance of death

 

Q

Dance of death

by Luther Blissett

hugely ambitious novel st amongst the chaos of reformation Europe, ‘Q’ is a cult book for the 21^st century.1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 theses, demanding reform of the catholic church, to the door of the cathedral church in Wattenberg, setting off the period of upheaval, war and violence, which we now know as the reformation.

Under the reigns of the Habsburgs, Charles V and his enemy the French King Francis I, the Papacy desperately struggles to secure its position.

Meanwhile the radical protestant Anabaptists are in rebellion against the entire order of European society. During this age , a young theology student adopts the cause of the heretics and the disinherited.

Across the chess board of Europe , the German plains to the flourishing Dutch cities and down to Venice , gateway to the East, our hero , a ’survivor’ , an Anabaptist , travels under many names . His enemy “Q” , a papal informer and heretic hunter , plays a game in which no moves are forbidden.

CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

 

CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

by sir Arthur Conan Dole

This volume completes the canon of the illustrated Sherlock Holmes stories reprinted from the Strand magazine. It contains the short story series reminiscences of sherlock Holmes: the Valley of fear, a sinister novella appeared during 1914-1915; His last bow: The war service of Sherlock Holmes and the last 12 stories.