Wikipedia says it will be "published in July 2026" but have not heard anything otherwise. Hoping for this month!

Unofficially called "The Red Books" these are just over 40 Books, Appendices and Map Cases covering the British Army's involvement in the First World War.

These are reprints done in the 1990's and early 2000's by The Battery Press before the contract fell apart. The didn't end up finishing every book (notably some of the Appendices and Map Cases didn't get finished individually and instead were moved to be inside the books they were paired to so that they still got released).

Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam

Author: Mark Bowden  Pages: 608 Published: 2017

Synopsis: The first battle book from Mark Bowden since his #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down, Hue 1968 is the story of the centerpiece of the Tet Offensive and a turning point in the American War in Vietnam. In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched over one hundred attacks across South Vietnam in what would become known as the Tet Offensive. The lynchpin of Tet was the capture of Hue, Vietnam’s intellectual and cultural capital, by 10,000 National Liberation Front troops who descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000. Within hours the entire city was in their hands save for two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the Front’s presence, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city, block by block and building by building, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II.

Recommend: Hue 1968

Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

Author: Garett Graff Pages: 528 Published: 2020

Synopsis: Now, in The Only Plane in the Sky, Garrett Graff tells the story of the day as it was lived—in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, he paints the most vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks yet. Beginning in the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, we meet the ticket agents who unknowingly usher terrorists onto their flights, and the flight attendants inside the hijacked planes. In New York, first responders confront a scene of unimaginable horror at the Twin Towers. From a secret bunker under the White House, officials watch for incoming planes on radar. Aboard unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to fly into a hijacked airliner if necessary to bring it down. In the skies above Pennsylvania, civilians aboard United 93 make the ultimate sacrifice in their place. Then, as the day moves forward and flights are grounded nationwide, Air Force One circles the country alone, its passengers isolated and afraid.

Recommend: Only Plane in the Sky

The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War

Author: Scott Anderson Pages: 608 Published: 2021

Synopsis: At the end of World War II, the United States was considered the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear—to some—that the Soviet Union was already seeking to expand and foment revolution around the world, and the American government’s strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly formed CIA. Chronicling the fascinating lives of four agents, Scott Anderson follows the exploits of four spies: Michael Burke, who organized parachute commandos from an Italian villa; Frank Wisner, an ingenious spymaster who directed actions around the world; Peter Sichel, a German Jew who outwitted the ruthless KGB in Berlin; and Edward Lansdale, a mastermind of psychological warfare in the Far East. But despite their lofty ambitions, time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination of ham-fisted politicking and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government.

Recommend: The Quiet Americans

My America: Langston Hughes on Democracy

Author: Randal Maurice Jelks  • Category: Voices / Lived Experiences • Pages: 292 • Published: 2026

Synopsis: Randal M. Jelks delivers a revelatory portrait of Langston Hughes — poet, essayist, playwright, and American artist — tracing his journey from a child captivated by Kansas City to cosmopolitan witness in Paris, New York, Mexico City, and Madrid. Hughes is one of the few American writers who consistently wrote about democracy from a joyous perspective, and My America explores how his works speak to the political anxieties and crises we face today — examining themes of creative expression, communal dignity, class struggle, and human suffering. Each of Hughes's extraordinary essays, poems, and speeches is accompanied by Jelks's contemporary analysis, presenting Hughes not as a sanitized icon but as a radical thinker who demanded a democracy that guaranteed freedom for all.

Recommend: My America

The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind

Author: Martin Sixsmith Pages: 592 Published: 2022

Synopsis: More than any other conflict, the Cold War was fought on the battlefield of the human mind. And, nearly thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, its legacy still endures—not only in our politics, but in our own thoughts and fears.

Drawing on a vast array of untapped archives and unseen sources, Martin Sixsmith vividly recreates the tensions and paranoia of the Cold War, framing it for the first time from a psychological perspective. Revisiting towering, unique personalities like Khrushchev, Kennedy, and Nixon, as well as the lives of the unknown millions who were caught up in the conflict, this is a gripping narrative of the paranoia of the Cold War—and in today's uncertain times, this story is more resonant than ever.

Recommend: War on Nerves

Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism

Author: Rachel Maddow Pages: 416 Published: 2023

Synopsis: Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.

Recommend: Prequel

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Author: Isabel Wilkerson Pages: 544 Published: 2020

Synopsis: Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Recommend: Caste

Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

Author: Mark Bowden  Pages: 400 Published: 2010

Synopsis: On October 3, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily-armed Somalis. The following morning, eighteen Americans were dead and more than seventy had been badly wounded.

Drawing on interviews from both sides, army records, audiotapes, and videos (some of the material is still classified), Mark Bowden's minute-by-minute narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern combat ever written--a riveting story that captures the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle.

Recommend: Black Hawk Down

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Author Frederick Douglass • Category: Voices / Lived Experiences •  Pages: 224 Published: 2014

Synopsis: The preeminent American slave narrative, first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass's Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838 — how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die.

In addition to Douglass's classic autobiography, this Penguin Classics edition includes his most famous speech, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" and his only known work of fiction, The Heroic Slave, written in part as a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Recommend: Narrative of the Life

Read the full list here

Great book to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday. Start at the VERY beginning:

Columbus is not a villain: Professor says explorer has been seriously maligned
Posted on October 9, 2017
By William Nardi - University of Massachusetts Boston

While hundreds of colleges around the country have started to mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day, calling the explorer a racist and blaming him for genocide, one professor says Christopher Columbus is not a villain and his legacy has been maligned.
Stanford professor emerita Carol Delaney, who taught at the university’s department of cultural and social anthropology for nearly 20 years, says Columbus did not condone many of the things he is accused of doing.
“Christopher Columbus writes very favorably about the natives he met and dealt with,” Delaney told The College Fix. “He continually told his men not to go marauding, raping, plundering and even executed two of his own men who did that.”
Columbus did not seek to cross the Atlantic to enslave people, Delaney said.
“His goal was to finance the crusade to reclaim Jerusalem after it had been taken by Muslims so Christ could come back and save the Christians,” she said. “His intention was to find Asia and instead found the new world.”
Columbus is not a villain, she said. As for Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Delaney says she would support a day to celebrate their culture, but not to replace Columbus Day.
“Students should read my book Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem before forming an opinion,” Delaney said.
“Rather than an avaricious glory hunter, Delaney reveals Columbus as a man of deep passion, patience, and religious conviction,” according to the book’s online description.
The book was based on extensive archival research, fieldwork in Spain and Italy, and his writings.
“She depicts him as a thoughtful interpreter of the native cultures that he and his men encountered, and unfolds the tragic story of how his initial attempts to establish good relations with the natives turned badly sour, culminating in his being brought back to Spain as a prisoner in chains,” the description states. “Putting Columbus back into the context of his times, rather than viewing him through the prism of present-day perspectives on colonial conquests, Delaney shows him to have been neither a greedy imperialist nor a quixotic adventurer, as he has lately been depicted, but a man driven by an abiding religious passion.”
Delaney told The Fix that Columbus’ voyages were complicated and difficult, and extenuating circumstances affected them. For example, during his first voyage, the Santa Maria went aground.
“He had to leave men there, and that’s when he brought settlers back in the second voyage,” she said. “When he came back, all of the men were killed.”
Delaney said a priest who traveled with him said they must kill the native chief in retaliation, to which Columbus replied: “Absolutely not, we will find out what happened.” It turns out the chief had nothing to do with why Columbus’ men were dead, she said.
As for Columbus’ relations with the Native Americans, Delaney says they were so friendly that “the chief’s son was his interpreter and sailed back to Spain with him.”
“There were slaves that were sent back eventually on the third or fourth voyage, and they were thought to be cannibals,” the scholar added. “The Pope said anybody that was a cannibal could be enslaved so he had a part in it.”

A huge thank you to everyone who has downloaded the e-book or picked up a paperback copy of Weekend Rush – A Pirate Radio Story. The support, reviews, messages, shares, and word of mouth have been amazing.

Seeing people reconnect with the memories, discover the story for the first time, and spread the word has meant a lot. What started as a story that needed telling has reached far more people than I ever imagined.

Big respect to everyone who has supported the journey so far. Thank you all.📡🔥 👊

The American Library Association (ALA) has come out with its annual report on the State of America’s Libraries, and it is an appalling document. It brings out how far and how deeply the attacks on democratic rights and freedom of thought and expression have gone and how determined the right-wing, fascistic elements are to suppress truth on various fronts.