What's Everyone Reading?
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The Hollow Crown
'The Hollow Crown is exhilarating, epic, blood-and-roses history . . . Jones's material is thrilling . . . There is fine scholarly intuition on display here and a mastery of the grand narrative; it is a supremely skilful piece of storytelling.' Sunday Telegraph
The fifteenth century saw the crown of England change hands seven times as the great families of England fought to the death for power, majesty and the right to rule. The Hollow Crown completes Dan Jones' epic history of medieval England, and describes how the Plantagenets tore themselves apart to be finally replaced by the Tudors.
Some of the greatest heroes and villains in British history were thrown together in these turbulent times: Henry V, whose victory at Agincourt and prudent rule at home marked the high point of the medieval monarchy; Edward IV, who was handed his crown by the scheming soldier Warwick the Kingmaker, before their alliance collapsed into a fight to the death; and the last Plantagenet, Richard III, who stole the throne and murdered his own nephews, the Princes in the Tower. Finally, the Tudors arrived - but even their rule was only made certain in the 1520s, when Henry VIII ruthlessly hunted down his family's last remaining enemies.
Historian and author Dan Jones
In the midst this tumult, chivalry was reborn, the printing press arrived and the Renaissance began to flourish. With vivid descriptions of the 1461 Battle of Towton, where 28,000 men (1% of England's entire population) died in a single morning, and the Battle of Bosworth Field, at which Richard III was hacked down, this is the real story behind Shakespeare's famous history plays.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hollow-Crown-Wars-Roses-Tudors-ebook/dp/B00L0LYTU0
'The Hollow Crown is exhilarating, epic, blood-and-roses history . . . Jones's material is thrilling . . . There is fine scholarly intuition on display here and a mastery of the grand narrative; it is a supremely skilful piece of storytelling.' Sunday Telegraph
The fifteenth century saw the crown of England change hands seven times as the great families of England fought to the death for power, majesty and the right to rule. The Hollow Crown completes Dan Jones' epic history of medieval England, and describes how the Plantagenets tore themselves apart to be finally replaced by the Tudors.
Some of the greatest heroes and villains in British history were thrown together in these turbulent times: Henry V, whose victory at Agincourt and prudent rule at home marked the high point of the medieval monarchy; Edward IV, who was handed his crown by the scheming soldier Warwick the Kingmaker, before their alliance collapsed into a fight to the death; and the last Plantagenet, Richard III, who stole the throne and murdered his own nephews, the Princes in the Tower. Finally, the Tudors arrived - but even their rule was only made certain in the 1520s, when Henry VIII ruthlessly hunted down his family's last remaining enemies.
Historian and author Dan Jones
In the midst this tumult, chivalry was reborn, the printing press arrived and the Renaissance began to flourish. With vivid descriptions of the 1461 Battle of Towton, where 28,000 men (1% of England's entire population) died in a single morning, and the Battle of Bosworth Field, at which Richard III was hacked down, this is the real story behind Shakespeare's famous history plays.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hollow-Crown-Wars-Roses-Tudors-ebook/dp/B00L0LYTU0
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Could an EMP attack take down Canada?
By Anthony Furey, Postmedia Network
First posted: Saturday, June 10, 2017 08:02 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, June 10, 2017 08:11 PM EDT
Canada is vulnerable to a crippling attack and is doing nothing to prepare for it.
That’s what I learned while researching my new book on electromagnetic pulse.
After speaking with top level national security sources in the United States the other year, I began studying this little known phenomenon that was classified until not long ago.
An EMP — whether naturally occurring via a solar flare or detonated above North America from a missile — sends extremely high voltage energy through the atmosphere and into electronics and our electricity grid. It’s so powerful that it has the ability to fry electronics and shut down the grid for days, weeks or even months.
The worst case scenario is that our water, food, transportation and communications systems all go down. The result is societal decay and a staggering death count.
No, this isn’t science fiction or a thriller novel. It’s all real, as government reports and laboratory documents I’ve dug up from years ago reveal. And now, with rogue states like North Korea on the rise, the few experts who know about this issue are sounding the alarm.
While EMP crops up in a few Canadian government reports over the years, I’ve discovered from access to information requests that our bureaucrats and politicians are basically clueless about this serious threat to our way of life.
There is no mitigation strategy. There is no action plan. There isn’t even significant awareness of the issue.
In the book I look at the science behind the issue, previous EMP attacks, where we’re at with it now and where we should be heading.
One well timed, properly aimed missile sent from a failed state or terrorist group is all it would take to bring us to our knees. It’s just not right.
Thankfully, there are things we can do to prevent it. The question is if we’ll get to it before it’s too late.
EXCERPT:
From Chapter 1 of Pulse Attack: The Real Story Behind the Secret Weapon that can Destroy North America
It was a quiet night at the Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s Metcalf transmission substation. Even though it’s one of the largest electric utility companies in America and its combined operations provide electricity to over 5 million customers, there were no security guards posted at the facility that night. Just like on most nights. There weren’t any other employees on shift either.
The only eyes on the ground were the surveillance cameras and motion detectors and someone clearly knew how to avoid their detection because just before 1 a.m. a person was able to sneak in and cut the telecommunications cables leading into the station. The phones went dead.
Thirty minutes later, a group of people opened fire on the station with military-grade rifles. They continued firing for 19 minutes — targeting the transformers. When they finished firing their weapons they didn’t enter the facility. They didn’t steal anything. They just left as mysteriously as they had arrived.
Officers arrived only one minute after the last bullet was fired. But the attackers were already gone. The officers didn’t see them leave or even hear any of the blasts. All they had to work with was a 911 call about shots fired. So, seeing nothing suspicious, they shrugged it off and left.
A couple hours later — soon after 3 a.m. — an employee finally arrived to check things out. What he found was doubtless a surprise. While there are a number of different types of equipment failures the electricity industry is used to dealing with, this wasn’t one of them.
The employee discovered in those early morning hours that a total of 17 transformers had been riddled with gunfire. Over 50,000 gallons of oil had leaked out around the station. Power had to be rerouted to avoid a blackout in the area. The most troubling evidence was the more than one hundred shell casings found littering the ground.
Who were these unidentified figures, systematically firing their weapons into the dark of the California night, targeting the metallic monoliths that powered nearby homes and businesses? Were they disgruntled former employees giving the finger to an old boss? Petty criminals looking to steal anything they could resell? One of California’s notorious gangs or drug rings? Operatives of a foreign terrorist group, prepared to die for a chance at taking down the Evil Empire?
The attackers left no trail behind them. There was zero evidence aside from the shell casings. Zero hint as to their motivation or goals. And this unsolved mystery has left a small but informed number of academics, politicians, industry experts and intelligence operatives deeply concerned for the safety of their country.
But why? Just how big of a problem could this attack have caused? Even if they’d blown up the transformer station entirely, and even if they were terrorists, how bad would the effects from this one incident have been?
***
The book is available at Pulse Attack and http://amazon.ca/Pulse-Attack-Behind-Destroy-America-ebook/dp/B071FXBY9S .
Pulse Attack: The Real Story Behind the Secret Weapon, a new book by Anthony Furey, explores the urgent national security threat of EMPs that can Destroy North America. (supplied photo)
Could an EMP attack take down Canada? | FUREY | Canada | News | Toronto Sun
By Anthony Furey, Postmedia Network
First posted: Saturday, June 10, 2017 08:02 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, June 10, 2017 08:11 PM EDT
Canada is vulnerable to a crippling attack and is doing nothing to prepare for it.
That’s what I learned while researching my new book on electromagnetic pulse.
After speaking with top level national security sources in the United States the other year, I began studying this little known phenomenon that was classified until not long ago.
An EMP — whether naturally occurring via a solar flare or detonated above North America from a missile — sends extremely high voltage energy through the atmosphere and into electronics and our electricity grid. It’s so powerful that it has the ability to fry electronics and shut down the grid for days, weeks or even months.
The worst case scenario is that our water, food, transportation and communications systems all go down. The result is societal decay and a staggering death count.
No, this isn’t science fiction or a thriller novel. It’s all real, as government reports and laboratory documents I’ve dug up from years ago reveal. And now, with rogue states like North Korea on the rise, the few experts who know about this issue are sounding the alarm.
While EMP crops up in a few Canadian government reports over the years, I’ve discovered from access to information requests that our bureaucrats and politicians are basically clueless about this serious threat to our way of life.
There is no mitigation strategy. There is no action plan. There isn’t even significant awareness of the issue.
In the book I look at the science behind the issue, previous EMP attacks, where we’re at with it now and where we should be heading.
One well timed, properly aimed missile sent from a failed state or terrorist group is all it would take to bring us to our knees. It’s just not right.
Thankfully, there are things we can do to prevent it. The question is if we’ll get to it before it’s too late.
EXCERPT:
From Chapter 1 of Pulse Attack: The Real Story Behind the Secret Weapon that can Destroy North America
It was a quiet night at the Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s Metcalf transmission substation. Even though it’s one of the largest electric utility companies in America and its combined operations provide electricity to over 5 million customers, there were no security guards posted at the facility that night. Just like on most nights. There weren’t any other employees on shift either.
The only eyes on the ground were the surveillance cameras and motion detectors and someone clearly knew how to avoid their detection because just before 1 a.m. a person was able to sneak in and cut the telecommunications cables leading into the station. The phones went dead.
Thirty minutes later, a group of people opened fire on the station with military-grade rifles. They continued firing for 19 minutes — targeting the transformers. When they finished firing their weapons they didn’t enter the facility. They didn’t steal anything. They just left as mysteriously as they had arrived.
Officers arrived only one minute after the last bullet was fired. But the attackers were already gone. The officers didn’t see them leave or even hear any of the blasts. All they had to work with was a 911 call about shots fired. So, seeing nothing suspicious, they shrugged it off and left.
A couple hours later — soon after 3 a.m. — an employee finally arrived to check things out. What he found was doubtless a surprise. While there are a number of different types of equipment failures the electricity industry is used to dealing with, this wasn’t one of them.
The employee discovered in those early morning hours that a total of 17 transformers had been riddled with gunfire. Over 50,000 gallons of oil had leaked out around the station. Power had to be rerouted to avoid a blackout in the area. The most troubling evidence was the more than one hundred shell casings found littering the ground.
Who were these unidentified figures, systematically firing their weapons into the dark of the California night, targeting the metallic monoliths that powered nearby homes and businesses? Were they disgruntled former employees giving the finger to an old boss? Petty criminals looking to steal anything they could resell? One of California’s notorious gangs or drug rings? Operatives of a foreign terrorist group, prepared to die for a chance at taking down the Evil Empire?
The attackers left no trail behind them. There was zero evidence aside from the shell casings. Zero hint as to their motivation or goals. And this unsolved mystery has left a small but informed number of academics, politicians, industry experts and intelligence operatives deeply concerned for the safety of their country.
But why? Just how big of a problem could this attack have caused? Even if they’d blown up the transformer station entirely, and even if they were terrorists, how bad would the effects from this one incident have been?
***
The book is available at Pulse Attack and http://amazon.ca/Pulse-Attack-Behind-Destroy-America-ebook/dp/B071FXBY9S .
Pulse Attack: The Real Story Behind the Secret Weapon, a new book by Anthony Furey, explores the urgent national security threat of EMPs that can Destroy North America. (supplied photo)
Could an EMP attack take down Canada? | FUREY | Canada | News | Toronto Sun
John Simpson is the BBC's World Affairs Editor. He has twice been the Royal Television Society's Journalist of the Year and won countless other major television awards and was famously punched in the stomach by then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1970 when he asked Wilson whether or not he is going to hold an election.
Drawing on John Simpson's acclaimed volumes of autobiography and hitherto unpublished material, Twenty Tales from the War Zone brings together some of the highlights of his remarkable BBC journalistic career which has seen him report from more than 120 countries, including thirty war zones, and interview many world leaders. Whether dodging guerrillas at a cocaine market in Colombia, narrowly escaping a murderous Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, interviewing a flatulent Colonel Gadaffi, crossing the border into Afghanistan dressed in a fetching bright blue burka or being kidnapped at gunpoint - or was it a finger in a pocket? - in the backstreets of Belfast at the height of the Troubles, Simpson paints a vivid picture of what being a journalist on the front line is all about, from low comedy to high drama. It's a rollercoaster ride that is sure to thrill anyone who dares to join it.
Here is a good source for books for those with E-readers....
Library Genesis
Put your favorite writer's name in the search bar and the type eg.(fiction).....From there you will have to figure out the process of downloading..can't be too hard....I did :lol:
Library Genesis
Put your favorite writer's name in the search bar and the type eg.(fiction).....From there you will have to figure out the process of downloading..can't be too hard....I did :lol:
Here's another source that randomly gives you the first page of a book without giving its title. If you don't like it, you 'shuffle' again, if you like it the site'll give you the title of the book. ........
Looking for new books to read? Book recommendations without the cover
