Leo S War

war{n}pieces is the sixth book and second collection of poetry from acclaimed author Leo Jenkins. Fifteen years have passed since Leo was a U.S. Army Ranger medic in Iraq and Afghanistan - fifteen years of reflection, of death and triumph, of struggle and overcoming. war{n}pieces is a poetic journey from war through love to redemption.

In 1942, with a black-market chicken tucked under his arm by his mother, Leo Marks left his father's famous bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, and went off to fight the war. He was twenty-two. Soon recognized as a cryptographer of genius, he became head of communications at the Special Operations Executive (SOE), where he revolutionized the codemaking techniques of the Allies and trained some of the most famous agents dropped into occupied Europe. As a top codemaker, Marks had a unique perspective on one of the most fascinating and, until now, little-known aspects of the Second World War. This stunning memoir, often funny, always gripping and acutely sensitive to the human cost of each operation, provides a unique inside picture of the extraordinary SOE organization at work and reveals for the first time many unknown truths about the conduct of the war. SOE was created in July 1940 with a mandate from Winston Churchill to "set Europe ablaze." Its main function was to infiltrate agents into enemy-occupied territory to perform acts of sabotage and form secret armies in preparation for D-Day. Marks's ingenious codemaking innovation was to devise and implement a system of random numeric codes printed on silk. Camouflaged as handkerchiefs, underwear, or coat linings, these codes could be destroyed message by message, and therefore could not possibly be remembered by the agents, even under torture. Between Silk and Cyanide chronicles Marks's obsessive quest to improve the security of agents' codes and how this crusade led to his involvement in some of the war's most dramatic and secret operations. Among the astonishing revelations is his account of the code war between SOE and the Germans in Holland. He also reveals for the first time how SOE fooled the Germans into thinking that a secret army was operating in the Fatherland itself, and how and why he broke the code that General de Gaulle insisted be available only to the Free French. By the end of this incredible tale, truly one of the last great World War II memoirs, it is clear why General Eisenhower credited the SOE, particularly its communications department, with shortening the war by three months. From the difficulties of safeguarding the messages that led to the destruction of the atomic weapons plant at Rjukan in Norway to the surveillance of Hitler's long-range missile base at Peenemünde to the true extent of Nazi infiltration of Allied agents, Between Silk and Cyanide sheds light on one of the least-known but most dramatic aspects of the war. Writing with the narrative flair and vivid characterization of his famous screenplays, Marks gives free rein to his keen sense of the absurd and wry wit without ever losing touch with the very human side of the story. His close relationship with "the White Rabbit" and Violette Szabo -- two of the greatest British agents of the war -- and his accounts of the many others he dealt with result in a thrilling and poignant memoir that celebrates individual courage and endeavor, without losing sight of the human cost and horror of war.

Kát'a Kabanová is both the first Janáček opera to have been performed in Britain and the one which has received the most productions in Britain and the USA. In this book the author brings together letters, early reviews and other documents (most of them translated from Czech for the first time) on the opera's composition and its early performances. A group of key interpretations of the opera ranges from one by the opera's German translator and Janáčeks first biographer Max Brod to specially commissioned essays by Wilfrid Mellers and by David Pountney, producer of the highly successful Welsh National Opera/Scottish Opera Janáček cycle.

Leos Carax is the first book in any language to study the films of this "enfant terrible" of contemporary French cinema. Paris, pop music, "flânerie" and "amour fou," "mannerist" and "neo-baroque" aesthetics, the Nouvelle Vague and contemporary "naturalist" cinema--these key ingredients of the worlds of Carax's four films (including Les Amants du Pont Neuf and Pola X) are examined here. The authors draw on a variety of intellectual sources, from Deleuze's philosophy and Cahiers-based film criticism to the theory of art and literary monographs in order to disentangle the complex web of biographical mythology, formal and intellectual cinematic concerns, flamboyant imagery and intertextual references woven by Carax and his films in the last two decades of the 20th century.

The Operas of Leoš Janáček presents the comprehensive analysis of Leoš Janáček's operas. This book presents a concise account of Janáček's extraordinary musical background and development as an operatic composer. Organized into seven chapters, this book begins with an overview of Janáček's visit to the London Zoo in 1926, which profoundly influenced his very personal compositional style when he recorded the different cries and sounds of animals in musical notation. This text then describes the nature of Janáček's last two operas, which are characterized by emotional stresses, psychological conflicts, and the turbulence of text and music. Other chapters describe pastoral symphony of the opera The Cunning Little Vixen, which is a touching and sincere tribute to the basic unity of all living creatures of nature. This book discusses as well the characteristic explosive musical prose writing of Janáček. This book is a valuable resource for musicians, instrumentalists, and composers.

Reproduction of the original: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoi

The Psychology of Combat Learn the secrets of tactical psychology The human brain is hard-wired with a primal aversion to killing. Amid the horror of war even the best-trained soldiers can forget their training. Vast effort and countless sums have been spent in the attempt to keep our men fighting. Military psychologist Leo Murray argues that the real question is: How do we make the enemy stop fighting? Weaving together intense first-hand accounts of combat with the hard science of tactical psychology, Murray offers a compelling insight into how war affects the human mind. War Games is both a powerful glimpse through the eyes of our soldiers and an urgent reminder that the future of modern warfare lies in understanding how the enemy thinks. Fascinating and often chilling, this is the story of how psychology wins wars. Leo Murray is a military analyst and former soldier who has spent half his life studying the psychology of armed combat. He has interviewed hundreds of war veterans, young and old, and worked with some shady collections of staff officers and war geeks. "Great insight into how the mind affects military outcomes." SOLDIER