Magnificent Bastards

On April 29, 1968, the North Vietnamese Army is spotted less than four miles from the U.S. Marines’ Dong Ha Combat Base. Intense fighting develops in nearby Dai Do as the 2d Battalion, 4th Marines, known as “the Magnificent Bastards,” struggles to eject NVA forces from this strategic position. Yet the BLT 2/4 Marines defy the brutal onslaught. Pressing forward, America’s finest warriors rout the NVA from their fortress-hamlets–often in deadly hand-to-hand combat. At the end of two weeks of desperate, grinding battles, the Marines and the infantry battalion supporting them are torn to shreds. But against all odds, they beat back their savage adversary. The Magnificent Bastards captures that gripping conflict in all its horror, hell, and heroism. “Superb . . . among the best writing on the Vietnam War . . . Nolan has skillfully woven operational records and oral history into a fascinating narrative that puts the reader in the thick of the action.” –Jon T. Hoffman, author of Chesty “Real and gripping . . . combat with all the warts on.” –Lieutenant General Victor H. Krulak, USMC (Ret.)

There was a single, sharp tap of the drums followed by a rapid succession of beats as the crushed velvet curtains spread and the audience gasped: for Tran had taken her position in the box and was even now being secured as Williams struck a gunfighter pose and his hand hovered next to his weapon. “Ladies and gentlemen, I think it goes without saying,” said the announcer over the speaker system, “Do not try this at home.” Williams relaxed his entire body even as his mind cycled through the calculations—altitude, the breeze, humidity, temperature, the curvature of the earth, the spinning of the earth … It was, like music, a largely mathematical proposition; a cold equation he’d had a gift for ever since he could remember, ever since he was a boy with a Daisy BB gun in the backyard of their southern California home. He focused on the knife blade as the balloons to each side of it warbled in the breeze. It was a funny thing, sharpshooting, so utterly unlike music, in that each time he did it he felt like he was doing it for the first time, felt like he was starting over from scratch. With music his fingers just automatically found the frets, just instantly knew where to begin and where to end; he never felt as though he were lost in a vortex of potentialities, never doubted his ability to perform. But sharpshooting was a different beast altogether. With sharpshooting he had to call on something outside of himself as well as from within—something which was not his to control. Something which either kissed him with its ghostly lips or turned away with perfect indifference—like love itself, he supposed. Or God. And then the drum taps stopped and he was alone with the breeze, and it was time to make the intuitive leap which would set the bullet in motion. And as he breathed out and drew his revolver and squeezed its trigger softer than he would a daisy, he knew, even before the crack! and the ka-chink! and the pop of the balloons, that the projectile had found its target. That it had found the slim blade and split like an atom—becoming two loaves rather than one—two soft but lethal slugs, which had spread like shrapnel in the Fresno heat and ruptured the red balloons—releasing their air in a vacuum-like rush and causing the audience to gasp and to cheer. And then his wife was there, having loosed her mock bonds and scrambled out of the tall wooden box (with its crushed velvet curtains and bulletproof glass), and she’d bowed to the audience before embracing him like the wind, and he had kissed her as he always did after completing their final act—when air raid sirens sounded and he looked at the sky, which had darkened with a storm front as fast-moving as it was inexplicable ...

A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar Why do we say “I am reading a catalog” instead of “I read a catalog”? Why do we say “do” at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Language distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history. Covering such turning points as the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest, and the Germanic invasions that started it all during the fifth century ad, John McWhorter narrates this colorful evolution with vigor. Drawing on revolutionary genetic and linguistic research as well as a cache of remarkable trivia about the origins of English words and syntax patterns, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue ultimately demonstrates the arbitrary, maddening nature of English— and its ironic simplicity due to its role as a streamlined lingua franca during the early formation of Britain. This is the book that language aficionados worldwide have been waiting for (and no, it’s not a sin to end a sentence with a preposition).

Comic genius Rich Hall introduces a series of magnificent bastards and lost souls in this hilarious collection of tall tales. Meet the man who vacuums bewildered prairie dogs out of their burrows; a frustrated werewolf who roams the streets of Soho getting mistaken for Brian Blessed; a smug carbon-neutral eco-couple; a teenage girl who invites 45,000 MySpace friends to a house party; the author of a business book entitled Highly Successful Secrets to Standing on a Corner Holding Up a Golf Sale Sign and a man whose attempts to teach softball to a group of indolent British advertising executives sparks an international crisis.

Both a uniquely intimate look at what makes a sniper tick and a harrowing read filled with dramatic war tales, Trigger Men is a book about killing and what it takes to be the ultimate warrior. Hans Halberstadt takes readers deeper inside the elusive world of snipers than ever before, from recruitment and training to the brutality of the killing fields. Mixed into the thrilling narrative, for the first time ever in their own words, American combat snipers talk about what it is like to kill a man and what it takes to become one of the elite. Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews, Halberstadt gets inside the sniper mind and shows how Shadow Team confidence led to success that led to even more aggressive operations. Readers will learn how snipers think and interact as a team, how missions are planned and executed, how the weapons work, and even what happens when a bullet strikes its target.

Located between the Blue Ridge and the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, Smyth County has had a profound effect on many aspects of local, state, American, and world history. In Images of America: Smyth County, take a journey back through time and visit the town recently named the "Most Historical Spot in America." Travel across the homestead of the first Virginians, who fought the first recorded battle of the new land, and find out how Smyth County is rewriting the history books. See the racetrack in Smyth County where the "Babe Ruth of NASCAR" took the checkered flag. Tour Civil War sites and homes where Stoneman's Raiders took refuge during battles for the most valuable site of the Confederacy.