Лучшие книги Дэмиена Льюиса

Ее преданность и верность спасли жизнь сотням людей.

Поразительный дар этой собаки подарил спасение многим людям, а ее любовь и преданность помогали выжить, когда надежды уже не было...
Крохотный щенок родился накануне войны. Английские моряки спасли его от горькой участи. Вскоре маленькая пушистая Джуди стала талисманом их корабля. Она чувствовала приближение опасности и предупреждала моряков.
Когда экипаж корабля попал в плен, враги хотели убить собаку. Но Джуди выжила и тайком пробралась в лагерь для пленных — к своим! Вместе с людьми она жила в лагерном аду и дарила морякам радость...

Бывший военный репортер и популярный британский писатель и сценарист Дэмиен Льюис, автор нескольких мировых бестселлеров, среди которых «Джуди: четвероногий герой», и бывший солдат ВВС США Джейсон Морган вместе рассказывают реальную историю удивительного пса по кличке Нэпал.

Когда чудом выживший во время неудачной спецоперации Джейсон многие месяцы балансировал между жизнью и смертью на больничной койке, где-то уже подрастал его будущий друг — черный как уголь маленький лабрадор. Его выбрали одного из многих, чтобы воспитать помощника и компаньона для людей с особыми потребностями и вырастить пса, навыки которого трудно оценить деньгами. Встреча с ним изменила жизнь прикованного к инвалидному креслу Джейсона, одинокого отца троих сыновей. Из измученного болью инвалида стать опорой и гордостью для своих детей, тренером футбольной команды, участником Игр воинов и марафона, гостем телепередач и Белого Дома — и везде вместе с верным Нэпалом рассказывать о том, каким удивительным чудом может стать дружба человека и собаки — в трогательной, вдохновляющей истории Джейсона Моргана и четвероногих воспитанников «Собак-помощников».

Singer. Actress. Beauty. Spy. During WWII, Josephine Baker, the world's richest and most glamorous entertainer, was an Allied spy in Occupied France.

Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all “negroes and Jews.” Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy.

In Agent Josephine, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer’s life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers—a cover for her spying work—Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served—the US, France, and Britain.

Drawing on a plethora of new historical material and rigorous research, including previously undisclosed letters and journals, Lewis upends the conventional story of Josephine Baker, explaining why she fully deserves her unique place in the French Panthéon.

From the award-winning historian, war reporter, and author Damien Lewis (Zero Six Bravo, Judy) comes the incredible true story of the top-secret "butcher-and-bolt" black ops units Prime Minister Winston Churchill tasked with stopping the unstoppable German war machine. Criminals, rogues, and survivalists, the brutal tactics and grit of these "deniables" would define a military unit the likes of which the world had never seen.
When France fell to the Nazis in 1940, Churchill declared that Britain would resist the advance of the German army--alone if necessary. Churchill commanded the Special Operations Executive to secretly develop of a very special kind of military unit that would operate on their own initiative deep behind enemy lines. The units would be licensed to kill, fully deniable by the British government, and a ruthless force to meet the advancing Germans.
The very first of these "butcher-and-bolt" units--the innocuously named Maid Honour Force--was led by Gus March-Phillipps, a wild British eccentric of high birth, and an aristocratic, handsome, and bloodthirsty young Danish warrior, Anders Lassen. Amped up on amphetamines, these assorted renegades and sociopaths undertook the very first of Churchill's special operations--a top-secret, high-stakes mission to seize Nazi shipping in the far-distant port of Fernando Po, in West Africa.
Though few of these early desperadoes survived WWII, they took part in a series of fascinating, daring missions that changed the course of the war. It was the first stirrings of the modern special-ops team, and all of the men involved would be declared war heroes when it was all over.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare focuses on a dozen of these extraordinary men, weaving their stories of brotherhood, comradely, and elite soldiering into a gripping narrative yarn, from the earliest missions to Anders Larssen's tragic death, just weeks before the end of the war.

"For years, Suraya Sadeed has worked tirelessly to help the people of her war-scarred homeland. This terrific memoir is the story of her struggles, her sacrifices, and her hopes. It is the moving life story of a remarkable woman who has overcome personal tragedy and has made it her single-minded mission to bring hope, relief, and a measure of happiness to the brutalized women and children of Afghanistan." --Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner

"I read this book in one gulp. I couldn't put it down. Suraya Sadeed is an amazing woman who has done what few others have dared, or cared enough, to do. Her life is inspiring, and so is her life story--this riveting, clear-eyed book." --Mir Tamim Ansary, author of West of Kabul, East of New York

"Wisecracking beneath her burka, [Sadeed] talks her way into horrific refugee camps, creates a clinic for women (they must skulk in by a secret door) and illegally starts a girls' school in a windowless basement. This former businesswoman turned full-time activist lives what she fervently believes: that education is more powerful than ‘the bullet and the bomb.'" --More

"�an adventure story with heart that tells Sadeed's (the founder of the charity Help the Afghan Children) inspiring fight to bring aid, education, and peace training to Afghan citizens." --East Bay Express

From her first humanitarian visit to Afghanistan in 1994, Suraya Sadeed has been personally delivering relief and hope to Afghan orphans and refugees, to women and girls in inhuman situations deemed too dangerous for other aid workers or for journalists. Her memoir of these missions, Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse, is as unconventional as the woman who has lived it. This is no humanitarian missive; it is an adventure story with heart.

To help the Afghan people, Suraya has flown in a helicopter piloted by a man who was stoned beyond reason. She has traveled through mountain passes on horseback alongside mules, teenage militiamen, and Afghan leaders. She has stared defiantly into the eyes of members of the Taliban and of the Mujahideen who were determined to slow or stop her. She has hidden and carried $100,000 in aid, strapped to her stomach, into ruined villages. She has built clinics. She has created secret schools for Afghan girls. She has dedicated the second half of her life to the education and welfare of Afghan women and children, founding the organization Help the Afghan Children (HTAC) to fund her efforts.

Suraya was born the daughter of the governor of Kabul amid grand walls, beautiful gardens, and peace. In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, she fled to the United States with her husband, their young daughter, their I-94 papers, and little else. In America, she became the workaholic owner of a prosperous real estate company, enjoying all the worldly comforts anyone could want, but when a personal tragedy struck in the early 1990s, Suraya seriously questioned how she was living and soon sharply changed the direction of her life.

Now, in Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse, she shares her story of passion, courage, and love, painting a complex portrait of Afghanistan, its people, and its foreign visitors that defies every stereotype and invites us all to contribute to the lives of others and to hope.