Tameichi Hara descended from Japan’s samurai class. He graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1921 and began a career at sea. When war started with the United States in 1941, Hara was serving as the captain of the destroyer Amatsukaze. He went on to command a destroyer division and participated in major engagements throughout the war. His last assignment at sea was captain of the light cruiser Yahagi tasked with a suicide mission to attack Allied forces during the Battle of Okinawa. The Yahagi was sunk but somehow Hara survived. He was the only Japanese destroyer captain at the start of the war to survive. This book, Japanese Destroyer Captain, are his memoirs.

On 30 April 1980 six Iranian Arabs seized the Iranian Embassy in the center of London and took 26 people hostage. They demanded the release of prisoners in Iran and safe passage out of the United Kingdom. British authorities managed to get five hostages released in return for minor concessions, but time passed, and tensions rose. On the sixth day, the hostage takers killed one of their captives. This killing triggered the British to launch an assault to rescue the remaining hostages. The roughly seventeen-minute assault was carried out by the British Army’s Special Air Service. Since all this took place in the center of London, the six-day siege and assault were viewed by the world. Ben MacIntyre tells the story in, “The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World”.

The A Shau Valley is in the mountainous northwest corner of what used to be South Vietnam. It is right across the border from Laos. Because of its location, the A Shau formed a natural hub for the North Vietnamese Army to move their units and supplies into South Vietnam and threaten the more heavily populated coastal plains. The United States tried multiple times and multiple ways to disrupt what the North Vietnamese were doing. Some of the Vietnam War's heaviest combat ensued. Jay Phillips tells the story in "A Shau: Crucible of the Vietnam War"