Donovan Webster

In the tradition of Band of Brothers and Anthony Beevor’s Stalingrad, Donovan Webster’s The Burma Road vividly recreates one of the astonishing and important events of the Second World War – and the basis for the film The Bridge over the River Kwai. With gripping prose, Webster follows the breathtaking adventures of the Allied ‘Hump’ pilots who flew hair-raising missions over the Himalayas delivering food and supplies to the 200,000 Chinese labourers charged with creating an overland link with the outside world. For the first time, we learn of the war in Burma from the perspective of the of the soldiers who fought and died there – the bravery, hardships and fears that motivated them to risk everything to avoid a full Japanese occupancy of China. Touching, moving and riveting, Webster’s account of this gruelling and arduous campaign is a brilliant and important history, as well as an epic adventure story. ‘A compelling narrative . . . The opposing armies pursue one another through tiger-infested jungles, plagued by leeches as they slog miserably from firefight to firefight. This is great material and Webster handles it well’ Los Angeles Times

This all-access, inside-out view of what the American occupation of Iraq really looks like on the ground is the story of two young Americans who went to Baghdad without any real plan and discovered they weren't the only ones. Underqualified but ingenious, Ray and Jeff found work with the Coalition Provisional Authority providing humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people amid an appalling atmosphere of corruption, incompetence, and horror. Gritty and irreverent, this is a wild ride inside the Red Zone and a strikingly original portrait of the real Iraq.

A remarkable new account of the "Burma Road" chronicles the remarkable effort by 200,000 Chinese laborers to build a seven-hundred-mile road through the jungle to Rangoon, Burma, in order to keep the Chinese supplied throughout the war with Japan and the subsequent air supply campaign after the road fell to the Japanese. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.