Best Selling Books by Chris Mcnab

Mental Toughness Training examines what it takes to be as mentally fit as a special forces soldier. The book explains why it is equally important to focus on stress management and mental discipline as it is to concentrate on physical exercises, and is an essential guide to testing and improving mental agility and resilience.

With more than 120 black-&-white drawings and with easy-to-follow text, The POW How To Escape Handbook is for anyone who wants to know how to survive in the most stressful of circumstances and emerge a winner. Presented in a handy, pocketsize format, this is a book you could take with you into the field. And it could save your life.

The Elite Forces Wilderness Survival Guide introduces the core skills needed to survive in a wilderness environment. With tips and techniques based on special forces practice, the book is divided into seven convenient chapters, dealing with equipment and clothing, water and plant food, hunting and cooking, shelter and camp skills, dangers, first aid, and navigation. Clearly illustrated throughout, the book offers useful tips on a vast array of topics, including: *packing a survival kit *finding water *foraging for plant food *avoiding poisonous plants *building a snow shelter *making a fire plow *tracking animals *making a bird trap *mountain climbing *controlling bleeding *finding a pulse *navigating without a map With more than 250 easy-to-follow artworks and handy pull-out lists of key tips, The Elite Forces Wilderness Survival Guide is the definitive pocket guide for anyone stranded in the wilderness—it could save your life.

The machine gun story

In 1977, Lufthansa Flight 181 was hijacked by terrorists and flown to Mogadishu, Somalia. Once landed, members of the German special missions group, GSG-9, stormed the plane, killing three of the terrorists and wounding the fourth, while successfully avoiding any major harm to the hostages. This book details the backgrounds of both GSG-9 and the hijackers and offers a detailed analysis of the planning and execution of the mission, codenamed Operation Feuerzauber (Fire Magic), one of the most audacious special forces operations of modern times.

The mobilisation of troops and equipment has always been crucial to winning a war. During the twentieth century, the days of horse-drawn logistics and cavalry charges gradually became a thing of the past, and the age of military vehicles began.This book charts the development of military vehicles from steam-powered tractors to modern main battle tanks. The story reveals how such vehicles have changed the way wars are fought, either by increasing the speed and volume of logistics or troop deployments, or through the application of mobile firepower. The narrative explains key technical innovations from World War I, through the inter-war years to World War II, the Cold War and beyond. It pays homage to outstanding designs and those that are remembered with fondness, including the M3 Lee/Grant, T-34, Panther, Tiger, M1 Abrams, Chieftain and M4 Sherman tanks; the Bren Gun Carrier, the Willys ''Jeep'', the Dodge truck; through to the modern ''Humvee'' and Stryker, and many more.

The Haynes Falklands War Operations Manual looks at the planning and logistics that made the whole operation possible. It considers how the naval Task Force was raised and assembled in rapid time, the adaptation and conversion of the liners QE2, Canberra and Uganda for war service in the South Atlantic, the logistics of the long voyage south, how Ascension Island became a 24/7 staging post and operations ''hub'' for the Task Force, the use of air power (in particular the RAF Harrier and RN Sea Harrier), the RAF’s air-to-air refuelling tanker aircraft that made much of the air component of the operation feasible, the epic Black Buck Vulcan bomber raid on Stanley; ships, landing craft, helicopters, weapons and equipment, and how the re-supply operation kept the fuel, food and ammunition flowing across 7,878 miles of ocean.

Subtitled: The Illustrated History of the Fallschirmjager in World War II. An pictorial record of Germany''s airborne troops, both as they developed as a unit in the run-up to war, and as they were deployed once it had commenced. Rarely-seen images show their spectacular, glider-borne deployments in the Low Countries during the early campaigns of the war in western Europe, their dramatic airdrop and costly seizure of Crete, and their stunning and daring missions at Monte Rotondo and Gran Sasso later in the war. Hdbd., 8 1/2 x 11 1/2, 176 pgs., 264 b&w ill.

On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated. This event sparked off a war that was change the lives of millions of people around the world. More than 70 million military personnel were mobilised, and over 9 million combatants were killed. Entire generations of young men from towns and villages across Europe were wiped out. The conflict drew in the world''s great global powers, including the British Empire, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, the United States and Japan, as well as many other nations. World War I transformed the way in which wars were fought. Cavalry charges and ''staged'' clashes were consigned to history, making way for trench warfare, heavy artillery, machine guns and poison gas. Troops learnt to exist for months in confined spaces and ruined landscapes, fighting horrifying battles to push their line forward by only a few hundred yards. World War I changed the face of European society and politics forever, and set the scene for a subsequent world war. On 11 November 1918, an armistice at last came into effect, and we continue to remember today the moment when the guns fell silent on the Western Front. The World War I Story is the perfect pocket narrative of one of the largest conflicts in human history: the Great War.

Launched in 1947, the AK-47 quickly became the standard Soviet Army rifle and has featured in almost every post-WWII conflict. AK-47 offers a complete, close up, and illustrated account of this incredible weapon. It includes the techniques of maintaining and firing the rifle, and a country-by-country account of the variants and copies produced. Most importantly, the book assesses the impact of the AK-47 on the battlefield, evaluating its performance, ammunition, and tactical usage.

"For most people, the art of survival is all about how to cope when deprived of the comforts of home finding food and building shelter in the wilderness, for instance but there is quite a different set of survival skills required for city living. With danger seeming to lurk around every street corner, coping with the potential threats of a busy and unfamiliar city can pose a real challenge to the uninitiated. How to Survive in the City is an informative guide to overcoming the challenges of urban living, offering the reader a variety of tips and advice on how to be streetwise and overcome everyday problems including how to prevent muggings and avoid confrontations, how to unlock your house and car without keys, how to escape a burning building, how to negotiate public transport, road safety measures, and being alert to terrorist activities. Complete with more than 120 black-and-white illustrations that complement the text, this book is the perfect companion to surviving city life, whether you are a seasoned urban dweller or merely a day visitor."--Amazon.com.

A fascinating insight into the world of World War II bomber operations through contemporary doctrine and training manuals.

Field-tested best practices and considerations for securely migrating data, apps, and services into the cloud Organized with network architects and network operations managers in mind, Secure Cloud Deployment is geared towards those not yet in the cloud and/or only partially in who need a roadmap for planning and migrating securely into the cloud. The book also provides an essential spot-checking guide for those organizations already in the cloud but without airtight security. This practical guide is organized into three main sections: A Cloud Security Model, Inner Workings, and Operational Concerns. Part I details how secure networks are built today, features and concerns, a thorough analysis of cloud solution providers (Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft, etc.), and consideration for moving applications and services into the cloud. Part II details the more technical inner workings of securing data in the cloud, including attack surface reduction, storage, hypervisors, engineering, and best practices for adding to and tailoring cloud systems. Part III goes into the important operational and upkeep concerns, responding to and documenting incidents regarding the cloud, and efficiencies for ongoing maintenance. Secure Cloud Deployment Delivers best practices rooted in successful, secure migrations implemented for high-profile customers, including Netflix, Amazon, Zynga, and more Explains how to deploy securely into the cloud, how to manage that deployment, and how to react to issues when they arise Reveals where data actually goes and how it’s stored there, as well as the new cloud equivalents for functionalities that previously existed on a physical network Provides thorough explanations of cloud services, such as Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft, and others--as well as the kinds of APIs that can be built to work with them Shows how to build additional wrap-around services and security features for more complex control, reporting, and system efficiencies

The US Navy’s fleet of aircraft carriers are at the heart of global American military force. With nuclear-powered oceanic range, complements of nearly 5,000 crew, and typically carrying more than 70 combat aircraft, US carriers can remain on station for months, delivering aerial combat strikes on distant targets around the clock. The Haynes Super Carrier Operations Manual offers unrivaled insights into understanding how a modern US super carrier is operated. The US Navy has given Haynes author Chris McNab and photographer Patrick Bunce official clearance to spend time at sea on one of its ‘Nimitz’ or ‘Gerald R. Ford’ class super carriers. During the visit Chris conducted interviews with key personnel of all major departments, including flight-deck crew, aviators, ordnance officers, engineers, logisticians, operations crew and the captain; while Patrick photographed life above and below decks, with a special focus on the engineering side of carrier aviation often not covered in other publications.

What would Europe have looked like if Nazi Germany had been victorious in World War II? Between 1933 and 1945, Hitler developed a vision for an infrastructure, architecture, race, labour force and Lebensraum - the acquiring of ''living space'' - among many other plans. Some of these were implemented during his leadership as the German Wehrmacht expanded the Nazi sphere of influence, but what were the unrealized plans for a Europe dominated by the Third Reich? A racially based order would have been established across European Russia, with former German soldiers running farms worked on by slave labour. Germany and Japan were to carve up the Soviet Union and Asia between them. Berlin was to be rebuilt as Germania, a world capital city designed on grandiose, neo-classical lines. Arranged in chapters covering topics such as leadership, war, physical infrastructure, empire building, race, culture and weaponry, Germany''s Secret Masterplan in World War II reveals the true scale of Hitler''s vision for a Greater Germany and a world dominated by the Nazi ideology. Packed with easy-to-understand maps, diagrams, graphs and illustrations, Germany''s Secret Masterplan in World War II is an essential reference guide for anyone interested in modern European history.

Elite soldiers must know how to survive in every environment, including if they''re stranded on the harshest ocean. Special Forces units trained to survive at sea are some of the most knowledgeable people in the world when it comes to a survival situation in the ocean. In this book, you will learn some of the techniques these soldiers use to stay alive at sea. You can learn from their training and discover: * what to do when a shark attacks. * how to tell when a storm is coming. * how to swim so that you save energy. * how to signal for help in the middle of the ocean. * how to treat a jellyfish sting. * how to build a raft out of logs or saplings.

The Somme

The evacuation of Britain’s urban children to the countryside was a uniquely emotional decision by the British government during the Second World War. The Pitkin Guide to Evacuees tells the colourful story of this mass exodus. As well as providing a clear narrative of how evacuation policy unfolded during the war, it also gives a deep insight into the experience of those who were evacuated. The personal stories vary greatly. The guide delves into many other elements of the evacuation experience: the practical challenges of housing thousands of displaced children in small villages and towns; the behavioural issues; the effect on the school system; how mothers coped with being separated from their children. Enhanced by superb photographic imagery, here is a complete and accessible reference guide to the mass evacuation of Britain’s children.

From Pripyat in Ukraine to Bodie in California to English villages requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence during World War II, from Greek leper colonies to deserted Italian mountain villages, Abandoned Towns is a fascinating visual history of the mysteries of lost worlds illustrated in 150 striking colour photographs.

Introduces the sport of wrestling and provides information on how to prevent and treat the most common wrestling injuries.

Profiles several legendary creatures from myth and lore.

Britain''s secret war

Twice every year, 150 recruits gather at SAS (the Brit. Special Air Service) hdqtrs. in the U.K. to try to become an SAS soldier. Yet between arriving & receiving the famous SAS badge, stands four months of the toughest military selection process in the world. This book shows you how you can rise to this challenge of mind & body. It covers fitness training & map-&-compass navigation, & then explores the 4-week Selection course itself. Then comes Continuation Training, where the recruits acquire such skills as handling foreign weapons, surviving the jungle, & parachute training. Also the Escape & Evasion test & the Resistance to Interrogation exercise. Also learn about life in the Regiment, incl. the famous Counter Revolutionary Warfare training. illustrated.

Special Acknowledgements and thanks to the following military operations for authenticating this series: The Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill AFB, FL; Army Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, NC; Navy Special Warfare Command, Coronado, CA; Air Force Special Operations Command, Hurlbers Field, FL.

Illustrates the uniforms of the units and irregular forces engaged in combat around the world since 1945.

From volcanoes and lava flows to geysers and geothermal pools, from bird life to whale-watching, from national parks, verdant valleys to inland tundra, and from how waterfalls are used for hydro-electric power to Reykjavik’s city life, Iceland is packed with 200 spectacular colour photographs.