Books with author P. Stephen Hardy

Shipwrecked on a South Pacific island, a young US Navy lieutenant waged a one-man war against the JapaneseIn the early hours of July 5, 1943, the destroyer USS Strong was hit by a Japanese torpedo. The powerful weapon broke the destroyer's back, killed dozens of sailors, and sparked raging fires. While accompanying ships were able to take off most of Strong's surviving crewmembers, scores went into the ocean as the once-proud warship sank beneath the waves--and a young officer's harrowing story of survival began.Lieutenant Hugh Barr Miller, a pre-war football star at the University of Alabama, went into the water as the vessel sank. Severely injured, Miller and several others survived three days at sea and eventually landed on a Japanese-occupied island. The survivors found fresh water and a few coconuts, but Miller, suffering from internal injuries and believing he was on the verge of death, ordered the others to go on without him. They reluctantly did do, believing, as Miller did, that he would be dead within hours.But Miller didn't die, and his health improved enough for him to begin searching for food. He also found the enemy--Japanese forces patrolling the island. Miller was determined to survive, and so launched a one-man war against the island's occupiers.Based on official American and Japanese histories, personal memoirs, and the author's exclusive interviews with many of the story's key participants, The Castaway's War is a rousing story of naval combat, bravery, and determination.

The Story of the Middle Ages is a short but comprehensive history of the Middle Ages across Europe and the Byzantine Empire. From the intro: "When Columbus in the year 1492 returned from his voyage of discovery, a keen rivalry began among the Old World nations for the possession of the New World. Expedition followed expedition; Spaniards, Portuguese, French, English, and later the Dutch and Swedes,—all began to strive with one another for the wealth and dominion of the new-found lands; and American history—our own history—begins. But who were these Spaniards and Portuguese, these Englishmen and Frenchmen, these Dutchmen and Swedes? In the old days when the might and power of Rome ruled over the world, we hear nothing of them. Whence had they come? Were they entirely new peoples who had had no part in the old world of the Greeks and Romans? Were they the descendants of the old peoples over whom the Emperors had ruled from the city of the Seven Hills? Or did they arise by a mingling of the old and the new? Then, if they were the result of a mingling, where had the new races dwelt during the long years that Rome was spreading her empire over the known world? When and how had the mingling taken place? What, too, had become of "The Glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome"? Why was America not discovered and settled before? What were the customs, the ideas, the institutions which these peoples brought with them when they settled here? In short, what had been the history and what was the condition of the nations which, after 1492, began the struggle for the mastery of the New World? To such questions it is the aim of this book to give an answer. It will try to show how the power of Rome fell before the attacks of German barbarians, and how, in the long course of the Middle Ages, new peoples, new states, a new civilization, arose on the ruins of the old."

Stephen Harris is a travel journalist whose yen for exploring places off the beaten path led him to North Korea. He had long wondered what might lie within this most mysterious and controversial of countries that mainstream media outlets attack so fiercely. However, preconceptions could never have prepared him for an experience so unexpected in the Hermit Kingdom!Loaded with photos, Traveling Through North Korea promises to entertain and attempts to mitigate an information gap through Harris’s amusing journey. From the rainbow-hued buildings of Pyongyang to the myriad of monuments celebrating egos of the state’s former leaders, this book is full of surprises and quirky facts about the puzzling nation while it humanizes the people. For anyone who has ever been curious about what may lurk just beyond the Demilitarized Zone of the Korean Peninsula, somewhere in the backyard of both Russia and China, Harris serves up a veritable feast for the eyes punctuated with good-natured humor.Let’s have some fun where we’re told there is none!

Everything was going as planned at The Great Plane Show until the main event. The show's biggest and strongest plane, Big Plane, climbed high in the air then unexpectedly sent out a call for help to all the planes down below. No plane in the Great Plane Show was as big or strong as Big Plane. What could anyone do to help the best plane of them all? Find out if a small plane with a big heart had the courage to go to new heights to save his struggling hero.

Shipwrecked on a South Pacific island, a young US Navy lieutenant waged a one-man war against the JapaneseIn the early hours of July 5, 1943, the destroyer USS Strong was hit by a Japanese torpedo. The powerful weapon broke the destroyer's back, killed dozens of sailors, and sparked raging fires. While accompanying ships were able to take off most of Strong's surviving crewmembers, scores went into the ocean as the once-proud warship sank beneath the waves--and a young officer's harrowing story of survival began.Lieutenant Hugh Barr Miller, a pre-war football star at the University of Alabama, went into the water as the vessel sank. Severely injured, Miller and several others survived three days at sea and eventually landed on a Japanese-occupied island. The survivors found fresh water and a few coconuts, but Miller, suffering from internal injuries and believing he was on the verge of death, ordered the others to go on without him. They reluctantly did do, believing, as Miller did, that he would be dead within hours.But Miller didn't die, and his health improved enough for him to begin searching for food. He also found the enemy--Japanese forces patrolling the island. Miller was determined to survive, and so launched a one-man war against the island's occupiers.Based on official American and Japanese histories, personal memoirs, and the author's exclusive interviews with many of the story's key participants, The Castaway's War is a rousing story of naval combat, bravery, and determination.