{"title":"Larry Engelmann","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"tears-before-the-rain-book-larry-engelmann-9780195053869","title":"Tears Before the Rain","description":"CBS camera-man Mike Marriott was on the last plane to escape from Danang before it fell in the spring of 1975. The scene was pure chaos: thousands of panic-stricken Vietnamese storming the airliner, soldiers shooting women and children to get aboard first, refugees being trampled to death. Marriott remembers standing at the door of the aft stairway, which was gaping open as the plane took off. \"There were five Vietnamese below me on the steps. As the nose of the aircraft came up, because of the force and speed of the aircraft, the Vietnamese began to fall off. One guy managed to hang on for a while, but at about 600 feet he let go and just floated off--just like a skydiver.... What was going through my head was, I've got to survive this, and at the same time, I've got to capture this on film. This is the start of the fall of a country. This country is gone. This is history, right here and now.\"\u003cbr\u003e In Tears Before the Rain, a stunning oral history of the fall of South Vietnam, Larry Engelmann has gathered together the testimony of seventy eyewitnesses (both American and Vietnamese) who, like Mike Marriott, capture the feel of history \"right here and now.\" We hear the voices of nurses, pilots, television and print media figures, the American Ambassador Graham Martin, the CIA station chief Thomas Polgar, Vietnamese generals, Amerasian children, even Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers. Through this extraordinary range of perspectives, we experience first-hand the final weeks before Saigon collapsed, from President Thieu's cataclysmic withdrawal from Pleiku and Kontum, (Colonel Le Khac Ly, put in command of the withdrawal, recalls receiving the order: \"I opened my eyes large, large, large. I thought I wasn't hearing clearly\") to the last-minute airlift of Americans from the embassy courtyard and roof (\"I remember when the bird ascended,\" says Stuart Herrington, who left on one of the last helicopters, \"It banked, and there was the Embassy, the parking lot, the street lights. And the silence\").\u003cbr\u003e Touching, heroic, harrowing, and utterly unforgettable, these dramatic narratives illuminate one of the central events of modern history. \"It was like being at Waterloo,\" concludes Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. \"It was so important, so historical. And today it is still very obvious that we Americans have not recovered from Vietnam....Nothing else in my lifetime was as important as that--as important as Vietnam.\"","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49588854653201,"sku":"GOR009515645","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50970889093393,"sku":"CIN0195053869VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51332244406545,"sku":"CIN0195053869G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51415537254673,"sku":"CIN0195053869A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195053869.jpg?v=1751389335"},{"product_id":"daughter-of-china-book-larry-engelmann-9780747262787","title":"Daughter of China","description":"This is the dramatic story of Meihong Xu, a remarkable woman trained as an elite member of the Chinese Army, who fell in love with the visiting American professor on whom she had been told to spy. DAUGHTER OF CHINA is the story of a love affair which changed two people's lives forever, but, more than that, it is an unforgettable depiction of life inside the rigid walls of Communist China.  Interspersed with flashbacks to Meihong's childhood and to her family's painful history, this is a vivid and often shocking tale of humanity triumphing over brutality.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49611056251153,"sku":"GOR002541709","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50098532548881,"sku":"CINB000OGN83GA","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50732238078225,"sku":"GOR002189775","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50776942706961,"sku":"CINB000OGN83GG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52958214226193,"sku":"CIN0747262780VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0747262780.jpg?v=1750945339"},{"product_id":"they-said-that-book-larry-engelmann-9781580631105","title":"They Said That!","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49636039524625,"sku":"GOR009080485","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/158063110X.gif?v=1750991435"},{"product_id":"goddess-and-the-american-girl-book-larry-engelmann-9780195043631","title":"The Goddess and the American Girl","description":"Better known and more admired in the 1920s and '30s than any politician, movie star, or royal family member, Suzanne Lenglen, lionized by Frenchmen as The Goddess, and Helen Wills, called Queen Helen or simply The American Girl, revolutionized tennis with their power and grace and beauty, and in the process virtually invented the concept of celebrity athlete. This superb dual biography--the first of either player to appear in English--follows their careers from the time they first set foot on a tennis court through their ascent and descent on the international circuit. \u003cbr\u003e Suzanne Lenglen was introduced to the game at age eleven by her father, an overzealous French businessman who is credited with adapting tennis to women's play. Papa Lenglen trained his daughter rigorously and throughout her career was her mentor and coach, providing sips of cognac at key moments and watching her every move with a stern parental eye. Lenglen, known by her trademark white ermine cape and diamond-studded headband, became the first non-English-speaking woman to win the Wimbledon singles championship--a title she held six times between 1919 and 1925. But to her fellow Frenchmen she was more than a great athlete: she was a symbol of resurgent French pride after the costly bloodshed of World War I, a national hero on the level of Joan of Arc.\u003cbr\u003e Helen Wills beat Lenglen's Wimbledon record although she lost the only match in which they came face to face. In 1938, Wills set a record of eight Wimbledon wins--unparalleled until Martina Navratilova tied it last year. Wills dominated women's tennis as few athletes in any sport have done, winning \u003cem\u003eevery\u003c\/em\u003e singles match she entered from 1926 to 1933. Like Lenglen, Wills was introduced to tennis by her father and played a man's game. But there the similarities end. Whereas Lenglen was homely and prone to nervous fits, Wills was a great American beauty whose coolness on the court earned her the name Little Miss Poker face. She was America's heartthrob, a California girl whose health and good looks defined the American New Woman. \u003cbr\u003e Engelmann brilliantly brings to life not only the women, their families, and friends, but the whole international sports world of the era. Filled with anecdotes about tennis clubs and the famous of the day--including Charlie Chaplin, Joseph Kennedy, and Bill Tilden--it is at once sports history, social history, and entertaining biography.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50307342336273,"sku":"CIN0195043634VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51421314679057,"sku":"GOR008484550","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53133918830865,"sku":"CIN0195043634A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195043634.jpg?v=1751037478"},{"product_id":"tears-before-the-rain-book-larry-engelmann-9780306807893","title":"Tears Before The Rain","description":"In this stunning history, soldiers and civilians, both American and Vietnamese, tell what it was like in the spring of 1975 as Hanoi carried out its final, successful offensive against the Republic of Vietnam. Generals, ambassadors, pilots, marines, politicians, doctors, seamen, flight attendants, journalists, children, and even Vietcong soldiers describe the growing demoralization, panic, and chaos as the collapse gained momentum. American survivors recall with raw emotions the escape of the last airliner out of Danang, the chilling helicopter airlift from the U.S. embassy roof in Saigon, and the painful abandonment of their South Vietnamese allies. Former boat people relate their hair-raising encounters with Thai pirates and in a new postscript, an American government official describes the resettlement of 130,000 Vietnamese refugees in America over the ensuing months. Touching, heroic, and unforgettable, these dramatic narratives illuminate the closing act of one of the central events of modern history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50348120572177,"sku":"CIN0306807890A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000739234065,"sku":"NIN9780306807893","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52149497626897,"sku":"NLS9780306807893","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0306807890.jpg?v=1750738810"},{"product_id":"intemperance-book-larry-engelmann-9780029095201","title":"Intemperance","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53077507932433,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53077508096273,"sku":"GOR010767761","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780029095201.jpg?v=1769781059"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-larry-engelmann.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}