Badass: Ultimate Deathmatch: Skull-Crushing True Stories of the Most Hardcore Duels, Showdowns, Fistfights, Last Stands, Suicide Charges, and Military Engagements of All Time

by Ben Thompson Narrated by Stephen Bowlby

Overview

Unstoppable true stories of the most hardcore showdowns, last stands, and military engagements of all time! When only one can live, it's an Ultimate Deathmatch!

This ain't no table tennis. You're not here to skip rope with your niece. You're here to witness the catastrophically awesome exploits of history's greatest badasses. Not only that, you're here to see what happens when badasses collide, when glory and doom hang in the balance, when two men enter one man leaves. If you dare listen, you'll hear the stories of . . .

Cyrus the Great
The king who forged the Persian Empire with blood, steel, and a few thousand rampaging camels

St. Moses the Black
The Patron Saint of Asskickings, who taught bandit thugs a lesson in turning the other cheek

The War of Aracau
The only successful indigenous resistance to Spanish colonization, led by a Mapuche warrior who strapped blades to his arms after the conquistadors sawed off his hands

The Rani of Jhansi
The Indian warrior princess who took on the British crown with a sword in each hand and her baby strapped to her back

Tango Mike-Mike
One lone Green Beret single-handedly rescues an entire Special Forces squad from a pinned-down position deep behind enemy lines in Cambodia

The Charge of the Australian Light Horse
Eight hundred horsemen armed with bayonets embark on the last great cavalry charge in history, rushing toward trenches filled with machine guns, rifles, and huge bullets

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Continuing with his theme of profiling badasses in all their badassery (his stated aim here is to recount “forty of my all-time favorite beatdowns from history”), Thompson marches on, recounting epic battles, standoffs, and skirmishes from antiquity through modern times in this testosterone-fueled collection. Beginning with the tale of Cyrus the Great’s 6th century B.C.E. attack on Lydia, Thompson (Badass: Birth of a Legend) covers all manner of conflicts, ranging from large-scale battles (e.g., Operation Desert Storm) to one-man-standing gunfights (like 77-year-old Don Alejo Garza Tamez’s shootout with Mexican gangsters in 2010), peppering the bloody tales with plenty of pop culture references and liberal doses of sarcasm. This approach, coupled with the brief summations of the battles, makes for engaging though wearying reading, best consumed in small doses. But that’s not to say the book isn’t wildly entertaining or well written. Thompson’s unabashed enthusiasm for his material (“Scythed war chariots are probably some of the most badass and most underappreciated weapons in all of ancient warfare.”) is palpable and infectious, and his research is admirable. Fans of mayhem—mythical and real—as well as military strategists will find this to be a worthwhile investment. 40 b&w illus. Agents: Farley Chase, Chase Literary Agency; Sean Daily, Hotchkiss and Associates. (Mar.)

Kirkus Reviews

History for the Ted Nugent set--a follow-up to Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live (2009). In order for a historical moment--in amateur historian Thompson's hands, almost always a desperate battle--to be worthy of consideration in this catalog of mayhem, it has to involve high stakes, impossible odds and a blaze of glory. On the last point: "The difference between a heroic victory, a valiant last stand, and a crushing defeat is often measured by the badly outnumbered side's ability to launch a balls-out attack at exactly the right moment." That's probably not the way they'd phrase it at West Point, but Thompson's compendium includes some sterling examples of bravery under fire, some very little known. One, for instance, involved a Russian paratroop unit that fought nearly to the last man in Chechnya, taking out nearly 10 foes for every paratrooper lost. "The Chechens were so impressed by this bold act of bravery," writes Thompson, "that they named a street after the Russian unit in the Chechen capital of Grozny--no small gesture considering how much these two groups hate each other." True enough. Many of the author's other case studies leave their names emblazoned on streets and other places, from Alcibiades to Napoleon to Wyatt Earp, but others are nearly forgotten--e.g., the Nazi fighter ace who later became a consultant to the U.S. Air Force and the unfortunate participants in what Thompson judges to be "history's dumbest battle," evidence of which the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire later discovered and was "left trying to piece together…like those dudes in The Hangover." The maundering rhetoric, all "dudes" and "balls-out" and "badass," gets old fast, but Thompson's grasp of history is solid. Think of it as Thucydides for video gamers.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173599827
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/12/2013
Series:	Badass
Edition description:	Unabridged

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