Major Matthew Carr is a professional soldier who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. When faced with a cancerous invasion of his body, Matthew used the expert training he learnt in the Australian Army as a strategy to wage his own fierce and relentless battle with an enemy force. In Battle Scars we learn that the main principles employed by militaries in the conduct of Counter Insurgency Operations can be applied to modern life as much as fighting cancer: 'In January 2002 I was 26, 10-foot tall and bullet proof. Not only well trained and well prepared for war, I was looking for a fight. That same month I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. I suddenly found myself in a battle that I had not been expecting. It was not the type of fight I had been hoping for.'

Battle Scars: A Soldier's Strategy for Fighting Cancer

Carr, Matthew

Jane Curry

"A thrilling quest for justice... [A] novel that is as exciting as it is enlightening from its first pages to its satisfying end.” —The New York Times Book Review “A page-turner in the proper sense… Mr. Carr has written a gripping and enjoyable novel.” —The Wall Street Journal The gripping story of the dangerous high-stakes worlds of politics and religion in sixteenth-century Spain as a mysterious Muslim killer retaliates against the Catholic Church. In March 1584, the priest of Belamar de la Sierra, a small town in Aragon near the French border, is murdered in his own church. Most of the town’s inhabitants are Moriscos, former Muslims who converted to Catholicism. Anxious to avert a violent backlash on the eve of a royal visit, an adviser to King Philip II appoints local magistrate Bernardo de Mendoza to investigate. A soldier and humanist, Mendoza doesn’t always live up to the moral standards expected of court officials, but he has a reputation for incorruptibility. From the beginning, Mendoza finds almost universal hatred for the priest. And it isn’t long before he’s drawn into a complex and dangerous world in which greed, fanaticism, and state policy overlap. And as the killings continue, Mendoza's investigation is overshadowed by the real prospect of an ethnic and religious civil war. By turns an involving historical thriller and a novel with parallels to our own time, The Devils of Cardona is an unexpected and compelling read.

The Devils of Cardona

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Riverhead Books

British & Irish

"A thrilling quest for justice... [A] novel that is as exciting as it is enlightening from its first pages to its satisfying end.” —The New York Times Book Review   “A page-turner in the proper sense… Mr. Carr has written a gripping and enjoyable novel.” —The Wall Street JournalThe gripping story of the dangerous high-stakes worlds of politics and religion in sixteenth-century Spain as a mysterious Muslim killer retaliates against the Catholic Church.  In March 1584, the priest of Belamar de la Sierra, a small town in Aragon near the French border, is murdered in his own church. Most of the town’s inhabitants are Moriscos, former Muslims who converted to Catholicism. Anxious to avert a violent backlash on the eve of a royal visit, an adviser to King Philip II appoints local magistrate Bernardo de Mendoza to investigate. A soldier and humanist, Mendoza doesn’t always live up to the moral standards expected of court officials, but he has a reputation for incorruptibility. From the beginning, Mendoza finds almost universal hatred for the priest. And it isn’t long before he’s drawn into a complex and dangerous world in which greed, fanaticism, and state policy overlap. And as the killings continue, Mendoza's investigation is overshadowed by the real prospect of an ethnic and religious civil war. By turns an involving historical thriller and a novel with parallels to our own time, The Devils of Cardona is an unexpected and compelling read.

The Devils of Cardona (Thorndike Press Large Print Historica Fiction)

Thorndike Press Large Print

The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism

A dramatic reframing of our troubled present against a century full of striking historical parallels. In 1881, a small group of Russian revolutionaries calling themselves "terrorists" assassinated Tsar Alexander II in a spectacular bombing attack in St. Petersburg. Far from being psychopathic murderers, these men and women viewed their actions as a just response to tyranny. The violence in Russia launched a crucial but poorly understood chapter in modern political history. With extraordinary narrative sweep, investigative journalist Matthew Carr unearths the complex realities of terrorist violence and its indelible impact on nations as different as Italy, Argentina, France, Algeria, Ireland, Russia, Japan, and the United States. Spanning over a century of world history, The Infernal Machine reveals stunning similarities in societies' responses to terrorism despite profound political and cultural differences. Again and again, Carr demonstrates that the true impact of terrorism has been felt in the overreactions of government and the media to acts of political violence, as rulers have consistently seized on terrorist attacks as a pretext for a massive counterassault, sacrificing civil liberties and curtailing democratic institutions in the name of security. Includes historical accounts of: IRA, Mau Mau, Red Brigades, Baader-Meinhof Gang, PLO, National Liberation Front of Algeria, The Weathermen, ETA/Basque separatists, Carlos the Jackal, Hezbollah, The Tamil Tigers, Al-Qaeda.

History

World

The New Press

In April 1609, King Philip III of Spain signed an edict denouncing the Muslim inhabitants of Spain as heretics, traitors, and apostates. Later that year, the entire Muslim population of Spain was given three days to leave Spanish territory, on threat of death. In a brutal and traumatic exodus, entire families and communities were obliged to abandon homes and villages where they had lived for generations, leaving their property in the hands of their Christian neighbors. In Aragon and Catalonia, Muslims were escorted by government commissioners who forced them to pay whenever they drank water from a river or took refuge in the shade. For five years the expulsion continued to grind on, until an estimated 300,000 Muslims had been removed from Spanish territory, nearly 5 percent of the total population. By 1614 Spain had successfully implemented what was then the largest act of ethnic cleansing in European history, and Muslim Spain had effectively ceased to exist. Blood and Faith is celebrated journalist Matthew Carr’s riveting chronicle of this virtually unknown episode, set against the vivid historical backdrop of the history of Muslim Spain. Here is a remarkable window onto a little-known period in modern Europe—a rich and complex tale of competing faiths and beliefs, of cultural oppression and resistance against overwhelming odds.

Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain

Americas

A highly accessible account of the history of terrorism that places 9/11 and al-Qaeda in historical context. Today, political violence has become the scourge of our world and terrorism is routinely described as a uniquely modern evil. Yet however unprecedented in scope the new terrorist organizations might appear, Matthew Carr argues in this definitive history of terrorism that they are merely offshoots of a spectacular bombing in 1881: the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II by terrorists...or were they freedom fighters? Thus begins a narrative of extraordinary sweep that Publishers Weekly called "engrossing, unsettling" and the Boston Globe praised as "brave and wise" and "a book for the ages." In The Infernal Machine, Carr unearths the complex realities of terrorist violence and its indelible impact on nations as different as Italy, Argentina, France, Algeria, Ireland, Russia, Japan, and the United States. Spanning over a century of world history, The Infernal Machine reveals stunning similarities in societies' responses to terrorism despite profound political and cultural differences. Carr demonstrates again and again that the true impact of terrorism has been felt in the overreactions of government and the media to acts of political violence. This "encyclopedic and diagnostic...primer for our frightening times" (Edmonton Journal) allows us to see our current predicament against a background of striking historical parallels.

A centuries-old story with remarkable contemporary resonance, Blood and Faith is celebrated journalist Matthew Carr’s riveting and richly detailed” (Choice) chronicle of what was, by 1614, the largest act of ethnic cleansing in European history. Months after King Philip III of Spain signed an edict in 1609 denouncing the Muslim inhabitants of Spain as heretics, traitors, and apostates, the entire Muslim population of Spain was given three days to leave Spanish territory, on threat of death. In the brutal and traumatic exodus that followed, entire families and communities were forced to abandon homes and villages where they had lived for generations, leaving their property in the hands of their Christian neighbors. By 1613, an estimated 300,000 Muslims had been removed from Spanish territory. Blood and Faith presents a remarkable window onto a little known period of modern Europe—a complex tale of competing faiths and beliefs, cultural oppression, and resistance against over-whelming odds that sheds new light on national identity and Islam.

Europe

On the militarized Turkish-Greek border, Afghan migrants brave minefields to cross into Europe—only to be summarily ejected by Greek border guards. At Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish enclaves in North Africa, migrants are turned back with razor wire and live ammunition. Deportees from the U.K. and France have died of "positional asphyxia" on deportation flights, strapped to chairs, their mouths sealed with tape. In a brilliant and shocking account, Fortress Europe tells the story of how the world’s most affluent region—and history’s greatest experiment with globalization—has become an immigration war zone, where tens of thousands have died in a human rights crisis that has gone largely unnoticed by the U.S. media. Journalist Matthew Carr brings to life these remarkable human dramas, based on extensive interviews and firsthand reporting from the hot zones of Europe’s immigration battles. Speaking with key European policy makers, police, soldiers on the front lines, immigrant rights activists, and an astonishing range of migrants themselves, Carr offers a lucid account both of the broad issues at stake in the crisis and its exorbitant human costs.

Fortress Europe: Dispatches from a Gated Continent

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

To know what war is, one should follow our tracks,” General William T. Sherman once wrote to his wife, describing the devastation left by his armies in Georgia. Sherman’s Ghosts is an investigation of the "tracks" left by the wars fought by the American military in the 150 years since Sherman's infamous March to the Sea.” Sherman’s Ghosts opens with an epic retelling of General Sherman’s fateful decision to turn his sights on the South’s civilian population in order to break the back of the Confederacy. Acclaimed journalist Matthew Carr then exposes how this strategy became the central preoccupation of war planners in the twentieth century and beyond, offering a stunning and lucid assessment of the impact Sherman’s slash-and-burn policies have had on subsequent wars, including in the Philippines, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and even Iraq and Afghanistan. In riveting accounts of military campaigns and in the words and writings of American fighting men and military strategists, Carr finds ample and revealing evidence of Sherman’s long shadow. Sherman’s Ghosts is a rare reframing of how we understand our violent history and a call to action for those who hope to change it.

Sherman's Ghosts: Soldiers, Civilians, and the American Way of War

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Carr, Matthew. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Carr, Matthew

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Carr, Matthew. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Battle Scars: A Soldier's Strategy for Fighting Cancer

The Devils of Cardona

The Devils of Cardona

The Devils of Cardona (Thorndike Press Large Print Historica Fiction)

The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism

Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain

The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism

Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain

Fortress Europe: Dispatches from a Gated Continent

Sherman's Ghosts: Soldiers, Civilians, and the American Way of War