In My Battle of Algiers, an eminent historian and biographer recounts his own experiences in the savage Algerian War, an event all too reminiscent of America's present difficulties in Iraq.
Ted Morgan recalls a war that we would do well not to forget. A Yale graduate who had grown up in both France and America -- he was then known as Sanche de Gramont and was then a French citizen -- he was drafted into the French Army and served in Algeria 1956 and '57. In this memoir, Morgan relives the harrowing conflict in which every Arab was considered a terrorist -- and increasingly, many were.
As a newly minted second lieutenant, he spends months in the back country -- the bled -- where everyone, including himself, becomes involved in unimaginable barbarities. "You cannot fight a guerrilla war with humanitarian principles," a superior officer tells Morgan early on. He beats up and kills a prisoner who won't talk and may have been responsible for the death of a friend. He kills another man in a firefight. He sees men die in encounters too small to be recorded, ones that his fellow soldiers quickly forget. For Morgan, the memories will never go away.
Later, in Algiers, Morgan's journalistic experience -- he had spent all of four months as a reporter on the Worcester, MA, Telegram -- gets him a job writing for an official newspaper. He lives through the day-to-day struggle to put down an Arab urban insurgency, the first in modern history, with its unrelenting menu of bombings, assassinations, torture, show trials, executions, and the deliberate humiliation of prisoners. He misses death when a beach casino explodes just as he is going in for lunch. He becomes disillusioned with the war and what it is doing to his country. He is himself arrested, but not for the real offense he committed, helping a deserter to escape.
Though the events Ted Morgan describes so vividly happened nearly half a century ago in Algiers, they might as well have taken place in Baghdad today.

My Battle of Algiers: A Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Morgan, Ted

Leaders & Notable People

Smithsonian

In My Battle of Algiers, eminent historian and biographer Ted Morgan recounts his experiences in the savage Algerian War. In 1956, Morgan was drafted into the French Army and was sent thousands of miles overseas to help quell the Algerian uprising. Once there, he witnessed—and became involved in—unimaginable barbarism that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Harper-perennial

Churchill, 1874-1915

Vintage/Ebury (A Division of Random House Group)

Light wear to boards, content clean and sharp - solidly bound. Good DJ.

The strong brown god: The story of the Niger River

Hart-Davis, MacGibbon

French-born American writer, Ted Morgan, explores France's darkest years - the five years of German domination during World War II. His focus is the city of Lyon, where Klaus Barbie ruled with such exceptional cruelty, but his narrative encompasses more; the cowardice that brought German victory and led into Vichy, the nature of the occupation and its atrocities, the heroism of the Resistance, the tragedy of the Jews, and the psychological debris left behind after 1945. Drawing upon the experiences of his own family, on thousands of pages of hitherto secret documents prepared for the Barbie trial, on dozens of interviews, and other extensive material, Morgan has created a work about the way defeat can bring forth the best and worst in a people. Here are heroes like Resistance leader, Jean Moulin, (whose capture is definitively described), collaborators like Marshal Petain and the French fascist ,Xavier Vallat, events like the brutal seizure of the Jewish children's home at Izieu and the long bitter journey of French Jews in the last train to Auschwitz - where for many death won the race against Allied victory.

An Uncertain Hour

History

Europe

Morrow

Literary Outlaw: Life and Times of William S. Burroughs

The Bodley Head, Ltd.

Chronicles the multi-faceted life of the brilliant writer and disturbed rebel

Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs

Arts & Literature

Avon/Books

“Almost indecently readable . . . captures [Burroughs’s] destructive energy, his ferocious pessimism, and the renegade brilliance of his style.”―Vogue With a new preface as well as a final chapter on William S. Burroughs’s last years, the acclaimed Literary Outlaw is the only existing full biography of an extraordinary figure. Anarchist, heroin addict, alcoholic, and brilliant writer, Burroughs was the patron saint of the Beats. His avant-garde masterpiece Naked Lunch shook up the literary world with its graphic descriptions of drug abuse and illicit sex―and resulted in a landmark Supreme Court ruling on obscenity. Burroughs continued to revolutionize literature with novels like The Soft Machine and to shock with the events in his life, such as the accidental shooting of his wife, which haunted him until his death. Ted Morgan captures the man, his work, and his friends―Allen Ginsberg and Paul Bowles among them―in this riveting story of an iconoclast. 18 photographs

W.W.Norton&Company

On Becoming American is an inquiry into American identity--what it is that sets Americans apart from the rest of the world. Ted Morgan discusses America through the prism of his own experience: he was a French aristocrat, Sanche de Gramont, who became Ted Morgan and an American citizen in 1977, he settled on a name that conformed with the language and cultural norms of American society, a name that telephone operators and desk clerks could hear without flinching. A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Morgan's experience illustrates why immigration is central to the American experience. He sees us with fresh eyes, and writes with humor about our passion for fast cars, fast food and the freedom we take for granted. "An antidote to facile put downs of America. Morgan makes the case that America is the greatest success story the world has ever known. Not bad for someone who isn't even running for office!"

On becoming American

Americas

Houghton, Mifflin Company

ROWING TOWARD EDEN [Feb 25, 1981] Morgan, Ted ...

Rowing Toward Eden

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

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

Books by Morgan, Ted

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

My Battle of Algiers: A Memoir

My Battle of Algiers: A Memoir

Churchill, 1874-1915

The strong brown god: The story of the Niger River

An Uncertain Hour

Literary Outlaw: Life and Times of William S. Burroughs

Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs

Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs

On becoming American

Rowing Toward Eden