Contents

Contents : whose hero -- Boomtown Bob's global jukebox (Bob Geldork inspires millions to help famine in Ethiopia) -- Punching a hole in the sky (Can Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier in his X-1 rocket) -- Terror stalks Chernobyl (lethal radiation menaces the terrified technicians) -- Owens' Olympic triumph (American athlete jesse Owens ridicules Hitler's racist beliefs) -- 12 seconds from death (Plummeting to Earth, Ronnie O'Brien battles to save two fellow parachutists) -- Geronimo's final stand (Geronimo and his band of Apache warriors fight on as the "white-eyes" overwhelm their homeland) -- Brazil's rainforest hero (Chico Mendes struggles to save the Amazon rainforest) -- Animal heroes (furry and feathery friends save human lives) -- Odette's ordeal (will housewife turned spy Odette Sansom survive her encounter with the brutal Gestapo) -- Helicopter heroes save forty (the rescued the ship's crew but can they save themselves) -- Mother Seacole's Balaclava boys (Mary Seacole braves Russian bullets and English prejudice to nurse soldiers during the Crimean War) -- Sauttfenberg's secret Germany (Claus von Stauffenberg commits high treason in the rotten heart of Nazi Germany) -- Blackbeard meets his match (Lieutenant Maynard takes on pirate 'Blackbeard' Teach in a no-quarter fight to the death) -- Rubble and strife in battlefield Beirut (Staring annihilation in the face, surgeon Pauline Cutting is besieged in Beirut) -- Sakhanov - Soviet Superstar (intrepid miner Alexei Stakhanov digs 14 times his coal quota in a single shift - or did he?) -- Cosmonaut number one (what hazards await the first man in space? Yuri Gagarin is determined to find out) -- Heroes on film (a guide to films based on characters in this book) -- after the event (death or glory - what happened to the people in these tales ...) -- further reading, acknowledgements and index.