Top ten books on heroes

Don Mullan is the author of Eyewitness Bloody Sunday, a book critical in reopening the British government's inquiry (over 25 years later) into what became known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was January 30, 1972, a day when thirteen civilians were killed by British soldiers during a civil rights march in North Ireland.

Paul Greengrass, perhaps better known to Americans as the director of The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and United 93 (2006), made a film (co-produced by Mullan) titled Bloody Sunday (2002) about those events.

In 2006 Mullan named his top ten books on heroes for The Guardian, including:

The Girl in the Picture: The Kim Phuc Story by Denise Chong

1972 was a momentous year in my life. On January 30 I witnessed the events of Bloody Sunday. On May 4, then aged 10, one of my closest friends, Richard Moore, was blinded by a rubber bullet on the edge of our school grounds. One month later, on the far side of the earth, a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl, Kim Phuc, was photographed by Nick Ut of the Associated Press, running naked and terrified from her burning village. Years later I was to meet the girl in the picture and we became friends. In 2001 I brought Kim to Ireland to meet my friend Richard and a schoolgirl he was mentoring who lost her eyesight in the 1998 Omagh Bomb. Together we made a 10-minute documentary for Ireland's TV3. Chong's book movingly tells how Kim Phuc's image changed the course of the Vietnam war. She writes: "In the voiceless cry of the girl in the picture is the silence of guilt. "

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue