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Humor, Entertainment, and Popular Culture during World War I
By Karen A. Ritzenhoff, Clémentine Tholas-Disset. 2015
Humor and entertainment were vital to the war effort during World War I. While entertainment provided relief to soldiers in…
the trenches, it also built up support for the war effort on the home front. This book looks at transnational war culture by examining seemingly light-hearted discourses on the Great War.All I Could Be: My Story as a Woman Warrior in Iraq
By Miyoko Hikiji. 2013
This inaugural account, during the onset of the Global War on Terrorism, by a female National Guard soldier provides evidence…
of the vitality of female fighters.It pays tribute to the two soldiers in her unit that lost their lives, and shows how love can be more vital in the desert than in water. This story exposes the comradeship, intimacy, cowardice and humor of soldiers living in physical and emotional grit.Through the candid telling of her encounters with battle buddies, the Iraqi people and enemy prisoners of war, Hikiji adds the timely, unexpected and fresh perspective about the Iraq war that readers are thirsting for.Force Recon Command
By Alex Lee. 1995
THE A SHAU VALLEYWHERE THE NVA WAS KING . . . In order to prevent surprise attacks on U.S. forces…
as they were pulling out of Vietnam, someone had to be able to pinpoint the NVA's movements. That dangerous job was the assignment of then-major Alex Lee and the Marines of the 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company when he assumed command in late 1969. They became the tip of the spear for Lt. Gen. Herman Nickerson's III MAF. And each time one of Lee's small, well-motivated, well-led, and wildly outnumbered teams was airlifted into the field, the men never knew if the day would end violently.But whether tracking NVA movements, recovering downed air crews, or making bomb-damage assessments after B-52 strikes, Major Lee's Few Good Men never forgot who they were: Each of them was in Vietnam to live like a Marine, win like a Marine, and, if need be, die like a Marine.Forthright and unabashed, Lieutenant Colonel Lee leaves no controversy untouched and no awe-inspiring tale untold in this gripping account of 3rd Force Recon's self-sacrifice and heroic achievement in the face of overwhelming odds.From the Paperback edition.Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall
By Nina Willner. 2016
In this illuminating and deeply moving memoir, a former American military intelligence officer goes beyond traditional Cold War espionage tales…
to tell the true story of her family--of five women separated by the Iron Curtain for more than forty years, and their miraculous reunion after the fall of the Berlin Wall.Forty Autumns makes visceral the pain and longing of one family forced to live apart in a world divided by two. At twenty, Hanna escaped from East to West Germany. But the price of freedom--leaving behind her parents, eight siblings, and family home--was heartbreaking. Uprooted, Hanna eventually moved to America, where she settled down with her husband and had children of her own. Growing up near Washington, D.C., Hanna's daughter, Nina Willner became the first female Army Intelligence Officer to lead sensitive intelligence operations in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Though only a few miles separated American Nina and her German relatives--grandmother Oma, Aunt Heidi, and cousin, Cordula, a member of the East German Olympic training team--a bitter political war kept them apart. In Forty Autumns, Nina recounts her family's story--five ordinary lives buffeted by circumstances beyond their control. She takes us deep into the tumultuous and terrifying world of East Germany under Communist rule, revealing both the cruel reality her relatives endured and her own experiences as an intelligence officer, running secret operations behind the Berlin Wall that put her life at risk. A personal look at a tenuous era that divided a city and a nation, and continues to haunt us, Forty Autumns is an intimate and beautifully written story of courage, resilience, and love--of five women whose spirits could not be broken, and who fought to preserve what matters most: family. Forty Autumns is illustrated with dozens of black-and-white and color photographs.The Invisible Front: Love and Loss in an Era of Endless War
By Yochi Dreazen. 2014
The unforgettable story of a military family that lost two sons—one to suicide and one in combat—and channeled their grief…
into fighting the armed forces’ suicide epidemic. Major General Mark Graham was a decorated two-star officer whose integrity and patriotism inspired his sons, Jeff and Kevin, to pursue military careers of their own. His wife Carol was a teacher who held the family together while Mark's career took them to bases around the world. When Kevin and Jeff die within nine months of each other—Kevin commits suicide and Jeff is killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq—Mark and Carol are astonished by the drastically different responses their sons’ deaths receive from the Army. While Jeff is lauded as a hero, Kevin’s death is met with silence, evidence of the terrible stigma that surrounds suicide and mental illness in the military. Convinced that their sons died fighting different battles, Mark and Carol commit themselves to transforming the institution that is the cornerstone of their lives. The Invisible Front is the story of how one family tries to set aside their grief and find purpose in almost unimaginable loss. The Grahams work to change how the Army treats those with PTSD and to erase the stigma that prevents suicidal troops from getting the help they need before making the darkest of choices. Their fight offers a window into the military’s institutional shortcomings and its resistance to change – failures that have allowed more than 2,000 troops to take their own lives since 2001. Yochi Dreazen, an award-winning journalist who has covered the military since 2003, has been granted remarkable access to the Graham family and tells their story in the full context of two of America’s longest wars. Dreazen places Mark and Carol’s personal journey, which begins when they fall in love in college and continues through the end of Mark's thirty-four year career in the Army, against the backdrop of the military’s ongoing suicide spike, which shows no signs of slowing. With great sympathy and profound insight, The Invisible Front details America's problematic treatment of the troops who return from war far different than when they'd left and uses the Graham family’s work as a new way of understanding the human cost of war and its lingering effects off the battlefield.Undertones of War
By Edmund Blunden. 1928
“I took my road with no little pride of fear; one morning I feared very sharply, as I saw what…
looked like a rising shroud over a wooden cross in the clustering mist. Horror! But on a closer study I realized that the apparition was only a flannel gas helmet. . . . What an age since 1914!” In Undertones of War, one of the finest autobiographies to come out of World War I, the acclaimed poet Edmund Blunden records his devastating experiences in combat. After enlisting at the age of twenty, he took part in the disastrous battles at the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele, describing them as “murder, not only to the troops but to their singing faiths and hopes. ” All the horrors of trench warfare, all the absurdity and feeble attempts to make sense of the fighting, all the strangeness of observing war as a writer—of being simultaneously soldier and poet—pervade Blunden’s memoir. In steely-eyed prose as richly allusive as any poetry, he tells of the endurance and despair found among the men of his battalion, including the harrowing acts of bravery that won him the Military Cross. Now back in print for American readers, the volume includes a selection of Blunden’s war poems that unflinchingly juxtapose death in the trenches with the beauty of Flanders’s fields. Undertones of War deserves a place on anyone’s bookshelf between Siegfried Sassoon’s poetry and Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That.Knight's Cross and Oak-Leaves Recipients 1939-40
By Ramiro Bujeiro, Gordon Williamson. 2004
Osprey's survey of the recipients of the Knight's Cross and Oak-Leaves awards during World War II (1939-1945). In 1939 a…
new grade in the Iron Cross series was introduced, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes). It was awarded for a variety of reasons, from skilled leadership to a single act of extreme gallantry, and was bestowed across all ranks, grades, and branches of service. As the war progresed, further distinctions were created for bestowal on existing winners, namely Oak-Leaves (Eichenlaub); Oak-Leaves with Swords (Eichenlaub und Schwertern); and Oak-Leaves with Swords and Diamonds (Eichenlaub, Schwerter und Brillanten). This book, the first in a sequence of four, covers winners of the Knights Cross and the Oak-Leaves distinction in the period 1939-40.Omar Bradley
By Steven Zaloga, Steve Noon. 2012
General Omar Bradley was the premier US Army tactical commander in the European Theater of Operations in 1944-45. A West…
Point classmate of Dwight Eisenhower, Bradley was the quintessential US field commander of World War II, elevated to high command with little combat experience but a solid track record as a skilled planner and organizer. Bradley was part of a small cadre of highly skilled young officers groomed for higher command in the austere and bankrupt 1930s. Bradley began World War II in creating the new 82nd Division which would go on to fame as one of the US Army's premier airborne divisions. Bradley spent most of the early years of the war in George Patton's shadow, first as an assistant corps commander under Patton in Tunisia in early 1943, then as a corps commander under Patton on Sicily in July 1943. Patton's social blunders pushed him out of contention for the coveted spot leading the First US Army on D-Day, and Bradley's sterling performance on Sicily won him the position.Bradley was at the center of nearly all the major US Army victories in 1944-45 from D-Day through the final push into Germany. After commanding the US First Army in Normandy, Bradley was elevated to the command of the 12th Army Group, which contained the three main American field armies in the autumn of 1944. Along with that combat record came a string of controversies. Bradley's great victories like Operation Cobra in July-August 1944 were brought in to question by more dubious campaigns such as the miserable battles for the Hurtgen forest and the lesser-known Operation Queen in the autumn of 1944. Bradley's greatest blunder, failing to anticipate the German offensive in the Ardennes, was counter-balanced by a vigorous and skilled response which fatally injured the German army in the West. Beyond the performance of the US Army in the ETO, Bradley was also intimately wrapped up in other controversies, especially the internecine squabbles with his British counterpart, Bernard Montgomery.Eisenhower
By Paul Johnson. 2014
Acclaimed historian Paul Johnson's lively, succinct biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower explores how his legacy endures today In the rousing…
style he's famous for, celebrated biographer Paul Johnson offers a fascinating portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower, focusing particularly on his years as a five-star general and his time as the thirty-fourth President of the United States.Johnson chronicles President Eisenhower's modest childhood in Kansas, his college years at West Point, and his rapid ascent through the military ranks, culminating in his appointment as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II. Beginning when Eisenhower assumed the presidency from Harry Truman in 1952, Johnson paints a rich portrait of his two consecutive terms, exploring his volatile relationship with then-Vice President Richard Nixon, his abhorrence of isolationism, and his position on the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the Civil Rights Movement. Johnson notes that when Eisenhower left the White House at age 70, reluctantly passing the torch to President-elect John F. Kennedy, he feared for the country's future and prophetically warned of the looming military-industrial complex.Many elements of Eisenhower's presidency speak to American politics today, including his ability to balance the budget and skill in managing an oppositional Congress. This brief yet comprehensive study will appeal to biography lovers as well as to enthusiasts of presidential history and military history alike.Tokugawa Ieyasu
By Stephen Turnbull, Giuseppe Rava. 2012
Towards the end of the 16th century three outstanding commanders brought Japan's century of civil wars to an end, and…
even though reunification was first achieved under Toyotomi Hideyoshi, it was his successor Tokugawa Ieyasu who was to ensure a lasting peace. In terms of his strategic and political achievements Ieyasu ranks as Japan's greatest samurai commander. His battlefield prowess, however, needs careful consideration before accolades are offered, because Ieyasu was undoubtedly a lucky general. Mikata ga Hara, for example, was a defeat that the onset of winter saved from being a rout. Ieyasu's crowning victory at Sekigahara depended very much on the defection to his side of Kobayakawa Hideaki, and the absence from the scene of Ieyasu's son Hidetada serves to illustrate how just once there was a failure in Ieyasu's otherwise classic strategic vision. Yet Ieyasu possessed the particular wisdom of knowing who should be an ally and who was an enemy, and he was gifted in the broad brush strokes of a campaign. He also knew how to learn from his mistakes.Ieyasu was also patient, a virtue sadly lacking in many of his contemporaries, and unlike Hideyoshi never outreached himself. To establish his family as the ruling clan in Japan for the next two and a half centuries was abundant proof of his true greatness.With Schwarzkopf
By Gus Lee. 2015
With Schwarzkopf is Gus Lee's remembrance of his mentor and friend H. Norman Schwarzkopf, and his firsthand account of how…
Schwarzkopf shaped his life. In 1966, Lee, a junior-year cadet at West Point, was bright, athletic, and popular. He was also on the verge of getting kicked out. Nearing the bottom of his class due to his penchant for playing poker and reading recreationally instead of studying engineering, he was assigned a new professor: then-Major Norman Schwarzkopf. Schwarzkopf's deeply principled nature and fierce personality took hold of the wayward cadet, and the two began meeting regularly and discussing what it meant to be a scholar, a soldier, and a man. Lee's vibrant, witty narrative brings his more than forty-year relationship with Schwarzkopf to life. Readers get an inside look at West Point culture; they see Schwarzkopf's bristling anger with his rebellious pupil as well as his tenacity, intellect, and moments of surprising emotional warmth; and they watch as Lee starts to absorb his teachings. As he left West Point and took on more professional and personal roles, Lee approached every crisis or difficult decision by channeling his mentor. Over the years, Schwarzkopf's instilled values, wise counsel, and warm conversations shaped Lee and brought the two together in an unlikely friendship. In With Schwarzkopf, Lee passes along the lessons he learned so future generations can hear Schwarzkopf's important teachings.Black Knights, Dark Days: The True Story of Sadr City's Black Sunday
By J. Matthew Fisk. 2017
An Iraq War veteran's firsthand account of surviving a deadly insurgent ambush on America's 1st Cavalry Division--and battling through the…
aftermath. It was known as Black Sunday--April 4, 2004, the day when units of the United States' 1st Cavalry Division saw their routine deployment turn into a harrowing and costly fight. Enraged, motivated, and well-armed insurgents crammed the alleys, streets, and buildings of Sadr City. In that fight, a surging mob of militants ambushed one small unit of the Black Knight battalion. The heroic rescue attempt proved fatal for many of the determined soldiers who braved the gauntlet. Now, cavalry veteran Matt Fisk--who fought through Black Sunday and survived--gives a gut-level, over-the-rifle-sights view of a short, violent period when one of the safest places in the war zone suddenly turned into a cauldron of death and destruction, leaving eight US troops dead and dozens more wounded--only the beginning of a lengthy siege aimed at defeating the Mahdi Army. Fisk's brutally honest Black Knights, Dark Days covers it all, from his rough deployment with colorful and courageous fellow soldiers to the serious problems he encountered when he returned home. In the ultimate test of his coping skills, Fisk turned to the VA for help--and wound up facing the same frustrations that plague so many of today's returning combat veterans.Vietnam Medal of Honor Heroes
By Edward F. Murphy. 2005
More than 100 compelling, true stories of personal heroism and valor- in a special expanded edition honoring courage in the…
face of war. Here are dramatic accounts of the fearless actions that earned American soldiers in Vietnam our highest military distinction--the Medal of Honor. Edward F. Murphy, head of the Medal of Honor Historical Society, re-creates the heroic acts of individual soldiers from official documents, Medal of Honor citations, contemporary accounts, and, where possible, interviews with survivors.Complete with a list of all Vietnam Medal of Honor recipients, this book offers a unique perspective on the war-from the early days of U.S. involvement through the return home of the last soldiers. It pays a fitting tribute to these patriotic, selfless souls.Memoirs
By Michael Fellman, William Tecumseh Sherman. 2000
Before his spectacular career as General of the Union forces, William Tecumseh Sherman experienced decades of failure and depression. Drifting…
between the Old South and new West, Sherman witnessed firsthand many of the critical events of early nineteenth-century America: the Mexican War, the gold rush, the banking panics, and the battles with the Plains Indians. It wasn't until his victory at Shiloh, in 1862, that Sherman assumed his legendary place in American history. After Shiloh, Sherman sacked Atlanta and proceeded to burn a trail of destruction that split the Confederacy and ended the war. His strategy forever changed the nature of warfare and earned him eternal infamy throughout the South. Sherman's Memoirs evoke the uncompromising and deeply complex general as well as the turbulent times that transformed America into a world power. This Penguin Classics edition includes a fascinating introduction and notes by Sherman biographer Michael Fellman.Shane Comes Home
By Rinker Buck. 2005
On March 21, 2003, while leading a rifle platoon into combat, Marine Lieutenant Shane Childers became the first combat fatality…
of the Iraq War. In this gripping, beautifully written personal history, award-winning writer Rinker Buck chronicles Shane's death and his life, exploring its meaning for his family, his fellow soldiers, and the country itself. It is the story of an intelligent, gifted soldier who embodied the soul of today's all-volunteer warrior class; of the town of Powell, Wyoming, which had taken Shane into its heart; and of the Marine detail sent to deliver the news to the Childers family and the extraordinary connection that formed between them. At once an inspiring account of commitment to the military and a moving story of family and devotion, Shane Comes Home rises above politics to capture the life of a remarkable young man who came to symbolize the heart of America during a difficult time.A Beirut Heart
By Cathy Sultan. 2005
A Beirut Heart is the unforgettable story of an American woman who lived amidst the Lebanese Civil War for eight…
years and through it all attempted to sustain a life with her Lebanese husband and two small children. It is a memoir that offers a unique illustration of the unsung heroes of war-the women who assume the awesome task of keeping the family united during wartime.The book tells the story of how Cathy Sultan moved with her family to Lebanon in 1969. For six years they led an ideal life experiencing the rich culture, exotic food and breathtaking landscape of the city located along the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea.After the war began in 1975, their lives changed forever. Sultan recounts how she held the family together by comforting her children after bomb blasts and consoling her physician husband who spent his days treating wounded civilians. To keep sane, she used cooking as her tranquilizer.The unique narrative places us uncomfortably inside something we seldom consider-the domestic element of civil war-and leaves on the reader a permanent impression of the destroyed city and its resilient people.It's no secret that psychedelic drugs have the ability to cast light on the miraculous reality hidden within our psyche.…
Almost immediately after the discovery of LSD less than a hundred years ago, psychedelics began to play a crucial role in the quest to understand the link between mind and matter. With an uncanny ability to reveal the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness, LSD and MDMA (better known as Ecstasy) have proven extraordinarily effective in treating anxiety disorders such as PTSD--yet the drugs remain illegal for millions of people who might benefit from them. Anchoring Tom Shroder's Acid Test are the stories of Rick Doblin, the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), who has been fighting government prohibition of psychedelics for more than thirty years; Michael Mithoefer, a former emergency room physician, now a psychiatrist at the forefront of psychedelic therapy research; and his patient Nicholas Blackston, a former Marine who has suffered unfathomable mental anguish from the effects of brutal combat experiences in Iraq. All three men are passionate, relatable people; each flawed, each resilient, and each eccentric, yet very familiar and very human. Acid Test covers the first heady years of experimentation in the fifties and sixties, through the backlash of the seventies and eighties, when the drug subculture exploded and uncontrolled use of street psychedelics led to a PR nightmare that created the drug stereotypes of the present day. Meticulously researched and astoundingly informative, this is at once a personal story of intertwining lives against an epic backdrop, and a compelling argument for the unprecedented healing properties of drugs that have for decades been characterized as dangerous, illicit substances.The Supreme Commander: The War Years of Dwight D. Eisenhower
By Stephen E. Ambrose. 1970
In this classic portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower the soldier, bestselling historian Stephen E. Ambrose examines the Allied commander's leadership…
during World War II. Ambrose brings Eisenhower's experience of the Second World War to life, showing in vivid detail how the general's skill as a diplomat and a military strategist contributed to Allied successes in North Africa and in Europe, and established him as one of the greatest military leaders in the world. Ambrose, then the Associate Editor of the General's official papers, analyzes Eisenhower's difficult military decisions and his often complicated relationships with powerful personalities like Churchill, de Gaulle, Roosevelt, and Patton. This is the definitive account of Eisenhower's evolution as a military leader--from its dramatic beginnings through his time at the top post of Allied command.Death in the A Shau Valley: L Company LRRPs in Vietnam, 1969-70
By Larry Chambers. 1998
The enemy had a single purpose kill me and my teammates Larry Chambers was still…
new to Vietnam in early 1969 when the LRRPs of the 101st Airborne Division became L Company 75th Rangers But his unit s mission stayed the same act as the eyes and ears of the 101st deep in the dreaded A Shau Valley--where the NVA ruled Relentless thick fog frequently made fighter bombers useless in the A Shau and the enemy had furnished the nearby mountaintops with antiaircraft machine guns to protect the massive trail network that snaked through it So outgunned outmanned and unsupported the teams of L Company executed hundreds of courageous missions Now in this powerful personal record Larry Chambers recaptures the experience of the war s most brutal on-the-job training where the slightest noise or smallest error could bring sudden--and certain--deathIncludes the First World War Illustrations Pack - 73 battle plans and diagrams and 198 photos Lieutenant-Colonel Rowland Feilding began…
his military career as a front line soldier in World War I and a leader of men preferring to volunteer for a dangerous duty rather than order a subordinate to do so in his place With a narrative broken only by the months he spent recuperating from wounds Feilding was blessed with an extraordinary luck his survival was a mystery even to his comrades Vivid yet unexaggerated in its depiction of life at the front Feilding s letters to his wife Edith Stapleton-Bretherton are driven by his thoughts emotions and experiences of the war and of home Written with the events still fresh in his mind--and often while still on the battlefield or in the trenches-- these letters form one of the most compelling accounts of the Western Front during the First World War Compelling reading -Print ed