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Richard S. Ewell
By Donald C. Pfanz. 1998
General Richard Stoddert Ewell holds a unique place in the history of the Army of Northern Virginia. For four months…
Ewell was Stonewall Jackson's most trusted subordinate; when Jackson died, Ewell took command of the Second Corps, leading it at Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House. In this biography, Donald Pfanz presents the most detailed portrait yet of the man sometimes referred to as Stonewall Jackson's right arm. Drawing on a rich array of previously untapped original source materials, Pfanz concludes that Ewell was a highly competent general, whose successes on the battlefield far outweighed his failures. But Pfanz's book is more than a military biography. It also examines Ewell's life before and after the Civil War, including his years at West Point, his service in the Mexican War, his experiences as a dragoon officer in Arizona and New Mexico, and his postwar career as a planter in Mississippi and Tennessee. In all, Pfanz offers an exceptionally detailed portrait of one of the South's most important leaders.General Richard Stoddert Ewell holds a unique place in the history of the Army of Northern Virginia. For four months Ewell was Stonewall Jackson's most trusted subordinate; when Jackson died, Ewell took command of the Second Corps, leading it at Gettysburg, the Wilderness Campaign, and Spotsylvania Court House. By the end of the war he was in charge of the defense of Richmond. With this book, Donald Pfanz provides more than just a military biography. He also examines Ewell's life before and after the Civil War, offering an exceptionally detailed portrait of one of the South's most important leaders.-->One of Lee's Best Men
By William W. Hassler. 1965
On the day that Lincoln was inaugurated in 1861, twenty-seven-year-old William Dorsey Pender, en route to the provisional Confederate capital…
in Montgomery, Alabama, hurriedly scribbled a note to his wife, Fanny. So began a prolific correspondence between a rising Confederate officer and his cherished wife that would last until Pender was mortally wounded at Gettysburg.First published by UNC Press in 1965, Pender's letters are filled with personal details, colorful descriptions, and candid opinions of such important figures as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, and A. P. Hill. His comments on his military activities and aspirations and the challenges of command, combined with his husbandly advice and affection, sketch an intimate and unvarnished portrait of the man who was perhaps the most distinguished North Carolina commander.John M. Schofield and the Politics of Generalship
By Donald B. Connelly. 2006
In the first full biography of Lieutenant General John McAllister Schofield (1831-1906), Donald B. Connelly examines the career of one…
of the leading commanders in the western theater during the Civil War. In doing so, Connelly illuminates the role of politics in the formulation of military policy, during both war and peace, in the latter half of the nineteenth century.Connelly relates how Schofield, as a department commander during the war, had to cope with contending political factions that sought to shape military and civil policies. Following the war, Schofield occupied every senior position in the army--including secretary of war and commanding general of the army--and became a leading champion of army reform and professionalism. He was the first senior officer to recognize that professionalism would come not from the separation of politics and the military but from the army's accommodation of politics and the often contentious American constitutional system. Seen through the lens of Schofield's extensive military career, the history of American civil-military relations has seldom involved conflict between the military and civil authority, Connelly argues. The central question has never been whether to have civilian control but rather which civilians have a say in the formulation and execution of policy.Force Recon Diary, 1969
By Major Bruce H. Norton. 1991
The riveting, true-to-life account of survival, heroism and death in the elite Marine 3d Force Recon unit, one of one…
two Marine units to receive the Valorous Unit Citation during the Vietnam War. Doc Norton, leader of 3d Force Recon, recounts his team's experiences behind enemy lines during the tense patrols, sudden ambushes and acts of supreme sacrifice that occurred as they gathered valuable information about NVA operations right from the source.Sherman’s March and the Emergence of the Independent Black Church Movement: From Atlanta to the Sea to Emancipation
By Jr., L. H. Whelchel. 2012
A discourse on the historical emergence of African American Churches as dynamic cultural presences which occurred in the aftermath of…
the Civil War, and specifically in the wake of General Sherman's march from Atlanta to Savannah.The Montreal Canadiens
By Nicolas Moreau, Howard Scott, Marie-Pier Rivest, Audrey Laurin-Lamothe. 2015
One of the most famous and certainly most successful professional hockey teams of all time, the Montreal Canadiens are practically…
a national institution in Quebec society. More than any other team, the Habs play an important role in the identity, economy, and culture of their home town and province.The essays in The Montreal Canadiens: Rethinking a Legend offer a panoramic view of this influence. What were the connections between the Maurice Richard Riot of 1955 and Quebec's Quiet Revolution? Can we say that loyalty to the team constitutes a religion for its fans? How is corporatization affecting how Quebecers connect with their beloved team? Featuring a wide range of writing on Le Grand Club and its social significance, the book offers a fresh and fascinating perspective on one of Canada's greatest sports teams.Riveting, novelistic, and startlingly candid, John T. Halliday's combat memoir begins in 1970, when Halliday has just landed in the…
middle of the Vietnam War, primed to begin his assignment with the 606th Special Operations Squadron. But there's a catch: He's stationed in a kind of no-man's-land. No one on his base flies with ID, patches, or rank. Even as Richard Nixon firmly denies reporters' charges that the United States has forces in Laos, Halliday realizes that from his base in Thailand, he will be flying top-secret, black-ops night missions over the Laotian Ho Chi Minh Trail. A naive yet thoughtful twenty-four-year-old, Halliday was utterly unprepared for the horrors of war. On his first mission, Halliday's C-123 aircraft dodges more than a thousand antiaircraft shells, and that is just the beginning. Nothing is as he expected -- not the operations, not the way his shell-shocked fellow pilots look and act, and certainly not the squadron's daredevil, seat-of-one's-pants approach to piloting. But before long, Halliday has become one of those seasoned and shell-shocked pilots, and finds himself in a desperate search for a way to elude certain death. Using frank, true-to-life dialogue, potent imagery, and classic 1970s song lyrics, Halliday deftly describes the fraught Laotian skies and re-creates his struggle to navigate the frustrating Air Force bureaucracy, the deprivations of a remote base far from home and his young wife, and his fight to preserve his sanity. The resulting nonfiction narrative vividly captures not only the intricate, distorted culture of war but also the essence of the Vietnam veteran's experience of this troubled era. A powerhouse fusion of pathos and humor, brutal realism and intimate reflection, Flying Through Midnight is a landmark contribution to war literature, revealing previously top-secret intelligence on the 606th's night missions. Fast-paced, thrilling, and bitingly intelligent, Halliday illuminates it all: the heart-pounding air battles, the close friendships, the crippling fear, and the astonishing final escape that made the telling of it possible.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.Quinn
By Dan Robson. 2015
A tribute to the larger than life story of a hockey icon and hero. The hockey world mourned when Pat…
Quinn died in November 2014. Tough guys sobbed. Networks carried montages of Quinn's rugged hits, his steely-eyed glare, and his famous victories. Quinn made a few enemies over the years, but there was no one who didn't respect the tough working-class kid who had fought his way to the very top of the hockey world. He had butted heads with superstars, with management, and with the league itself. And he had also succeeded at every level, finishing his journeyman's career as the captain of an NHL team, then quickly emerged as one of the best coaches in the league. He gathered executive titles like hockey cards, and done things his own way, picking up a law degree along the way. He was brash, dour, and abrasive--and people loved him for his alloy of pugnacity and flair, his three-piece suits and cigars, his Churchillian heft and his scowl. In the end, the player who would never even have dreamed of being inducted into the Hall of Fame was the chair of the Hall's selection committee. That is Quinn's story: an underdog who succeeded so completely that his legacy has become the standard by which others are judged. Told by bestselling author Dan Robson, and supported by the Quinn family and network of friends, Quinn is the definitive account of one of the game's biggest personalities and most storied lives.From the Hardcover edition.Where Countries Come to Play
By Andrew Podnieks. 2013
Where Countries Come to Play chronicles each Olympic tournament, from the 1920 Antwerp games to Vancouver in 2010. Illustrated with…
photographs from the IIHF archives, the book features rare pictures of games and players, as well as memorabilia and artifacts. Each event is retold through a detailed narrative that will offer fans a complete history of Olympic hockey, including amazing stories from both on and off the ice, organizational challenges, bitter battles, player's tales, and spectacular hockey action. The book also contains a prelude to 2014 Sochi and a detailed appendix of Olympic hockey stats. As well, Where Countries Come to Play celebrates the IIHF's Triple Gold Club, whose members have each won an Olympic Gold Medal, a Stanley Cup, and a World Championship. For the first time in book form, the elite club's twenty-five members are profiled and the story of their accomplishments told. The book will be publsihed in advance of the Sochi Winter Games and is the must-have hockey book for all fans of the game and for anyone that has ever cheered for their nation as they skated out onto the ice.Bench Bosses
By Matthew Dibiase. 2015
Bench Bosses celebrates the greatest NHL Coaches in the history of the game. Bench Bosses is filled with compelling biographical…
narrative, innovative analysis, historical allusion, hockey folklore, humour, heartbreak, and tragedy. By introducing a creative new method for evaluating coaching success, professional historian and hockey columnist Matthew DiBiase settles many a debate. His hard-hitting prose and cogent analysis covers key aspects of coaching and definitively identifies the greatest offensive and defensive coaches, expounds on the best penalty-killing or power-play coaches and delves into statistics to determine the nastiest squads on the ice. His unique assessment method determines his selection of the top fifty head coaches of all time. DiBiase's in-depth hockey research delivers a powerful, gripping and informative look at the game's best of the best. This seminal book tells the story behind the story of coaching success. It removes subjectivity and bias and provides a comprehensive overview of each coach's major career achievements and the contributions each has made to the game. In the writing of this book, the author personally interviewed many of the game's best known coaches and their players to get the most accurate and complete perspective of the sport and its coaching elite. Readers will enjoy hearing from such names as Scotty Bowman, Al Arbour, Jean Beliveau, Dick Irving Jr., and more.From the Hardcover edition.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.Hockey Moms
By Anthony Jenkins, Julie Bertuzzi. 2015
Julie Bertuzzi, the wife of NHL player Todd Bertuzzi and Hockey Mom extraordinaire, presents us with twenty hilarious portraits of…
the Hockey Moms we know and love. The perfect gift book for all seasons. Straight-shooting, observant, and uproarious, Julie Bertuzzi's Hockey Moms is an irreverent look at the many kinds of moms you are sure to find in the ice rinks, on the road, and in the hotel bars at tournaments across this hockey-loving continent. While always applauding the dedication of moms who support their players -- at early morning practices and on long drives to and from tournaments, in the triumph of a big win and the heartache of a big loss -- Bertuzzi pokes fun at herself and her fellow Hockey Moms, and brings alive the many characters she has observed during her years of experience as a Hockey Mom herself. Whether it's Big Mouth Betty shrieking from the stands, the Drama Queen stirring up trouble in the bar after a tournament game, Team Manager Mom with her clipboard and team jacket, the Yodeler, or the Leaner, readers will recognize and delight in these familiar profiles. This is a quick, funny read and a must-have book for Hockey Moms, and those who love them, everywhere.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.