Childrens Military History

After Germany lost World War II in 1945, a cold war started with the United States and its friends against the Soviet Union (formally known as Russia) and its friends. Why? Listen to find out....

It is 1942, and 14-year-old Jill is spending the summer with her grandmother in the coastal village of Winter Haven, Maine. The U.S. is at war, and Jill hears rumors that German submarines - U-boats - are just off shore. Trying to ignore her fears, Jill notices suspicious activities in town. When she finds a carrier pigeon bearing the message Sonnabend iv, she's sure that something is wrong. The secret she uncovers will have her running for her life.

Between 1819 and 1845, as veterans of the Revolutionary War were filing applications to receive pensions for their service, the government was surprised to learn that many of the soldiers were not men but boys, many of whom were under the age of 16 and some even as young as nine. In Boy Soldiers of the American Revolution, Caroline Cox reconstructs the lives and stories of this young subset of early American soldiers, focusing on how these boys came to join the army and what they actually did in service.

Resting on a convincing body of evidence that violence is not a necessary component of conflict among states and between states and non-state actors, World Beyond War asserts that war itself can be ended. We humans have lived without war for most of our existence and most people live without war most of the time. Warfare arose about 10,000 years ago (only five percent of our existence as Homo Sapiens) and spawned a vicious cycle as peoples, fearing attack by militarized states, found it necessary to imitate them.

The biblical account of Gideon. The ancient story of the Trojan horse. Deceptive techniques have been used in war through the ages. But while the principles have changed very little, the technology behind fooling the enemy has evolved dramatically. Paul B. Janeczko’s fascinating chronology focuses on the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf Wars to reveal evolving attitudes toward the use and effectiveness of deceptive operations.

Through the moving and often heart-wrenching personal accounts of Kindertransport survivors, critically acclaimed and award-winning author Deborah Hopkinson paints the timely and devastating story of how the rise of Hitler and the Nazis tore apart the lives of so many families and what they were forced to give up in order to save these children.

At the height of World War I, as battles raged in the trenches and in the air, another struggle for survival was being waged in the most notorious POW camp in all of Germany: Holzminden. A land-locked Alcatraz of sorts, it was home to the most troublesome Allied prisoners - and the most talented at escape. The Grand Escape tells the remarkable tale of a band of pilots who pulled off an ingenious plan and made it out of enemy territory in the biggest breakout of WWI, inspiring their countrymen in the darkest hours of the war.

★ "Partridge proves once again that nonfiction can be every bit as dramatic as the best fiction."* America's war in Vietnam. In over a decade of bitter fighting, it claimed the lives of more than 58,000 American soldiers and beleaguered four US presidents. More than forty years after America...

Jackson fought poverty and sadness, rising to become one of the most extraordinary figures in American military history. His clever Civil War strategies were unmatched. While holding the line during one battle, he earned the nickname "Stonewall", and became a legend. From the world's most acclaimed Civil War historian, this is the complete story of Jackson's life.

Children of a Faraway War tells the story of Wendy and Robbie, two Australian-born sisters, now in their 70s, and their life-changing quest to learn the truth about their father who died in England in World War II while serving in Bomber Command. Because of their mother's reticence and their reluctance to probe her grief, they grow up knowing very little about the man who could have been a father to them. Separated by half a world, Robbie in Australia, Wendy in Canada, they plan a trip to England as a kind of homage to this missing dad.

When the Second World War began, there were 10 million children living in Britain. Many were evacuated to the countryside, but others stayed behind and witnessed the Blitz close-up in cities around the UK. Blitz Kids tells the remarkable true stories of children who spent their nights in cold, cramped air-raid shelters, hearing the rumble of planes and the crash of bombs overhead.

As a boy living in a tribe in what is now South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, Ayik Chut Deng was a member of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA). During his time as a child soldier, he witnessed unspeakable violence and was regularly tortured by older boys. At age 19, he and his family escaped the conflict in Sudan and resettled in Toowoomba, Australia. But adjusting to his new life in small-town Queensland was more difficult than he anticipated.

The wake of war leaves marks that don’t always look dramatic from the outside. Inside, a tempest of trauma rages. Consumed by darkness and depression in the aftermath of war, Ewa Reid-Hammer’s story is the journey of a terrified child’s transformation to adulthood. With reflections on the emotional wounds left not only on herself, but those close to her, Reid-Hammer’s account depicts the complexities of survival and self-recovery in the face of distress. From horror to healing, her story reveals the truth of what it is to be a child of war.

For American children raised exclusively in wartime - that is, a Cold War containing monolithic communism turned hot in the jungles of Southeast Asia - and the first to grow up with televised combat, Vietnam was predominately a mediated experience. Walter Cronkite was the voice of the conflict, and grim, nightly statistics the most recognizable feature. But as involvement grew, Vietnam affected numerous changes in child life, comparable to the childhood impact of previous conflicts - chiefly the Civil War and World War II - whose intensity and duration also dominated American culture.

It’s the summer of 1962, and Scott and his friends spend their days playing baseball and thinking about girls. But the threat of nuclear war looms over everything they do, and they are haunted by the idea that they could all be dead tomorrow. Even though the possibility of war is all anyone talks about, Scott’s dad is the only one in the neighborhood who actually prepares for the worst, building a bomb shelter to protect his family and stocking it with enough supplies to keep them alive for two critical weeks. The neighbors scoff, but then, in the middle of the night in late October, the unthinkable happens.

The plot has been enacted, but there's been a problem. Now dire consequences await the would-be assassins.

Based on the true story of the French villagers in WWII who saved thousands of Jews, this novel tells how a group of young teenagers stood up for what is right. Among them is a young Jewish boy who learns to forge documents to save his mother and later goes on to save hundreds of lives with his skills. There is also a girl who overcomes her fear to carry messages for the Resistance. And a boy who smuggles people into Switzerland. But there is always the threat that they will be caught. As the knot tightens, the young people must race against time to bring their friends to safety.

The winner of the Scott O’Dell Award, The Bomb is a powerful history lesson and a gripping tale of suspense that no listener will ever forget. In 1946, 16-year-old Sorry Rinamu watches as U.S. Navy warships appear off the coast of Bikini Island. The U.S. Government wants to test the deadly power of the atomic bomb—and Sorry’s island has been chosen as the test site. The young man knows he must stop the Americans from dropping the bomb—even if it means defying orders from the U.S. Government and risking his own life.

Halliburtons Army is the first book to show, in shocking detail, how Halliburton really does business in Iraq and around the world. From its vital role as the logistical backbone of the U.S. occupation in Iraq to its role in covering up gang-rape amongst its personnel in Baghdad, Halliburtons Army is a devastating bestiary of corporate malfeasance and political cronyism.

September, 1939. When Jimmy is evacuated to a small village in Wales, it couldn’t be more different from London. Green, quiet and full of strangers, he instantly feels out of place. But then he finds a skull hidden in a tree, and suddenly the valley is more frightening than the war. Who can Jimmy trust? His brother is too little; his best friend has changed. Finding an ally in someone he never expects, they set out together to uncover the secrets that lie with the skull. What they discover will change Jimmy - and the village - forever.