War History America

A widening gulf between performance and accountability has caused history to be kinder to the American generals of World War II than to those of later wars. In The Generals we meet leaders from World War II to the present who rose to the occasion - and those who failed.

Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army, was as good a rifle company as any in the world. From their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to D-Day and victory, Ambrose tells the story of this remarkable company, which kept getting the tough assignments. Easy Company was responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. Band of Brothers is the account of the men of this remarkable unit.

The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 2 continues one of the most remarkable works of history ever fashioned. Focusing on the pivotal year of 1863, the second volume in Shelby Foote's masterful narrative history brings to life some of the most dramatic and important moments in the Civil War, including the Battle of Gettysburg and Grant's Vicksburg Campaign. The word narrative is the key to this book's extraordinary incandescence and truth: The story is told entirely from the point of view of the people involved.

This book paints a vivid picture of Jefferson Davis as a multifaceted, often charismatic man who mirrored the turbulent times in which he lived and who stood solidly for the South that he loved. Ranging over the complete span of his long life, it shows him as a hardworking Mississippi planter, a compassionate slave owner, a hero of the Mexican War, and an able secretary of war under Franklin Pierce. But it is on the years of the Civil War and Davis’s controversial performance as president of the Confederacy that the book focuses.

On July 10, 1943, two great Allied armadas of over 2,000 ships readied to invade Sicily. This was Operation Husky, the first step toward winning a toehold in fascist-occupied Europe. Among the invaders were 20,000 Canadian troops serving in the First Canadian Infantry Division and First Canadian Tank Brigade - in their first combat experience. Over the next 28 days, the Allied troops carved a path through the rugged land, despite fierce German opposition.

This audiobook is about the Banana Wars that lasted from the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898 until Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy of 1934. When you listen to this story, you’ll learn how and why the US marines invaded Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. You’ll also learn how the US Marines occupied and ruled Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic for years.

The first full-length biography of the Civil War surgeon who, over the course of the war’s bloodiest battles - from Antietam to Gettysburg - redefined military medicine.

Jonathan Letterman was an outpost medical officer serving in Indian country in the years before the Civil War, responsible for the care of just hundreds of men. But when he was appointed the chief medical officer for the Army of the Potomac, he revolutionized combat medicine over the course of four major battles - Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg - that produced unprecedented numbers of casualties.

From best-selling author John U. Bacon, a gripping narrative history of the largest manmade detonation prior to Hiroshima. On Monday, December 3, 1917, the French freighter SS Mont-Blanc set sail from Brooklyn carrying the largest cache of explosives ever loaded onto a ship, including 2,300 tons of picric acid, an unstable, poisonous chemical more powerful than TNT.

For decades after its founding, America was really two nations—one slave, one free. There were many reasons why this composite nation ultimately broke apart, but the fact that enslaved black people repeatedly risked their lives to flee their masters in the South in search of freedom in the North proved that the "united" states was actually a lie. Fugitive slaves exposed the contradiction between the myth that slavery was a benign institution and the reality that a nation based on the principle of human equality was in fact a prison-house in which millions of Americans had no rights.

Thousands of American soldiers are returning from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan with severe wounds from chemical war. They are not the victims of ruthless enemy warfare, but of their own military commanders. These soldiers, afflicted with rare cancers and respiratory diseases, were sickened from the smoke and ash swirling out of the "burn pits" where military contractors incinerated mountains of trash, including old stockpiles of mustard and sarin gas, medical waste, and other toxic material.

In the summer of 1754, deep in the wilderness of western Pennsylvania, a very young George Washington suffered his first military defeat, and a centuries-old feud between Great Britain and France was rekindled. The war that followed would be fought across virgin territories, from Nova Scotia to the forks of the Ohio River, and it would ultimately decide the fate of the entire North American continent—not just for Great Britain and France but also for the Spanish and Native American populations.

Author of the best-seller FDR, Jean Edward Smith is a master of the presidential biography. Setting his sights on Dwight D. Eisenhower, Smith delivers a rich account of Eisenhower’s life using previously untapped primary sources. From the military service in WWII that launched his career to the shrewd political decisions that kept America out of wars with the Soviet Union and China, Smith reveals a man who never faltered in his dedication to serving America, whether in times of war or peace.

Nearly all of the Civil War's greatest soldiers - Grant, Lee, Sherman, Davis, and Jackson - were forged in the heat of the Mexican War. This is their story. At this fascinating juncture of American history, a group of young men came together to fight as friends - only, years later, to fight again as enemies.

Get ready for a rousing rebel yell as best-selling author H. W. Crocker III charges through bunkers and battlefields in The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War. Crocker busts myths and shatters stereotypes as he profiles eminent and colorful military generals, revealing little-known truths, like why Robert E. Lee had a higher regard for African-Americans than Lincoln did.

Resuming the narrative of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, best-selling author Steve Coll tells for the first time the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11.

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, that unmanned drones fill the sky. And when her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she quickly begins to be shaped by her particular time and place until, finally, through the influence of a mysterious functionary, she is turned into a deadly instrument of war.

In 1960 President Eisenhower was focused on Laos, a tiny Southeast Asian nation few Americans had ever heard of. Washington feared the country would fall to Communism, triggering a domino effect in the rest of Southeast Asia. So in January 1961, Eisenhower approved the CIA's Operation Momentum, a plan to create a proxy army of ethnic Hmong to fight Communist forces in Laos. While remaining hidden from the American public and most of Congress, Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States.

Now, for the first time, the nation's most respected reporters share their stories as the eyes and ears of the nation to create a fascinating oral history. Some of the most influential journalists of our time, including Christiane Amanpour, Walter Cronkite, Morley Safer, Peter Arnett, and Andy Rooney convey the facts, the brutality, and the drama of warfare and examine issues such as censorship, propaganda, ethics, the power of the press, and the future of war reporting, especially after September 11th.

The New York Times best-selling author of 13 Hours and Lost in Shangri-La delivers his most compelling and vital work yet - a spellbinding, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting narrative, years in the making, that weaves together myriad stories to create the definitive portrait of 9/11.

Among all of the conflicts that took place in American history, the War of 1812 is one of the most unique wars that helped to shape many of the important American milestones in the years to come. It was also a battle of surprises and irony, as well. Firstly, the weaknesses of both parties ultimately ended up being their respective strengths in the two years of constant fighting that started off in 1812. Secondly, the War of 1812 was the most pointless series of conflicts for the parties involved, as the geographical borders ultimately reverted to what they were before the war.