From America's preeminent military historian, Stephen E. Ambrose, comes a brilliant telling of the war in Europe, from D-Day, June 6, 1944, to the end, eleven months later, on May 7, 1945. This authoritative narrative account is drawn by the author himself from his five acclaimed books about that conflict, most particularly from the definitive and comprehensive "D-Day" and "Citizen Soldiers," about which the great Civil War historian James McPherson wrote,
If there is a better book about the experience of GIs who fought in Europe during World War II, I have not read it. "Citizen Soldiers" captures the fear and exhilaration of combat, the hunger and cold and filth of the foxholes, the small intense world of the individual rifleman as well as the big picture of the European theater in a manner that grips the reader and will not let him go. No one who has not been there can understand what combat is like but Stephen Ambrose brings us closer to an understanding than any other historian has done.
"The Victors" also includes stories of individual battles, raids, acts of courage and suffering from "Pegasus Bridge," an account of the first engagement of D-Day, when a detachment of British airborne troops stormed the German defense forces and paved the way for the Allied invasion; and from "Band of Brothers," an account of an American rifle company from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment who fought, died, and conquered, from Utah Beach through the Bulge and on to Hitter's Eagle's Nest in Germany.
Stephen Ambrose is also the author of "Eisenhower," the greatest work on Dwight Eisenhower, and one of the editors of the Supreme Allied Commander's papers. He describes themomentous decisions about how and where the war was fought, and about the strategies and conduct of the generals and officers who led the invasion and the bloody drive across Europe to Berlin.
But it is, as always with Stephen Ambrose, the ranks, the ordinary boys and men, who command his attention and his awe. "The Victors" tells their stories, how citizens became soldiers in the best army in the world. Ambrose draws on thousands of interviews and oral histories from government and private archives, from the high command Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton -- on down through officers and enlisted men, to re-create the last year of the Second World War when the Allied soldiers pushed the Germans out of France, chased them across Germany, and destroyed the Nazi regime.
The Battle of Iwo Jima has been memorialized innumerable times as the subject of countless books and motion pictures, most recently Clint Eastwood's films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, and no wartime photo is more famous than Joe Rosenthal's Pulitzer Prize-winning image of Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi. Yet most Americans know only one side of this pivotal and bloody battle. First published in Japan to great acclaim, becoming a bestseller and a prize-winner, So Sad to Fall in Battle shows us the struggle, through the eyes of Japanese commander Tadamichi Kuribayashi, one of the most fascinating and least-known figures of World War II.
As author Kumiko Kakehashi demonstrates, Kuribayashi was far from the stereotypical fanatic Japanese warrior. Unique among his country's officers, he refused to risk his men's lives in suicidal banzai attacks, instead creating a defensive, insurgent style of combat that eventually became the Japanese standard. On Iwo Jima, he eschewed the special treatment due to him as an officer, enduring the same difficult conditions as his men, and personally walked every inch of the island to plan the positions of thousands of underground bunkers and tunnels. The very flagpole used in the renowned photograph was a pipe from a complex water collection system the general himself engineered. Exclusive interviews with survivors reveal that as the tide turned against him, Kuribayashi displayed his true mettle: Though offered a safer post on another island, he chose to stay with his men, fighting alongside them in a final, fearless, and ultimately hopeless three-hour siege. After thirty-six cataclysmic days on Iwo Jima, Kurbiayashi's troops were responsible for the deaths of a third of all U.S. Marines killed during the entire four-year Pacific conflict, making him, in the end, America's most feared-and respected-foe. Ironically, it was Kuribayashi' s own memories of his military training in America in the 1920s, and his admiration for this country's rich, gregarious, and self-reliant people, that made him fear ever facing them in combat-a feeling that some suspect prompted his superiors to send him to Iwo Jima, where he met his fate. Along with the words of his son and daughter, which offer unique insight into the private man, Kuribayashi's own letters cited extensively in this book paint a stirring portrait of the circumstances that shaped him. So Sad to Fall in Battle tells a fascinating, never-before-told story and introduces America, as if for the first time, to one of its most worthy adversaries.![In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars [With DVD]](/images/books_by_isbn/006/122/875/3/0061228753_item.jpg)
Venturing alone into the dark heart of war, armed with just a video camera, a digital camera, a laptop, and a satellite modem, the award-winning journalist covered virtually every major global hot spot as the first Internet correspondent for Yahoo News.
Beginning his journey with the anarchic chaos of Somalia in September 2005 and ending with the Israeli-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006, Sites talks with rebels and government troops, child soldiers and child brides, and features the people on every side, including those caught in the cross fire. His honest reporting helps destroy the myths of war by putting a human face on war's inhumanity. Personally, Sites will come to discover that the greatest danger he faces may not be from bombs and bullets, but from the unsettling power of the truth.
On February 6, 1945, Robert Brasillach was executed for treason by a French firing squad. He was a writer of some distinction--a prolific novelist and a keen literary critic. He was also a dedicated anti-Semite, an acerbic opponent of French democracy, and editor in chief of the fascist weekly Je Suis Partout, in whose pages he regularly printed wartime denunciations of Jews and resistance activists.
Was Brasillach in fact guilty of treason? Was he condemned for his denunciations of the resistance, or singled out as a suspected homosexual? Was it right that he was executed when others, who were directly responsible for the murder of thousands, were set free? Kaplan's meticulous reconstruction of Brasillach's life and trial skirts none of these ethical subtleties: a detective story, a cautionary tale, and a meditation on the disturbing workings of justice and memory, The Collaborator will stand as the definitive account of Brasillach's crime and punishment. A National Book Award Finalist A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist "A well-researched and vivid account."--John Weightman, New York Review of Books "A gripping reconstruction of Brasillach's] trial."--The New Yorker "Readers of this disturbing book will want to find moral touchstones of their own. They're going to need them. This is one of the few works on Nazism that forces us to experience how complex the situation really was, and answers won't come easily."--Daniel Blue, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review "The Collaborator is one of the best-written, most absorbing pieces of literary history in years."--David A. Bell, New York Times Book Review "Alice Kaplan's clear-headed study of the case of Robert Brasillach in France has a good deal of current-day relevance. . . . Kaplan's fine book . . . shows that the passage of time illuminates different understandings, and she leaves it to us to reflect on which understanding is better."--Richard Bernstein, The New York Times
Deserve s] a place on every Civil War bookshelf.--New York Times Book Review
Trulock] brings her subject alive and escorts him through a brilliant career. One can easily say that the definitive work on Joshua Chamberlain has now been done.--James Robertson, Richmond Times-Dispatch
An example of history as it should be written. The author combines exhaustive research with an engaging prose style to produce a compelling narrative which will interest scholars and Civil War buffs alike.--Journal of Military History
A solid biography. . . . It does full justice to an astonishing life.--Library Journal
This remarkable biography traces the life and times of Joshua L. Chamberlain, the professor-turned-soldier who led the Twentieth Maine Regiment to glory at Gettysburg, earned a battlefield promotion to brigadier general from Ulysses S. Grant at Petersburg, and was wounded six times during the course of the Civil War. Chosen to accept the formal Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Chamberlain endeared himself to succeeding generations with his unforgettable salutation of Robert E. Lee's vanquished army. After the war, he went on to serve four terms as governor of his home state of Maine and later became president of Bowdoin College. He wrote prolifically about the war, including The Passing of the Armies, a classic account of the final campaign of the Army of the Potomac.
Combining scholarship with readability, this collection of nineteen biographical essays has been written by a distinguished international team of naval historians in a style readily accessible to the general reader. It examines admirals of many navies, from the advent of the gun-armed sailing ship onward, who gave naval combat a recognizably modern form. The theme is leadership in war at sea. Each essay treats an admiral who held command in battle, exploring the combination of personal attributes and professional experience that shaped the admiral's leadership, and analyzing a battle in which that leadership can be observed in action.
Only admirals who flew their flags in battle are included. They are presented in chronological order, beginning with Drake, continuing with Tromp, Blake, de Ruyter, Hawke, Juel, Suffren, Nelson, Miaoulis, Farragut, Tegetthoff, Dewey, Togo, Jellicoe, Scheer, Cunningham, Yamamoto, Spruance, and Halsey. Complementing their biographies are nearly forty illustrations, including seldom-seen portraits, and more than thirty maps and charts drawn especially for the book. Six surveys by the editor trace the evolution of the instruments and conditions of naval warfare and link the admirals to their eras. As a whole, the work provides a panoramic treatment of command at sea under the changing circumstances of naval combat since early modern times.
Surveys the war and its politics
This massive work is biography at its very best. Literate and meaty, incisive and balanced, detailed without being pedantic. Mr. D'Este's Patton takes its rightful place as the definitive biography of this American warrior. --Calvin L. Christman, Dallas Morning News
D'Este tells this story well, and gives us a new understanding of this great and troubled man.-The Wall Street Journal
An instant classic. --Douglas Brinkley, director, Eisenhower Center
In Where the Birds Never Sing, Jack Sacco tells the harrowing and ultimately triumphant tale of his father, an American G.I. in World War II. Joe Sacco was a farm boy from Alabama who survived both Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge; at the age of twenty he was already a seasoned veteran. But it was at Dachau that he finally grasped the significance of the Allied mission; Sacco was among the first 250 American troops who entered the infamous concentration camp, where he witnessed unimaginable death and destruction.
Told from the perspective of an ordinary soldier, Where the Birds Never Sing contains firsthand accounts and never-before-published photographs that document one man's transformation from farm boy to soldier to liberator. Jack Sacco is a director, writer, and composer living in Marina Del Rey, California. His writing and directing credits include the documentaries "Beyond the Fields" and "The Shroud," and he has composed the soundtracks for such works as TR: The Heroic Life of Theodore Roosevelt and Once Upon a Starlit Night. "One of the more accurate and compelling re-creations of the GI experience in recent years." -- Publishers Weekly
