From the author of The Perfect Storm, a gripping book about Sebastian Junger's almost fatal year with the 2nd battalion of the American Army. For 15 months, Sebastian Junger accompanied a single platoon of thirty men from the celebrated 2nd battalion of the U.S. Army, as they fought their way through a remote valley in Eastern Afghanistan. Over the course of five trips, Junger was in more firefights than he could count, men he knew were killed or wounded, and he himself was almost killed. His relationship with these soldiers grew so close that they considered him part of the platoon, and he enjoyed an access and a candidness that few, if any, journalists ever attain. But this is more than just a book about Afghanistan or the 'War on Terror'; it is a book about the universal truth of all men, in all wars. Junger set out to answer what he thought of as the 'hand grenade question': why would a man throw himself on a hand grenade to save other men he has probably known for only a few months? The answer is elusive but profound, and goes to the heart of what it means not just to be a soldier, but to be human. 'War' is a narrative about combat: the fear of dying, the trauma of killing and the love between platoon-mates who would rather die than let each other down. Gripping, honest, intense, it explores the neurological, psychological and social elements of combat, and the incredible bonds that form between these small groups of men.

How did the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) 'cavalry of the air' transform into the strategic RAF of the Cold War? The flying lives of these three pilots combine across the years to illustrate how it happened. Trained on Bristol Boxkites in 1912, Major Leonard Dawes helped shape the RFC in its infancy. Posted to France with BE2s, he saw action at the birth of battlefield reconnaissance and air fighting, then activated many new squadrons during the First World War. Joining the RAF in 1923, Group Captain Dickie Barwell became a fighter pilot and respected leader of men. As a Hurricane squadron commander, he routed the first major Luftwaffe air attack of the Second World War and flew with Bader's Wing in the Battle of Britain. While commanding RAF Biggin Hill, he flew combat operations over France before his death in a friendly-fire incident in 1942. Squadron Leader Brian Fern learned to fly at Ponca City, Oklahoma, in 1942, then trained hundreds of RAF bomber pilots during the Second World War. Post-war tours on Canberra bombers and spy flights in Chipmunks were followed by selection to the elite Valiant bomber force, where he became a leading exponent of in-flight refuelling, which finally gave the RAF its global reach. Combining these three stories into a narrative that explores the rise of the RAF through an era of dazzling technological breakthroughs and ever-changing operational requirements, Alastair Goodrum tells the story of a journey through adversity to the stars.

E. Tayloe Wise served in Vietnam from May 1969 through April 1970. During those 11 months, he wrote an estimated 750-800 letters home. This memoir is based on those letters, which recounted the details of his experiences and also served as an outlet where he could express the terror, tedium and even boredom of his daily life while in Vietnam. It tells the story of the Vietnam War as this foot soldier viewed it from the jungle, as both a rifleman and a combat medic who was forced to learn his medical skills under fire, and who later became a personal waiter in the private mess hall of Major General E.B. Roberts, the Commanding General of the 1st Cavalry Division (Air Mobile).

The story begins with a record of Wises military history, his training as an infantryman in Leesville, Louisiana and his arrival in Vietnam on May 2, 1969. Chapter two details his first experience under enemy fire on May 11, when suicide squads penetrated their perimeter with the purpose of inflicting the maximum amount of damage with disregard to even the attackers' own lives. Chapters five and six recount the August 1969 battle of LZ Becky, a landing zone that was constructed just south of the Cambodian border and was destroyed only four weeks later. Chapter seven relates Wises experiences after receiving a job as a waiter in the Commander Generals mess hall. On April 9, 1970, his service ended and he headed home. The book contains diagrams of several battles and the authors personal photographs taken while he was in the jungle and in the rear echelon area of Phuoc Vinh.

** Shortlisted for the Military History Matters Book of the Year Award ** 'Magnificent. Narrative history at its vivid and compelling best' Fergal Keane The first major history of the International Brigades: a tale of blood, ideals and tragedy in the fight against fascism. The Spanish Civil War was the first armed battle in the fight against fascism, and a rallying cry for a generation. Over 35,000 volunteers from sixty-one countries around the world came to defend democracy against the troops of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini. Ill-equipped and disorderly, yet fuelled by a shared sense of purpose and potential glory, these disparate groups of idealistic young men and women formed a volunteer army of a size and type unseen since the Crusades, known as the International Brigades. Were they heroes or fools? Saints or bloodthirsty adventurers? And what exactly did they achieve? In this magisterial history, Giles Tremlett tells - for the first time - the story of the Spanish Civil War through the experiences of this remarkable group. Drawing on the Brigades' archives in Moscow, as well as first-hand accounts, The International Brigades captures all the human drama of a historic mission to halt fascist expansion in Europe.

War and Enlightenment in Russia explores how members of the military during the reign of Catherine II reconciled Enlightenment ideas about the equality and moral worth of all humans with the Russian reality based on serfdom, a world governed by autocracy, absolute respect for authority, and subordination to seniority. While there is a sizable literature about the impact of the Enlightenment on government, economy, manners, and literature in Russia, no analytical framework that outlines its impact on the military exists. Eugene Miakinkov's research addresses this gap and challenges the assumption that the military was an unadaptable and vertical institution. Using archival sources, military manuals, essays, memoirs, and letters, the author demonstrates how the Russian militaires philosophes operationalized the Enlightenment by turning thought into reality.

Before, during, and after World War II, Maria Savchyn Pyskir served in the Ukrainian Underground resistance. Her dramatic and poignant memoir tells of her recruitment into underground service at age 14, her participation in resistance activities during the War, her bittersweet marriage to revolutionary leader "Orlan," her struggle against Stalinist forces, and her captures by and escapes from the KGB. In the 1950s when she escaped to the West, she began these memoirs, which were not published in Ukrainian until after the fall of the Soviet Union. Their appearance in Ukrainian caused a sensation, as she remains the only survivor of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to have told her tale, now offered in English. Pyskir, whose escape came at the cost of her husband, children, and family, recreates in her memoir an astonishing account of her experiences as a Ukrainian partisan, a woman, a wife, a mother, and an outcast from her own land. The book contains maps, many of the author's own photographs, and a foreword by John A. Armstrong.

When 3 Para began their assault under cover of darkness on Mount Longdon in June 1982, nobody knew what to expect. The three platoons of B Company each approached the mountain silently, treading carefully through a series of defensive minefields. But following an explosion, fighting quickly escalated with shocking speed and severity, resulting in some of the bloodiest close hand fighting, terrible injuries and shocking loss of life experienced by British troops since the Korean war.

Forty years on, James O'Connell - who fought there and was injured himself - recreates this bloody battle in a gut-wrenching 360 degree classic.

Frustrated by highly inaccurate books about the battle, O'Connell decided to set the record straight. He revisited the Falkland's five times with comrades and Argentine soldiers and literally walked through the battle with them, step-by-step, creating an unprecedented masterpiece of immersive military publishing.

Combined with rare access to the Battalion's records and radio logs, the resulting book is the last word in Mount Longdon, and might be the most harrowingly realistic description of modern warfare you will ever read.

On a clear night in late June 2005, four U.S. Navy SEALs left their base in northern Afghanistan for the mountainous Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less then twenty-four hours later, only one of those Navy SEALs remained alive. This is the story of fire team leader Marcus Luttrell, the sole survivor of Operation Redwing, and the desperate battle in the mountains that led, ultimately, to the largest loss of life in Navy SEAL history. But it is also, more than anything, the story of his teammates, who fought ferociously beside him until he was the last one left-blasted unconscious by a rocket grenade, blown over a cliff, but still armed and still breathing. Over the next four days, badly injured and presumed dead, Luttrell fought off six al Qaeda assassins who were sent to finish him, then crawled for seven miles through the mountains before he was taken in by a Pashtun tribe, who risked everything to protect him from the encircling Taliban killers. A six-foot-five-inch Texan, Leading Petty Officer Luttrell takes us, blow-by-blow, through the brutal training of America's warrior elite and the relentless rites of passage required by the Navy SEALs. He transports us to a monstrous battle fought in the desolate peaks of Afghanistan, where the beleaguered American team plummeted headlong a thousand feet down a mountain as they fought back through flying shale and rocks. In this rich, moving chronicle of courage, honor, and patriotism, Marcus Luttrell delivers one of the most powerful narratives ever written about modern warfare-and a tribute to his teammates, who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

In Bonzo's War, Clare Campbell told the fascinating story of what it was like for Britain's pets when the world was at war. This time, she follows the incredible journey of the dogs who conscripted to fight for their country, with some even returning with medals for their bravery. During the most dangerous days of the Second World War, the British government set out to recruit an army of canines - a 'Guard Dog Unit'. This experimental team of brave hounds would later use their incredible sense of smell to sniff out the anti-personnel mines that barred the way to reclaiming Europe. Dog owners countrywide shed tears as they bid farewell to their beloved 'Brian', 'Rex', or 'Molly' and packed them off to the War Dogs Training School to learn the skills they'd need to 'do their bit for Britain' on the very frontiers of the Third Reich. The soldiers waiting out in the field to greet their canine counterparts were under strict instructions: do not get too attached to your new four-legged companion. That bit proved disastrously impossible. Based on original documents, first-hand accounts and interviews, Dogs of Courage tells a story of human determination, heartbreak and uncompromising canine courage that has never been told before.

This book recounts the World War II journeys of a soldier, a ship, and a bottle of spirits through, and around, five great turning-point battles. Those battles were influenced more by geography and climate than by generals and admirals. Properly titled they would be known as the Battles of the Sky (Britain), the Sand (El Alemein), the Snow (Stalingrad), the Sea (North Atlantic), and the Shore (Normandy). Slogging their way through this quintet are an eighteen-year-old G.I. from Missouri (as seen through his letters home), an "ugly duckling" of a Liberty ship (as seen through its Armed Guard reports), and a bottle of rum (as traced by those who, after the war, made money in selling war souvenirs). It is the history of the North Atlantic sea basin and its extensions at war: the story of the lulls between battles, when America's teenage warriors often watched war movies (Humphrey Bogart made and Warner Brothers released seven during the war), sang or listened to popular tunes by songsmiths like Irving Berlin, and drank rum-and-Coke (while listening to Dick Haymes sing the hit "Rum & Coca-Cola"). While accessible and vastly entertaining, this is a serious work of history. By treating World War II in Europe much as Fernand Braudel treated the origins of Western civilization in his masterpiece The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Hatcher brings Braudelian detachment to his narrative.

"The boat was eerily quiet and hot as an oven. Shirts came off and men were either in skivvy shirts or bare from the waist up. Every body glistened with sweat—some from the heat and some from just raw fear. Click . . . BANG! Click . . . BANG! Two more [depth charges], still very close. A couple of lightbulbs shattered. . . ."

In this riveting personal account, an authentic American hero relives the perils and triumphs of eight harrowing patrols aboard one of America's most successful World War II submarines. Courageous deeds and terror-filled moments—as well as the endless hard work of maintaining and operating a combat sub—are vividly recalled in James Calvert's candid portrait. From rigorous training and shakedown cruises off the coast of New England, to tense patrols within shouting distance of Japan's major cities, the progress of the newly commissioned USS Jack parallels Calvert's own growth from callow ensign to charter member of one of the sharpest attack teams in the fleet.

In June 1943, the Jack made its first patrol into Japanese waters, and Calvert began to build a reputation as a crack TDC operator—the crew member who set the torpedo's course based on the approach officer's readings. With Calvert at the TDC and his much admired skipper Tommy Dykers at the periscope, the Jack had five hits and four confirmed kills on its first patrol. The Jack's fame grew. Despite recurring engine trouble, and the notorious failure of American torpedo detonators early in the war, the sub continued to take its toll on enemy shipping. At one point, Calvert hit an enemy vessel at 5,000 yards, roughly three times the maximum distance recommended for accurate torpedo shooting. The ship earned its nickname, "Jack the Pack," when a besieged Japanese admiral radioed for help, saying that he was under attack by a "wolf pack."

Telling his story with sensitivity and great affection for his shipmates, Calvert combines an intimate knowledge of the nitty-gritty technical details of submarine warfare with the fast-paced action and nail-biting tension of a Tom Clancy novel. He relives long and terrifying hours spent hundreds of feet beneath the ocean's surface, punctuated by the relentless click-BANG of exploding depth charges. He recounts the perilous nighttime cat-and-mouse games that Dykers played with convoy escorts, accompanied on the bridge by a crewman renowned for his night vision—and the disconcerting habit of singing "Nearer My God to Thee" whenever the situation got tense. And a lively account of a completely unauthorized tour of Tokyo before the official surrender recalls an escapade that nearly cost Calvert his career.

Advance praise for Jim Calvert's Silent Running

"I am just one of many who experienced life on a submarine during World War II. Silent Running is a story sincerely told—free of any revisionism or cynicism—and I commend Vice Admiral Calvert for sharing this dramatic personal account of that difficult and exciting time." —President George Bush

"Hardened old sub vet that I am, I still felt the need for two weeks R&R after reliving Jim's only too realistic war patrolling adventures." —C. W. Nimitz, Jr., Rear Admiral, USN (Ret.)

"I believe it is the best personal account yet written on U.S. submarine operations in the Second World War. . . . [Calvert] writes with lucidity and a rare candor. We get an extraordinary sense of what it was like, feeling the tensions and emotions, sharing the successes and disappointments.

. . . This is a true story with real people, always gripping and sometimes tender. It is exciting to read and hard to put down. —J. L. Holloway, Admiral, USN (Ret.) President, Naval Historical Society Chief of Naval Operations, 1974-1978

"I knew Jim Calvert throughout the war, and in this book he has told the submarine story in a way that catches the flavor and tang of the real thing. This is the way it really was." —Frederick B. Warder, Rear Admiral, USN (Ret.) Legendary WWII skipper of the Seawolf

A Times History Book of the Year 2022 From Sunday Times bestselling historian Saul David, the dramatic tale of the first American troops to take the fight to the enemy in the Second World War, and also the last. The 'Devil Dogs' of K Company, 3/5 Marines, were part of the legendary first Marine Division. They landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in 1942 - the first US ground offensive of the war - and were present when Okinawa, Japan's most southerly prefecture, finally fell to American troops after a bitter struggle in June 1945. In between they fought in the 'Green Hell' of Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain, and across the coral wasteland of Peleliu in the Palau Islands, a campaign described by one K Company veteran as 'thirty days of the meanest, around-the-clock slaughter that desperate men can inflict on each other.' Ordinary men from very different backgrounds, and drawn from cities, towns, and settlements across America, the Devil Dogs were asked to do something extraordinary: take on the victorious Imperial Japanese Army, composed of some of the most effective soldiers in world history - and defeat it. This is the story of how they did just that and, in the process, forged bonds of brotherhood that still survive today. Remarkably, the company contained an unusually high number of talented writers, whose first-hand accounts and memoirs provide the colour, emotion, and context for this extraordinary story. In Devil Dogs, award-winning historian Saul David sets the searing experience of K Company into the broader context of the brutal war in the Pacific and does for the U.S. Marines what Band of Brothers did for the 101st Airborne. Gripping, intimate, authoritative and far-reaching, this is a unique and incredibly personal narrative of war. Saul David's previous book SBS -Silent Warriors was in the Sunday Times Bestseller Chart in the 35th and 36th week of 2021.

On 31st January 2010, Trooper Corie Mapp of The Life Guards was driving his armoured vehicle on combat operations in Afghanistan when it ran over an IED. The explosion that followed caused him massive injuries. But this was not the end of his active life but rather the beginning. The next thing Corie remembers was waking in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Selly Oak, Birmingham, not realising that he was a double amputee. Two months later, and having made an almost miraculous against-the-odds recovery, Corie was back with his regiment in Windsor, and continued to serve until 2013. Sport was an important part of Corie's life before the explosion and a vital one after. In rehabilitation, he rediscovered his sporting skills, and competed successful in disabled cricket at a national level, and was a member of Team GB for sitting volley ball and athletics at the Warrior and the Invictus Games. However, when he was offered the chance to bobsleigh, his horizons widened considerably. After just one year of training, in 2014 Corie won gold in the inaugural Para Bobsleigh World Cup competition in St Moritz, was second overall in the World Cup 2014/15 season and became the overall World Cup champion in 2018. In the 2021-22 season, he will continue to train and compete at the highest levels in North America and Europe. On the international bobsleigh circuit he is affectionately known 'Black Ice'. This book is Corie Mapp's remarkable story of triumph over adversity.

On November 8, 1943, U.S. Army nurse Agnes Jensen stepped out of a cold rain in Catania, Sicily, into a C-53 transport plane. But she and twelve other nurses never arrived in Bari, Italy, where they were to transport wounded soldiers to hospitals farther from the front lines. A violent storm and pursuit by German Messerschmitts led to a crash landing in a remote part of Albania, leaving the nurses, their team of medics, and the flight crew stranded in Nazi-occupied territory. What followed was a dangerous nine-week game of hide-and-seek with the enemy, a situation President Roosevelt monitored daily. Albanian partisans aided the stranded Americans in the search for a British Intelligence Mission, and the group began a long and hazardous journey to the Adriatic coast. During the following weeks, they crossed Albania's second highest mountain in a blizzard, were strafed by German planes, managed to flee a town moments before it was bombed, and watched helplessly as an attempt to airlift them out was foiled by Nazi forces. Albanian Escape is the suspense-filled story of the only group of Army flight nurses to have spent any length of time in occupied territory during World War II. The nurses and flight crew endured frigid weather, survived on little food, and literally wore out their shoes trekking across the rugged countryside. Thrust into a perilous situation and determined to survive, these women found courage and strength in each other and in the kindness of Albanians and guerrillas who hid them from the Germans.

A Daily Telegraph History Book of the Year 'An astonishing story... brilliantly told' Antony Beevor 'Gripping... Will appeal to anyone who relishes Ben Macintyre's tales of wartime espionage and cryptic codes.' Sunday Telegraph Summertime, 1935. On a lake near Berlin, a young man is out sailing when he glimpses a woman reclining in the prow of a passing boat. Their eyes meet - and one of history's greatest conspiracies is born. Harro Schulze-Boysen had already shed blood in the fight against Nazism by the time he and Libertas Haas-Heye began their whirlwind romance. She joined the cause, and soon the two lovers were leading a network of antifascists that stretched across Berlin's bohemian underworld. Harro himself infiltrated German intelligence and began funnelling Nazi battle plans to the Allies, including the details of Hitler's surprise attack on the Soviet Union. But nothing could prepare Harro and Libertas for the betrayals they would suffer in this war of secrets - a struggle in which friend could be indistinguishable from foe. Drawing on unpublished diaries, letters and Gestapo files, Norman Ohler spins an unforgettable tale of love, heroism and sacrifice.

The Gulf War and its aftermath has testified once again to the significance placed on the meanings and images of Vietnam, by the US media and culture. Almost two decades after the end of hostilities, the Vietnam war remains a dominant moral, political and military touchstone in American cultural consciousness. "Vietnam War Stories" provides an introduction to ten key narratives, including personal accounts as well as novels. The work of, amongst others, Philip Caputo, Michael Herr, Tim O'Brien and Bobbi Ann Mason is located in the context of contemporary cinema and TV and a tradition of modern war literature from Crane and Hemingway to Mailer and Jones. By tracing cultural and literary themes generated by the conflict, Tobey Herzog charts the transformations undergone by US soldiers and by the American nation in their experience of modern war. He examines the "John Wayne syndrome" of pre-war innocence through the "Heavy Heart of Darkness trip" of the conflict itself and beyond to the "aftermath novels" of the post-war adjustment period.

From award-winning war reporter and co-author of I Am Malala, this is the first major account to address the scale of and sexual violence in modern conflict.

Christina Lamb has worked in war and combat zones for over thirty years. In Our Bodies, Their Battlefield she gives voice to the women of conflicts, exposing how in today’s warfare, is used by armies, s and militias as a weapon to humiliate, oppress and carry out ethnic cleansing.

Speaking to survivors first-hand, Lamb encounters the suffering and bravery of women in war and meets those fighting for justice. From Southeast Asia where ‘comfort women’ were enslaved by the Japanese during World War Two to the Rwandan , when an estimated quarter of a million women were , to the Yazidi women and children of today who witnessed the of their families before being enslaved by ISIS. Along the way Lamb uncovers incredible stories of heroism and resistance, including the Bosnian women who have hunted down more than a hundred war criminals, the Aleppo beekeeper rescuing Yazidis and the Congolese doctor who has risked his life to treat more victims than anyone else on earth.

may be as old as war but it is a preventable crime. Bearing witness does not guarantee it won’t happen again, but it can take away any excuse that the world simply didn’t know.

Adolf Hitler was hardly the modern world's only murderous tyrant and imperialist. Yet he and the regime he ruled over for 12 years exerted an enormous impact on the history of the 20th Century. We are still living with the consequences. Interpretations of his life and legacy continue to extert a range of influences - some beneficial and other deleterious - on our politics and popular culture. "For the world to be done with Hitler," the German journalist and historian Sebastian Haffner wrote in 1978, "it had to kill not just the man, but the legend as well." That legend has proven to be like the mythical hydra. Adolf Hitler: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works captures Hitler's life, her works, and legacy. It features a chronology, an introduction offers a brief account of his life, a dictionary section lists entries on people, places, and events related to him. A comprehensive bibliography offers a list of works by and about Hitler.

From master storyteller Andy McNab, this is the opening book in an adventure-filled and action-packed new series telling, for the first time ever, the true stories of Special Forces missions. 'McNab's first major non-autobiographical work of non-fiction ... The operation is told like a novel [...] and it is as refreshingly informal and compellingly immediate as his other books' Daily Express 'Part history lesson, part military manual, part fixed-bayonets thriller. A must for Special Forces fans' The Sun It is the early 2000s and 9/11 is fresh in the world's memory. The Taliban have taken over Afghanistan, and armed militants and explosive devices are terrorising the people. And now a new threat is emerging in the country: suicide bombings, ordered by military commander of the Taliban, Mullah Dadullah. Special Forces are sent in to stop him. The Hunt is the thrilling story of the secret mission to catch Dadullah, one of the most dangerous men alive. Using classified sources and his unique insight into the way the SAS works, Andy McNab gives a page-turning account of what it took the Special Forces to find their target and what they would have to do to take him down. An explosive story of hostage negotiations, undercovers missions and a final, epic assault on Dadullah's compound that could leave only one side alive, The Hunt is a powerful retelling of a real-life Special Forces mission.

The remarkable story of a Japanese American who served in a top-secret team in World War II that coaxed Japanese Imperial soldiers from their bunkers on the front lines of the war in the Pacific. Masao Abe was a second-generation Japanese American who was swept up in the momentum of history during World War II. Born in southern California but educated as a teenager in Japan during the 1930s, he returned to the US and was drafted into the US Army. As he completed basic training, the attack on Pearl Harbor put his military career in limbo because the US government didn't know what to do with him or how to think about him--was he an enemy or a patriot? Masao was eventually recruited to join the secretive Military Intelligence Service: he was trained to accompany American soldiers as they fought their way across the islands in the Pacific. His assignment was to convince Japanese Imperial soldiers to lay down their arms, and to read captured documents looking for enemy strategies. He went to war with a bodyguard because his commanders knew he wore a target on his front and his back. This little-known slice of history reveals how the confluence of race, war, and loyalty played out when the nation called for the service of those it judged most harshly.

Many years after becoming the youngest person ever to be awarded the VC for attacking a company of Panzer Grenadiers on his own - an action that proved a turning point in one of the major battles of the Second World War - John Kenneally made an extraordinary confession. The courageous hero of the Irish Guards, who had taken on a whole company single-handed was not, in fact, John Kenneally at all, but Leslie Jackson, the illegitimate son of Neville Blond and Gertrude Robinson (a 'high-class whore'), who had deserted his former regiment, the Honourable Artillery Company. In THE HONOUR AND THE SHAME, he tells his story with great verve and frankness - a story of riotous living, great courage on the front line, and intense loyalties. Full of the escapades of battle - from the triumphant Tunisian campaign to the bloodbath of Anzio - and the many adventures of a freewheeling youth, THE HONOUR AND THE SHAME is a vivid portrait of a fascinating man.

" With a foreword by Stephen Ambrose and a preface by Franklin D. Anderson Forrest Pogue (1912-1996) was undoubtedly one of the greatest World War II combat historians. Born and educated in Kentucky, he is perhaps best known for his definitive four-volume biography of General George C. Marshall. But, as Pogue's War makes clear, he was also a pioneer in the development of oral history in the twentieth century, as well as an impressive interviewer with an ability to relate to people at all levels, from the private in the trenches to the general carrying four stars. Pogue's War is drawn from Forrest Pogue's handwritten pocket notebooks, carried with him throughout the war, long regarded as unreadable because of his often atrocious handwriting. Pogue himself began expanding the diaries a few short years after the war, with the intent of eventual publication. At last this work is being published. Supplemented with carefully deciphered and transcribed selections from his diaries, the heart of the book is straight from the field. Much of the material has never before seen print. From D-Day to VE-Day, Pogue experienced and documented combat on the front lines, describing action on Omaha Beach, in the Huertgen Forest, and on other infamous fields of conflict. He not only graphically -- yet also often poetically -- recounts the extreme circumstances of battle, but he also notes his fellow soldiers' innermost thoughts, feelings, opinions, and attitudes about the cruelty of war. As a trained historian, Pogue describes how he went about his work and how the Army's history program functioned in the European Theater of Operations. His entries from his time at the history headquarters in Paris show the city in the early days after the liberation in a unique light. Pogue's War has an immediacy that much official history lacks, and is a remarkable addition to any World War II bookshelf. Franklin D. Anderson, Forrest Pogue's nephew by marriage, is a longtime educator. He lives in Princeton, Kentucky.

This is the first book to describe British wartime success in breaking Japanese codes of dazzling variety and great complexity which contributed to the victory in Burma three months before Hiroshima. Written for the general reader, this first-hand account describes the difficulty of decoding one of the most complex languages in the world in some of the most difficult conditions. The book was published in 1989 to avoid proposed legislation which would prohibit those in the security services from publishing secret information.

"I am just one of many who experienced life on a submarine during World War II. Silent Running is a story sincerely told—free of any revisionism or cynicism—and I commend Vice Admiral Calvert for sharing this dramatic personal account of that difficult and exciting time." —President George Bush

"Hardened old sub vet that I am, I still felt the need for two weeks R&R after reliving Jim's only too realistic war patrolling adventures." —C. W. Nimitz, Jr., Rear Admiral, USN (Ret.)

"I believe it is the best personal account yet written on U.S. submarine operations in the Second World War. [Calvert] writes with lucidity and a rare candor. We get an extraordinary sense of what it was like, feeling the tensions and emotions, sharing the successes and disappointments, ... This is a true story with teal people, always gripping and sometimes tender. It is exciting to read and hard to put down. —J. L. Holloway, Admiral, USN (Ret.) President, Naval Historical Society, Chief of Naval Operations, 1974-1978.

"I knew Jim Calvert Throughout the war, and in this book he has told the submarine story in a way that catches the flavor and tang of the real thing. This is the way it really was." —Frederick B. Warder, Rear Admiral, USN (Ret.) Legendary W.W. II skipper of the Seawolf.