Bold, brash, and full of ambition, George Brinton McClellan seemed destined for greatness when he assumed command of all the Union armies before he was 35. It was not to be. Ultimately deemed a failure on the battlefield by Abraham Lincoln, he was finally dismissed from command following the bloody battle of Antietam. To better understand this fascinating, however flawed, character, Ethan S. Rafuse considers the broad and complicated political climate of the earlier 19th century. Rather than blaming McClellan for the Union s military losses, Rafuse attempts to understand his political thinking as it affected his wartime strategy. As a result, Rafuse sheds light not only on McClellan s conduct on the battlefields of 1861-62 but also on United States politics and culture in the years leading up to the Civil War."

Military working dogs gained widespread attention after one participated in the SEAL Team Six mission that led to Osama bin Laden's death. Before that, few civilians realized we had dogs serving in combat, let alone that they could parachute from up to 30,000 feet. And as astounding as that is, it's only one of the many things our four-legged soldiers can do.

In this book, Lisa Rogak shows the amazing range of jobs that military working dogs perform, such as explosives detection, patrol, and hunt for enemy combatants. Dogs have had a place in the military for decades, but their importance and our treatment of them has evolved over time. Rogak examines the training, equipment, and what it's like to serve with them on the front lines.

"The Dogs of War "also tells heart-warming stories of the deep connections that grow between dogs and their handlers. And Rogak recounts adventures both heroic and tragic of the courage and devotion that both human and canine soldiers have shown together on the battlefield.

An incredible story of a largely unseen but vital role that dogs play in our armed forces, "The Dogs of War "is a must-read for animal-lovers everywhere.

Based on Captain Matt Gallagher's controversial and popular blog, which the U.S. Army shut down in June 2008, Kaboom is a sardonic, unnerving, one-of-a-kind Iraq war memoir. "At turns hilarious, maddening and terrifying," providing "raw and insightful snapshots of conflict" ( Washington Post ), Kaboom resonates with stoical detachment from and timeless insight into a war that we are still trying to understand.

Written by a soldier from the ranks, this book is a candid account of the bloody battle for Mount Langdon during the Falklands War. Vincent Bramley describes in shocking detail the 12 hours of brutal man-to-man combat that it took before the Third Battalion Parachute Regiment were able to take the mountain from the Argentine forces. He exposes the effects that the fear of dying and the reality of killing have on the ordinary soldier during the heat of battle. He tells how some men went AWOL, how others faced their fears and confronted the enemy, and how some went on a vicious killing spree. Bramley's underlying message is that war should be avoided at all costs. But, while wars continue to be fought around the globe, the grim reality of life on the frontline will be fully comprehended by all who read this book.

In this book, ten scripts derived from highly regarded sources bring World War II to life for students in grades 6-12 and serve as a springboard for further investigation of this pivotal world event. World War II mobilized 100 million military personnel and resulted in the deadliest conflict in human history. Everyone from students in grade six to adults will be engrossed by tales documenting the actions of Hannah Szenes, a young Hungarian woman who lost her life trying to save Jews, the sobering and shocking occurrences during the Bataan Death March, and the daring POW rescues like the raid at Cabanatuan. Each script in War Stories for Readers Theatre: World War II not only brings history to life, but also provides a perspective that readers may not have encountered. While some topics are familiar, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor, most readers are unaware of the motivations behind it. Some of the narratives are created from interviews with living World War II veterans. Every reader will be inspired to explore each subject more deeply after experiencing these intimate views of the specific events during World War II. Includes content based on new interviews with living World War II veterans and heroes, primary documents, and adaptations of previously published works A bibliography of topical reading and media sources are provided for each script

The incredible true story of a top secret mission to resuce POWs in Vietnam. In the last year of the Vietnam conflict, even as American troops were leaving for home, there were still those fighting for their lives: prisoners of war being held in the Communist north. There were two operations launched to rescue the POWs. One-the legendary Son Tay Raid-was revealed to the public. The other was classified as Top Secret. This is the incredible true story of that almost-forgotten mission... Among the personnel recruited for Operation Thunderhad was a select group of operators from both the U.S. Navy SEALs and the Underwater Demolition Teams who knew that if they were captured, they would be killed, tortured, or simply disappear. They went in anyway. Here, for the first time, the details of Operation Thunderhead are revealed-the mission, the materials, and the men who put their lives on the line to save their brothers in arms.

At exactly 1.30 p.m. on 1 September 1918, the dozen men of Nine Platoon, 21st Australian Infantry Battalion, rose from Elsa Trench and walked across a weedy beet-field toward the German defenders of Mont St Quentin. Within hours, three were dead and five more were wounded, one of whom died six weeks later. The survivors returned from war, more-or-less intact, to live through the next sixty-odd years in the shadow of that traumatic event. Men of Mont St Quentin tells the story of the men of Nine Platoon and their families. This is the first time that the story of such a group of Australians has been told - only made possible because Garry Roberts, the father of one of the dead, was so grieved by his son Frank's death that he obsessively collected accounts of what happened that afternoon. The Roberts' family papers, used here in this way for the first time, reveal the lives of Frank's comrades and their families as they came to terms with loss and life after war. In the hands of Peter Stanley, one of Australia's leading military historians, a famous battlefield in France becomes unforgettably connected with Australian men and their families in the long aftermath of the Great War.

Nearly two million people were slaughtered in the four-year Nigerian/Biafran Civil War. American educated Nnamdi Agbakoba writes a chilling account of bloodshed and almost miraculous survival in The Terrors of War. As much a story of war as of peace, of cowardice as of heroism, he reveals the spiritual lessons learned, as well as a powerful philosophical viewpoint found in the Bible and the Koran. Woven together, The Terrors of War is a uniquely compelling book. Author Agbakoba takes his account far beyond the events of the mid-sixties, when Nigeria's Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was assassinated and the country was drowning in a sea of anarchy, starvation, and brutality. He delves into fascinating parallels between that civil war and the American presence in Iraq. The chapters on the America/Iraq crisis parts 1, 2 and 3 ministers loads of scriptural therapy very appropriate for application in the current crisis in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria and elsewhere. There are no wiser words than those of the author: War is a reflection of a total breakdown of diplomatic dialogue and discussions aimed at resolving differences. War breaks out when compromise, tolerance, forgiveness, and diplomatic discussions completely fail. In Terrors of War, the futile and violent results of hatred are studied. . .and important conclusions are reached.

On December 19, 1944, Gene Garrison turned nineteen. He spent his birthday in a muddy foxhole, listening to the cries of wounded comrades while exploding artillery shells sent shrapnel raining down on him and the enemy prepared to attack. It was his first day in combat. "Unless Victory Comes" recounts Garrison's journey as he was transformed from a fresh-faced kid from the farmlands of Ohio into a hardened soldier fighting for survival. From his baptism under fire, to the bitter fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, to the end of the war on the Czechoslovakian border, Gene Garrison witnessed the war from the ground up. This is the story of one young man, far from home, surrounded by strangers, facing death yet never losing hope that he would live to see his family again.

A soldier is badly wounded in a mobile, fast-moving theatre of war. Without rapid surgery, he will die. There are no helicopters to move him out to a hospital.
This was the problem faced by the military medical authorities in the Second World War. Their solution: take the medical services to the wounded They set up mobile ambulance units, field dressing stations and blood transfusion units, all based on trucks so that they could move swiftly to keep up with the troops.
They also set up field surgical units, which were mobile operating rooms based on three trucks and managed by the surgeons themselves. They operated in everything from tents to wine cellars, abandoned schoolhouses and hospitals to monasteries and cathedrals. Working often in conditions that would be condemned in modern hospitals, they did whatever it took to save lives.
This is the story of one such unit, the 2nd Canadian Field Surgical Unit under the command of the young surgeon Rocke Robertson: from its set-up and training in England to the historic Allied landings in Sicily; through the killing grounds of central Sicily and southern Italy to the horrific Battle of Ortona on Italy's Adriatic coast. Operating in stifling heat and raw cold, fighting off dust, flies, exhaustion and malaria, they dealt with wounds and patient loads that stretched their imagination, ingenuity and strength to the breaking point.
These units were the precursors of the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals (MASH) in the Korean War, where the wounded soldiers were transferred swiftly and smoothly by helicopter to a medical facility set up behind the lines.
Written by Rocke Robertson's son, this is a vivid and intimate account of a field surgical unit in action - saving lives while bullets fly.

This powerful story documents the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of extraordinary navy corpsman George Wahlen. After decades of silence, this survivor of one of World War II's most horrific battles divulges the gritty details of his incredible experiences. Upon landing with a company of 250 marines, Wahlen fought alongside them. Under repeated grenade and mortar fire himself, Wahlen refused evacuation, choosing instead to aid those he perceived to be in greater danger. Witnesses of his heroics remain dumbfounded he survived, and while his incredible feats of bravery saved countless marines, the intensity of the battle left few men of the company unscathed--they suffered the highest killed-in-action ratio of any marine company during a single battle in U.S. history. The significance of his story lies in the historic context of the battle for Iwo Jima; while many remember the iconic flag-raising photograph captured during this conflict, few realize the battle was the most costly of World War II for America. After receiving a Medal of Honor from President Harry Truman in 1945, Wahlen has been the quintessential quiet hero, refusing the adulation usually bestowed on nationally recognized veterans.

How did the soldiers in the trenches of the Great War understand and explain battlefield experience, and themselves through that experience? Situated at the intersection of military history and cultural history, The Embattled Self draws on the testimony of French combatants to explore how combatants came to terms with the war. In order to do so, they used a variety of narrative tools at hand rites of passage, mastery, a character of the soldier as a consenting citizen of the Republic. None of the resulting versions of the story provided a completely consistent narrative, and all raised more questions about the "truth" of experience than they answered. Eventually, a story revolving around tragedy and the soldier as victim came to dominate even to silence other types of accounts. In thematic chapters, Leonard V. Smith explains why the novel structured by a specific notion of trauma prevailed by the 1930s.

Smith canvasses the vast literature of nonfictional and fictional testimony from French soldiers to understand how and why the "embattled self" changed over time. In the process, he undermines the conventional understanding of the war as tragedy and its soldiers as victims, a view that has dominated both scholarly and popular opinion since the interwar period. The book is important reading not only for traditional historians of warfare but also for scholars in a variety of fields who think critically about trauma and the use of personal testimony in literary and historical studies."

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE, 2014 Haunted by the fate of Dora Bruder - a fifteen-year-old girl listed as missing in an old December 1941 issue of Paris Soir - Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick Modiano sets out to find all he can about her. From her name on a list of deportees to Auschwitz to the fragments he is able to uncover about the Bruder family, Modiano delivers a moving survey of a decade-long investigation that revived for him the sights, sounds and sorrowful rhythms of occupied Paris. And in seeking to exhume Dora Bruder's fate, he in turn faces his own family history. Translated by Joanna Kilmartin 'Absolutely magnificent' Le Monde

G.I. Resister has to do with a nation so deeply cleaved by the ill-fated and unjust war in Vietnam that a generation later the United States has only just begun to heal. Perrin's story is a part of that, both in the hurt and the healing.

Told by the grandson of the head of the family, this is the gripping odyssey of another Frank family from the deceptively good life of Berlin in the 1920s, through the rise of Hitler and their flight to apparently safe Holland, the nightmarish ordeal of their thousand-day-long "submersion" in a small apartment in The Hague, to the joy and pain of liberation and their final journey to America, the same route Anne Frank might have taken had she not been betrayed. Based on personal testaments, records, and family interviews, the book describes their life behind closed curtains in constant fear of discovery. In 1945, after many adventures and appalling vicissitudes, they finally emerged to face the uncertainties of postwar Holland and the promise of the New World. Both a history and a memoir, this extensively researched book gives the first account of the war in Holland, the occupation, and the resistance (including the Jewish resistance) to be published for several years. Despite that resistance, and the help of the Dutch citizens who sheltered their Jewish neighbors, most of Dutch Jewry was destroyed.

This distinctive volume contains twenty first-person narrative essays from Holocaust survivors who were children at the time of the atrocity. As children aged two to sixteen, these authors had different experiences than their adult counterparts and also had different outlooks in understanding the events that they survived. While most Holocaust memoirs focus on one individual or one country, ""And Life Is Changed Forever"" offers a varied collection of compelling reflections. The survivors come from Germany, Poland, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Greece, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Latvia, and Czechoslovakia. All of the contributors escaped death, but they did so in myriad ways. Some children posed as Gentiles or were hidden by sympathizers, some went to concentration camps and survived slave labor, some escaped on the Kindertransports, and some were sent to endure hardships in a ""safe"" location such as Siberia or unoccupied France. While each essay is intensely personal, all speak to the universal horrors and the triumphs of all children who have survived persecution. ""And Life Is Changed Forever"" also focuses on what these children became - teachers, engineers, physicians, entrepreneurs, librarians, parents, and grandparents - and explores the impact of the Holocaust on their later lives.

On an early morning in the fall of 1942, Kemp McLaughlin's group set out for a raid on a French target. Immediately after dropping its bombs, McLaughlin's plane was hit. A huge fire burned a four-foot hole in his wing, his waist gunner bailed out, his radio operator was wounded, the plane lost all oxygen, and his pilot put on a parachute and sat on the escape hatch, waiting for the plane to explode. And this was only McLaughlin's first sortie. McLaughlin went on to pilot the mission command plane on the second raid against Schweinfurt, the largest air raid in history, which resulted in the destruction of 70 percent of German ball bearing production capability. McLaughlin also participated in the bombing of heavy water installations in Norway. The Mighty Eighth in WWII also includes the stories of downed pilots in France and Holland who traveled under the cover of night through the countryside, evading the Nazis who had seen their planes go down. As a group leader, McLaughlin was responsible for the planning and execution of air raids, forced to follow the directives of senior (and sometimes less informed) officers. His position as one of the managers of the massive sky trains allows him to provide unique insight into the work of maintenance and armament crews, preflight briefings, and off-duty activities of the airmen. No other memoir of World War II reveals so much about both the actual bombing runs against Nazi Germany and the management of personnel and material that made those airborne armadas possible.

Rare recollections of combat and camaraderie from the Army of the Potomac. Thomas W. Hyde, a native of Maine who rose rapidly through the Union ranks and eventually received the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Antietam, published his portrait of the Army of the Potomac in 1894. More than a mere personal remembrance, ""Following the Greek Cross"" tells the story of an illustrious army unit and offers rare glimpses into the Northern perspective on the war and its significance in U.S. history. One of the most cited - and most difficult to find - Union memoirs, this volume returns to print with an expanded edition featuring new information about the author, more than a dozen photographs, and a complete index. Hyde began his military career in 1861 as a major of the Seventh Maine Infantry Regiment. When that unit became part of the Sixth Corps of the massive Army of the Potomac, Hyde was promoted to a staff post. He served on the staffs of several prominent Union officers, including John Sedgwick and Horatio G. Wright, major generals who between them commanded the Sixth Corps in several important campaigns in the Virginia theater. Hyde's unit was also among those who followed General Lee's army into Pennsylvania and fought at Gettysburg. In his correspondence Hyde writes engagingly about the war, his fellow soldiers, strategy and tactics, and daily life in the Union forces. He elaborates on their motivation for fighting, the strength of their camaraderie, and their unflagging determination to preserve the Union. Eric J. Mink's new introduction provides fresh insights on Hyde's origins, perspectives, and postwar achievements, which include the establishment of one of North America's most important shipyards, in Hyde's hometown of Bath, Maine.

In the fourth Quarterly Essay of 2005, John Birmingham ponders the Aust ralian way of war. After East Timor and Bali, a combination of primal fear and primal ambition has transformed attitudes to our region, to security and to war as an instrument of politics. Australian defence policy has become more assertive and our armed forces are being radically restructured and hardened. Australia now has the capacity, and even the will, to act as a military power in its region. A Time for War begins with a gripping account of Operation Anaconda, the 2002 battle in Afghanistan to which Australian special forces made a crucial contribution. Birmingham also looks at our war dreaming- the sanctification of Anzac Day and the eclipse of the Vietnam Syndrome. Ranging from Sir John Monash to Peter Cosgrove, from Rudyard Kipling to The One Day of the Year, he finds that our armed forces can now do no wrong, and that politicians have taken note. The new militarism is not simply a response to September 11, he argues - it marks a deeper shift in the culture. 'It being an RSL, we would stand each night at six o'clock for the prayer of remembrance. It was always a moving occasion, a strange suspended moment when the pokies and racing channel, the piped music and the drunken bullshitting all fell away ...Friends from overseas who witnessed the quiet ceremony never failed to be impressed. One, a poet from Czechoslovakia, had always thought Australians to be a shallow, soulless, materialistic people, but she changed her mind after her first experience of the ode to the fallen among the half-empty schooners and chip packets.' - John Birmingham, A Time For War

The epic story of how the Second World War was won.On 4 January 1945, General 'Blood and Guts' Patton confided gloomily to his diary, 'We can still lose the war.' The Nazis were attacking in Eastern France, Luxembourg and Belgium. General Eisenhower's allied armies had lost over 300,000 men in battle (with a similar number of non-battle casualties) and they were still in the same positions they had first captured three months before. Would the German will to resist never be broken? Veteran military historian Charles Whiting assembled individual stories from the frontline as the war entered its last bloody, but ultimately victorious phase. From material such as diaries, interviews and battalion journals he vividly builds up a picture of the soldiers and combatants. As the greatest conflict of them all came to its epic crescendo, those on the ground knew that paths that lead to glory could also lead to death... Perfect for fans of Anthony Beevor, Richard Overy and Damien Lewis.

Even as a boy growing up amid the green hills of rural Pennsylvania, Robert W. Black knew he was destined to become a Ranger. With their three-hundred-year history of peerless courage and independence of spirit, Rangers are a uniquely American brand of soldier, one foot in the military, one in the wilderness—and that is what fired Black’s imagination. In this searing, inspiring memoir, Black recounts how he devoted himself, body and soul, to his proud service as an elite U. S. Army Ranger in Korea and Vietnam—and what those years have taught him about himself, his country, and our future.

Born at the start of the Great Depression, Black grew up on a farm at a time of great hardship but also tremendous national determination. He was a kid who toughened up fast, who learned the hard way to rely on his strength and his wits, who saw the country go to war with Germany and Japan and wept because he was too young to serve. As soon as the army would take him, Black enlisted. And as soon as he could muscle his way in, he became a Ranger.

As a private first class in the 82d Airborne Division headquarters, Black withstood the humiliations of enlisted service in the peacetime brown-shoe army. When the Korean War began, he volunteered and trained to be an Airborne Ranger. In Korea, this young warrior, his mind and body bursting with the lusts of adolescence, grew up fast, literally in the line of fire. In clean, vivid prose, Black describes the hell of giving his all for a country that lacked the political resolve to give its all to a war against the North Koreans and the Chinese.

If Korea was frustrating, Vietnam was maddening. The heart of this book is devoted to the years of action that Black saw in Long An Province starting in 1967. Black writes of the perplexity of collaborating with South Vietnamese officers whose culture and motives he never fully understood; he conjures up the sudden shock of the Tet Offensive and the daily horror of seeing fellow soldiers and innocent civilians slaughtered—sometimes by stray bullets, often by carelessness or treachery. Vietnam challenged everything Black had come to believe in and left him totally unprepared for the hostility he would face when he returned to a war-weary America.

Written with extraordinary candor and passion, A Ranger Born is the memoir of a man who dedicated the best of his life to everything that is great and enduring about America. At once intimate in its revelations and universal in its themes, it is a book with profound relevance to our own troubled time in history.


From the Hardcover edition.

In the author's words, taken from the preface:
"I went on active duty on the first day of July 1943, and was discharged in March 1946. Between those dates I experienced the frightening, the pathetic, the moving, the ridiculous, the funny and the unbelievable, all to a degree I would not have thought possible.
Just short of my twenty-second birthday I entered the Army a bookish, somewhat introverted person. For what happened then, read on."
A remarkable story of courage, resourcefulness, tragedy and humor, Blood and Candles is unlike any other account of World War II that has ever been published.
The author's combat duty lasted for seven months during which he served as a runner or scout, sometimes finding himself alone behind enemy lines. Once he was even captured by the Americans and was almost shot as a German spy posing as an American. How he got out of that jam and many others will keep the reader fascinated from cover to cover.
While the climax of the book describes some of the most intense combat of the war, in which almost everyone around him was killed or seriously wounded, the author's experiences during basic training and after the War, attending the Sorbonne under the auspices of the Army, are equally fascinating.

Critical acclaim for William B. Breuer

"A first-class historian."
–The Wall Street Journal

Top Secret Tales of World War II

"A book for rainy days and long solitary nights by the fire. If there were a genre for cozy nonfiction, this would be the template."
–Publishers Weekly

"Perfect for the curious and adventure readers and those who love exotic tales and especially history buffs who will be surprised at what they didn’t know. Recommended for nearly everyone."
–Kirkus Reviews

Daring Missions of World War II

" The author brings to light many previously unknown stories of behind-the-scenes bravery and covert activities that helped the Allies win critical victories."
–Albuquerque Journal

Secret Weapons of World War II

"Rip-roaring tales . . . a delightful addition to the niche that Breuer has so successfully carved out."
–Publishers Weekly