Perhaps the most viscerally exciting book ever written by a fighter pilot.' Rowland White Pierre Clostermann DFC was one of the oustanding Allied aces of the Second World War. A Frenchman who flew with the RAF, he survived over 420 operational sorties, shooting down scores of enemy aircraft while friends and comrades lost their lives in the deadly skies above Europe. THE BIG SHOW, his extraordinary account of the war, has been described as the greatest pilot's memoir of WWII. ‘A truly remarkable book … the most gripping descriptions of aerial combat I have ever read’ New York Times ‘A thrilling read … ranks among the finest accounts of war’ Guardian ‘A magnificent story’ Daily Telegraph ‘A classic … gripping, ripping, full of action’ Economist ‘Vividly captures the spirit of air combat’ The Times 'The relentlessness of the flying is extraordinary and the casual loss of life chilling. It really is one of the very best war memoirs ever written: exhilarating, exciting, deeply moving and a book that lingers in the mind long after the last page has been turned.' James Holland

    The prisoners were survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March and the Fall of Corregidor, and the prison from which they escaped was surrounded by an impenetrable swamp and reputedly escape-proof. Theirs was the only successful group escape from a Japanese POW camp during the Pacific war. Escape from Davao is the story of one of the most remarkable incidents in the Second World War and of what happened when the Americans returned home to tell the world what they had witnessed.Davao Penal Colony, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, was a prison plantation wherethousands of American POWs toiled alongside Filipino criminals and suffered from tropical diseases and malnutrition, as well as the cruelty of their captors. The American servicemen were rotting in a hellhole from which escape was considered impossible, but ten of them, realizing that inaction meant certain death, planned to escape. Their bold plan succeeded with the help of Filipino allies, both patriots and the guerrillas who fought the Japanese sent to recapture them. Their trek to freedom repeatedly put the Americans in jeopardy, yet they eventually succeeded in returning home to the United States to fulfill their self-appointed mission: to tell Americans about Japanese atrocities and to rally the country to the plight of their comrades still in captivity. But the government and the military had a different timetable for the liberation of the Philippines and ordered the men to remain silent. Their testimony, when it finally emerged, galvanized the nation behind the Pacific war effort and made the men celebrities.Over the decades this remarkable story, called the "greatest story of the war in the Pacific" bythe War Department in 1944, has faded away. Because of wartime censorship, the full story has never been told until now. John D. Lukacs spent years researching this heroic event, interviewing survivors, reading their letters, searching archival documents, and traveling to the decaying prison camp and its surroundings. His dramatic, gripping account of the escape brings this remarkable tale back to life, where a new generation can admire the resourcefulness and patriotism of the men who fought the Pacific war.

    It is the story of an idealistic schoolboy who couldn't believe his luck when the RAF agreed to take him on as a "pupil pilot" at the minimum age of seventeen and a half in 1939. In his fervor to fly, he gave little thought to the coming war." "Writing with wit, compassion, and a great deal of technical expertise, Wellum relives his grueling months of flight training, during which two of his classmates crashed and died. He describes a hilarious scene during his first day in the prestigious 92nd Squadron when his commader discovered that Wellum had not only never flown a Spitfire, he'd never even seen one." A battle-hardened ace by the winter of 1941, though still not out of his teens, 'Boy' Wellum flew scores of missions as fighter escort on bombing missions over France. Yet the constant life-or-death stress of murderous combat and anguish over the loss of his closest friends sapped endurance. Tortured by fierce headaches, even in the midst of battle, he could not bear the thought of "not pulling your weight," of letting the other pilots risk their lives in his place. Wellum's frank account of his long, losing bout with battle fatigue is both moving and enlightening.

    Long before television beamed daily images of combat into our living rooms, Pyle’s on-the-spot reporting gave the American public a firsthand view of what war was like for the boys on the front. Pyle followed the soldiers into the trenches, battlefields, field hospitals, and beleaguered cities of Europe. What he witnessed he described with a clarity, sympathy, and grit that gave the public back home an immediate sense of the foot soldier’s experience. There were really two wars, John Steinbeck wrote in Time magazine: one of maps and logistics, campaigns, ballistics, divisions, and regiments and the other a "war of the homesick, weary, funny, violent, common men who wash their socks in their helmets, complain about the food, whistle at Arab girls, or any girls for that matter, and bring themselves through as dirty a business as the world has ever seen and do it with humor and dignity and courage—and that is Ernie Pyle’s war." This collection of Pyle’s columns detailing the fighting in Europe in 1943–44 brings that war—and the living, and dying, moments of history—home to us once again.

    “Red Blood, Black Sand,” is Chuck’s true story, his first-hand account of Iwo Jima, the Marine Corps’ most savage battle. Best-selling author/historian Stephen E. Ambrose praised “Red Blood, Black Sand,” saying, “In my judgment no combat veterans’ memoir is better . . . and only a handful are equal.” Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg agreed, and bought the rights to use “Red Blood, Black Sand” as a credited source for their new, $200-million-dollar HBO mini-series, “The Pacific.” In addition, they made Chuck Tatum a central character of the series, portrayed by actor Ben Esler. “Red Blood, Black Sand,” transports the reader back to 1944, when the Marine Corps built a fresh division, the 5th, for an apocalyptic battle: Iwo Jima. This gripping narrative follows Chuck’s life-or-death training at Camp Pendleton where Chuck learned machine guns, the tools of his trade, from his new mentor: Medal of Honor recipient John Basilone. Chuck’s colorful storytelling takes the reader on his voyage overseas, from the raucous port of Pearl Harbor with its gambling, gals, and tattoos, to the island of death itself, where Chuck hit the black sand beach of Iwo Jima, an 18-year-old Marine machine gunner in the climactic battle of the war. This is the story of Chuck’s two weeks in hell, where he fought alongside Basilone and watched his hero fall, where enemy infiltrators stalked the night and snipers haunted the day, and where Chuck would see his friends whittled away in an ear-shattering, earth-shaking, meat grinder of a battle.Before the end, Chuck would find himself, like his hero Basilone, standing alone, blind with rage, firing a machine gun from the hip, while in a personal battle to keep his sanity. This is the island, the heroes, and the tragedy of Iwo Jima, through the eyes of the battle’s greatest storyteller, Chuck Tatum. Includes new bonus chapters: “Chuck’s thoughts on The Pacific series” and actor Ben Esler’s “On Set Memories of Portraying Chuck Tatum.”

    Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842 that included six sailing vessels and a crew of hundreds who set out to map the Pacific Ocean.

    Going well beyond all previous accounts, David Glantz and Jonathan House now offer the definitive work on arguably the greatest battle of World War II. Drawing on both German and Soviet sources, Glantz and House separate myth from fact to show what really happened at Kursk and how it affected the outcome of the war. Their access to newly released Soviet archival material adds unprecedented detail to what is known about this legendary conflict, enabling them to reconstruct events from both perspectives and describe combat down to the tactical level. The Battle of Kursk takes readers behind Soviet lines for the first time to discover what the Red Army knew about the plans for Hitler's offensive (Operation Citadel), relive tank warfare and hand-to-hand combat, and learn how the tide of battle turned. Its vivid portrayals of fighting in all critical sectors place the famous tank battle in its proper context. Prokhorovka here is not a well-organized set piece but a confused series of engagements and hasty attacks, with each side committing its forces piecemeal. Glantz and House's fresh interpretations demolish many of the myths that suggest Hitler might have triumphed if Operation Citadel had been conducted differently. Their account is the first to provide accurate figures of combat strengths and losses, and it includes 32 maps that clarify troop and tank movements. Shrouded in obscurity and speculation for more than half a century, the Battle of Kursk finally gets its due in this dramatic retelling of the confrontation that marked the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front and brought Hitler's blitzkrieg to a crashing halt.

    Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a small village of scattered houses high in the mountains of the Ardèche. Surrounded by pastures and thick forests of oak and pine, the plateau Vivarais lies in one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of Eastern France, cut off for long stretches of the winter by snow. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of the area saved thousands wanted by the Gestapo: resisters, freemasons, communists, downed Allied airmen and above all Jews. Many of these were children and babies, whose parents had been deported to the death camps in Poland. After the war, Le Chambon became the only village to be listed in its entirety in Yad Vashem's Dictionary of the Just.Just why and how Le Chambon and its outlying parishes came to save so many people has never been fully told. Acclaimed biographer and historian Caroline Moorehead brings to life a story of outstanding courage and determination, and of what could be done when even a small group of people came together to oppose German rule. It is an extraordinary tale of silence and complicity. In a country infamous throughout the four years of occupation for the number of denunciations to the Gestapo of Jews, resisters and escaping prisoners of war, not one single inhabitant of Le Chambon ever broke silence. The story of Le Chambon is one of a village, bound together by a code of honour, born of centuries of religious oppression. And, though it took a conspiracy of silence by the entire population, it happened because of a small number of heroic individuals, many of them women, for whom saving those hunted by the Nazis became more important than their own lives.

    It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.Written over the course of thirty years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, Matterhorn is a visceral and spellbinding novel about what it is like to be a young man at war. It is an unforgettable novel that transforms the tragedy of Vietnam into a powerful and universal story of courage, camaraderie, and sacrifice: a parable not only of the war in Vietnam but of all war, and a testament to the redemptive power of literature.A graduate of Yale University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. This is his first novel. He lives in rural Washington State.

    Bill is picked by Roosevelt to run his first Map Room in Washington. Benny is the gunnery and anti-aircraft officer on the USS Enterprise, one of the only carriers to escape Pearl Harbor and by the end of 1942 the last one left in the Pacific to defend against the Japanese. Barton, the youngest and least distinguished of the three, is shuffled off to the Navy Supply Corps because his mother wants him out of harm’s way. But this protection plan backfires when Barton is sent to the Philippines and listed as missing-in-action after a Japanese attack. Now it is up to Bill and Benny to find and rescue him. Based on ten years of research drawn from archives around the world, interviews with fellow shipmates and POWs, and primary sources including diaries, unpublished memoirs, and letters half-forgotten in basements, The Jersey Brothers is a remarkable story of agony and triumph—from the home front to Roosevelt’s White House, and Pearl Harbor to Midway and Bataan. It is the story, written with intimate, novelistic detail, of an ordinary young man who shows extraordinary courage as the Japanese do everything short of killing him. And it is, above all, a story of brotherly love: of three men finding their loyalty to each other tested under the tortures of war—and knowing that their success or failure to save their youngest brother will shape their family forever.

    mission to kill Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese commander who masterminded Pearl Harbor.In 1943, the United States military began to plan one of the most dramatic secret missions of World War II. Its code name was Operation Vengeance. Naval Intelligence had intercepted the itinerary of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, whose stealth attack on Pearl Harbor precipitated America’s entry into the war. Harvard-educated, Yamamoto was a close confidant of Emperor Hirohito and a brilliant tactician who epitomized Japanese military might. On April 18th, the U.S. discovered, he would travel to Rabaul in the South Pacific to visit Japanese troops, then fly to the Japanese airfield at Balalale, 400 miles to the southeast.Set into motion, the Americans’ plan was one of the most tactically difficult operations of the war. To avoid detection, U.S. pilots had to embark on a circuitous, 1,000-mile odyssey that would test not only their skills but the physical integrity of their planes. The timing was also crucial: the slightest miscalculation, even by a few minutes—or a delay on the famously punctual Yamamoto’s end—meant the entire plan would collapse, endangering American lives. But if these remarkable pilots succeeded, they could help turn the tide of the war—and greatly boost Allied morale. Informed by deep archival research and his experience as a decorated combat pilot, Operation Vengeance focuses on the mission’s pilots and recreates the moment-by-moment drama they experienced in the air. Hampton recreates this epic event in thrilling detail, and provides groundbreaking evidence about what really happened that day.Operation Vengeance includes 30 black-and-white images.