Although it did not single-handedly win WWI, this extremely bloody battle did mark the end of the last major German offensive of the war. Miracle at Belleau Wood is a thoroughly researched, intelligent, and insightful account of one of the U.S. Army's most intense and ferocious actions of the Great War. It is also the story of how the Marines were transformed from a motley crew of shipboard soldiers and embassy guards into, ultimately, one of the world's most elite fighting units. This brand new account of one of the most stirring battles of the Great War is an essential read for anyone with an interest in that particular theatre and the history of U.S. Marine Corps.

    Robert Leckie was 21 when he enlisted in the US Marine Corps in January 1942. In Helmet for My Pillow we follow his journey, from boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina, all the way to the raging battles in the Pacific, where some of the war's fiercest fighting took place. Recounting his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal, New Britain and Peleliu, Leckie spares no detail of the horrors and sacrifice of war, painting an unsentimental portrait of how real warriors are made, fight, and all too often die in the defence of their country.From the live-for-today rowdiness of Marines on leave to the terrors of jungle warfare against an enemy determined to fight to the last man, Leckie describes what it's really like when victory can only be measured inch by bloody inch. Unparalleled in its immediacy and accuracy, Helmet for My Pillow is a gripping account from an ordinary soldier fighting in extraordinary conditions. This is a book that brings you as close to the mud, the blood, and the experience of war as it is safe to come.Helmet for My Pillow is a grand and epic prose poem. Robert Leckie's theme is the purely human experience of war in the Pacific, written in the graceful imagery of a human being who - somehow - survived - Tom Hanks

    Hackworth presents a vivid and powerful portrait of a life of patriotism.From age fifteen to forty David Hackworth devoted himself to the US Army and fast became a living legend. In 1971, however, he appeared on television to decry the doomed war effort in Vietnam. With About Face, he has written what many Vietnam veterans have called the most important book of their generation.From Korea to Berlin, from the Cuban missile crisis to Vietnam, Hackworth’s story is that of an exemplary patriot, played out against the backdrop of the changing fortunes of America and the American military. It is also a stunning indictment of the Pentagon’s fundamental misunderstanding of the Vietnam conflict and of the bureaucracy of self-interest that fuelled the war.Heavily decorated Colonel Hackworth narrates his life and disillusionment during Vietnam. Orphaned before he was a year old, he found his home at 15 in the Army. In Korea, heroism gave him a battlefield commission at 20. During the Cold War, he commanded at the Berlin wall and the Cuban missile crises. But Vietnam led to disillusionment.

    They have fought from the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan and Iraq, in famous battles become bone and sinew of American lore. But why do Marines fight? Why fight so well? Why run toward the guns? Now comes a thrilling new book, pounding and magnificent in scope, by the author some Marines consider the unofficial “poet laureate” of their Corps.James Brady interviews combat Marines from wars ranging from World War II to Afghanistan, their replies in their own individual voices unique and powerful, an authentically American story of a country at war, as seen through the eyes of its warriors.  Culling his own correspondence and comradeship with hundreds of fellow Marines, Brady compiles a story---lyrical and historical---of the motivations and emotions behind this compelling question. Included are the accounts of Senator James Webb and his lance corporal son, Jim; New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly; Yankee second baseman (and Marine fighter pilot) Jerry Coleman, and of teachers, firemen, authors, cops, Harvard football players, and just plain grunts, as well as the unforgettable story of Jack Rowe, who lost an eye and other parts and now grows avocados and chases rattlesnakes. Their stories poignantly and profoundly illustrate the lives and legacies of battlefront Marines. Why Marines Fight is a ruthlessly candid book about professional killers not ashamed to recall their doubts as well as exult in their savagely triumphant battle cries.  A book of weight and heft that Marines, and Americans everywhere, will want to read, and may find impossible to forget. Praise for James Brady The Scariest Place in the World“[A] graceful, even elegant, and always eloquent tribute to men at arms in a war that, in a way, never ended.”---Kirkus Reviews“James Brady has done it again.  A riveting and illuminating insight into a dark corner of the world.”---Tim Russert, NBC’s Meet the Press The Coldest War“His story reads like a novel, but it is war reporting at its best---a graphic depiction, in all its horrors, of the war we’ve almost forgotten.”---Walter Cronkite“A marvelous memoir. A sensitive and superbly written narrative that eventually explodes off the pages like a grenade in the gut . . .taut, tight, and telling.”---Dan Rather The Marine“In The Marine, James Brady again gives us a novel in which history is a leading character, sharing the stage in this case with a man as surely born to be a gallant warrior as any knight in sixth-century Camelot.”---Kurt Vonnegut  The Marines of Autumn“Mr. Brady knows war, the smell and the feel of it.”---The New York Times

    In the tradition of the best narrative storytellers, he brings together newly unclassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and fresh primary interviews to tell the story of the ill-assorted group of castoffs and second-stringers who not only saved millions of desperate people from a dire threat but changed how the world viewed the United States, and set in motion the chain of events that would ultimately lead to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and to America's victory in the Cold War.On June 24, 1948, intent on furthering its domination of Europe, the Soviet Union cut off all access to West Berlin, prepared to starve the city into submission unless the Americans abandoned it. Soviet forces hugely outnumbered the Allies', and most of America's top officials considered the situation hopeless. But not all of them.Harry Truman, an accidental president, derided by his own party; Lucius Clay, a frustrated general, denied a combat command and relegated to the home front; Bill Tunner, a logistics expert downsized to a desk job in a corner of the Pentagon; James Forrestal, a secretary of defense beginning to mentally unravel; Hal Halvorsen, a lovesick pilot who had served far from the conflict, flying transport missions in the backwater of a global war—together these unlikely men improvised and stumbled their way into a uniquely American combination of military and moral force unprecedented in its time.This is the forgotten foundation tale of America in the modern world, the story of when Americans learned, for the first time, how to act at the summit of world power—a masterful and exciting work of historical narrative, and one with strong resonance for our time.

    They are a rough–and–ready tangle of guys from America's cities and farms and reservations. Led by a tough veteran sergeant, these soldiers band together to emerge as part of one of the most elite fighting forces in the world. With staggering realism and detail, we follow them into intense battles – Guadalcanal and Tarawa – and through exceptional moments of camaraderie and bravery. Battle Cry does not extol the glories of war, but proves itself to be one of the greatest war stories of all time.

    In this plain-spoken but eloquent narrative, we live each minute at MacDonald's side, sharing in all of combat's misery, terror, and drama. How this green commander gains his men's loyalty in the snows of war-torn Europe is one of the great, true, unforgettable war stories of all time.

     From the beaches of Normandy and the South Pacific Islands to the deserts of the Middle East, the American soldier has been the most indispensable- and most overlooked-factor in wartime victory. In Grunts, renowned historian John C. McManus covers six decades of warfare, examining ten critical battles-from the Battle of the Bulge to counterinsurgency combat in Iraq-where the skills and courage of American troops proved the crucial difference between victory and defeat. Based on years of research and interviews with veterans, this powerful history reveals the ugly face of war in a way few books have, and demonstrates the fundamental, and too often forgotten, importance of the human element in serving and protecting the nation.

    It was also one of the war's bloodiest and most pivotal battles, whose outcome would shape international politics for decades to come.Cornelius Ryan's compelling account of this final battle is a story of brutal extremes, of stunning military triumph alongside the stark conditions that the civilians of Berlin experienced in the face of the Allied assault. As always, Ryan delves beneath the military and political forces that were dictating events to explore the more immediate imperatives of survival, where, as the author describes it, “to eat had become more important than to love, to burrow more dignified than to fight, to exist more militarily correct than to win.”It is the story of ordinary people, both soldiers and civilians, caught up in the despair, frustration, and terror of defeat. It is history at its best, a masterful illumination of the effects of war on the lives of individuals, and one of the enduring works on World War II.

    Gen. Mike Ryan, USMC (Ret.) Navy Cross recipient Green Beach, TarawaOn November 20, l943, in the first trial by fire of America's fledgling amphibious assault doctrine, five thousand men stormed the beaches of Tarawa, a seemingly invincible Japanese island fortress barely the size of the Pentagon parking lots (three-hundred acres!). Before the first day ended, one third of the Marines who had crossed Tarawa's deadly reef under murderous fire were killed, wounded, or missing. In three days of fighting, four Americans would win the Medal of Honor. And six-thousand combatants would die.Now, Col. Joseph Alexander, a combat Marine himself, presents the full story of Tarawa in all its horror and glory: the extreme risks, the horrific combat, and the heroic breakthroughs. Based on exhaustive research, never-before-published accounts from Marine survivors, and new evidence from Japanese sources, Colonel Alexander captures the grit, guts, and relentless courage of United States Marines overcoming outrageous odds to deliver victory for their country."Without a doubt the best narrative of the struggle ever produced."--Richard B. Frank, Author of GuadalcanalA MAIN SELECTION OF THE MILITARY BOOK CLUB Winner of the 1995 General Wallace M. Greene, Jr., Award, awarded to the year's best nonfiction book pertinent to Marine Corps HistoryWinner of the Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Outstanding Writer of the Year, presented by the Navy League of the United StatesWinner of the Roosevelt Naval History Prize, awarded by the Naval War College

    In this major reevaluation of that crucial year, Robert Citino shows that the German army's emerging woes were rooted as much in its addiction to the war of movement-attempts to smash the enemy in short and lively campaigns-as they were in Hitler's deeply flawed management of the war. From the overwhelming operational victories at Kerch and Kharkov in May to the catastrophic defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, Death of the Wehrmacht offers an eye-opening new view of that decisive year. Building upon his widely respected critique in The German Way of War, Citino shows how the campaigns of 1942 fit within the centuries-old patterns of Prussian/German warmaking and ultimately doomed Hitler's expansionist ambitions. He examines every major campaign and battle in the Russian and North African theaters throughout the year to assess how a military geared to quick and decisive victories coped when the tide turned against it. Citino also reconstructs the German generals' view of the war and illuminates the multiple contingencies that might have produced more favorable results. In addition, he cites the fatal extreme aggressiveness of German commanders like Erwin Rommel and assesses how the German system of command and its commitment to the independence of subordinate commanders suffered under the thumb of Hitler and chief of staff General Franz Halder. More than the turning point of a war, 1942 marked the death of a very old and traditional pattern of warmaking, with the classic German way of war unable to meet the challenges of the twentieth century. Blending masterly research with a gripping narrative, Citino's remarkable work provides a fresh and revealing look at how one of history's most powerful armies began to founder in its quest for world domination.

    Burgin in the award winning documentary film Peleliu 1944: Horror in the Pacific. Click here for more information. This is an eyewitness-and eye-opening-account of some of the most savage and brutal fighting in the war against Japan, told from the perspective of a young Texan who volunteered for the Marine Corps to escape a life as a traveling salesman. R.V. Burgin enlisted at the age of twenty, and with his sharp intelligence and earnest work ethic, climbed the ranks from a green private to a seasoned sergeant. Along the way, he shouldered a rifle as a member of a mortar squad. He saw friends die-and enemies killed. He saw scenes he wanted to forget but never did-from enemy snipers who tied themselves to branches in the highest trees, to ambushes along narrow jungle trails, to the abandoned corpses of "hara kiri" victims, to the final howling "banzai" attacks as the Japanese embraced their inevitable defeat. An unforgettable narrative of a young Marine in combat, "Islands of the Damned" brings to life the hell that was the Pacific War.

    This volume of comparative essays investigates how and why innovation occurred or did not occur, and explains much of the strategic and operative performance of the Axis and Allies in World War II.

    Acts of War takes readers through a soldier's experience from beginning to end--starting with the tribulations of basic training to the terror and exhaustion of battle."Brilliant, totally fascinating... This compelling, forceful volume is a monumental addition to the study of war and its impact on the men who fight the battles." - John G. Barrett, Dallas Times-Herald

    At first an exciting adventure, young Guy Sajer’s war becomes, as the German invasion falters in the icy vastness of the Ukraine, a simple, desperate struggle for survival against cold, hunger, and above all the terrifying Soviet artillery. As a member of the elite Gross Deutschland Division, he fought in all the great battles from Kursk to Kharkov. Sajer's German footsoldier’s perspective makes The Forgotten Soldier a unique war memoir, the book that the Christian Science Monitor said "may well be the book about World War II which has been so long awaited." Now it has been handsomely republished containing fifty rare German combat photos of life and death at the eastern front. The photos of troops battling through snow, mud, burned villages, and rubble-strewn cities depict the hardships and destructiveness of war. Many are originally from the private collections of German soldiers and have never been published before. This volume is a deluxe edition of a true classic.