Terror of the Autumn Skies: The True Story of Frank Luke, America's Rogue Ace of World War I


Blaine Lee Pardoe - 2008
    In the Great War, when fliers were still "knights of the air," Luke was an ungallant loner, a kid from Arizona who collected tarantulas, shot buzzards, and boxed miners. But during two torrid weeks in September 1918, he was the deadliest man on the Western Front. In only ten missions, he destroyed fourteen heavily-defended German balloons and four airplanes, a rampage unequaled even by the dreaded von Richtofen, and the second highest American tally of the entire war. Cocksure and constantly reprimanded, Luke was actually under arrest on the day of his final flight, but he stole a plane to join the fatal action that won him the first Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to a pilot. Blaine Pardoe retraces and refreshes Frank Luke's story through recently discovered correspondence. What emerges is a portrait of a life out of an "Old West" that was, by the late Teens, colliding with modernity. Frantic, short, and splendid, the life of Frank Luke, Jr. dramatizes the tragic intervention of an American spirit in the war that devastated Europe.

The Complete Stories and Poems


Lewis Carroll - 1884
    Lewis Carroll was the pen name and, it could be claimed, the alter ego of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematician, writer and photographer. His creations, especially "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There," have been translated into countless languages and are as loved now as they have ever been. His neologisms ("curiouser and curiouser") and turns of phrase have forever infiltrated and enriched our language and culture.

The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme


Joe Sacco - 2013
    Crumb and Art Spiegelman” (Economist) comes a monumental, wordless depiction of the most infamous day of World War I.Launched on July 1, 1916, the Battle of the Somme has come to epitomize the madness of the First World War. Almost 20,000 British soldiers were killed and another 40,000 were wounded that first day, and there were more than one million casualties by the time the offensive halted. In The Great War, acclaimed cartoon journalist Joe Sacco depicts the events of that day in an extraordinary, 24-foot- long panorama: from General Douglas Haig and the massive artillery positions behind the trench lines to the legions of soldiers going “over the top” and getting cut down in no-man’s-land, to the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers retreating and the dead being buried en masse. Printed on fine accordion-fold paper and packaged in a deluxe slipcase with a 16-page booklet, The Great War is a landmark in Sacco’s illustrious career and allows us to see the War to End All Wars as we’ve never seen it before.

The First World War: A Very Short Introduction


Michael Eliot Howard - 2002
    Examining how and why the war was fought, as well as the historical controversies that still surround the war, Michael Howard also looks at how peace was ultimately made, and describes the potent legacy of resentment left to Germany.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

Gallipoli


Alan Moorehead - 1956
    But poor communication left the Allies in the dark, allowing the Turks to prevail and the Allies to suffer a crushing quarter-million casualties. A vivid chronicle of adventure, suspense, agony, and heroism, Gallipoli brings to life the tragic waste in human life, the physical horror, the sheer heartbreaking folly of fighting for impossible objectives with inadequate means on unknown, unmapped terrain.

Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age


Modris Eksteins - 1989
    Recognizing that The Great War was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole, author Modris Eksteins examines the lives of ordinary people, works of modern literature, and pivotal historical events to redefine the way we look at our past and toward our future.

Germany's Aims in the First World War


Fritz Fischer - 1961
    Professor Fischer's great work is possibly the most important book of any sort, probably the most important historical book, certainly the most controversial book, to come out of Germany since the war.

The Backwash of War: The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse


Ellen N. La Motte - 1916
    She began her nursing career as a tuberculosis nurse in Baltimore and then served as an army nurse in Europe during World War I. After that she traveled to Asia where she saw the effects of opium addiction. The Backwash of War (1934) was based on her diaries kept during her time at the front. La Motte speaks of her time in an army hospital in France as periods of boredom interspersed with moments of fright. The Backwash of War is an excellent memoir of war from the viewpoint of a woman army nurse.

The Hawk in the Rain


Ted Hughes - 1957
    It won the New York Poetry Centre First Publication Award, for which the judges were W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Marianne Moore, and the Somerset Maugham Award, and it was critically acclaimed by every reviewer from A. Alvarez to Edwin Muir. When Robin Skelton wrote, 'All looking for the emergence of a major poet must buy it', he was right to see in it the promise of what many now regard as the most important body of work by any poet of the twentieth century.

A Book for Kids


C.J. Dennis - 1921
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Krapp's Last Tape & Embers


Samuel Beckett - 1958
    In the second, a man walking along the seashore recalls his dead father while other familiar voices speak to him from the past.

The Remains of Company D: A Story of the Great War


James Carl Nelson - 2009
    But then, he didn't need me."---Ron Powers, "New York"" Times" bestselling coauthor of "Flags of Our Fathers" and author of "Mark Twain: A Life""A beautifully crafted anthem to doomed American youth, James Carl Nelson's "The Remains of Company D" is a must-read for World War I enthusiasts and those looking for a damn good war book."---Alex Kershaw, "New York"" Times" bestselling author of "The Longest Winter" and "The Bedford Boys""War is always hell, but the unprecedented carnage on World War I's Western Front was the stuff of nightmares. The American boys of Company D were on the front lines, and James Carl Nelson has combined previously unpublished first-person accounts, prodigious research, and vivid, you-are-there prose into one of the great books on the subject. This is a "Band of Brothers "for World War I."---James Donovan, author of" A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn--the Last Great Battle of the American West""James CarlNelson's book is a great contribution to AEF history. He has done an incredible amount of research in order to convey the experience of one group of doughboys...and to tell their story through their own words.....He reminds us that these long-forgotten battles of ninety years ago were as hard fought as any before or since, and that our country was well served by the young men who fought them. Get this book. It puts a very human face on the experience of Americans on the Western Front."---Dr. Paul Herbert, executive director of the Cantigny First Division FoundationHaunted by an ancestor's tale of near death on a distant battlefield, James Carl Nelson set out in pursuit of the scraps of memory of his grandfather's small infantry unit. Years of travel across the world led to the retrieval of unpublished personal papers, obscure memoirs, and communications from numerous Doughboys as well as original interviews of the descendents of his grandfather's comrades in arms. The result is a compelling tale of battle rooted in new primary sources, and one man's search for his grandfather's legacy in a horrifying maelstrom that is today poorly understood and nearly forgotten."The Remains of Company D" follows the members of Company D, 28th Infantry Regiment, United States First Division, from enlistment to combat to the effort to recover their remains, focusing on the three major battles at Cantigny, Soissons, and in the Meuse-Argonne and the effect these horrific battles had on the men.This is an important and powerful tale of the different destinies, personalities, and motivations of the men in Company D and a timeless portrayal of men at war.

The Death of Mr. Lomas


Francis Vivian - 1941
    Lomas visits the Chief Constable of Burnham and describes his symptoms, Sir Wilfred Burrows believes that his visitor suffers from nothing more serious than nerves. Later that day Mr. Lomas's body is recovered from the water at Willow Lock; yet death is not by drowning.Sir Wilfred recounts the interview to Inspector Knollis, who, realizing the significance of the symptoms, is satisfied that Mr. Lomas is a victim of cocaine poisoning. With characteristic energy he sets about the task of unmasking the murderer.In this gripping story of a cunning murderer brought to justice by brilliant, logical reasoning, the solution is skilfully yet legitimately concealed to the last.The Death of Mr. Lomas was first published in 1941. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Undaunted: The Tiger of Auschwitz


Garmaine Pitchon - 2016
    That is where Garmaine Pitchon was when Hitler ascended to power and unleashed a diabolical scheme to annihilate the Jewish race. Follow along as Eli Gonzalez tells Garmaine story in a vibrant, chilling, and compelling narrative. Always a rambunctious, curious girl, Garmaine found a way to not wear the yellow Star of David and got to experience more than most before Garmaine experienced loss at an epic proportion. Her entire family was murdered, beginning with her grandmother, killed in her own grocery store by a Nazi officer who forced her to make him a sandwich as she walked over her just-murdered beloved grandmother’s warm, flowing blood. Experience the horror of the 9-Day train ride to Auschwitz and become a first hand witness to when it was only Nazi’s and Jews and the veil was pulled off and absolute evil abounded. Yet, there is something about Garmaine’s story, something divine that happened. What was meant to destroy her strengthened her. What was meant to stop her lineage became a force to help desperate mothers years after. When there is a divine purpose for your life and that of your family, no one and nothing can stop it.

War of Attrition: Fighting the First World War


William J. Philpott - 2014
    America did not enter the war until 1917, but, as Philpott demonstrates, the war came to America as early as 1914. By 1916, long before the Woodrow Wilson’s impassioned speech to Congress advocating for war, the United States was firmly aligned with the Allies, lending dollars and selling guns and opposing German attempts to spread submarine warfare. War of Attrition skillfully argues that the emergence of the United States on the world stage is directly related to her support for the conflagration that consumed so many European lives and livelihoods. In short, the war that ruined Europe enabled the rise of America.