When Saturday Mattered Most: The Last Golden Season of Army Football


Mark Beech - 2012
    That fall, the Black Knights of Army were the class of the nation. Mark Beech, a second-generation West Pointer, recounts this memorable and never-to-be-repeated season with:- Pete Dawkins, the Heisman Trophy winner who rose to the rank of Brigadier General - The long-reclusive Bill Carpenter, the fabled "lonesome end" who earned the Distinguished Service Cross for saving his company in Vietnam - Red Blaik, who led Army back to glory after the cribbing scandal and had the field at Michie Stadium named in his honorCombining the triumph of The Junction Boys with the heroics of The Long Gray Line, Beech captures a unique period in the history of football, the military, and mid-twentieth-century America.

Easy Target: The Long Strange Trip of a Scout Pilot in Vietnam (Taking Flight)


Tom Smith - 1996
    Initially cast as target-spotters for gunships and air-assault forces, the scout pilots evolved into live bait as enemy weapons and tactics improved. Their small helicopters were vulnerable even to minor damage, and parachuting from a damaged bird was impossible. Casualty rates could be as high as 50%; a scout unit often resembled a WWI fighter squadron, with replacements dying almost before they could unpack. Yet fresh volunteers kept coming, even if only to stay out of the infantry. In his visceral memoir, Smith tells the familiar story of a young man who flunked out of college, sampled the 1960s counterculture and found himself first in the army, then in Vietnam. For Smith, the war was a theater of the absurd whose only meaning was survival. His narrative of low-altitude, high-risk operations in 1969-70 replicates that of others: initial confusion giving way first to proficiency and pleasure in stalking and killing anonymous enemies, later to a sense that both his skill and his luck are running out. Gritty enough to appeal to adventure fans, this memoir makes a useful contribution to a subject, American helicopter pilots in Vietnam, whose recorded history is largely still in its anecdotal stage.

Hell's Guest


Glenn D. Frazier - 2007
    Five months later, an underage U.S. Army volunteer, he found himself thrust into a war of an unimaginable brutality and became a hero of the defense of Bataan, a survivor of the brutal Death March and of three harrowing years in a Japanese prisoner or war camp. This is his story.

The Early Birds


Laurie Graham - 2017
    The women are now in their seventies and time is rendering its Accounts Payable: arthritis, cataracts, forgetfulness, and departures.From the dawn of the new millennium - at which the anti-Christ unaccountably fails to appear, despite evangelist Gayle's predictions - Peggy soldiers on through new upheavals, including her ex-husband Vern's Alzheimer's diagnosis, and the death of one of her live-in friends. Then, on a clear blue day in September 2001, the US Air Force scrambles too late to save America from four hostile attacks, and for the first time Peggy wonders if being a USAF wife - the constant worry about your husband, the faraway postings in Alaska, Norfolk, Siberia, the lack of control over your own life - was worth it.You're getting very negative in your old age, Peggy Dewey, says Lois. Sure it was worthwhile. Leastways we're not speaking Russky. And besides, we had some fun. Didn't we have some fun?

The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie of Kentucky


James Ohio Pattie - 2018
    Pattie’s Personal Narrative is a prime source for the history of the Southwest during the 1820s. He, and a group of fur trappers, set out on a journey from St. Louis to California and back. After Jed Smith’s trip this journey, which began in 1824, is the second known expedition to California. This remarkable book records an eyewitness account of what the West was like before the great swathes of migration occurred. Pattie’s book fully explores the dangers of life as a trapper in the wilderness of the far west, including during one episode after Pattie and a group of French trappers were attacked and only three of them survived. Personal Narrative provides fascinating insight into the earliest clashes that were beginning to occur between citizens of the travelers from the east, Native Americans and Mexicans as United States began its great westward expansion. Yet, Pattie also demonstrates how there was great cooperation between groups, for example when he aided Mexicans, Native Americans, missionaries and settlers with smallpox vaccinations. It is essential reading for anyone interested in finding out more about the Old West and life of this fascinating American frontiersman. James O. Pattie first published his account The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie of Kentucky in 1831 and he passed away in 1851.

The Second World War, Vol. 3: The War at Sea (Essential Histories Book 1)


Philip D. Grove - 2003
    The war at sea was a critical contest, as sea-lanes provided the logistical arteries for British and subsequent Allied armies fighting on the three continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Land forces ultimately won World War II, but the battles at sea fundamentally altered the balance of military power on the ground.

The Long Range Desert Group 1940-1945: Providence Their Guide


David Lloyd Owen - 1980
    This classic insider's account has been updated and supplemented with rare photographs from the LRDG collection in the Imperial War Museum.

Flood


Ann Swinfen - 2014
    Granddaughter of a local hero, Mercy Bennington moves out of the shadow of her elder brother to become a leader of the protestors, finding the strength to confront the enemies who endanger the survival of her village and her own life. Yet the violence wreaked upon the fragile fenlands unleashes a force no one can control – flood.

Reluctant Pioneer: How I Survived Five Years in the Canadian Bush


Thomas Osborne - 1995
    The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents with axes and boats, and narrow escapes from wolves and bears. Many years later, after returning to the United States, Osborne wrote down all his adventures in a graphic memoir that has become, in the words of author and journalist Roy MacGregor, "an undiscovered Canadian classic."Reluctant Pioneer provides a brooding sense of adventure and un- sentimental realism to deliver a powerful account of pioneer life where tragedies arrive as naturally as rain and where humour resides in irony.

Pearl: Lost Girl of White Oak Mountain


Bill Yates - 2020
    The search for little Pearl consumed the next several weeks, and the story became front page news all over the United States. Hundreds of residents from the nearby towns of Waldron and Booneville Arkansas helped in the search, and a mysterious mountain hermit seemed to hold the secret to Pearl's disappearance. The incredible events that followed contributed to a mountain legend that still exists today.

Secret Weapons of World War II


Gerald Pawle - 1957
     For the next four years they would become instrumental in the secret war against Germany, developing a wide array of armaments to give Britain the upper hand against the might of the Axis forces. Under the guidance of Charles Goodeve, a remarkable Canadian with a flair for picking out which invention could tip the war in the Allies’ favor, these scientists and inventors worked tirelessly, and even put their lives on the line, in the quest to give Churchill’s military the knockout weapon. As Nevil Shute, who was an engineer with the Wheezers and Dodgers stated, “If any one quality was a common requirement for the officers in this unusual department I would say it was imagination — the imagination to look forward and to visualize what might happen.” Not all of their inventions were successful, indeed Sir Charles Madden, who served as staff officer to the Director of the Department stated that during his time there he dealt with “a medley of suggestions ranging from the impractical to the lunatic.” Yet, despite some mishaps, the Wheezers and Dodgers were instrumental in aiding the Allies to victory, with their degaussing method of protecting ships from mines to their Hedgehog weapon that destroyed over forty-five enemy submarines. Secret Weapons of World War II records all of the Department’s developments through the course of the conflict, both successful and not, and is written with humor and insight. “Their story has the fascination of the unexpected, in a British well-played spirit.” Kirkus Reviews Gerald Pawle worked with the Wheezers and Dodgers through the course of World War Two. This work was first published under the title The Secret War: 1939-1945 in 1957. Pawle passed away in 1991.

The Lincoln Assassination


John Butler Ford - 2015
    But there is far more to the story, including the bizarre scheme that Booth first concocted to kidnap Lincoln and trade him for Confederate soldiers held in Northern prisons. Here is the full story of the plot, the bumbling plotters that Booth recruited, Lincoln's lingering death, the manhunt for the assassin, and the trial of the conspirators. It is essential knowledge of a tragedy that shaped America for a century to come.

Skylarks At Sunset


Rita Bradshaw - 2007
    And so when she meets and falls in love with Daniel Fallow, son of a successful businessman, she's quick to accept his proposal of his marriage. His family, though, are against the match, and so the young couple marry in secret. Grudging acceptance follows, and as the Depression worsens Daniel is persuaded to join the family business, unaware of his father's dodgy dealings. Tragedy is just around the corner, and worse is to come when war is declared in 1939: as Daniel leaves to fight and her children are evacuated, Hope wonders if she will ever have all her family around her again...

Ready For Flynn Box Set


K.L. Shandwick - 2018
    Do reputations never change?Some people aren't always forever...Taking chances may be reckless, but the prizes can be great. Is love always enough or will the heady temptations of fame prove too much?I don't think I've read anything so gut-wrenching and amazing before' - ReviewerNo Cheating, HEA seriesScroll up and grab it now.

By the Rivers of Brooklyn


Trudy J. Morgan-Cole - 2009
    John's. By the Rivers of Brooklyn traces the story of the Evans family across two countries and three generations, exploring the hopes, passions and heartbreaks of those who went away and those who stayed behind. By the Rivers of Brooklyn transforms into fiction the experience of the 75,000 first- and second-generation Newfoundlanders who once lived in Brooklyn, New York - and the experience of Newfoundlanders throughout history who have gone away to find work and prosperity but never stopped dreaming of home.