Sledge's story in the HBO miniseries The Pacific !China Marine is the extraordinary sequel to E.B. Sledge's memoir, With the Old Breed, which remains the most powerful and moving account of the U.S. Marines in World War II. Sledge continues his story where With the Old Breed left off and recounts the compelling conclusion of his Marine career.After Japan's surrender in 1945, Sledge and his company were sent to China to maintain order and to calm the seething cauldron of political and ideological unrest created by opposing factions. His regiment was the first Marine unit to return to the ancient city of Peiping (now Beijing) where they witnessed the last of old China and the rise of the Communist state. Sledge also recounts the difficulty of returning to his hometown of Mobile, Alabama, and resuming civilian life while haunted by shadows of close combat. Through the discipline of writing and the study of biology, he shows how he came to terms with the terrifying memories that had plagued him for years.Poignant and compelling, China Marine provides a frank depiction of the real costs of war, emotional and psychological as well as physical, and reveals the enduring bond that develops between men who face the horrors of war.

    The legendary Marine Corps officer and his bunch of misfits, outcasts, and daredevils gave new definition to "hell-raising" - on the ground and in the skies.Pappy himself was a living legend - he personally shot down 28 Japanese planes, and won the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross. He broke every rule in the book in doing so, but when he fell into the hands of the vengeful Japanese his real ordeal began.Here, in his own words, is the true story of America's wildest flying hero, of his extraordinary heroism, and of his greatest battle of all - the fight to survive.

    Ambrose, bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the inspiring story of the ordinary men of the U.S. army in northwest Europe from the day after D-Day until the end of the bitterest days of World War II.In this riveting account, historian Stephen E. Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Citizen Soldiers opens at 0001 hours, June 7, 1944, on the Normandy beaches, and ends at 0245 hours, May 7, 1945, with the allied victory. It is biography of the US Army in the European Theater of Operations, and Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war. From the high command down to the ordinary soldier, Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.

    At the age of sixteen, she was sent to London to earn her living, where she found a live-in job as a scullery maid. Her day began at 5 a.m., cleaning grates and lighting fires, then she would scrub floors and polish the house - all for two shillings a week, one of which she had to send home to her mother. Things improved when she secured the position of lady's maid in a house in Belgravia, on five shillings a week. Anwyn was required to be a hairdresser, beautician, confidante and secretary. Reporting directly to the lady of the house, she was expected to cover up her mistress's affairs. Her time as a lady's maid was over when she was caught with a young aristocrat in her room and banished from the house, but Anwyn found further employment in a variety of houses, working above and below stairs. However, she found her niche in the jolly working-class atmosphere of the capital city's pubs. London between the wars and during the Blitz is richly evoked and, despite all her hardships, Anwyn never asks for the readers' sympathy.

     HITLER'S GLADIATOR is the life of German general Josef "Sepp" Dietrich, who rose from private soldier in the kaiser's army to command of an SS Panzer Army in the closing stage""Clear and detailed . . . most scholarly." —- "The Sunday Times" (London)"An enlightened portrait of both Dietrich and his Germany." —- "Soldier Magazine"

    With his friend Bevil Hogg, he founded the Trek Bicycle Corporation in 1976 and then went on to establish the company as one of the leading bicycle companies in the world. He was a man who called his son, John, his best friend. Indeed, they did many great things together: ran the Boston Marathon, followed the Tour de France throughout France, and later ran Trek together. In March 2008, he passed away after complications of heart surgery. The Big Guy touched people’s lives in countless ways, and his passing was deeply emotional for many. Now John (current president of Trek Bicycle) has written a powerful tribute to the incredible life his father led and the ways in which he was an inspiring businessman, leader, and person. Taking readers deep into the history of Trek, John shares how his father taught, trained, and instilled in him the confidence and desire to be a leader. A portrait of a great man, the book culminates with John telling his father on his deathbed of their twenty greatest moments together. This is an intimate portrayal of a father-son relationship filled with poignant experiences and lessons on how to get the most out of life. *** My father was an amazing man and he taught me many of life’s lessons. This book takes you through a great relationship between a father and a son. It takes you through the building of Trek Bicycle, and most importantly it tells the story of how my father and how our family dealt with his fight for life, and ultimately how my father and how our family dealt with his death. Death is a destination that we all share and yet there is so little written about it and so many people are unprepared to deal with it. My father amazed me throughout his life, but he saved his best act for last. The way he dealt with his death is a story that should be of some help to any family facing this most difficult time. —from the preface

    It also chronicles the thrilling detective hunt for the diary, which disappeared after the Nuremburg Trials and remained lost for almost three quarters of a century, until Robert Wittman, a former FBI special agent who founded the Bureau’s Art Crimes Team, traced its strange journey.The authors expertly and deftly contextualize more than 400 pages of entries stretching from 1936 through 1944, in which the loyal Hitler advisor recounts internal meetings with the Fürher and his close associates Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler; describes the post-invasion occupation of the Soviet Union; considers the “solution” to the “Jewish question;” and discusses his overseeing of the mass seizure and cataloguing of books and artwork from homes, libraries, and museums across occupied Europe. An eyewitness to events, this narrative of Rosenberg’s diary offers provocative and intimate insights into pivotal moments in the war and the notorious Nazi who laid the philosophical foundations of the Third Reich.

    World War II is nearly over in Europe but is escalating in the Pacific, where American soldiers face an opponent who will go to any length to avoid defeat. The Japanese army follows the samurai code of Bushido, stipulating that surrender is a form of dishonor. Killing the Rising Sun takes readers to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made a triumphant return and is plotting a full-scale invasion of Japan.Across the globe in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists are preparing to test the deadliest weapon known to mankind. In Washington, DC, FDR dies in office and Harry Truman ascends to the presidency, only to face the most important political decision in history: whether to use that weapon. And in Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito, who is considered a deity by his subjects, refuses to surrender, despite a massive and mounting death toll. Told in the same page-turning style of Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing Patton, and Killing Reagan, this epic saga details the final moments of World War II like never before.

    

    

    American Daughter Gone to War is the extraordinary story of how she was transformed from a romantic young nurse into a thoughtful, battle-scarred adult. It is a mirror for how our country dealt with the shattering experience and aftermath of the war.

    Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs. Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of  RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition.  Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work, with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.

    soldiers surrendered as the Philippines’ island of Luzon fell to the Japanese. A few hundred Americans placed their faith in their own hands and headed for the jungles.One of them was Clay Conner Jr.—a twenty-three-year-old Army Air Force communications officer who had never even camped before… The obstacles to Conner’s survival were as steep as the Zimbales Mountains that Conner had to traverse daily: among them, malaria, heat, jungle rot, snakes, and mosquitoes. Beyond that, the threat of enemy soldiers who would ultimately put a price on Conner’s head, and local natives and villagers who claimed to be his friends only to later betray him. And, finally, he had to overcome his own self doubts, struggle with the despair of having to bury dead comrades, deal with friction among his fellow American soldiers, and survive years passing with little hope of rescue. But if conflict reveals character, Conner showed himself to be a man of iron will, unbridled boldness, and endless perseverance. Inspired by an unlikely alliance with a tribe of arrow-shooting pygmy Negritos, by the words in a dog-eared New Testament, and by a tattered American flag that he vowed to someday triumphantly fly at battalion headquarters, Conner would survive and fight for almost three years. Resolve is the story of an unlikely hero who never surrendered to the enemy—and of a soldier who never gave up hope.

    Inside were more than 100 revealing letters the legendary pilot wrote to her beloved mother. The first was a four-year-old's thank-you note. The last, three short lines, was written just prior to her final 1937 flight when she vanished into a Pacific mist of conjecture. Fitted together, they portray the evolution to adulthood of a warm, sensible, fun-loving tomboy who would become the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo. Amid these captivating letters, Jean L. Backus skillfully weaves accounts of Earhart and her family's joys and squabbles from an aristocratic mother who was the first woman to scale Pike's Peak to husband George Putnam who made her a media sensation, secured financing for her flights, and led her to reject any "medieval code of faithfulness." Written under all conditions - in school, on trains, at the White House - the engrossing messages show devotion, wisdom, and a hilarious talent for playing with the English language, as well as a rare ability to stand apart from her own legend. Letters from Amelia is an apt testimony to the totality of an extraordinary person.

    Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the New Germany, she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition.Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Goring and the expectedly charming—yet wholly sinister—Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.