Book picks similar to
Shooting the Pacific War by Soule Thayer
world-war-ii
american-history
japan
pacific-theater
Eagle's Claw
Morgan Jameson - 2017
But the Gestapo needs a man-hunter to apprehend an Allied agent who has killed three men, and worse, absconded with Top Secret Luftwaffe documents which detail a secret plan that could alter the course of the war. The Reich cannot let the information, and the man who stole it, make it back to Allied territory. The deal? Catch the killer and the Gestapo will free his family from the death camp where they are jailed. Fail...
Fifty Years on the Trail:: A True Story of Western Life
John Young Nelson - 2014
Born in Virginia in 1826, Nelson ran away from home as a young teenager to escape a domineering father and to seek adventure in the west. He took odd jobs along with way working on farms, serving as a cabin boy on a Mississippi steamer, and becoming an apprentice with a group of traders traveling west from Missouri. After meeting a band of Sioux, he decided that the nomadic life of an Indian was the adventure he was looking for and got himself adopted into the tribe. Here he learned how to live off the land and acquired the skills of a Sioux warrior. His adopted father was the Chief Spotted Tail and his brother-in-law was Red Cloud—Chief of the Sioux Nation. As a young Sioux brave, Nelson participated in Indian raids and skirmishes. Later, he guided Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, worked as a military scout with William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), fought in the Indian Wars, and served as a lawman in North Dakota. In his many escapades he often narrowly escaped death from bullets, arrows, and knives. Nelson’s story is a fascinating view of the early American west in all its glory. This pre-1923 publication has been converted from its original format for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the conversion.
Benghazi Breakout
Gordon Landsborough - 1966
Now only fifteen are left to call themselves the Glasshouse Gang Commando Unit, and live on their wits and their desert knowledge and their fighting skills, and evade both the Eighth Army and Rommel’s Afrika Korps. One far-sighted general at Cairo H.Q. had seen a use for John Offer’s misfits and sent them to wreak death and destruction behind Rommel’s lines. And now the Germans hold hostages—two of the Glasshouse Gang, prisoners in the hands of the S.S. in Benghazi. They will not live long unless their comrades can pull off another of their daring exploits... Praise for Gordon Landsborough “An exciting tough, fast and moving novel” – Times Literary Supplement “It has everything…supremely good characterisation, descriptive brilliance, and masterly in its simplicity" - Birmingham Post "A punchy tale coupled with plenty of action - an engaging read!" - Philip McCormac Gordon Landsborough was a publisher, author and bookseller. In the 1950s to 1980s, the publishing industry went through significant changes. Landsborough found himself at the forefront of this and used this opportunity to bring forth his innovative ideas. Other works by Landsborough included, The Violent People (1960), The Dead Commando (1976) and Black Death (1951), among many more.
A Mother's Journey
June Hampson - 2012
Fourteen-year-old Vera has led a sheltered life with her overbearing, religious mother and older sister. But her world is turned upside down with the arrival of the Lovell family on her street. Vera quickly befriends the daughter, Angela, an impulsive, worldly young woman who opens Vera's eyes to what she has been missing. But Vera, unaware of the effect she has on men, invites the unwanted attention of Angela's father, with devastating consequences. Outraged at the news that her teenage daughter is pregnant, Vera is sent to a home for wayward girls. After giving birth to a baby boy, Vera manages to escape the brutality of the institution, only to end up homeless. Alone and struggling to make ends meet, Vera is determined to give her son a better life, at any cost. But just as their fortunes seem to change for the better, everything Vera has worked for is threatened. June Hampson brings heartbreak, warmth, and humor to this compelling tale of family tragedy and a young mother's fight for her son.
Still a PFC: A Combat Marine in World War II: The Pacific Theater (1942-1945): Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Guam, & Iwo Jima
Eugene H. Peterson - 2020
Tomes have been devoted to this subject. I choose instead to tell of my life as a Private, a grunt if you will, and how this life impacted on me.As a telephone lineman for the United States Marine Corps, I had the greatest opportunity to see more of the combat area than most participants. We traveled to the right flank, left flank, up front and to the rear areas to keep our telephone lines functioning and all our artillery and infantry in constant communications.A Japanese general stated "the American troops' ability to concentrate artillery fire on a given point was a tremendous advantage." As an artilleryman, I am proud we provided this edge. Our front line troops on numerous occasions told me our artillery barrage had "stopped the Japs cold." Our constant goal.I have often been asked, "How did you cope with death as an everyday fact?" I tell of losing eight buddies on one day on Guam. We acknowledged the loss then moved on. "What is past is past." We did not dwell on one or multiple losses. We simply moved on. Yesterday was an age away, this is today, we hope to see tomorrow. Perhaps cruel, but it retained our sanity. Those who stand and wait have not shared this burden.Lest you think I am portraying myself as some kind of hero -- let me remind you, they never asked me if I wanted to go on these combat landings to Bougainville, Guam, and Iwo Jima.I was not a hero, but I walked among heroes.
The Pecos Undertaker (Stark & Buchanan Book 1)
Mel Odom - 2020
Blunt talks to Mr. Henson, Charlie’s mentor, like he knows him, but Charlie knows that can’t be. John Peter Henson is a good man who would only spend time with someone like Blunt the day he put him into the ground…Unwilling to give up Mr. Henson’s secret and tarnish his good name, Charlie tries to put the pieces together himself. Maggie Buchanan knows he’s hiding something and she’s on his trail as well. Together, they turn the tables on Blunt’s outlaws. Charlie ends up in possession of a treasure map to Mexican gold that may just get him killed.“The pace is fast, the action plentiful, the characters colorful and memorable, and the writing is top-notch.” – Wayne D. Dundee
Sergeant Nibley PhD: Memories of an Unlikely Screaming Eagle
Hugh Nibley - 2006
But on June 6, 1944, at Utah Beach, he learned more about war than he had gleaned from all the books he'd read combined. General Maxwell Taylor assigned Sergeant Nibley to educate the officers of the 101st Airborne about warfare. But it was the professor himself that received an education while fighting as a member of the most legendary unit of the United States Army. Most war memoirs come either from the bird's-eye view of the general or from the visceral but limited scope of the common soldier. Because of Nibley's unique situation, this book blends both perspectives. From the narrow view of a sergeant in a foxhole to the broader perspective of an intelligence specialist, his experience offers an intimate, realistic and articulate view of World War II.
The Photographer at Sixteen: The Death and Life of a Fighter
George Szirtes - 2019
It is fiercely compelling" EDMUND DE WAAL, author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes
A poet's memoir of his mother that flows backwards through time, and through a tumultuous period of European history - a tender and yet unsparing autobiographical journey.
In July 1975, George Szirtes' mother, Magda, died in an ambulance, on her way to hospital after attempting to take her own life. She was fifty-one years old. This memoir is an attempt to make sense of what came before, to re-construct who Magda Szirtes really was. The Photographer at Sixteen moves from her death, spooling backwards through her years as a mother, through sickness and exile in England, the family's flight from Hungary in 1956, her time in two concentration camps, her girlhood as an ambitious photographer and her vanished family in Transylvania.The woman who emerges, fleetingly, fragmentarily - with her absolutism, her contradictions, her beauty - is utterly captivating. What were the terrors and obsessions that drove her? The Photographer at Sixteen reveals a life that is at Magda Szirtes from the depths of the end to the comparable safety of the photographer's studio where she first appears as a small child. It is a book born of curiosity, guilt and love.
The Big War
Anton Myrer - 1957
They were Americans and Marines. And this is their story: The Big War, Anton Myrer's panoramic novel of Marines in the Pacific in World War II. This is the story of Alan Newcombe, the Boston society Harvard man; Danny Kantaylis, the natural-born leader; Jay O'Neill, the barroom scrapper. Myrer does not glorify war; he does not flinch from describing what the actual experience of warfare was like for a desperate group of Marines trapped in some of the worst fighting conditions of the war. We learn about their lives at home and their fates on the battlefield.
Battle for Leyte Gulf
C. Vann Woodward - 1947
Vann Woodward recreates the gripping account of the battle for Leyte Gulf—the greatest naval battle of World War II and the largest engagement ever fought on the high seas. For the Japanese, it represented their supreme effort; they committed to action virtually every operational fighting ship on the lists of the Imperial Navy, including two powerful new battleships of the Yamato class. It also ended in their greatest defeat—and a tremendous victory for the United States Navy. Features a new introduction by Evan Thomas, author of Sea of Thunder.
Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment
Linda Gordon - 2006
Presenting 119 images originally censored by the U.S. Army—the majority of which have never been published—Impounded evokes the horror of a community uprooted in the early 1940s and the stark reality of the internment camps. With poignancy and sage insight, nationally known historians Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro illuminate the saga of Japanese American internment: from life before Executive Order 9066 to the abrupt roundups and the marginal existence in the bleak, sandswept camps. In the tradition of Roman Vishniac's A Vanished World, Impounded, with the immediacy of its photographs, tells the story of the thousands of lives unalterably shattered by racial hatred brought on by the passions of war.
Biltmore Estate
Ellen Erwin Rickman - 2005
Created in the 1890s by George Washington Vanderbilt, a member of one of America's wealthiest families, the estate combined a 250-room French Renaissance-style chateau with 125,000 acres of gardens, forests, and working farms. Biltmore House served as Vanderbilt's primary residence for almost 20 years. After Mr. Vanderbilt's death in 1914, life at Biltmore continued for his wife Edith and daughter Cornelia. In 1930, Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil and her husband, Hon. John Francis Amherst Cecil, opened Biltmore House--the largest private home in the United States--to the public, firmly establishing the Asheville area as a major tourist destination.
Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun
John Prados - 2012
In Islands of Destiny, Prados points out that the Japanese forces quickly regained strength after Midway and continued their assault undaunted. Taking this surprising fact as the start of his inquiry, he began to investigate how and when the Pacific tide turned in the Allies’ favor. His search led him to the decisive battles and strategic maneuvers in the fight for the Solomon Islands.Beginning with the invasion of Guadalcanal in August 1942, the Solomons became a hotly contested battleground for over a year, culminating in the isolation of Rabaul by the Allies. As military forces fought over the strategically important islands, a secret war of intelligence was also being waged. For a total picture of the conflict, Prados integrates blow-by-blow action on the ground with the code breaking, aerial reconnaissance, secret spy posts, and submarine scouting that were vital to the Allied effort.The Solomons arena saw some of the most intense combat of WWII—from major naval actions, including a key confrontation between battleships, to air battles that took place almost daily. With expert knowledge and crystal clear prose, John Prados illustrates why these events were not only thrilling, but pivotal in the Allies’ path to victory.
Battleground Pacific: A Marine Rifleman's Combat Odyssey in K/3/5
Sterling Mace - 2012
But this is ultimately a combat tale—as violent and harrowing as any that has come before. From fighting through the fiery hell that was Peleliu to the deadly battleground of Okinawa, Mace traces his path from the fear of combat to understanding that killing another human comes just as easily as staying alive. He learns that bravery often equates to stupidity, leading to the death of close friends, but also that life goes on, with death on its heels. Battleground Pacific is one of the most important and entertaining memoirs about the Pacific theater in WWII.
The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival
Sara Tuval Bernstein - 1999
She was born into a large family in rural Romania?and grew up feisty and willing to fight back physically against anti-Semitism from other schoolchildren. She defied her father' s orders to turn down a scholarship that took her to Bucharest, and got herself expelled from that school when she responded to a priest/teacher' s vicious diatribe against the Jews by hurling a bottle of ink at him?After a series of incidents that ranged from dramatic escapes to a year in a forced labor detachment, Sara ended up in Ravensbruck, a women' s concentration camp, Aand? managed to survive?she tells this story with style and power." --Kirkus Reviews