Away All Boats


Kenneth Dodson - 1954
    A vivid portrayal of the officers and sailors of the fictional amphibious transport USS Belinda in the Pacific of World War II.

The Caine Mutiny


Herman Wouk - 1951
    In the intervening half century, The Caine Mutiny has become a perennial favorite of readers young and old, has sold millions of copies throughout the world, and has achieved the status of a modern classic.

Harm's Way


James Bassett - 1962
     The year is 1941. The Japanese have struck a mighty blow against America at Pearl Harbor. In its aftermath America has begun its struggle with Japan for control of the Pacific Ocean. Captain Rockwell Torrey, USN, commanding officer of the heavy cruiser Old Swayback, is sent out on a search-and-destroy mission against their foes. This is no simple mission as Japanese submarines lurk in the murky depths and threaten to destroy Torrey’s task force at every opportunity. Harm’s Way is a thrilling novel of naval fortitude and survival in the combat for the Pacific Ocean. It culminates in a brilliant sea battle off the coast of the strategic island of Levu-Vana where the fate of the Pacific conflict hangs in the balance. “In both, smaller and larger, Torrey must battle not only with the Japanese but also with his nominal superior who has political friends. The best part of the book, by far, is the climatic naval battle where the American task force is faced with appalling, and in some instances, suicidal odds. Here the book can be described as truly exciting.” Kirkus Reviews James Bassett’s novel Harm’s Way was made into a film in 1965 that was produced and directed by Otto Preminger. It starred John Wayne, Kirk Douglas and Henry Fonda. During World War II, James Bassett was a staff officer intimately associated with the late Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey, and handled his press relations from the Guadalcanal campaign to the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. Although he won the Bronze Star with combat clasp, he is proudest of this inscription on a photograph of the famed “Wild Bull”: “To Jim Bassett, tried wartime comrade, shipmate and friend.” Harm’s Way drew greatly upon his wartime experiences and was published in 1962. Bassett retired October 1977 after serving 43 years on the staffs of the Los Angeles Times and The Mirror. He died in 1978.

Flags of Our Fathers


James D. Bradley - 2000
    Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America.In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima—and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag.Now the son of one of the flagraisers has written a powerful account of six very different young men who came together in a moment that will live forever.To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of Easy Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island—an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man.But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what happened after the victory. The men in the photo—three were killed during the battle—were proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only James Bradley's father truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: "The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn't come back."Few books ever have captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well as Flags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.From the Hardcover edition.

A Bridge Too Far


Cornelius Ryan - 1974
    Focusing on a vast cast of characters -- from Dutch civilians to British and American strategists to common soldiers and commanders -- Ryan brings to life one of the most daring and ill-fated operations of the war. A Bridge Too Far superbly recreates the terror and suspense, the heroism and tragedy of this epic operation, which ended in bitter defeat for the Allies.

Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad


William Craig - 1973
    It signaled the beginning of the end for the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler; it foretold the Russian juggernaut that would destroy Berlin and make the Soviet Union a superpower. As Winston Churchill characterized the result of the conflict at Stalingrad: " the hinge of fate had turned." William Craig, author and historian, has painstakingly recreated the details of this great battle: from the hot summer of August 1942, when the German armies smashed their way across southern Russia toward the Volga River, through the struggle for Stalingrad-a city Hitler had never meant to capture and Stalin never meant to defend-on to the destruction of the supposedly invincible German Sixth Army and the terror of the Russian prison camps in frozen Siberia. Craig has interviewed hundreds of survivors of the battle-both Russian and German soldiers and civilians-and has woven their incredible experiences into the fabric of hitherto unknown documents. The resulting mosaic is epic in scope, and the human tragedy that unfolds is awesome.

Matterhorn


Karl Marlantes - 2009
    It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.Written over the course of thirty years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, Matterhorn is a visceral and spellbinding novel about what it is like to be a young man at war. It is an unforgettable novel that transforms the tragedy of Vietnam into a powerful and universal story of courage, camaraderie, and sacrifice: a parable not only of the war in Vietnam but of all war, and a testament to the redemptive power of literature.A graduate of Yale University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. This is his first novel. He lives in rural Washington State.

The Great Escape


Paul Brickhill - 1950
    With only their bare hands and the crudest of homemade tools, they sank shafts, forged passports, faked weapons, and tailored German uniforms and civilian clothes. They developed a fantastic security system to protect themselves from German surveillance.It was a split-second operation as delicate and as deadly as a time bomb. It demanded the concentrated devotion and vigilance of more than six hundred men—every one of them, every minute, every hour, every day and night for more than a year.Made into the classic 1963 war film of the same name starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough.

The Rising Tide


Jeff Shaara - 2006
    Now he embarks upon his most ambitious epic, a trilogy about the military conflict that defined the twentieth century. The Rising Tide begins a staggering work of fiction bound to be a new generation's most poignant chronicle of World War II. With you-are-there immediacy, painstaking historical detail, and all-inclusive points of view, Shaara portrays the momentous and increasingly dramatic events that pulled America into the vortex of this monumental conflict.As Hitler conquers Poland, Norway, France, and most of Western Europe, England struggles to hold the line. When Germany's ally Japan launches a stunning attack on Pearl Harbor, America is drawn into the war, fighting to hold back the Japanese conquest of the Pacific, while standing side-by-side with their British ally, the last hope for turning the tide of the war.Through unforgettable battle scenes in the unforgiving deserts of North Africa and the rugged countryside of Sicily, Shaara tells this story through the voices of this conflict's most heroic figures, some familiar, some unknown. As British and American forces strike into the "soft underbelly" of Hitler's Fortress Europa, the new weapons of war come clearly into focus. In North Africa, tank battles unfold in a tapestry of dust and fire unlike any the world has ever seen. In Sicily, the Allies attack their enemy with a barely tested weapon: the paratrooper. As battles rage along the coasts of the Mediterranean, the momentum of the war begins to shift, setting the stage for the massive invasion of France, at a seaside resort called Normandy.More than an unprecedented and intimate portrait of those who waged this astonishing global war, The Rising Tide is a vivid gallery of characters both immortal and unknown: the as-yet obscure administrator Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose tireless efficiency helped win the war; his subordinates, clashing in both style and personality, from George Patton and Mark Clark to Omar Bradley and Bernard Montgomery. In the desolate hills and deserts, the Allies confront Erwin Rommel, the battlefield genius known as "the Desert Fox," a wounded beast who hands the Americans their first humiliating defeat in the European theater of the war. From tank driver to paratrooper to the men who gave the commands, Shaara's stirring portrayals bring the heroic and the tragic to life in brilliant detail.

Once an Eagle


Anton Myrer - 1968
    Damon is a professional who puts duty, honor, and the men he commands above self interest. Massengale, however, brilliantly advances by making the right connections behind the lines and in Washington's corridors of power.Beginning in the French countryside during the Great War, the conflict between these adversaries solidifies in the isolated garrison life marking peacetime, intensifies in the deadly Pacific jungles of World War II, and reaches its treacherous conclusion in the last major battleground of the Cold War -- Vietnam.A study in character and values, courage, nobility, honesty, and selflessness, here is an unforgettable story about a man who embdies the best in our nation -- and in us all.

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour


James D. Hornfischer - 2003
    We will do what damage we can.”With these words, Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland addressed the crew of the destroyer escort USS Samuel B. Roberts on the morning of October 25, 1944, off the Philippine Island of Samar. On the horizon loomed the mightiest ships of the Japanese navy, a massive fleet that represented the last hope of a staggering empire. All that stood between it and Douglas MacArthur’s vulnerable invasion force were the Roberts and the other small ships of a tiny American flotilla poised to charge into history.In the tradition of the #1 New York Times bestseller Flags of Our Fathers, James D. Hornfischer paints an unprecedented portrait of the Battle of Samar, a naval engagement unlike any other in U.S. history—and captures with unforgettable intensity the men, the strategies, and the sacrifices that turned certain defeat into a legendary victory.From the Hardcover edition.

Halsey's Typhoon: The True Story of a Fighting Admiral, an Epic Storm, and an Untold Rescue


Bob Drury - 2007
    In December 1944, America’s most popular and colorful naval hero, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, unwittingly sailed his undefeated Pacific Fleet into the teeth of the most powerful storm on earth. Three destroyers were capsized sending hundreds of sailors and officers into the raging, shark infested waters. Over the next sixty hours, small bands of survivors fought seventy-foot waves, exhaustion, and dehydration to await rescue at the hands of the courageous Lt. Com. Henry Lee Plage, who, defying orders, sailed his tiny destroyer escort USS Tabberer through 150 mph winds to reach the lost men. Thanks to documents that have been declassified after sixty years and dozens of first-hand accounts from survivors—including former President Gerald Ford—one of the greatest World War II stories, and a riveting tale of survival at sea, can finally be told.

Surface with Daring


Douglas Reeman - 1976
    Lieutenant David Seaton leads his flotilla of four-man-crew, midget submarines into the chill waters of Norway on a mission to destroy a secret and devastating weapon recently developed by the Nazis.

Sharks and Little Fish: A Novel of German Submarine Warfare


Wolfgang Ott - 1956
    "A German counterpart to The Caine Mutiny" (Frederic Morton), SHARKS AND LITTLE FISH is based on the author's own experiences as a young submariner. "It is as uncompromising, vivid, and unfalsified an account of war-time naval life as has appeared." (Times Literary Supplement)

Ice Brothers


Sloan Wilson - 1979
    The lone U.S. Coast Guard trawler Arluk is commanded by "Mad" Mowry, a salty old drunk, a raging tyrant -- and the finest ice pilot around. But when Mowry cracks up, two greenhorns are suddenly thrust into command. Paul Schumann and Nathan Greenberg must conquer the icy Greenland seas, the brutal Arctic elements, the fog-enshrouded Nazi gunboats -- or die.Based on personal experience, Sloan Wilson, author of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, has written a gripping story of war at sea, of the officers and seamen who fight fear and the enemy. The solitary trawler Arluk and its crew become a microcosm of the entire war.