Book picks similar to
Target Patton: The Plot to Assassinate General George S. Patton by Robert K. Wilcox
history
non-fiction
wwii
biography
The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom
Slavomir Rawicz - 1956
The harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.
Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia
Michael Korda - 2010
Lawrence (1888-1935) first won fame for his writings and his participation in the British-sponsored Arab Revolt of WWI, but the adventurer known even in his day as "Lawrence of Arabia" is remembered today mostly as the subject of the 1962 film masterpiece based on his life. This splendid page-turner revitalizes this protean, enigmatic adventurer. That this colorful British scholar/Middle East warrior deserves a better fate is demonstrated amply in Michael Kordas' authoritative 784-page biography. Exciting, well-written, and relevant.699 pages of text, 762 with notes
The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War
Catherine Grace Katz - 2020
Catherine Grace Katz uncovers the dramatic story of the three young women who were chosen by their famous fathers to travel with them to Yalta, each bound by fierce ambition and intertwined romances that powerfully colored these crucial days. Kathleen Harriman, twenty-seven, was a champion skier, war correspondent, and daughter to US Ambassador to Russia Averell Harriman. Sarah Churchill, an actress-turned-RAF officer, was devoted to her brilliant father, who in turn depended on her astute political mind. FDR’s only daughter, Anna, chosen over Eleanor Roosevelt to accompany the president to Yalta, arrived there as holder of her father’s most damaging secret. Situated in the political maelstrom that marked the transition to a postwar world, The Daughters of Yalta is a remarkable story of fathers and daughters whose relationships were tested and strengthened by the history they witnessed and the future they crafted together.
Clara's War
Clara Kramer - 2008
Three years later, in the small town of Żółkiew, life for Jewish 15-year-old Clara Kramer was never to be the same again. While those around her were either slaughtered or transported, Clara and her family hid perilously in a hand-dug cellar. Living above and protecting them were the Becks.Mr. Beck was a womaniser, a drunkard and a self-professed anti-Semite, yet he risked his life throughout the war to keep his charges safe. Nevertheless, life with Mr. Beck was far from predictable. From the house catching fire, to Beck's affair with Clara's cousin, to the nightly SS drinking sessions in the room just above, Clara's War transports you into the dark, cramped bunker, and sits you next to the families as they hold their breath time and again.Sixty years later, Clara Kramer has created a memoir that is lyrical, dramatic and heartbreakingly compelling. Despite the worst of circumstances, this is a story full of hope and survival, courage and love.
The Good War: An Oral History of World War II
Studs Terkel - 1984
No matter how gruesome the memories are, relatively few of the interviewees said they would have been better off without the experience. It was a central and formative experience in their lives. Although 400,000 Americans perished, the United States itself was not attacked again after Pearl Harbor, the economy grew, and there was a new sense of world power that invigorated the country. Some women and African Americans experienced new freedoms in the post war society, but good life after World War II was tarnished by the threat of nuclear war.
FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio
Richard Neer - 2001
Top Forty jocks screamed and yelled and sounded mightier than God on millions of transistor radios. But on FM radio it was all spun out for only you. On a golden web by a master weaver driven by fifty thousand magical watts of crystal clear power . . . before the days of trashy, hedonistic dumbspeak and disposable three-minute ditties . . . in the days where rock lived at many addresses in many cities."–from FMAs a young man, Richard Neer dreamed of landing a job at WNEW in New York–one of the revolutionary FM stations across the country that were changing the face of radio by rejecting strict formatting and letting disc jockeys play whatever they wanted. He felt that when he got there, he’d have made the big time. Little did he know he’d have shaped rock history as well.FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio chronicles the birth, growth, and death of free-form rock-and-roll radio through the stories of the movement’s flagship stations. In the late sixties and early seventies–at stations like KSAN in San Francisco, WBCN in Boston, WMMR in Philadelphia, KMET in Los Angeles, WNEW, and others–disc jockeys became the gatekeepers, critics, and gurus of new music. Jocks like Scott Muni, Vin Scelsa, Jonathan Schwartz, and Neer developed loyal followings and had incredible influence on their listeners and on the early careers of artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Genesis, the Cars, and many others.Full of fascinating firsthand stories, FM documents the commodification of an iconoclastic phenomenon, revealing how counterculture was coopted and consumed by the mainstream. Richard Neer was an eyewitness to, and participant in, this history. FM is the tale of his exhilarating ride.
Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life
Carlo D'Este - 2002
Eisenhower, from apprehensive soldier to one of our greatest heros. In the weeks leading up to D-Day, Dwight D. Eisenhower seethed with nervous energy. He had not expected his military career to bring him to this moment. The son of pacifists, Ike graduated from high school more likely to teach history than to make it. Casting new light on this profound evolution, "Eisenhower" chronicles the unlikely, dramatic rise of the supreme Allied commander. Beginning with the lasting effect of Eisenhower's impoverished youth, bestselling biographer Carlo D'Este follows his subject through West Point and a sometimes troubled marriage; toil under MacArthur in the Philippines during the 1930s; the inner sanctums of the War Department; the general's painful North African apprenticeship; and, finally, the dramatic events leading to the Allied victory in May 1945. Exposing for the first time numerous myths that have surrounded the war hero and his family (such as his romance with his wartime driver, Kay Summersby), D'Este also probes Eisenhower's famous clashes with his American peers and the British chiefs of staff, as well as his relations with legendary figures, including Winston Churchill and George S. Patton. Unlike other biographies of the general, "Eisenhower" captures Ike's true character, from his youth to the pinnacle of his career and afterward.
The Atomic Times: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground
Michael Harris - 2005
Strangelove.Except it really happened.Operation Redwing, the biggest and baddest of America's atmospheric nuclear weapons test regimes, mixed saber rattling with mad science, while overlooking the cataclysmic human, geopolitical and ecological effects. But mostly, it just messed with guys' heads.Major Maxwell, who put Safety First, Second and Third. Except when he didn't.Berko, the wise-cracking Brooklyn Dodgers fan forced to cope with the H-bomb and his mother's cookies.Tony, who thought military spit and polish plus uncompromising willpower made him an exception.Carl Duncan, who clung to his girlfriend's photos and a dangerous secret.Major Vanish, who did just that.In THE ATOMIC TIMES, Michael Harris welcomes readers into the U.S. Army's nuclear family where the F-words were Fallout and Fireball. In a distinctive narrative voice, Harris describes his H-bomb year with unforgettable imagery and insight into the ways isolation and isotopes change men for better--and for worse.
Patton: Blood, Guts, and Prayer
Michael Keane - 2012
Patton, Jr. is one of the most famous military figures in U.S. history. Yet, he is better known for his profanity than his prayers. Until now. In his new book Patton: Blood, Guts, and Prayer, author Michael Keane takes readers on a journey through Patton's career in three parts: his military prowess, his inspirational bravery, and his faith. Using Patton's own diaries, speeches, and personal papers, Keane examines the general's actions and personality to shed light on his unique and paradoxical persona. From his miraculous near-death experience to his famous prayer for fair weather, Patton: Blood, Guts, and Prayer recounts the seminal events that contributed to Patton's personal and religious beliefs. Comprehensive and inspiring, Patton: Blood, Guts, and Prayer is an extraordinary look at the public and private life of one of World War II's most storied generals.
Discovering the Rommel Murder
Charles F. Marshall - 1994
Contains previously unpublished letters and photographs from the Rommel family.
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 Spy Wore Red
Aline, Countess of Romanones - 1987
Under the code name ''Tiger,'' this remarkable woman probed the depths of the Nazi underground, risking her life -- and her love -- in a glittering world of high intrigue far more exciting than any fictionalized thriller. The Spy Wore Red is a harrowing first-hand account of the dangers and adventures she experienced as an undercover agent.
The Ratline: Love, Lies, and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive
Philippe Sands - 2020
By the time the war ended in May 1945, he was indicted for 'mass murder'. Hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the Poles and the British, as well as groups of Jews, Wächter went on the run. He spent three years hiding in the Austrian Alps, assisted by his wife Charlotte, before making his way to Rome where he was helped by a Vatican bishop. He remained there for three months. While preparing to travel to Argentina on the 'ratline' he died unexpectedly, in July 1949, a few days after spending a weekend with an 'old comrade'.In The Ratline Philippe Sands offers a unique account of the daily life of a senior Nazi and fugitive, and of his wife. Drawing on a remarkable archive of family letters and diaries, he unveils a fascinating insight into life before and during the war, on the run, in Rome, and into the Cold War. Eventually the door is unlocked to a mystery that haunts Wächter's youngest son, who continues to believe his father was a good man - what happened to Otto Wächter, and how did he die?
The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe
Stephen Harding - 2013
Hitler is dead, and the Third Reich little more than smoking rubble. No GI wants to be the last man killed in action against the Germans. But for cigar-chewing, rough-talking, hard-drinking, hard-charging Captain Jack Lee and his men, there is one more mission: rescue fourteen prominent French prisoners held in an SS-guarded castle high in the Austrian Alps. It’s a dangerous mission, but Lee has help from a decorated German Wehrmacht officer and his men, who voluntarily join the fight.Based on personal memoirs, author interviews, and official American, German, and French histories, The Last Battle is the nearly unbelievable story of the most improbable battle of World War II — a tale of unlikely allies, bravery, cowardice, and desperate combat between implacable enemies.
Escape from Sobibor
Richard Rashke - 1982
The smallest of the extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany during World War II, Sobibor was where now-retired auto worker John Demjanjuk has been accused of working as a prison guard. Sobibor also was the scene of the war's biggest prisoner escape. Richard Rashke's interviews with eighteen of those who survived provide the foundation for this volume. He also draws on books, articles, and diaries to make vivid the camp, the uprising, and the escape. In the afterword, Rashke relates how the Polish government in October 1993, observed the fiftieth anniversary of the escape and how it has beautified the site since a film based on his book appeared on Polish television.