[PDF] When Books Went To War eBook

Author : Molly Guptill Manning
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 15,60 MB
Release : 2014-12-02
Category : History
ISBN : 0544535170

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This New York Times bestselling account of books parachuted to soldiers during WWII is a “cultural history that does much to explain modern America” (USA Today). When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned 100 million books. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops, gathering 20 million hardcover donations. Two years later, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million specially printed paperbacks designed for troops to carry in their pockets and rucksacks in every theater of war. These small, lightweight Armed Services Editions were beloved by the troops and are still fondly remembered today. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy, in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific, in field hospitals, and on long bombing flights. This pioneering project not only listed soldiers’ spirits, but also helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity and made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. “A thoroughly engaging, enlightening, and often uplifting account . . . I was enthralled and moved.” — Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Whether or not you’re a book lover, you’ll be moved.” — Entertainment Weekly

Author : Molly Guptill Manning
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 11,82 MB
Release : 2014
Category : History
ISBN : 0544535022

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Chronicles the joint effort of the U.S. government, the publishing industry, and the nation's librarians to boost troop morale during World War II by shipping more than one hundred million books to the front lines for soldiers to read during what little downtime they had.

Author : David Brinkley
Publisher : Knopf
Page : 445 pages
File Size : 39,11 MB
Release : 2020-09-30
Category :
ISBN : 0593319451

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David Brinkley, one of America's most respected and celebrated news commentators, turns his journalistic skills to a personal account of the tumultuous days of World War II in the sleepy little Southern town that was Washington, D.C. Carrying us from the first days of the war through Roosevelt's death and the celebration of VJ Day, Brinkley surrounds us with fascinating people. Here are the charismatic President Roosevelt and the woman spy, code name "Cynthia." Here, too, are the diplomatic set, new Pentagon officials, and old-line society members--aka "Cave Dwellers." We meet the brashest and the brightest who actually ran the government, and the countless men and women who came to support the war effort in any way they could--all seeking to share in the adventure of their generation.

Author : Karl Marlantes
Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 46,74 MB
Release : 2011-08-30
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0802195148

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“A precisely crafted and bracingly honest” memoir of war and its aftershocks from the New York Times–bestselling author of Matterhorn (The Atlantic). In 1968, at the age of twenty-three, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions. In his thirteen-month tour he saw intense combat, killing the enemy and watching friends die. Marlantes survived, but like many of his brothers in arms, he has spent the last forty years dealing with his experiences. In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes takes a candid look at these experiences and critically examines how we might better prepare young soldiers for war. In the past, warriors were prepared for battle by ritual, religion, and literature—which also helped bring them home. While contemplating ancient works from Homer to the Mahabharata, Marlantes writes of the daily contradictions modern warriors are subject to, of being haunted by the face of a young North Vietnamese soldier he killed at close quarters, and of how he finally found a way to make peace with his past. Through it all, he demonstrates just how poorly prepared our nineteen-year-old warriors are for the psychological and spiritual aspects of the journey. In this memoir, the New York Times–bestselling author of Matterhorn offers “a well-crafted and forcefully argued work that contains fresh and important insights into what it’s like to be in a war and what it does to the human psyche” (The Washington Post).

Author : Harry Turtledove
Publisher : Del Rey
Page : 513 pages
File Size : 42,10 MB
Release : 2009-08-04
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 034551565X

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A stroke of the pen and history is changed. In 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, determined to avoid war, signed the Munich Accord, ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. But the following spring, Hitler snatched the rest of that country, and England, after a fatal act of appeasement, was fighting a war for which it was not prepared. Now, in this thrilling alternate history, another scenario is played out: What if Chamberlain had not signed the accord? In this action-packed chronicle of the war that might have been, Harry Turtledove uses dozens of points of view to tell the story: from American marines serving in Japanese-occupied China and ragtag volunteers fighting in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain to an American woman desperately trying to escape Nazi-occupied territory—and witnessing the war from within the belly of the beast. A tale of powerful leaders and ordinary people, at once brilliantly imaginative and hugely entertaining, Hitler’s War captures the beginning of a very different World War II—with a very different fate for our world today. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Harry Turtledove's The War that Came Early: West and East.

Author : Robert J. Serling
Publisher : Kensington Publishing Corporation
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 30,54 MB
Release : 1997
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN :

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From one of America's most honored aviation authors comes a must-read book for aviation fans and World War II history buffs alike. Serling offers the dramatic chronicle of the glory days of the propeller plane, telling the story of the airline pioneers and pilots, mechanics and engineers, who became key players in momentous military engagements from the European theater to the Pacific. of photos.

Author : Brian Matthew Jordan
Publisher : LSU Press
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 31,44 MB
Release : 2020-04-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0807173053

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In recent years, Civil War veterans have emerged from historical obscurity. Inspired by recent interest in memory studies and energized by the ongoing neorevisionist turn, a vibrant new literature has given the lie to the once-obligatory lament that the postbellum lives of Civil War soldiers were irretrievable. Despite this flood of historical scholarship, fundamental questions about the essential character of Civil War veteranhood remain unanswered. Moreover, because work on veterans has often proceeded from a preoccupation with cultural memory, the Civil War’s ex-soldiers have typically been analyzed as either symbols or producers of texts. In The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans, fifteen of the field’s top scholars provide a more nuanced and intimate look at the lives and experiences of these former soldiers. Essays in this collection approach Civil War veterans from oblique angles, including theater, political, and disability history, as well as borderlands and memory studies. Contributors examine the lives of Union and Confederate veterans, African American veterans, former prisoners of war, amputees, and ex-guerrilla fighters. They also consider postwar political elections, veterans’ business dealings, and even literary contests between onetime enemies and among former comrades.

Author : Rhonda Cornum
Publisher : Thorndike Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 24,46 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Large type books
ISBN : 9780783885162

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Rhonda Cornum was a soldier, a surgeon, a helicopter pilot, a wife, a mother - and a prisoner of war during the Gulf War. Not only does this book explore Major Cornum's fears during her capture, but it gives us a unique insight into Middle Eastern culture. Major Cornum is a woman of immense courage, competence and conviction, and her performance helps convince us that women can, indeed, be warriors.

Author : Todd Anton
Publisher : Triumph Books
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 44,95 MB
Release : 2013-10-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1623683092

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More than any other sport, professional football contributed fighting men to the battles of World War II, and the 22 or so players or former players that lost their lives are among the riveting stories told in this tribute to football's war heroes that spans many decades and military conflicts. The National Football League counts three Congressional Medal of Honor recipients among its honors, along with numerous Silver Stars, Distinguished Flying Crosses, and Purple Hearts. When Football Went to War offers a ground-breaking look at football—college and professional football alike—and many of the wartime heroes who came off the field of play to fight for their country. Detailed biographies of those who gave their lives are supplemented by many other stories of wartime heroism, from World War I through to Pat Tillman's tragic death in the Global War on Terrorism. Football has become the most popular sport in America and this heartfelt book honors the many sacrifices of NFL athletes over the years in service of their country.

Author : William M. Tuttle Jr.
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 49,59 MB
Release : 1993-09-16
Category : History
ISBN : 019987882X

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Looking out a second-story window of her family's quarters at the Pearl Harbor naval base on December 7, 1941, eleven-year-old Jackie Smith could see not only the Rising Sun insignias on the wings of attacking Japanese bombers, but the faces of the pilots inside. Most American children on the home front during the Second World War saw the enemy only in newsreels and the pages of Life Magazine, but from Pearl Harbor on, "the war"--with its blackouts, air raids, and government rationing--became a dramatic presence in all of their lives. Thirty million Americans relocated, 3,700,000 homemakers entered the labor force, sparking a national debate over working mothers and latchkey children, and millions of enlisted fathers and older brothers suddenly disappeared overseas or to far-off army bases. By the end of the war, 180,000 American children had lost their fathers. In "Daddy's Gone to War", William M. Tuttle, Jr., offers a fascinating and often poignant exploration of wartime America, and one of generation's odyssey from childhood to middle age. The voices of the home front children are vividly present in excerpts from the 2,500 letters Tuttle solicited from men and women across the country who are now in their fifties and sixties. From scrap-collection drives and Saturday matinees to the atomic bomb and V-J Day, here is the Second World War through the eyes of America's children. Women relive the frustration of always having to play nurses in neighborhood war games, and men remember being both afraid and eager to grow up and go to war themselves. (Not all were willing to wait. Tuttle tells of one twelve year old boy who strode into an Arizona recruiting office and declared, "I don't need my mother's consent...I'm a midget.") Former home front children recall as though it were yesterday the pain of saying good-bye, perhaps forever, to an enlisting father posted overseas and the sometimes equally unsettling experience of a long-absent father's return. A pioneering effort to reinvent the way we look at history and childhood, "Daddy's Gone to War" views the experiences of ordinary children through the lens of developmental psychology. Tuttle argues that the Second World War left an indelible imprint on the dreams and nightmares of an American generation, not only in childhood, but in adulthood as well. Drawing on his wide-ranging research, he makes the case that America's wartime belief in democracy and its rightful leadership of the Free World, as well as its assumptions about marriage and the family and the need to get ahead, remained largely unchallenged until the tumultuous years of the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam and Watergate. As the hopes and expectations of the home front children changed, so did their country's. In telling the story of a generation, Tuttle provides a vital missing piece of American cultural history.