Wars & Military Hist
--We Are the Mighty In the winter of 1941, as Britain faced defeat on all fronts, an RAF reconnaissance pilot photographed an alien-looking object on the French coast near Le Havre. The mysterious device--a "Wurzburg Dish"--appeared to be a new form of radar technology: ultra-compact, highly precise, and pointed directly across the English Channel. Britain's experts found it hard to believe the Germans had mastered such groundbreaking technology. But one young technician thought it not only possible, he convinced Winston Churchill that the dish posed a unique and deadly threat to Allied forces, one that required desperate measures--and drastic action . . . Capturing the radar on film had been an amazing coup. Stealing it away from under the noses of the Nazis would be remarkable. So was launched Operation Biting, a mission like no other. An extraordinary "snatch-and-grab" raid on Germany's secret radar installation, it offered Churchill's elite airborne force, the Special Air Service, a rare opportunity to redeem themselves after a previous failed mission--and to shift the tides of war forever. Led by the legendary Major John Frost, these brave paratroopers would risk all in a daring airborne assault, with only a small stretch of beach menaced by enemy guns as their exit point. With the help of a volunteer radar technician who knew how to dismantle the dish, as well as the courageous men and women of the French Resistance, they succeeded against all odds in their act of brazen robbery. Some would die. Others would be captured. All fought with resolute bravery . . . This is the story of that fateful night of February 27, 1942. A brilliantly told, thrillingly tense account of Churchill's raiders in their finest hour, this is World War II history at its heart-stopping best. "This highly informative book almost reads like a genuine techno-thriller."
--New York Journal of Books
"A little-known behind-the-lines spectacular led by two heroic British officers."
--Kirkus Reviews
"Anyone who wants to learn more about the origins of the British Special Forces should read this book. It intertwines historical research and eyewitness testimony to tell the untold story of heroism, courage, and ingenuity."
--Military Press
"Lewis presents a richly detailed and nail-biting tale."
--Library Journal
Franci’s War: A Woman’s Story of Survival by Franci Rabinek Epstein
I love non-fiction about strong people who struggle through frightening events and somehow survive. These stories grab me because I want to believe we can persevere throughw ars, famine and pandemics, knowing that survival will take determination and hard work in order to defend our lives and beliefs. Franci’s War: A Woman’s Story of Survival by Franci Rabinek Epstein, is that kind of story. Franci was a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birrkenau camps. Her daughter, Helen Epstein, has edited her mother’s journal and divided it into chapters to help the reader follow the story.
Franci was born in Prague, in 1920. At the age of nineteen she became the owner of her mother’s couture shop, but the Nazi’s had invaded Czechoslovakia and her world was rapidly changing. Franci and her parents were arrested by the Gestapo, released, she got married, got pregnant—and decided on an abortion--and in the next year, Nazi’s took everything away and sent her to a concentration camp. She survived, in part, because she told them a lie, that she was an electrician. Her story is amazing, honest, heartbreaking and inspiring, and, in my opinion, a must read to understand our past--so we never repeat it.
Sarah Willis, Loganberry Books
American author Stephen Crane began writing early in life, and was already a published author by the age of sixteen. Among Crane's best known works is The Red Badge of Courage, which was influenced by his own experiences in military school and personal contact with Civil-War veterans. Crane died in 1900 at the age twenty-eight of tuberculosis, but had a significant and lasting impact on twentieth-century literature, influencing early modernist writers such as Ernest Hemingway.
Great Battles of the World, published in 1900, is a book in which Crane discusses some of the most famous battles that he researched.
Illustrated by John Sloan. Red cloth, embossed decoration and lettering in gilt and silver on cover; gilt lettering on spine; t.e.g.; small spot on top of fore-edge; hinges weak. G
“When in 1922 T.E. Lawrence enlisted in the ranks of the R.A.F. under the name of John Hulme Ross, he was in a strange physical and mental state as the result of his war experiences. Upon the discovery of his identity he was discharged, but was allowed to re-enlist two and a half years later, this time using the name of Shaw, under which he had meanwhile served in the Tank Corps.
From his notes, many times re-written and revised, he constructed The Mint – ‘an iron, rectangular, abhorrent book,’ he called it, ‘one which no man would willingly read.’ It does not correspond to that description. In the main it is a highly subjective account of Lawrence’s life in the R.A.F. Though resentfully critical of the treatment to which he and other recruits were subjected, it is not self-pitying. It is often robustly entertaining, and the character sketches are brilliant examples of Lawrence’s literary skill. He had an acute ear for conversation: in fact, some of the dialogue so faithfully records habitual barrack-room words that it has been deemed inadvisable to reproduce them in the ordinary edition of the book.” (From book flap)
London: Jonathan Cape, 1955. 1st edition; dust jacket in protective cover; edges tanned; flaps clipped; blue cloth; spine head frayed; corners bumped; binding good; text clean and bright. G/G
On Thermonuclear War was controversial when originally published and remains so today. It is iconoclastic, crosses disciplinary boundaries, and finally it is calm and compellingly reasonable. The book was widely read on both sides of the Iron Curtain and the result was serious revision in both Western and Soviet strategy and doctrine. As a result, both sides were better able to avoid disaster during the Cold War.
The strategic concepts still apply: defense, local animosities, and the usual balance-of-power issues are still very much with us. Kahn's stated purpose in writing this book was simply: "avoiding disaster and buying time, without specifying the use of this time." By the late 1950s, with both sides H-bomb-armed, reason and time were in short supply.
Kahn, a military analyst at Rand since 1948, understood that a defense based only on thermonuclear arnaments was inconceivable, morally questionable, and not credible.The book was the first to make sense of nuclear weapons. Originally created from a series of lectures, it provides insight into how policymakers consider such issues. One may agree with Kahn or disagree with him on specific issues, but he clearly defined the terrain of the argument. He also looks at other weapons of mass destruction such as biological and chemical, and the history of their use.
Princeton University Press, 1961; 2nd edition with index; dust jacket in protective cover; head of spine chipped; edges shelf worn; rust cloth with black and gilt lettering on spine; binding tight; text clean and bright. G+/G
On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss, a blow that destroyed the offensive power of their fleet. Pacific Crucible--through a dramatic narrative relying predominantly on primary sources and eyewitness accounts of heroism and sacrifice from both navies--tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history to seize the strategic initiative.
One of Chicago Tribune's Best Books of the Year So Far - "A bravura performance by one of America's greatest storytellers."--NPR "Churchill's lessons of resilience and his style of steady-handed leadership are essential to the state of mind of American readers."--Vanity Fair On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports--some released only recently--Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill's "Secret Circle," to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill's eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
Unbroken : A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (USED)
"[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring."--New York "Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand's writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don't dare take your eyes off the page."--People
"A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life."--The Washington Post
"Ambitious and powerful . . . a startling narrative and an inspirational book."--The New York Times Book Review
"Marvelous . . . Unbroken is wonderful twice over, for the tale it tells and for the way it's told. . . . It manages maximum velocity with no loss of subtlety."--Newsweek "Moving and, yes, inspirational . . . [Laura] Hillenbrand's unforgettable book . . . deserve[s] pride of place alongside the best works of literature that chart the complications and the hard-won triumphs of so-called ordinary Americans and their extraordinary time."--Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air "Hillenbrand . . . tells [this] story with cool elegance but at a thrilling sprinter's pace."--Time
"Unbroken is too much book to hope for: a hellride of a story in the grip of the one writer who can handle it."--Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run