Download or read book The Marines of Autumn written by James Brady and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War has been the inspiration of such great novels as The Red Badge of Courage and A Farewell to Arms, and daring feats of courage and tragic mistakes have been the foundation for such classic works. Now, for the first time ever, the Korean War has a novel that captures that courage and sacrifice. When Captain Thomas Verity, USMC, is called back to action, he must leave his Georgetown home, career, and young daughter and rush to Korea to monitor Chinese radio transmissions. At first acting in an advisory role, he is abruptly thrust into MacArthur's last daring and disastrous foray-the Chosin Reservoir campaign-and then its desperate retreat. Time magazine at the time recounted the retreat this way: "The running fight of the Marines...was a battle unparalleled in U.S. military history. It had some aspects of Bataan, some of Anzio, some of Dunkirk, some of Valley Forge, and some of 'the retreat of the 10,000' as described in Xenophon's Anabasis." The Marines of Autumn is a stunning, shattering novel of war illuminated only by courage, determination, and Marine Corps discipline. And by love: of soldier for soldier, of men and their women, and of a small girl in Georgetown, whose father promised she would dance with him on the bridges of Paris. A child Captain Tom Verity fears he may never see again. In The Marines of Autumn, James Brady captures our imagination and shocks us into a new understanding of war.

Download or read book The Marine written by James Brady and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rousing new Marine Corps adventure from the author of the New York Times bestselling Warning of War and The Marines of Autumn The Marine is Colonel James ("Oliver") Cromwell, a warrior forged at Notre Dame and the Berlin of Hitler's Olympics, and honed by combat at Guadalcanal as one of Carlson's Marine Raiders. With the world at peace, the thirty-five-year old Cromwell is restlessly, if pleasantly, beached on garrison duty in California, aware of how much he misses the war, when he is ordered to fresh duty beyond the seas, as military attaché to the American ambassador in a dull Asian backwater half a world away. There, at dawn on a June Sunday, Ollie gets his wish for action. Korea violently erupts and Colonel Cromwell is caught up in the early, panicked, rout. While South Koreans cut and run, the first GIs hurried into battle are brushed aside by advancing Red tanks and tough peasant infantry. The Marine chronicles the war-hardened Cromwell's experience of the dramatic First Hundred Days of a brutal three-year Korean War, the chaos and cowardice of retreat, the last-ditch gallantry of the Pusan Perimeter, MacArthur's brilliant left hook sending Marines against the deadly seawall at Inchon, and the bloody assault to liberate Seoul and promote MacArthur's 1952 presidential ambitions. Ollie Cromwell's is the story of a "forgotten war" that never truly ended, but for a bitter truce along what a recent U.S. president called "the most dangerous border in the world." In The Marine, James Brady crafts a powerful novel of one man's service to his country and Corps.

Download or read book Warning of War written by James Brady and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times Bestselling Author of The Marines of Autumn Late November of 1941. Half the world is at war and with the other half about to join in, a thousand U.S. Marines stand sentinel over the last days of an uneasy truce between ourselves and the Imperial Japanese Army in chaotic North China. By November 27, FDR is convinced Japan is about to launch a military action. Washington doesn't know where, isn't sure precisely when. But the Cabinet is sufficiently alarmed that War Secretary Henry Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox are authorized to send an immediate and coded "warning of war" to American bases and units in harm's way. In Shanghai two cruise ships are chartered and 800 armed American Marines are marched through the great port city with enormous pomp and circumstance and embarked for Manila. Another 200 Marines, unable to reach Shanghai, and serving in small garrisons and posts from Peking to Mongolia and the Gobi Desert, are caught short by this "warning of war." This is their story. Of how a detachment of American Marines marooned in North China as war erupts, set out on an epic march through hostile territory in an attempt to fight their way out of China and, somehow, rejoin their Corps for the war against Japan. James Brady dazzles us once again with a stunning and unflinching look at America at war. Warning of War is a moving tribute to sheer courage, determination, and Marine Corps discipline, and is a wonderful celebration of America in one of its darkest but finest hours.

Download or read book The Coldest War written by James Brady and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Brady's The Coldest War is a powerful and moving memoir of the Korean War. America's "forgotten war" lasted just thirty-seven months, yet 54,246 Americans died in that time -- nearly as many as died in ten years in Vietnam. On the fiftieth anniversary of this devastating conflict, James Brady tells the story of his life as a young marine lieutenant in Korea. In 1947, seeking to avoid the draft, nineteen-year-old Jim Brady volunteered for a Marine Corps program that made him a lieutenant in the reserves on the day he graduated college. He didn't plan to find himself in command of a rifle platoon three years later facing a real enemy, but that is exactly what happened after the Chinese turned a so-called police action into a war. The Coldest War vividly describes Brady's rapid education in the realities of war and the pressures of command. Opportunities for bold offensives sink in the miasma of trench warfare; death comes in fits and starts as too-accurate artillery on both sides seeks out men in their bunkers; constant alertness is crucial for survival, while brutal cold and a seductive silence conspire to lull soldiers into an often fatal stupor. The Korean War affected the lives of all Americans, yet is little known beyond the antics of "M*A*S*H." Here is the inside story that deserves to be told, and James Brady is a powerful witness to a vital chapter of our history.

Download or read book Why Marines Fight written by James Brady and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-10-28 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Why Marines Fight is a candid collection of courage and esprit de corps that serves as a reminder that when America needs a real hero, it doesn't need to look beyond its military." --The San Antonio Express News United States Marines, for more than two centuries, have been among the world's fiercest and most admired of warriors. They have fought from the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan and Iraq, in famous battles that have become the bone and sinew of American lore. But why do Marines fight? Why do they fight so well? James Brady, to some an unofficial "poet laureate" of the Corps, interviews combat Marine veterans from World War II to Afghanistan, and their replies are in their own individual voices, unique and powerful. What results is an authentically American story of a country at war, as seen through the eyes of its warriors; a story of the motivations and emotions behind this compelling title question. Included are accounts from Senator James Webb and his Corporal son, Jim; New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly; Yankee second baseman (and Marine fighter pilot) Jerry Coleman, and of teachers, fireman, authors, cops, Harvard football players, and just plain grunts. Why Marines Fight is a ruthlessly candid book about professional killers not ashamed to recall their doubts as well as exult in their savagely triumphant battle cries. A book of weight and heft that Marines, and Americans everywhere, will want to read, and may find impossible to forget. "Brady explores both the emotions and motivations of the men who willingly run toward guns. Read this and you'll be steeled to stare down your own fears." --Men's Health "For anyone who wants to know how the U.S. Marine team works in war and peace, this book is indispensable." --Booklist (starred review) "Brady's book succeeds in delivering honest, front-row accounts of war--the gritty details and the hard realities--and provides a veritable smorgasbord of answers to the question of why Marines fight." --Chattanooga Times Free Press "These inspirational tales cover as many Marine experiences as Brady can pack in." --Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book The Scariest Place in the World written by James Brady and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-04-04 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir from the New York Times bestselling author of Warning of War and Marines of Autumn, James Brady's The Scariest Place in the World. Half a century after he fought there as a young lieutenant of Marines, James Brady returns to the brooding Korean ridgelines and mountains to sound taps for a generation. It's been years since Brady first wrote of Korea in The Coldest War, drawing raves from Walter Cronkite and The New York Times, which called it "a superb personal memoir of the way it was." In the spring of 2003, Brady and Pulitzer Prize–winning combat photographer Eddie Adams flew in Black Hawk choppers and trekked the Demilitarized Zone where it meanders into North Korea, interviewing four-star generals and bunking in with tough U.S. recon troops, in Brady's words, "raw meat on the point of a sharpened stick." Brady recalls that first time on bloody Hill 749, the men who died there, what happened to the Marines who lived to make it home, and experiences yet again the emotional pull of a lifelong love affair with the Corps in which they all served. Brady summons up the past and illuminates the present, be it the Korea of "the forgotten war," the Yanks who fought there long ago, or today's soldiers standing wary sentinel over "the scariest place in the world." The result is uplifting, inspiring, often heartbreaking, and this Brady memoir proves as powerful as his first.

Download or read book Unexpected Journey written by Randy Keith Mills and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By focusing on one unit, a Marine Corps Reserve company called to active duty with no warning and little training, this researched and vividly presented account makes clear what these individuals faced and how they coped."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Force Recon Diary 1969 written by Major Bruce H. Norton and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elite and highly trained, the 3d Force Recon's eight-man teams were assigned to obtain vital information about NVA operations. Alone, the men of these small teams were sent behind enemy lines, where they all knew that a single mistake could cost everyone their lives. United States Navy Hospital Corpsman Bruce Norton was the only navy corpsman to act as a Marine Force Recon Team Leader. In Force Recon Diary, 1969 Doc Norton chronicles his life, mission by mission, with the 3d Force Recon in the DMZ and the A Shau Valley. He describes the tense patrols, the supreme courage, the sacrifices—in ambushes and hot landing zones—that made this courageous company one of only two Marine units during the entire Vietnam War to receive the United States Army's Valorous Unit Citation.

Download or read book Hero of the Pacific written by James Brady and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author James Brady-the story of Marine legend John Basilone, one of three main characters in HBO's The Pacific Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone was a Marine legend who received the Medal of Honor for holding off 3,000 Japanese on Guadalcanal and the Navy Cross posthumously for his bravery on Iwo Jima. This is the story of how a young man from Raritan, New Jersey, became one of America's biggest World War II heroes. Profiles one of three main characters in HBO's The Pacific, the successful sequel to the popular mini-series Band of Brothers "A carefully reported, briskly written book . . . that could go a long way toward correcting . . . historical oversight." –The Los Angeles Times Sorts through the differing accounts of Basilone's life and exploits, including what he did on Iwo Jima and how he died The final book by James Brady, the Korean War veteran and well-known columnist and author of books that include Why Marines Fight and an autobiography, The Coldest War, a Pulitzer Prize finalist An incredible story masterfully told, Hero of the Pacific will appeal to anyone with an interest in World War II and military history as well as fans of HBO's The Pacific.

Download or read book Building for War written by Bonita Gilbert and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2012-12-07 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Americans who came under attack five hours after Pearl Harbor was hit: “Intriguing, informative, gripping, and at times very moving” (Naval Historical Foundation). This intimately researched work tells the story of the thousand-plus Depression-era civilian contractors who came to Wake Island, a remote Pacific atoll, in 1941 to build an air station for the US Navy—charting the contractors’ hard-won progress as they scramble to build the naval base, as well as runways for US Army Air Corps B-17 Flying Fortresses, while war clouds gather over the Pacific. Five hours after their attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese struck Wake Island, which was now isolated from assistance. The undermanned Marine Corps garrison, augmented by civilian-contractor volunteers, fought back against repeated enemy attacks, at one point thwarting a massive landing assault. The atoll was under siege for two weeks as its defenders continued to hope for the US Navy to come to their rescue. Finally succumbing to an overwhelming amphibious attack, the surviving Americans, military and civilian, were taken prisoner. While most were shipped off to Japanese POW camps for slave labor, a number of the civilians were retained as workers on occupied Wake. Later in the war, the last ninety-eight Americans were brutally massacred by their captors. The civilian contractors who had risked distance and danger for well-paying jobs ended up paying a steep price: their freedom and, for many, their lives. Written by the daughter and granddaughter of civilians who served on Wake Island, Building for War sheds new light on why the United States was taken by surprise in December 1941, and shines a spotlight on the little-known, virtually forgotten story of a group of civilian workers and their families whose lives were forever changed by the events on this tiny atoll.

Download or read book The Autumn of the Patriarch written by Gabriel García Márquez and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Gabriel García Márquez’s most intricate and ambitious works, The Autumn of the Patriarch is a brilliant tale of a Caribbean tyrant and the corruption of power. From charity to deceit, benevolence to violence, fear of God to extreme cruelty, the dictator of The Autumn of the Patriarch embodies the best and the worst of human nature. Gabriel García Márquez, the renowned master of magical realism, vividly portrays the dying tyrant caught in the prison of his own dictatorship. Employing an innovative, dreamlike style, and overflowing with symbolic descriptions, the novel transports the listener to a world that is at once fanciful and real.

Download or read book Green Knight Red Mourning written by Richard E. Ogden and published by Pinnacle Books. This book was released on 2002-10-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only 17 years old when he joined the Marines in 1965, Richard Ogden was sent to Vietnam and took part in the amphibious assault at Red Beach. This critically-acclaimed first-person account of his experiences tells the vivid truth about men at war.

Download or read book Underdogs written by Aaron B. O'Connell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Marine Corps has always considered itself a breed apart. Since 1775, America’s smallest armed service has been suspicious of outsiders and deeply loyal to its traditions. Marines believe in nothing more strongly than the Corps’ uniqueness and superiority, and this undying faith in its own exceptionalism is what has made the Marines one of the sharpest, swiftest tools of American military power. Along with unapologetic self-promotion, a strong sense of identity has enabled the Corps to exert a powerful influence on American politics and culture. Aaron O’Connell focuses on the period from World War II to Vietnam, when the Marine Corps transformed itself from America’s least respected to its most elite armed force. He describes how the distinctive Marine culture played a role in this ascendancy. Venerating sacrifice and suffering, privileging the collective over the individual, Corps culture was saturated with romantic and religious overtones that had enormous marketing potential in a postwar America energized by new global responsibilities. Capitalizing on this, the Marines curried the favor of the nation’s best reporters, befriended publishers, courted Hollywood and Congress, and built a public relations infrastructure that would eventually brand it as the most prestigious military service in America. But the Corps’ triumphs did not come without costs, and O’Connell writes of those, too, including a culture of violence that sometimes spread beyond the battlefield. And as he considers how the Corps’ interventions in American politics have ushered in a more militarized approach to national security, O’Connell questions its sustainability.

Download or read book Black Autumn written by Jeff Kirkham and published by . This book was released on 2019-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rogue Russian nuke sails toward the harbors of Los Angeles in the hull of a ramshackle sailboat. Without destroying a single building, the bomb shatters the latticework of the American dream, toppling one piece of the economy after another. A group of Special Forces veterans and their prepper friends scramble for survival in a worldwide catastrophe so psychologically disruptive they are left questioning everything they ever believed to be true.

Download or read book Youngblood written by Matt Gallagher and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the U.S. military prepares to leave Iraq, Lieutenant Jack Porter becomes obsessed with the story of a lost American soldier who had a romance with a local sheikh's daughter and tries to discover what happened to him.

Download or read book On Desperate Ground written by Hampton Sides and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers, a chronicle of the extraordinary feats of heroism by Marines called on to do the impossible during the greatest battle of the Korean War. "Superb ... A masterpiece of thorough research, deft pacing and arresting detail...This war story—the fight to break out of a frozen hell near the Chosin Reservoir—has been told many times before. But Sides tells it exceedingly well, with fresh research, gritty scenes and cinematic sweep." —The Washington Post On October 15, 1950, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of UN troops in Korea, convinced President Harry Truman that the Communist forces of Kim Il-sung would be utterly defeated by Thanksgiving. The Chinese, he said with near certainty, would not intervene in the war. As he was speaking, 300,000 Red Chinese soldiers began secretly crossing the Manchurian border. Led by some 20,000 men of the First Marine Division, the Americans moved deep into the snowy mountains of North Korea, toward the trap Mao had set for the vainglorious MacArthur along the frozen shores of the Chosin Reservoir. What followed was one of the most heroic--and harrowing--operations in American military history, and one of the classic battles of all time. Faced with probable annihilation, and temperatures plunging to 20 degrees below zero, the surrounded, and hugely outnumbered, Marines fought through the enemy forces with ferocity, ingenuity, and nearly unimaginable courage as they marched their way to the sea. Hampton Sides' superb account of this epic clash relies on years of archival research, unpublished letters, declassified documents, and interviews with scores of Marines and Koreans who survived the siege. While expertly detailing the follies of the American leaders, On Desperate Ground is an immediate, grunt's-eye view of history, enthralling in its narrative pace and powerful in its portrayal of what ordinary men are capable of in the most extreme circumstances. Hampton Sides has been hailed by critics as one of the best nonfiction writers of his generation. As the Miami Herald wrote, "Sides has a novelist's eye for the propulsive elements that lend momentum and dramatic pace to the best nonfiction narratives."

Download or read book The Marines Counterinsurgency and Strategic Culture written by Jeannie L. Johnson and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States Marine Corps has a unique culture that ensures comradery, exacting standards, and readiness to be the first to every fight. Yet even in a group that is known for innovation, culture can push leaders to fall back on ingrained preferences. Jeannie L. Johnson takes a sympathetic but critical look at the Marine Corps’s long experience with counterinsurgency warfare. Which counterinsurgency lessons have been learned and retained for next time and which have been abandoned to history is a story of battlefield trial and error--but also a story of cultural collisions. The book begins with a fascinating and penetrating look inside the culture of the Marine Corps through research in primary sources, including Marine oral histories, and interviews with Marines. Johnson explores what makes this branch of the military distinct: their identity, norms, values, and perceptual lens. She then traces the history of the Marines’ counterinsurgency experience from the expeditionary missions of the early twentieth century, through the Vietnam War, and finally to the Iraq War. Her findings break new ground in strategic culture by introducing a methodology that was pioneered in the intelligence community to forecast behavior. Johnson shows that even a service as self-aware and dedicated to innovation as the Marine Corps is constrained in the lessons-learned process by its own internal predispositions, by the wider US military culture, and by national preferences. Her findings challenge the conclusions of previous counterinsurgency scholarship that ignores culture. This highly readable book reminds us of Sun Tzu’s wisdom that to be successful in war, it is important to know thyself as well as the enemy. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the Marines Corps, counterinsurgency warfare, military innovation, or strategic culture.