Download or read book Good War Great Men written by Andrew Capets and published by . This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Good War, Great Men provides first-hand accounts of more than a dozen soldiers who served together during the Great War. Their stories have been rediscovered by compiling unpublished letters and journals with historical insights to provide a compelling history of the men of the 313th Machine Gun Battalion, 80th Division. This second edition printing includes new maps and illustrations not provided in the first edition. Surviving the incessant shelling and gas attacks were often a matter of luck. Enduring the long marches, muddy trenches, and soaking wet uniforms were routine. Being able to laugh through the misery, finding a swimming hole on a march though the French countryside, or sleeping in late under the warmth of the sun occasionally made it a good war. You'll read about a young Private who colorfully describes the antics of his fellow draftees while they trained at Camp Lee preparing for war. Meet an idealistic officer who provides vivid details of the simple pleasures and the aggravating moments as he marches his company to the front lines. Discover the naïve desires of a Company Commander hoping to get into a 'real show' which are later extinguished when his unit takes on multiple casualties from a gas attack. Read the honest prose of one officer who reveals a catastrophic mistake made during the harrowing events of the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne. Endorsed by the United States World War One Centennial Commission, this project honors the service and sacrifice of American servicemen and women in World War I.

Download or read book Death s Men written by Denis Winter and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Death's Men is the classic bestselling story of the First World War as told by the soldiers themselves - reissued for the 2014 Centenary. Millions of British men were involved in the Great War of 1914-1918. But, both during and after the war, the individual voices of the soldiers were lost in the collective picture. Men drew arrows on maps and talked of battles and campaigns, but what it felt like to be in the front line or in a base hospital they did not know. Civilians did not ask and soldiers did not write. Death's Men portrays the humble men who were called on to face the appalling fears and discomforts of the fighting zone. It shows the reality of the First World War through the voices of the men who fought. 'A raw, haunting read that puts you directly into the shoes of the men who rushed to volunteer at the start of the war' Guardian 'An engrossing view of what it was like to live in the trenches, go on leave, get wounded, et cetera, and features voice after voice from the ranks' Telegraph Denis Winter was born in 1940 and read history at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Death's Men was first published in 1978, to critical and popular acclaim. This was followed by his book The First of the Few: Fighter Pilots of the First World War.

Download or read book No Man s Land written by John Toland and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 862 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1918: The end of the war to end all wars. The end of an era for victors and vanquished alike. When Germany launched the Ludendorf Offensives—the most massive military bombardment of World War I—they seemed certain to win. But when American troops began arriving in droves, the Allies' certain defeat became a decisive victory. No Man's Land takes us into the trenches, behind enemy lines, into military strategy sessions and through the corridors of power in London, Paris, Berlin, and Washington in a brilliant account of one of the most fateful years in Western history. Drawing on new sources—diaries, memoirs, vivid personal experiences—here is a book that for sheer excitement, drama, vigor, and emotional impact rivals the greatest novels, history marvelously told by the incomparable John Toland. "A compelling human picture...a marvelous job by a master of the big-canvas history." Business Week

Download or read book Looking for the Good War written by Elizabeth D. Samet and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A remarkable book, from its title and subtitle to its last words . . . A stirring indictment of American sentimentality about war.” —Robert G. Kaiser, The Washington Post In Looking for the Good War, Elizabeth D. Samet reexamines the literature, art, and culture that emerged after World War II, bringing her expertise as a professor of English at West Point to bear on the complexity of the postwar period in national life. She exposes the confusion about American identity that was expressed during and immediately after the war, and the deep national ambivalence toward war, violence, and veterans—all of which were suppressed in subsequent decades by a dangerously sentimental attitude toward the United States’ “exceptional” history and destiny. Samet finds the war's ambivalent legacy in some of its most heavily mythologized figures: the war correspondent epitomized by Ernie Pyle, the character of the erstwhile G.I. turned either cop or criminal in the pulp fiction and feature films of the late 1940s, the disaffected Civil War veteran who looms so large on the screen in the Cold War Western, and the resurgent military hero of the post-Vietnam period. Taken together, these figures reveal key elements of postwar attitudes toward violence, liberty, and nation—attitudes that have shaped domestic and foreign policy and that respond in various ways to various assumptions about national identity and purpose established or affirmed by World War II. As the United States reassesses its roles in Afghanistan and the Middle East, the time has come to rethink our national mythology: the way that World War II shaped our sense of national destiny, our beliefs about the use of American military force throughout the world, and our inability to accept the realities of the twenty-first century’s decades of devastating conflict.

Download or read book The Good War in American Memory written by John Bodnar and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “Good War” in American Memory dispels the long-held myth that Americans forged an agreement on why they had to fight in World War II. John Bodnar's sociocultural examination of the vast public debate that took place in the United States over the war's meaning reveals that the idea of the "good war" was highly contested. Bodnar's comprehensive study of the disagreements that marked the American remembrance of World War II in the six decades following its end draws on an array of sources: fiction and nonfiction, movies, theater, and public monuments. He identifies alternative strands of memory—tragic and brutal versus heroic and virtuous—and reconstructs controversies involving veterans, minorities, and memorials. In building this narrative, Bodnar shows how the idealism of President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms was lost in the public commemoration of World War II, how the war's memory became intertwined in the larger discussion over American national identity, and how it only came to be known as the "good war" many years after its conclusion.

Download or read book A World Undone written by G. J. Meyer and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2007-05-29 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Drawing on exhaustive research, this intimate account details how World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world “Thundering, magnificent . . . [A World Undone] is a book of true greatness that prompts moments of sheer joy and pleasure. . . . It will earn generations of admirers.”—The Washington Times On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, monumental forces were shaken. In less than a month, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculation sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. As crowds cheered their armies on, no one could guess what lay ahead in the First World War: four long years of slaughter, physical and moral exhaustion, and the near collapse of a civilization that until 1914 had dominated the globe. Praise for A World Undone “Meyer’s sketches of the British Cabinet, the Russian Empire, the aging Austro-Hungarian Empire . . . are lifelike and plausible. His account of the tragic folly of Gallipoli is masterful. . . . [A World Undone] has an instructive value that can scarcely be measured”—Los Angeles Times “An original and very readable account of one of the most significant and often misunderstood events of the last century.”—Steve Gillon, resident historian, The History Channel

Download or read book Fighting the Great War written by Michael S. NEIBERG and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Neiberg offers a concise history based on the latest research and insights into the soldiers, commanders, battles, and legacies of the Great War.

Download or read book Waging a Good War written by Thomas E. Ricks and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks offers a new take on the Civil Rights Movement, stressing its unexpected use of military strategy and its lessons for nonviolent resistance around the world. “Ricks does a tremendous job of putting the reader inside the hearts and souls of the young men and women who risked so much to change America . . . Riveting.” —Charles Kaiser, The Guardian In Waging a Good War, the bestselling author Thomas E. Ricks offers a fresh perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution—the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s—and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize–winning war reporter, draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but by paying attention to recruiting, training, discipline, and organization—the hallmarks of any successful military campaign. An engaging storyteller, Ricks deftly narrates the Movement’s triumphs and defeats. He follows King and other key figures from Montgomery to Memphis, demonstrating that Gandhian nonviolence was a philosophy of active, not passive, resistance—involving the bold and sustained confrontation of the Movement’s adversaries, both on the ground and in the court of public opinion. While bringing legends such as Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis into new focus, Ricks also highlights lesser-known figures who played critical roles in fashioning nonviolence into an effective tool—the activists James Lawson, James Bevel, Diane Nash, and Septima Clark foremost among them. He also offers a new understanding of the Movement’s later difficulties as internal disputes and white backlash intensified. Rich with fresh interpretations of familiar events and overlooked aspects of America’s civil rights struggle, Waging a Good War is an indispensable addition to the literature of racial justice and social change—and one that offers vital lessons for our own time.

Download or read book A Soldier of the Great War written by Mark Helprin and published by Houghton Mifflin. This book was released on 1991 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young aesthete from a privileged Roman family, Alexandro Giuliani, found his charmed existence shattered by the coming of WWI. Highly recommended.

Download or read book The Good War written by Studs Terkel and published by New Press/ORIM. This book was released on 2011-07-26 with total page 707 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize: “The richest and most powerful single document of the American experience in World War II” (The Boston Globe). “The Good War” is a testament not only to the experience of war but to the extraordinary skill of Studs Terkel as an interviewer and oral historian. From a pipe fitter’s apprentice at Pearl Harbor to a crew member of the flight that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, his subjects are open and unrelenting in their analyses of themselves and their experiences, producing what People magazine has called “a splendid epic history” of WWII. With this volume Terkel expanded his scope to the global and the historical, and the result is a masterpiece of oral history. “Tremendously compelling, somehow dramatic and intimate at the same time, as if one has stumbled on private accounts in letters locked in attic trunks . . . In terms of plain human interest, Mr. Terkel may well have put together the most vivid collection of World War II sketches ever gathered between covers.” —The New York Times Book Review “I promise you will remember your war years, if you were alive then, with extraordinary vividness as you go through Studs Terkel’s book. Or, if you are too young to remember, this is the best place to get a sense of what people were feeling.” —Chicago Tribune “A powerful book, repeatedly moving and profoundly disturbing.” —People

Download or read book Bloody Good written by Allen J. Frantzen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the popular imagination, World War I stands for the horror of all wars. The unprecedented scale of the war and the mechanized weaponry it introduced to battle brought an abrupt end to the romantic idea that soldiers were somehow knights in shining armor who always vanquished their foes and saved the day. Yet the concept of chivalry still played a crucial role in how soldiers saw themselves in the conflict. Here for the first time, Allen J. Frantzen traces these chivalric ideals from the Great War back to their origins in the Middle Ages and shows how they resulted in highly influential models of behavior for men in combat. Drawing on a wide selection of literature and images from the medieval period, along with photographs, memorials, postcards, war posters, and film from both sides of the front, Frantzen shows how such media shaped a chivalric ideal of male sacrifice based on the Passion of Jesus Christ. He demonstrates, for instance, how the wounded body of Christ became the inspiration for heroic male suffering in battle. For some men, the Crucifixion inspired a culture of revenge, one in which Christ's bleeding wounds were venerated as badges of valor and honor. For others, Christ's sacrifice inspired action more in line with his teachings—a daring stay of hands or reason not to visit death upon one's enemies. Lavishly illustrated and eloquently written, Bloody Good will be must reading for anyone interested in World War I and the influence of Christian ideas on modern life.

Download or read book Why Great Men Fall written by Wayde Goodall and published by New Leaf Publishing Group. This book was released on 2005-07-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Your head sits heavily in your hands as the last employee turns out the last light and goes home for the night, leaving you alone in the dark with your failure and desperation. This scene is played-out daily in offices all over America, as leaders in corporations, churches, and organizations free-fall from moral or ethical failure. Wayde Goodall has observed this quagmire for decades, counseling those who have thrown away their families and their futures for a moment of pleasure or profit. Profiling well-known leaders who've had a fall from grace, Goodall notes the common traits, warning signs, and most importantly, a plan for avoiding such deadly traps of the soul. For everyone who has found himself in this terrible dilemma, and to those who can still avoid it, this book is like a beacon. There is a fail-safe guide for remaining on the right path, and Why Great Men Fall illustrates that safe route in a riveting way. One after the other, great men are falling like dominoes as they defy the profound wisdom of Scripture, make themselves into their own god and satisfy their most base desires. If you are already experiencing substantial fame, power or wealth or, more importantly, if you are approaching that possibility in your life, this well be one of the most important books you will ever read. -Barry Meguiar, President/CEO of Meguiar?s, Inc, and host of FOX?s Speed Channel program, Car Crazy Television Wayde Goodall has shared a brief but masterful guide to leadership in WHY GREAT MEN FALL. Having known Wayde as an exceptional leader for over 20 years, it is obvious that this is the life story and lessons learned by a great, humble leader whose "life lessons" blended with the truth of God's Word, give us a page turner that addresses the personal issues of today. -Dr. Tom Phillips, Director of the Billy Graham Cove & Director of Crusades for Billy Graham Crusades Anyone can read the headlines. It takes a finer mind to go behind the faces of scandalized celebrities and their lurid exploits. Dr. Goodall combines discernment, insight, and an engaging contemporaneity to turn the tale of the fallen into wisdom for those willing to learn. -Mark Rutland, President, Southeastern University

Download or read book Boy Soldiers of the Great War written by Richard van Emden and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-11-24 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the outbreak of the Great War, boys as young as twelve were caught up in a national wave of patriotism and, in huge numbers, volunteered to serve their country. The press, recruiting offices and the Government all contributed to the enlistment of hundreds of thousands of under-age soldiers in both Britain and the Empire. On joining up, these lads falsified their ages, often aided by parents who believed their sons’ obvious youth would make overseas service unlikely. These boys frequently enlisted together, training for a year or more in the same battalions before they were sent abroad. Others joined up but were soon sent to units already fighting overseas and short of men: these lads might undergo as little as eight weeks’ training. Boys served in the bloodiest battles of the war, fighting at Ypres, the Somme and on Gallipoli. Many broke down under the strain and were returned home once parents supplied birth certificates proving their youth. Other lads fought on bravely and were even awarded medals for gallantry: Jack Pouchot won the Distinguished Conduct Medal aged just fifteen. Others became highly efficient officers, such as Acting Captain Philip Lister and Second Lieutenant Reginald Battersby, both of whom were commissioned at fifteen and fought in France. In this, the final update of his ground-breaking book, Richard van Emden reveals new hitherto unknown stories and adds many more unseen images. He also proves that far more boys enlisted in the British Army under-age than originally estimated, providing compelling evidence that as many as 400,000 served.

Download or read book The Good War That Wasn t and Why It Matters written by Ted Grimsrud and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A war is always a moral event. However, the most destructive war in human history has not received much moral scrutiny. The Good War That Wasn't--and Why It Matters examines the moral legacy of this war, especially for the United States. Drawing on the just war tradition and on moral values expressed in widely circulated statements of purpose for the war, the book asks: How did American participation in the war fit with just cause and just conduct criteria? Subsequently the book considers the impact of the war on American foreign policy in the years that followed. How did American actions cohere (or not) with the stated purposes for the war, especially self-determination for the peoples of the world and disarmament? Finally, the book looks at the witness of war opponents. Values expressed by war advocates were not actually furthered by the war. However, many war opponents did inspire efforts that effectively worked toward the goals of disarmament and self-determination. The Good War That Wasn't--and Why It Matters develops its arguments in pragmatic terms. It focuses on moral reasoning in a commonsense way in its challenge to widely held assumptions about World War II.

Download or read book Great Men Die Twice written by Mark Kram and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-06-23 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of classic essays by legendary sports journalist Mark Kram, Great Men Die Twice covers Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, George Best, Cool Papa Bell, and other memorable subjects. Imagine Mad Men set not in the advertising world but at 1960s Sports Illustrated, a place where the finest sports staff of any generation was attended by an open bar and almost unlimited expense account. This was the world Mark Kram lived and wrote in, along with his peers including Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins and other major talents. A high school graduate with a gift for revealing the hearts of his subjects, Kram would become one of the greatest sports writers of all time, covering the famed rivalry between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Negro League baseball star Cool Papa Bell, doomed soccer legend George Best, Olympic gold medal sprinter Edwin Moses, and others. The New York Times obituary of Kram in June, 2002 saluted his work in SportsIllustrated by calling him one of its "most lyrical writers of the 1960s and 1970s." Great Men Die Twice selects his best work with a moving introduction by his son, Mark Kram Jr., the PEN/ESPN Award-winning author of Like Any Normal Day.

Download or read book A Good Year to Die written by Charles M. Robinson, III and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-09-12 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the dramatic story of the most crucial year in the history of the American West, 1876, when the wars between the United States Government and the Indian Nations reached a peak. Telling a great deal about Indian cultures, history, beliefs and personality, this is the first book to cover the whole year, rather than simply its components. NOTE: This edition does not include photographs.

Download or read book A Great Place to Have a War written by Joshua Kurlantzick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of how America’s secret war in Laos in the 1960s transformed the CIA from a loose collection of spies into a military operation and a key player in American foreign policy. January, 1961: Laos, a tiny nation few Americans have heard of, is at risk of falling to communism and triggering a domino effect throughout Southeast Asia. This is what President Eisenhower believed when he approved the CIA’s Operation Momentum, creating an army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces there. Largely hidden from the American public—and most of Congress—Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States. The brutal war lasted more than a decade, left the ground littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, and changed the nature of the CIA forever. With “revelatory reporting” and “lucid prose” (The Economist), Kurlantzick provides the definitive account of the Laos war, focusing on the four key people who led the operation: the CIA operative whose idea it was, the Hmong general who led the proxy army in the field, the paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong forces, and the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew. Using recently declassified records and extensive interviews, Kurlantzick shows for the first time how the CIA’s clandestine adventures in one small, Southeast Asian country became the template for how the United States has conducted war ever since—all the way to today’s war on terrorism.