Download or read book The Twins Platoon written by Christy W. Sauro and published by Zenith Press. This book was released on 2006-03-20 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the evening of June 28, 1967, 150 young Americans were sworn into the Marine Corps as part of the pre-game ceremonies of a Minnesota Twins baseball game. Before the end of the fourth inning these volunteers were being hustled on to buses, on their way to boot camp. It was a journey that would take them from a boyhood of baseball in the American heartland to manhood on the killing fields of Vietnam. Christy Sauro was one of the Twins Platoon, and in this book he tells what it was like-from the pomp and ceremony of induction to the all-too-real initiation by fire that would shortly follow: in mere months, he and most of the Twins Platoon were on the ground in Vietnam and promptly faced with some of the toughest fighting of the war, the Siege of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive, including the brutal Battle for Hue. From baseball to boot camp to brutal combat, his is a firsthand story of American life being lived at the limits-and changed forever.

Download or read book Through the Wheat written by Thomas Boyd and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Powerful and poignant, a masterpiece. 'Through the Wheat' depicts the horrors of World War 1: the first modern war fought in trenches with mustard gas, artillery, and tanks. Thomas Boyd brings home the psychological damage done to men under extreme pressure fighting for their livers thousands of miles from home. Unforgettable!

Download or read book Three Junes written by Julia Glass and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2002-09-03 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An astonishing novel that traces the lives of a Scottish family over a decade as they confront the joys and longings, fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises. In June of 1989 Paul McLeod, a newspaper publisher and recent widower, travels to Greece, where he falls for a young American artist and reflects on the complicated truth about his marriage.... Six years later, again in June, Paul’s death draws his three grown sons and their families back to their ancestral home. Fenno, the eldest, a wry, introspective gay man, narrates the events of this unforeseen reunion. Far from his straitlaced expatriate life as a bookseller in Greenwich Village, Fenno is stunned by a series of revelations that threaten his carefully crafted defenses.... Four years farther on, in yet another June, a chance meeting on the Long Island shore brings Fenno together with Fern Olitsky, the artist who once captivated his father. Now pregnant, Fern must weigh her guilt about the past against her wishes for the future and decide what family means to her. In prose rich with compassion and wit, Three Junes paints a haunting portrait of love’s redemptive powers.

Download or read book The Things They Carried written by Tim O'Brien and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Download or read book The Real Team written by Richard Marcinko and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2000-11 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The retired naval commander chronicles the real-life exploits of the Navy SEALs who inspired the characters in his best-selling Rogue Warrior series, profiling the members of his team, their training, their combat missions, and the characteristics that made them successful warriors.

Download or read book Too Like the Lightning written by Ada Palmer and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Ada Palmer's 2017 Compton Crook Award-winning political science fiction, Too Like the Lightning, ventures into a human future of extraordinary originality Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer--a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away. The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labelling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life. And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life... Terra Ignota 1. Too Like the Lightning 2. Seven Surrenders 3. The Will to Battle At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book How It Feels to Float written by Helena Fox and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best of the Year "Profoundly moving . . . Will take your breath away." —Kathleen Glasgow, author of Girl in Pieces A stunningly gorgeous and deeply hopeful portrayal of living with mental illness and grief, from an exceptional new voice. Biz knows how to float. She has her people, her posse, her mom and the twins. She has Grace. And she has her dad, who tells her about the little kid she was, and who shouldn't be here but is. So Biz doesn't tell anyone anything. Not about her dark, runaway thoughts, not about kissing Grace or noticing Jasper, the new boy. And she doesn't tell anyone about her dad. Because her dad died when she was seven. And Biz knows how to float, right there on the surface—normal okay regular fine. But after what happens on the beach—first in the ocean, and then in the sand—the tethers that hold Biz steady come undone. Dad disappears and, with him, all comfort. It might be easier, better, sweeter to float all the way away? Or maybe stay a little longer, find her father, bring him back to her. Or maybe—maybe maybe maybe—there's a third way Biz just can't see yet. Debut author Helena Fox tells a story about love and grief, about inter-generational mental illness, and how living with it is both a bridge to someone loved and lost and, also, a chasm. She explores the hard and beautiful places loss can take us, and honors those who hold us tightly when the current wants to tug us out to sea. "Give this to all [your] friends immediately." —Cosmopolitan.com "I haven't been so dazzled by a YA in ages." —Jandy Nelson, author of I'll Give You the Sun (via SLJ) "Mesmerizing and timely." —Bustle "Nothing short of exquisite." —PopSugar "Immensely satisfying" —Girls' Life * "Lyrical and profoundly affecting." —Kirkus (starred review) * "Masterful...Just beautiful." —Booklist (starred review) * "Intimate...Unexpected." —PW (starred review) * "Fox writes with superb understanding and tenderness." —BCCB (starred review) * "Frank [and] beautifully crafted." —BookPage (starred review) "Deeply moving...A story of hope." —Common Sense Media "This book will explode you into atoms." —Margo Lanagan, author of Tender Morsels "Helena Fox's novel delivers. Read it." —Cath Crowley, author of Words in Deep Blue "This is not a book; it is a work of art." —Kerry Kletter, author of The First Time She Drowned "Perfect...Readers will be deeply moved." —Books+Publishing

Download or read book Return Via Rangoon written by Philip Stibbe and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 1994-06-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is one young officer's war story about training and inspiration in the Burmese jungle behind enemy lines. Beaten up and water tortured, yet only giving his captors false information, Stibbe was moved around Burma until he was eventually imprisoned in Rangoon jail. Now stricken with Parkinson's disease, probably as a result of his prison diet, Stibbe with his eldest son, also a soldier, has revised his book and this edition published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Wingate's second triumphant Chindit expedition.

Download or read book Along These Highways written by Rene S. Perez and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rene Perez has the ability to stop time. In fact, time stops as soon as you start reading one of his short stories. You find yourself transported into the minds and lives of people you thought you didn't know. Suddenly they are your best friends. They live in Texas. Most of them are Hispanic. But their problems are universal. Like Alfredo, driving home from Dallas to Greenton with the body of his friend "Frankie" Ochoa in the back of his hearse and his son Ramon ready to drive if Alfredo's eyesight fails again. Or Joey, just back from basic training and ready to ship out with his Marine platoon. He's having beers with his best friend J.R. at Flojo's, a bar outside of Greenton run by Liz and Vicente, "the toughest couple in town." Or Benny, who drops into Flojo's for the first time in years and finds his one-time friend Gumby drinking himself into oblivion. Turns out Gumby's luck is even worse than Benny's. Or Virginia, the schoolteacher who's trying to become better educated in the hope that her son who went to Stanford will come back home to Corpus Christi. Or Eric, who spent all his money on two flashy wheels for his car and put them both on the passenger side so that they'll impress everyone on the sidewalk as he passes. Or Andy, who breaks into a home he's always wanted to see from the inside. You'll want to know them all. And you will count yourself fortunate to have met them.

Download or read book On Hallowed Ground written by Bill McWilliams and published by Berkley Trade. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: July 1953. The Korean War had become a bloody stalemate. Peace was imminent but-as bitter fighting continued-each soldier could only ask himself, would he be the last to die? Despite this, a small group of the U.S. 7th Infantry Division fought back the Chinese Army on Pork Chop Hill. In round-the-clock counterattacks, devastating artillery assaults, and vicious hand-to-hand fighting, the Korean War's final, hellish chapter played out-while truce negotiations dragged on. On Hallowed Ground uses previously classified documents and never-before-told accounts by the soldiers and medics whose extraordinary heroism held "the Chop" to reveal, for the first time, the full story of the greatest test of U.S. soldiers' resolve since Valley Forge.

Download or read book Moneyball The Art of Winning an Unfair Game written by Michael Lewis and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-03-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

Download or read book Boots on the Ground by Dusk written by Mary Tillman and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2008-04-29 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 22, 2004, Lieutenant David Uthlaut received orders from Khost, Afghanistan, that his platoon was to leave the town of Magarah and "have boots on the ground before dark" in Manah, a small village on the border of Pakistan. It was an order the young lieutenant protested vehemently, but the commanders at the Tactical Command Center disregarded his objections. Uthlaut split his platoon into two serials, with serial one traveling northwest to Manah and serial two towing a broken Humvee north toward the Khost highway. By nightfall, Uthlaut and his radio operator were seriously wounded, and an Afghan militia soldier and a U.S. soldier were dead. The American soldier was Pat Tillman. The Tillman family was originally informed that Pat, who had given up a professional football career to serve his country, had been shot in the head while getting out of a vehicle. At his memorial service twelve days later, they were told that he was killed while running up a hill in pursuit of the enemy. He was awarded a Silver Star for his courageous actions. A month and two days after his death, the family learned that Pat had been shot three times in the head by his own troops in a "friendly fire" incident. Seven months after Pat's death, the Tillmans requested an investigation. Boots on the Ground by Dusk is a chronicle of their efforts to ascertain the true circumstances of Pat's death and the reasons why the Army gave the family and the public a false story. Woven into the account are valuable and respectful memories of Pat Tillman as a son, brother, husband, friend, and teammate, in the hope that the reader will better comprehend what is really lost when our sons and daughters are killed or maimed in war. In the course of three and a half years, there have been six investigations, several inquiries, and two Congressional hearings. The Tillmans are still awaiting an outcome.

Download or read book Give Me Tomorrow written by Patrick O'Donnell and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-11-05 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If I were God, what would you want for Christmas?'' With a thousand-yard stare, a haggard and bloodied Marine looked incredulously at the war correspondent who asked him this question. In an answer that took ''almost forever,'' the Marine responded; ''Give me tomorrow.'' After nearly four months of continuous and bloody combat in Korea, such a wish seemed impossible. For many of the men of George Company, or ''Bloody George'' - one of the Forgotten War's most decorated yet unrecognized companies - this would be their last day. This is the epic story of ''Bloody George,'' Spartans for the modern age. After storming ashore at Inchon and fighting house-to-house in Seoul, George Company, America's last reserve unit, found itself on the frozen tundra of the Chosin Reservoir facing an entire division of Chinese troops. Little did this small band of men - green troops who had been rushed through training to bring fresh forces to the war - know, they would soon be saviors. This is their story, and it will never again be forgotten.

Download or read book Defenders written by Will McIntosh and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new epic of alien invasion and human resistance by Hugo Award-winning author Will McIntosh. The invaders came to claim earth as their own, overwhelming us with superior weapons and the ability to read our minds like open books. Our only chance for survival was to engineer a new race of perfect soldiers to combat them. Seventeen feet tall, knowing and loving nothing but war, their minds closed to the aliens. But these saviors could never be our servants. And what is done cannot be undone.

Download or read book The God of Small Things written by Arundhati Roy and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved debut novel about an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969, from the author of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s modern classic is equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevocably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.

Download or read book Road of 10 000 Pains written by Otto J. Lehrack and published by Zenith Imprint. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an epic oral history of Vietnam's bloodiest campaign, fought for seven months in a series of battles, most of them within four miles of each other, along Route 534. Staring in October 1967, orders came down to the 2nd North Vietnamese Army Division commanding them to join with the local Viet Cong and seize the city of Danang in the Tet Offensive. After fighting for seven months in the Que Son Valley, the division was so battered that it failed to carry out its mission, with only one platoon making it inside the city limits. This is the true-life accounts of what fighting was like in that narrow, bloody valley from the veteran's own mouths, and how that saved Danang from suffering the same fate as Hue City

Download or read book Chasing the Light written by Oliver Stone and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2020 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this powerful and evocative memoir, Oscar-winning director and screenwriter, Oliver Stone, takes us right to the heart of what it's like to make movies on the edge. In Chasing The Light he writes about his rarefied New York childhood, volunteering for combat, and his struggles and triumphs making such films as Platoon, Midnight Express, and Scarface. Before the international success of Platoon in 1986, Oliver Stone had been wounded as an infantryman in Vietnam, and spent years writing unproduced scripts while taking miscellaneous jobs and driving taxis in New York, finally venturing westward to Los Angeles and a new life. Stone, now 73, recounts those formative years with vivid details of the high and low moments: we sit at the table in meetings with Al Pacino over Stone's scripts for Scarface, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July; relive the harrowing demon of cocaine addiction following the failure of his first feature, The Hand (starring Michael Caine); experience his risky on-the-ground research of Miami drug cartels for Scarface; and see his stormy relationship with The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino. We also learn of the breathless hustles to finance the acclaimed and divisive Salvador; and witness tensions behind the scenes of his first Academy Award-winning film, Midnight Express. The culmination of the book is the extraordinarily vivid recreation of filming Platoon in the depths of the Philippine jungle with Kevin Dillon, Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp et al, pushing himself, the crew and the young cast almost beyond breaking point. Written fearlessly, with intense detail and colour, Chasing the Light is a true insider's story of Hollywood's years of upheaval in the 1970s and '80s, and Stone brings this period alive as only someone at the centre of the action truly can.