Military Personal Memoir

In this beautiful American family album of stories from the Greatest Generation, the history of life as it was lived during the Depression and World War II comes alive and is preserved in people’s own words.

When you delete your adjectives, who are you? Most people limit themselves to their labels. They embrace barriers based on the box that society puts them in. But your adjectives aren’t your destiny. In Delete the Adjective: A Soldier’s Adventures in Ranger School, Lisa Jaster proves your merit should always trump your labels. Lisa didn’t confine herself to the adjectives of “middle-aged” or “female.” Instead, she became one of the first three women to graduate from the United States Army Ranger program. For those six months in the program, her adjectives didn’t matter.

In early 2022, veteran journalist Andrew North was kidnapped by the Taliban. By the time he found himself imprisoned in a jail cell, he had been reporting from Afghanistan for two decades, coming to know hundreds of Afghans along the way. This book brings together both his and their stories.

Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Paul Brinkley Rogers has lived an adventurous life all over the world. But there is one story he cannot forget: that of his haunting love affair with a mysterious older Japanese woman in 1959. Paul was a sailor aboard the USS Shangri La that long ago summer when he met Kaji Yukiko in the seaport of Yokosuka. A fierce intellectual, Yukiko shared her astonishing knowledge of literature, film, and poetry with Paul and encouraged, even demanded, that he use his gifts to become the writer he is today.

R. D. Hooker, Jr. was a combat soldier and leader in five wars. He then served as a senior Pentagon advisor and as a White House staff member in four different administrations. At the time of his retirement from the military in 2010, he was the most decorated colonel in the US Army. Beginning with his enlistment at eighteen in 1975, this memoir chronicles his experiences in the post-Vietnam Army as a young paratrooper, as a West Point cadet, and as a combatant in the many military conflicts which followed.

Acclaimed historian Stephen Ambrose begins his examination with a glance inward - he starts this book with his brothers, his first and forever friends, and the shared experiences that join them for a lifetime, overcoming distance and misunderstandings.

He next tells of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had a golden gift for friendship and who shared a perfect trust with his younger brother, Milton, in spite of their apparently unequal stations....

General Ike is a book that John Eisenhower always knew he had to write, a tribute from an affectionate and admiring son to a great father. John chose to write about the "military Ike", as opposed to the "political Ike", because Ike cared far more about his career in uniform than about his time in the White House. John Eisenhower masterfully uses the backdrop of Ike's key battles to paint a portrait of his father and his relationships with the great men of his time.

While their husbands, brothers and sweethearts fought in Europe and their mothers, sisters and friends kept the home fires burning, for the first time, a group of remarkable women took to the skies. They weren't allowed into combat but risked their lives in bad weather and without radios to bring our boys the aircraft they so vitally needed. Employed by the Air Transport Auxiliary, these women were known as 'attagirls'. They proved that women, too, could master Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Hawker Hurricanes, forging a new path in aviation.

The week before Thanksgiving 2011, Dustin Smiley left for a yearlong military deployment. Soon after, his son Ford, 11, invited Senator Susan Collins to fill his dad's chair at dinner. On January 3, 2012, Senator Collins came to dinner...and brought brownies. So began Dinner with the Smileys, nationally syndicated columnist Sarah Smiley's 52-week commitment to fill her husband's place at the family dinner table with interesting people - from schoolteachers to Olympians, professional athletes to famous authors, comedians to politicians - and unique role models for her three sons, even as she knows Dustin's seat cannot truly be "filled"

Army leadership is a sophisticated endeavour that has kept pace with societal change and the challenges of the modern world. In the military, exceptional leadership is crucial every day. Drawing on the latest research in military history, sociology, psychology and behavioural science and with compelling illustration from British Army operations across the centuries, Lt Col Langley Sharp MBE goes beyond the latest leadership fads to distil into one peerlessly authoritative work the essence of leading and leadership from one of the world's most revered institutions.

Falling to Grace – A Powerful Journey from Brokenness to Purpose What if the lowest point in your life was the very place you were meant to rise from? Falling to Grace is a deeply personal and inspiring testimony of transformation, redemption, and faith. From a strict and conflicted childhood to serving in the U.S. Navy, from becoming a bestselling science fiction author to finally stepping into true identity, this memoir traces a remarkable path of struggle, discovery, and healing. Told with raw honesty and heartfelt conviction, this is the story of a life that seemed to fall apart—...

In 2021, BBC journalist Sarah Rainsford set out to write a book about how Russians who dared to think differently to the Putin regime were being labelled as enemies, foreign agents and even traitors. It was to chart Russia's slide from democracy and warn of where the crushing of liberties could lead. The culmination of many years of on-the-ground reporting, Goodbye to Russia shines a light on the attacks on freedom that she has witnessed and paints an intimate portrait of the individuals who have tried to resist.

In July 2009 Geraint (Gez) Jones was sitting in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, with the rest of The Firm - Danny, Jay, Toby and Jake, his four closest friends, all junior NCOs and combat-hardened infantrymen. Thanks to the mangled remains of a Jackal vehicle left tactlessly outside their tent, IEDs were never far from their mind. Within days they’d be on the ground in Musa Qala with the rest of 3 Platoon - a mixed bunch of men Gez would die for.

Captured by Love shares the real love stories of 20 Vietnam War POWs. Some had wives who started a movement that changed American foreign policy. Others came home and had to start over, while five single men met the loves of their lives. Despite their unique differences, all these couples have been happily married 40 to 65 years. Former POW Lee Ellis and love expert Greg Godek take you on a dramatic journey of faithfulness, passion, excitement, resilience, and practical love lessons from these couples.

Helga Schneider was four when her mother suddenly abandoned her family in Berlin in 1941. When she next saw her mother, 30 years later, she learned the shocking reason why. Her mother had joined the Nazi SS and had become a guard in the concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where she was in charge of a "correction" unit and responsible for untold acts of torture.

The former general in chief of the Union armies during the Civil War...the two-term president of the United States...the beloved ambassador of American goodwill around the globe...the respected New York financier - Ulysses S. Grant - was dying. The hardscrabble man who regularly smoked 20 cigars a day had developed terminal throat cancer. Thus began Grant’s final battle - a race against his own failing health to complete his personal memoirs in an attempt to secure his family’s financial future. But the project evolved into something far more....

The dream of joining the military after high school to serve the country other family members had honorably served takes a terrifying turn in her first assignment after boot camp. Authority Beyond Reproach tells the author's experience of physical, emotional, and sexual trauma from her superiors in the immediate chain of command.

The Trees are all Young on Garrison Hill is written and read by a veteran of the Second World War battle of Kohima. This tautly-written autobiography takes the listener on a journey from a quiet respectable Scottish boyhood to the sudden brutality of jungle warfare in Assam and Burma, and afterwards through the twilight of Empire in India, where Gordon Graham lived for 10 years after the war.

When RIP first deployed for Desert Storm, his baby daughter, Vicky, was three months old. RIP wrote heartfelt letters to her for posterity, not knowing if he’d get to see her grow up but wanting to tell her of his hopes and dreams. She grew into a teenager before he retired, and he wrote to her about dealing with life’s curves.

In his thrilling and incredibly thoughtful book, Colonel Bruce Hurd thrusts us into the private world of an accomplished military officer as he describes the trials and triumphs of his 30-year career in the Air Force. With courage and honesty, Colonel Hurd unveils the fears, disappointments, and shame he overcame to be a life-changing leader both at home and abroad. His wit and ability to see the big picture give us a new perspective on possibilities.