United States Military

For the past three decades, Colin Powell has been among America's most trusted and admired leaders. This biography demonstrates that Powell's decades-long development as an exemplary subordinate is crucial to understanding his astonishing rise from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to the highest echelons of military and political power.

After stowing away as a boy to come to America around 1905, an Italian immigrant sculptor later stands firm in his love for an unfaithful woman. Trapped behind enemy lines during World War II, he and his family go on to save over 600 Allied troops. This is the epic multi-generational, true story of Salvatore Cartaino Scarpitta and family. His story was only partially told in a 1953 episode of This Is Your Life. Salvatore’s role in WWII is just one of the many stories found throughout this book.

Author William S. Kiser reshapes the history of the Southwest, underlining the role of the military not just in obtaining territory but in retaining it.

Perhaps no other single day in United States history was as threatening to the survival of the nation as August 24, 1814, when British forces captured Washington, DC. This unique moment might have significantly altered the nation's path forward, but the event and the reasons why it happened are little remembered by most Americans.

For all the talk of the Civil War "pitting brother against brother", until now there has never been a single book that traces the story of one family ravaged by that conflict. And no family could better illustrate the personal toll the war took than Lincoln's own. Mary Todd Lincoln was one of 14 siblings who were split between the Confederacy and the Union. Three of her brothers fought, and two died, for the South.

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the 100 or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

As the fledgling nation looked west to the land beyond the Appalachian Mountains, it turned to the Army to advance and defend its national interests. Clashing with Spain, Britain, France, Mexico, the Confederacy, and Indians in this pursuit of expansion, the army's failures and successes alternately delayed and hastened western migration.

Did you know the coal fields of West Virginia were the scene of violence and strife between coal miners and coal company management in the early 20th century? The West Virginia Coal Wars are often overlooked in US history. It is time that changed. Several lessons can be learned from what happened during the West Virginia Coal Wars. These confrontations led to developments in labor relations that define collective bargaining to this day. There were heroes and villains, saints and sinners, and a mountain culture that was inexorably changed.

The recent Hollywood film Hidden Figures presents a portrait of how African American women shaped the US effort in aerospace during the height of Jim Crow. In Storming the Heavens, Gerald Horne presents the necessary back story to this account and goes further to detail the earlier struggle of African Americans to gain the right to fly.

Prepare to conquer the CLEP History of the United States II exam with this comprehensive study guide! Covering the period from 1865 to the present, this book dives deep into the key topics outlined by the exam, including political institutions and public policy, social developments, economic developments, cultural and intellectual developments, as well as diplomacy and international relations. With detailed explanations, this guide is your essential companion for acing the exam and earning college credit. Whether you're a seasoned student or new to the subject, Conquer the CLEP History of ...

Invalid teenager Leroy Wiley Gresham left a seven-volume diary spanning the years of secession and the Civil War. He was just 12 when he began, and he died at 17, just weeks after the war ended. LeRoy’s diary offers an inside look at a fateful journey that robbed an energetic and likeable young man of his youth and life. I Am Perhaps Dying adds considerably to the medical literature by increasing our understanding of how tuberculosis attacked a young body over time, how it was treated in the middle 19th century, and the effectiveness of those treatments.

Recalling the classic warnings against militarism, from George Washington's farewell address to Dwight Eisenhower's denunciation of the military-industrial complex, Johnson explores the trend of militarism that is bankrupting the United States and creating conditions for a new century of virulent blowback.

Including pieces from The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, this collection is Bowden at his best. The titular article, "The Three Battles of Wanat", tells the story of one of the bloodiest days in the war in Afghanistan and the extraordinary years-long fallout it generated within the United States military. In "The Killing Machines", Bowden examines the strategic, legal, and moral issues surrounding armed drones.

The Civil War conjures images of blood-soaked battlefields in the United States. Few are aware of the equally important diplomatic and intelligence contest that raged between the North and South in Europe. While the Confederacy sought Great Britain as a strategic ally, the Union utilized diplomacy and espionage to avert both the construction of a Confederate navy and the threat of war with England.

The Battle of New Market in the Shenandoah Valley suffers from no lack of drama, interest, or importance. The ramifications of the May 1864 engagement, which involved only 10,000 troops, were substantial. Previous studies, however, focused on the Confederate side of the story. David Powell’s Union Command Failure in the Shenandoah: Major General Franz Sigel and the War in the Valley of Virginia, May 1864 provides the balance that has so long been needed.

Acclaimed military historian Major Bruce Norton USMC (Ret.) brings to light a long-forgotten memoir by a marine captured at Corregidor in 1942 and interned for three devastating years by the Japanese. With unflinching prose, the words of Marine Sergeant Maj. Charles Jackson describe the fierce yet impossible battle for Corregidor, the surrender of thousands of his comrades, the long forced marches, and the lethal reality of the P.O.W. camps. Joining some of the most important eyewitness accounts of war, I AM ALIVE! is a testament to the men who fought and died for their country.

Of all the US Army posts in the West, none witnessed more history than Fort Laramie, positioned in the northern Great Plains join the Rocky Mountains. From its beginnings as a trading post in 1834 to its abandonment by the army in 1890, it was involved in the buffalo hide trade, overland migrations, Indian wars and treaties, the Utah War, Confederate maneuvering, and the coming of the telegraph and first transcontinental railroad.

Thulani Davis provides a sweeping rethinking of Reconstruction by tracing how the four million people newly freed from bondage created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South. Drawing on the practices of community they developed while enslaved, freedpeople built new settlements and created a network of circuits through which they imagined, enacted, and defended freedom. This history shows that these circuits linked rural and urban organizations, labor struggles, and political culture with news, strategies, education, and mutual aid.

Lincoln at Cooper Union explores Lincoln’s most influential and widely reported pre-presidential address—an extraordinary appeal by the western politician to the eastern elite that propelled him toward the Republican nomination for president. Delivered in New York in February 1860, the Cooper Union speech dispelled doubts about Lincoln’s suitability for the presidency and reassured conservatives of his moderation while reaffirming his opposition to slavery to Republican progressives.

The Nazi Spy Ring in America tells the story of Hitler's attempts to interfere in American affairs by spreading anti-Semitic propaganda, stealing military technology, and mapping US defenses. This fast-paced history provides essential insight into the role of espionage in shaping American perceptions of Germany in the years leading up to US entry into World War II. Fascinating and thoroughly researched, The Nazi Spy Ring in America sheds light on a now-forgotten but significant episode in the history of international relations and the development of the FBI.