War Nonfiction

John C. McManus, one of our most highly acclaimed historians of World War II, takes listeners from Pearl Harbor - a rude awakening for a military woefully unprepared for war - to Makin, a sliver of coral reef where the Army was tested against the increasingly desperate Japanese. In between were nearly two years of punishing combat as the Army transformed, at times unsteadily, from an undertrained garrison force into an unstoppable juggernaut, and America evolved from an inward-looking nation into a global superpower.

In the brutal crucible of the Vietnam War, a young Marine faces the horrors of combat and the absurdity of military bureaucracy, as his idealism erodes into a cynical fight for survival, blurring the line between heroism and cowardice.

The Civil War divided a nation and turned brother against brother. Lasting four long years, it resulted in the deaths of more than 600,000 soldiers. IBOOKS For Young Readers presents a six-volume series devoted to this war, a war fought for liberation as well as reunification. With historic photographs and engaging text, "Civil War Chronicles recreates key battles and paints living portraits of the heroes who made the war of the states unforgettable."

In Degrade and Destroy, the bestselling author and Wall Street Journal national security correspondent Michael R. Gordon reveals the strategy debates, diplomatic gambits, and military operations that shaped the struggle against the Islamic State. With extraordinary access to top U.S. officials and military commanders and to the forces on the battlefield, Gordon offers a riveting narrative that ferrets out some of the war’s most guarded secrets.

On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atom bomb ever dropped on a city. This book, John Hersey's journalistic masterpiece, tells what happened on that day. Told through the memories of survivors, this timeless, powerful and compassionate document has become a classic "that stirs the conscience of humanity" (The New York Times).

In 1971 William Reeder was a senior captain on his second tour in Vietnam. He had flown armed, fixed-wing OV-1 Mohawks on secret missions deep into enemy territory in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam, on his first tour. He returned as a helicopter pilot eager to experience a whole new perspective as a Cobra gunship pilot. Believing that Nixon's Vietnamization would soon end the war, Reeder was anxious to see combat action. To him, it appeared that the Americans had prevailed, beaten the Viet Cong, and were passing everything over to the South Vietnamese Army so Americans could leave.

Tragedy, Survival, and Triumph…South America the War Doesn’t End in Europe: A War and Love Story. Based on true events. Jude is a boy who managed to escape the concentration camp where his parents died. A new life awaits him after joining a group of people who, like him, have survived the Holocaust. South America appears as the dreamland where he can build his new destiny. However, the New World will also become the dreamland for Germans avoiding being held accountable for the crimes they’ve committed. "Dad, daddy," Jude said as he cried. Unable to stop his tears, and being careful ...

Guerrilla Warfare by the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, written in 1960, has become a how-to manual for thousands of guerrilla fighters in various countries around the world. Guevara intended it to be a guidebook on guerrilla warfare, as inspiration for the revolutionary movement. Fascinating to admirers and adversaries alike, he captured the minds of millions with his leadership and his belief in guerrilla warfare as the only effective agent to achieve political change.

Beginning with the death of Stalin in 1953, the "sixties" era in the Soviet Union was just as vibrant and transformative as in the West. The ideological romanticism of the revolutionary years was revived, with renewed emphasis on egalitarianism, equality, and the building of a communist utopia. Mass terror was reined in, great victories were won in the space race, Stalinist cultural dogmas were challenged, and young people danced to jazz and rock and roll. Robert Hornsby examines this remarkable and surprising period.

An unforgettable and moving story of tragedy, heroism, resilience, and redemption that is sure to become an enduring document of American history, All the Brave Men is a sailor's moment-by-moment eyewitness account of the Japanese surprise attack that decimated the US Pacific Fleet in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, and his inspiring return to active duty to carry on the Allied fight in the Pacific.

Germany's success in the Second World War was built upon its tank forces; however, many of its leading generals, with the notable exception of Heinz Guderian, are largely unknown. This biographical study of four German panzer army commanders serving on the Eastern Front is based upon their unpublished wartime letters to their wives. David Stahel offers a complete picture of the men conducting Hitler's war in the East, with an emphasis on the private fears and public pressures they operated under.

The US Air Force is a powerful military force. But there is more to this high-flying military branch than you might imagine. These surprising facts about the US Air Force will amaze you.

In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing to the forbidding Bialowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods—through brutal winters, Typhus outbreaks, and merciless Nazi raids—until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944. After the war, they trekked across the Alps into Italy, where they settled as refugees before eventually immigrating to the United States.

In a gripping, moment-by-moment narrative based on a wealth of recently declassified documents and in-depth interviews, Bob Drury and Tom Clavin tell the remarkable drama that unfolded over the final, heroic hours of the Vietnam War. This closing chapter of the war would become the largest-scale evacuation ever carried out, as improvised by a small unit of Marines, a vast fleet of helicopter pilots flying nonstop missions beyond regulation, and a Marine general who vowed to arrest any officer who ordered his choppers grounded while his men were still on the ground.

The American Revolution was a war that allowed the birth of a new country. Secrets of the American Revolution reveals little-known stories of the people, weapons, and battles that have affected the maps on our walls and the allegiances in our hearts.

Between 1941 and 1945, more than eight hundred shiploads of supplies were delivered to the Soviet Union protected by allied naval forces. Each journey was a battle against the elements, with turbulent seas, extreme cold, and the constant dread of torpedoes. These Arctic convoys have been mythologized as defenseless vessels at the mercy of deadly U-boats—but was this really the case?

When Frank Thompson sees a poster requesting recruits for the new Union army, he is ready and willing to enlist. Except Frank isn’t his real name. In fact, Frank isn’t a man—he is really Sarah Emma Edmonds. At only nineteen years old, Sarah had already been dressing as a man for three years and living on the run in order to escape an arranged marriage. She had tasted freedom, and there was no going back.

July 1943: The largest invasion fleet ever assembled sailed for fortress Europe, aiming to bulldoze its way onto Nazi shores. At its vanguard went a few hundred elite forces soldiers. The Royal Navy warship carrying them-a former passenger ferry transformed for battle-bore the iconic winged dagger emblem carved on its prow, plus the motto 'Who Dares Wins,' painstakingly fashioned with the most rudimentary tools by Sergeant William 'Bill' Deakins, the foremost explosives expert on board and a Royal Engineer by trade.

The Civil War divided a nation and turned brother against brother. Lasting four long years, it resulted in the deaths of more than 600,000 soldiers. IBOOKS For Young Readers presents a six-volume series devoted to this war, a war fought for liberation as well as reunification. With historic photographs and engaging text, "Civil War Chronicles recreates key battles and paints living portraits of the heroes who made the war of the states unforgettable."

The remaining US aviation forces, along with the US Air Force and US Navy and Marine aviation assets, would not be easily removed from the battle. For the US forces still in-country, this is an untold story of heroism, dedication, and refusal to yield the battlefield despite being largely considered by US political leaders as "expendable."