Biography & Autobiography : Military

The "inspirational" and "extraordinary" memoir of one of the most courageous of the greatest generation, Louis Zamperini: Olympian, WWII Japanese POW and survivor. A juvenile delinquent, a world class NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a WWII bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a fuller than most, when it changed in an instant. On May 27, 1943, his B–24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Louis and two other survivors found a raft amid the flaming wreckage and waited for rescue. Instead, they drifted two thousand miles for forty–seven days. Their only food: two shark livers and three raw albatross. Their only water: sporadic rainfall. Their only companions: hope and faith–and the ever–present sharks. On the forty–seventh day, mere skeletons close to death, Zamperini and pilot Russell Phillips spotted land–and were captured by the Japanese. Thus began more than two years of torture and humiliation as a prisoner of war. Zamperini was threatened with beheading, subject to medical experiments, routinely beaten, hidden in a secret interrogation facility, starved and forced into slave labour, and was the constant victim of a brutal prison guard nicknamed the Bird–a man so vicious that the other guards feared him and called him a psychopath. Meanwhile, the Army Air Corps declared Zamperini dead and President Roosevelt sends official condolences to his family, who never gave up hope that he was alive. Somehow, Zamperini survived and he returned home a hero. The celebration was short–lived. He plunged into drinking and brawling and the depths of rage and despair. Nightly, the Bird's face leered at him in his dreams. It would take years, but with the love of his wife and the power of faith, he was able to stop the nightmares and the drinking. A stirring memoir from one of the greatest of the "Greatest Generation," DEVIL AT MY HEELS is a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spi more...

Price: $10.99

John Gregory Bourke kept a monumental set of diaries as aide-de-camp to Brigadier General George Crook. This second volume opens as Crook prepares for the expedition that would lead to his infamous and devastating Horse Meat March. It continues with the Powder River Expedition and ends with a retrospective of his service in Tucson, Arizona. more...

Price: $55.00

This book is the story - intimate and moving in the telling - of a group of Latvian men who refer to themselves as the Diggers. This platoon of digger colleagues gathers from disparate fields and disciplines. Digging in the old trenches and sunken bunkers of the Latvian forest, you may find, among others, the Communicator, the Classicist, the Forest Man, Little Spirit, and the venerable Legend. The Diggers are reverent with regard to the materiel. Live ammunition, grenades, and artillery shells demand careful handling. As the author Viktors Duks says, 'You have the deepest respect for every land mine and every rusty hand grenade that never did explode.' more...

Price: $7.50

The image of the Baron de Steuben training Washington's ragged, demoralized troops in the snow at Valley Forge is part of the iconography of our Revolutionary heritage, but most history fans know little more about this fascinating figure. In the first book on Steuben since 1937, Paul Lockhart, an expert in European military history, finally explains the significance of Steuben's military experience in Europe. Steeped in the traditions of the Prussian army of Frederick the Great—the most ruthlessly effective in Europe—he taught the soldiers of the Continental Army how to fight like Europeans. His guiding hand shaped the army that triumphed over the British at Monmouth, Stony Point, and Yorktown. And his influence did not end with the Revolution. Steuben was instrumental in creating West Point, and in writing the "Blue Book"—the first official regulations of the American army. His principles have guided the American armed forces to this day. Steuben's life is also a classic immigrant story. A failure in midlife, he uprooted himself from his native Europe to seek one last chance at glory and fame in the New World. In America he managed to reinvent himself—making his background quite a bit more glamorous than was the reality—but redeeming himself by his exceptional service and becoming, in a sense, the man he claimed to be. more...

Price: $21.99

Before Dwight Eisenhower became president of the United States, he had a brilliant and successful career in the military. This work reveals Eisenhower's contributions to American warfare, including his advocacy in the pre-war years of the tank, his friendships with George Patton and Fox Conner, and his service in the Philippines. more...

Price: $21.95