Events

Please join me in welcoming historian and author Rona Simmons. Rona will be speaking about her newest book No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944 at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force on 26 February 2025. From Rona's Linkedin profile:

"Rona Simmons is an Atlanta-area based author and has written both historical fiction and works of nonfiction. After co-authoring the book Images from World War II (2016) celebrating the art of WWII veteran and artist Jack Smith, Simmons again turned to the Second World War for her latest book, The Other Veterans of World War II: Stories from Behind the Front Lines (2020) released by Kent State University Press. The daughter of a WWII fighter pilot herself, she is proud to honor veterans and their stories through her work.

"Simmons's writing, including stories, articles, and interviews, has appeared in regional and national literary journals and online and print magazines and newspapers. She is active in the local writing community (as a speaker and member of the Atlanta Writers Club and the Georgia Writers Association) and local veterans organizations (as a member of the Atlanta World War II Roundtable, the North Georgia Veterans Group, and Stories Behind the Stars, a group that is documenting the stories of all 400,000 fallen of WWII). She is also a contributing author and book reviewer for DODReads.org, an organization dedicated to reading and lifelong learning."

No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944. Published 24 October 2024 by University of Missouri. Hardcover, 362 pages. 

From the publisher, "On Tuesday, October 24, 1944, nearly three years after the United States entered World War II, over 2,600 Americans perished—more than on any other single day of the conflict—yet the day remains overshadowed by more widely remembered dates in WWII history. Drawing from the accounts of men from diverse backgrounds who served in the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Corps, Rona Simmons offers a gripping retelling of the fateful day, hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First Class Paul Miller’s demise in a prisoner of war camp and ends with the death of Navy Seaman Second Class Wanza E. Matthews after the Japanese submarine I-56 attacked his ship off New Guinea. The sinking of the Japanese “hellship” Arisan Maru—a lesser-known tragedy of the war—looms large, deftly interwoven through each part of the narrative.

"Perhaps the most compelling aspect of No Average Day is its attention to the human side of conflict, telling the stories of ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews—as they grapple with the horrors of the war. Despite its narrow focus, or perhaps because of it, No Average Day reveals the vastness of World War II through a consideration of the largely overlooked events that unfolded on what, for members of the US Armed Forces, was its deadliest day."    ☞ Pick up a copy on Amazon