A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic by Henry Mayer

As War History Network members know, war often originates in political realms and is fought by politicians as well as soldiers and sailors.  Patrick Henry is one politician inextricably entwined in the American Revolution.  His place in American history is largely limited to two lines, ““If this be treason, make the most of it!”, spoken to the Virginia House of Burgesses and “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” addressed to the Second…

Read more…
0 Replies
Views: 6

Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II by Arthur Herman

War histories usually focus on battles and strategies, generals and admirals, presidents and privates.  Occasionally there is mention of the Age of Total War, of the American superiority of resources that overwhelmed Germany and Japan, but where do all of those materials come from?  As “Freedom’s Forge” explains, it was American industry nurtured by its free enterprise system that supplied the tools that the soldiers and sailors needed to do the job.  The two businessmen who are at the center…

Read more…
0 Replies
Views: 15

Arsenal of Democracy by A. J. Baime

War History Network members will appreciate that World War II was fought as much in the factory, the farm and the mine as it was in the battlefield.  “The Arsenal of Democracy” tells the role that the Ford Motor Company played in producing the materials necessary for victory, primarily the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber.  It was not a role that came naturally.  Edsel Ford’s premise that making parts and assembling them into a vehicle was similar whether dealing building automobiles or airplanes…

Read more…
0 Replies
Views: 3

Volunteers: Growing Up in the Forever war by Jerad W. Alexander

War History Network members realize that not all war stories are set on the battlefield.  “Volunteers” is a memoir of a son and member of the military class.  It is a tale of aspiration and discouragement, deployment and divorce, idealization and disappointment.  Memoirs of home life are interspersed among italicized chapters commencing with a quote followed by combat flashbacks.Author Jerad Alexander was born to an Air Force couple.  His mother, the daughter and step daughter of Air Force…

Read more…
0 Replies
Views: 3

Most Honorable Son: A Forgotten Hero's Fight Against Fascism And Hate During World War II by Gregg Jones

The World War II plight of Japanese Americans is common knowledge to War History Network readers.  “Most Honorable Son” is a different take on the oft told story.  This is the tale of Ben Kuroki, a Nebraska farm boy born in 1917 to Japanese-American immigrants.  His life changed dramatically on December 7, 1941, but in different ways than some.  The Kuroki family has endured racial discrimination common to Japanese-Americans, but from a different perspective.  They were precluded from…

Read more…
0 Replies
Views: 7

Russia's Fighting Men 1880-1914 by Wendell Schollander

War History Network members are aware that wars are fought by the warriors who fill the ranks before and during conflicts.  “Russia’s Fighting Men: 1880-1914” is a study of the men who prepared to defend their nation in the years leading up to World War I.  It is divided into three sections: Russian Officers, Russian Soldiers and Cossacks.  The text is liberally supplemented by photos of the uniformed men who served.  An army reflects the nation from which it is drawn.  This work examines the…

Read more…
0 Replies
Views: 12

Black Redcoats: The Corps of Colonial Marines 1814-1816 by Matthew Taylor

“Black Redcoats” is a study of the hundreds of American Blacks, mostly run-away slaves, who served in the British Colonial Marines in the Southern theatres during the War of 1812.  Drawn from plantations around Chesapeake Bay, the Georgia Sea Islands and the Gulf Coast they supplemented British forces in raids and tested American unity and will. Though a short book, this highlights the war aims and plans of both sides, the disunity among Americans and the role enslavement and emancipation in…

Read more…
0 Replies
Views: 28

We Band of Angels by Elizabeth M. Norman

 War History Network members are familiar many War II tales but one that is frequently overlooked is told in We Band Of Angels.  It contains the story of 99 American nurses trapped on Bataan and Corregidor during the Japanese conquest of 1942.  Theirs is a fairy tale gone bad.  Some were young women, others matronly veterans.  Dreaming of moonlit beaches, dinner and dancing with officers in a tropical paradise, they volunteered for service in the Philippines.  Their world was shattered on…

Read more…
0 Replies
Views: 44

Crisis At The Chesapeake: The Royal Navy and the Struggle for America 1775-1783 by Quintin Barry

 To War History Network members familiar with George Washington and a few Revolutionary War battles, the introductory, theme setting statement: “There was in the end no way in which the Americans could have ultimately been denied their independence; but the war that was fought to achieve it was substantially a naval war, and it was at sea that it would be decided” can be stunning.  Follow that with the quote from Washington: “Whatever efforts are made by the land armies, the navy must have the…

Read more…
0 Replies
Views: 25

Unlike Anything That Ever Floated: The Monitor and Virginia and the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8-9, 1862 by Dwight Sturtevant Hughes

Unlike Anything That Ever Floated approaches the classic Battle of Hampton Roads between the Monitor and Virginia from two perspectives. It goes into extensive detail about the engineering and mechanical features of each vessel as well as the occurrences during the battle itself. Although not the world’s first ironclad vessels, their iconic battle is widely considered to be a turning part in the history of naval warfare. There development is a classic example of an underdog attempting to…

Read more…
0 Replies
Views: 15

 

18TH AND 19TH CENTURY WAR AND CONFLICT
· The Dawn of Guerrilla Warfare
· The Pirates’ Code: Laws and Life Aboard Ship 
· War Along The Wabash

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
· Appomattox: The Last Days of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia
· Civil War on The Western Border: 1854-1865
· Guerrilla Hunters In Civil War Missouri
· The Last Confederate General: John C. Vaughn and His East Tennessee Cavalry
· A Soldier to the Last: Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler in Blue and Gray
· The Last Confederate General: John C. Vaughn and His East Tennessee Cavalry
· Lost Civil War: The Disappearing Legacy of America's Greatest Conflict
· Make Way For Liberty: Wisconsin African Americans In The Civil War
· The Presidents' War
· This Wicked Rebellion: Wisconsin Civil War Soldiers Write Home
· Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War
· Unlike Anything That Ever Floated: The Monitor and Virginia and the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8-9, 1862
· War In The Mountains: The Macbeth Light Artillery At Asheville, NC 1864-1865
· Wisconsin Women In The War Between The States

AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR
· Crisis At The Chesapeake: The Royal Navy and the Struggle for America 1775-1783
· George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved The American Revolution
· John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot
· Morristown: The Darkest Winter of the Revolutionary War and the Plot to Kidnap George Washington
· The Philadelphia Campaign
· Pierre Gibault, Missionary 1737-1802
· Revolutionary War Forts: New York
· Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth
· A Very Fine Regiment: The 47th Foot during the American War of Independence, 1773-1783

ANCIENT, CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL WAR
· King John: Treachery and Tyranny in Medieval England; Road to Magna Carta
· Warfare in the Age of Crusades

THE HOLOCAUST
· The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation
· Elie Wiesel’s Night: One Writer’s Voice from the Holocaust
· The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945
·
Tot De Dood Ons Scheidt (Till Death Do Us Part)

MODERN WAR & CONFLICT
· Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
· Future Peace: Technology, Aggression, And The Rush To War
· The Fighters: Americans In Combat In Afghanistan and Iraq
· The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History

VIETNAM WAR
· Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music by John Fogerty
· SOG Kontum: Top Secret Missions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, 1968–1969

WAR OF 1812
· Black Redcoats: The Corps of Colonial Marines 1814-1816
· A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South
· Don't Give Up The Ship: Myths of the War of 1812
· Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814-15 with an Atlas
· Tohopeka: Rethinking the Creek War and the War of 1812

WORLD WAR I
· 14-18: Understanding The Great War
· American Journalists In The Great War: Rewriting The Rules Of Reporting
· American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis
· Asleep in the Deep; Nursing Sister Anna Stamers and the First World War
· Botha, Smuts And The Great War
· Curse of the Narrows
· Faith in Conflict: The Impact of the Great War on the faith of the people of Britain
· General Jan Smuts and his First World War in Africa, 1914–1917: Incorporating His German South West and East Africa Campaigns
· The Great Halifax Explosion
· Letters from the Front: 1898-1945
· The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel

WORLD WAR II
· All Behind You, Winston: Churchill's Great Coalition 1940-45
· The Americans on D-Day: A Photographic History of the Normandy Invasion
· The Bedford Boys: One American Town’s Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice
· Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich's Enduring Mystery
· Colditz: The Full Story
· Devil Dogs: King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines: From Guadalcanal to the Shores of Japan
· Generals and Admirals of the Third Reich for Country or Fuehrer: Volume 1: A–G
· Hitlerland: American Eyewitness to the Nazi Rise to Power
· How Ike Led
· The Improbable Wendell Willkie: The Businessman Who Saved The Republican Party And His Country, And Conceived A New World Order
· The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945
· The Longest Winter
· Lucky 666: The Impossible Mission
· Nightstalkers: The Wright Project and the 868th Bomb Squadron in World War II
· Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II
· The Splendid And The Vile
· Three Days At The Brink: FDR's Daring Gamble To Win World War II
· Uniting America: How FDR and Henry Stimson Brought Democrats and Republicans Together to Win World War II
· Warbird Factory: North American Aviation in World War II
· We Band of Angels
· Winning French Minds, Radio Propaganda in Occupied France 1940-42
· Women Remember The War 1941-1945

UNCATEGORIZED
· Commanders In Chief: Presidential Leadership In Modern Wars
· French Republic's Fighting Men: 1880-1914
· The General and the Jaguar
· From Ushant To Gibraltar: The Channel Fleet 1778-1783