Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Once a Warrior King: Memories of an Officer in Vietnam

Once a Warrior King: Memories of an Officer in Vietnam

Patton: A Genius for War is a full-fledged portrait of an extraordinary American that reveals the complex and contradictory personality that lay behind the swashbuckling and brash facade. According to Publishers Weekly , the result is "a major biography of a major American military figure." "This massive work is biography at its very best. Literate and meaty, incisive and balanced, detailed without being... (more)

This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History - Fiftieth Anniversary Edition

This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History - Fiftieth Anniversary Edition

by T. R. Fehrenbach

The authoritative, highly acclaimed classic history of the Korean War, THIS KIND OF WAR, is a dramatic and hard-hitting account of the conflict written from the perspective of those who fought it. The 50th anniversary of the Korean War, which began in June 1950, makes this an appropriate time to revisit this monumental study. Successive generations of U.S. military officers have considered this book an... (more)

The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme

The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme

by John Keegan

Although he has never fought in a war the author creates a realistic picture of the fears, pressures, and mechanics of fighting a battle, emphasizing three particular campaigns.

The Mask of Command

by John Keegan

In this incisive analysis of generals, John Keegan examines the meaning of heroism as represented by Alexander the Great, Wellington, Grant, and Hitler, and argues that generalship, like warfare itself, is a cultural activity that has, through the years, required a change in the very nature of leadership. 16 pages of photos.

Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific

Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific

by Eric M. Bergerud

The horrors of this century's war in the South Pacific extended far beyond the detonation of atomic bombs. In this revelatory portrayal of the lives of the regular infantrymen who struggled to contain the Japanese advance, Bergerud presents a chilling and compelling record of the incredible hardships endured by these soldiers and the heroic efforts that resulted in the reversal of the course of the war. of photos.... (more)

Once An Eagle

by Anton Myrer

Once An Eagle is the story of one special man, a soldier named Sam Damon, and his adversary over a lifetime, fellow officer Courtney Massengale. Damon is a professional who puts duty, honor, and the men he commands above self interest. Massengale, however, brilliantly advances by making the right connections behind the lines and in Washington's corridors of power. Beginning in the French countryside during the... (more)

If You Survive

by George Wilson

In the tradition of Company Commander, an intense memoir of the blood-drenched small-unit combat of World War II--by a man who lived it--and survived. For the first time, George Wilson tells what it was like--the blood, the horror, the death and the glory, all brought vividly to life in the most amazing combat memoir of recent years.

The Forgotten Soldier

by Guy Sajer

This is the horror of World War II on the Eastern Front, as seen through the eyes of a teenaged German soldier. At first an exciting adventure, Guy Sajer's war becomes, as the German invasion falters in the icy vastness of the Ukraine, a simple, desperate struggle for survival against cold, hunger, and above all, the terrifying Soviet artillery. As a member of the elite Gross Deutschland division, he fought in... (more)

Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam

Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam

by Lynda Van Devanter

"This incredible story, which plunges us immediately into the bloodiest aspects of the war, is also a suspenseful autobiography that will keep you chewing your fingernails to see if Van Devanter survives any of it at all. She proves herself a natural storyteller. . . . The most extraordinary part in this book is Van Devanter's plight after the war-her attempt to retrieve the love of her family, only to realize... (more)

My Rise to the Stars: How a Sharecropper's Daughter Became an Army GeneralClara L. Adams Ender

My Rise to the Stars: How a Sharecropper's Daughter Became an Army General

by Clara L. Adams-Ender

Operation Just Cause: The Storming of Panama

Operation Just Cause: The Storming of Panama

by Thomas Donnelly

The authors visited each major battle site to write this authoritative and vivid account of Operation Just Cause--and offer a firsthand account of the planning, execution, and aftermath of the U.S.invasion of Panama, and the fall of General Noriega, in December, 1989. Index.

Prodigal Soldiers: How the Generation of Officers Born of Vietnam Revolutionized the American Style of War (An Ausa Institute of Land Warfare Book)

Prodigal Soldiers: How the Generation of Officers Born of Vietnam Revolutionized the American Style of War (An Ausa Institute of Land Warfare Book)

by James Kitfield

Documenting the transformation of the U.S. military from Vietnam to the Gulf War, a history of a generation of officers examines changing ideas about war, ending the draft, reducing racial tensions, and integrating women into the ranks.

America's First Battles, 1776-1965

by Charles E. Heller

This volume, a collection of eleven original essays by many of the foremost U.S. military historians, focuses on the transition of the Army from parade ground to battleground in each of nine wars the United States has fought. Through careful analysis of organization, training, and tactical doctrine, each essay seeks to explain the strengths and weaknesses evidenced by the outcome of the first significant... (more)

Gates of Fire

by Steven Pressfield

Thousands of years ago, Herodotus and Plutarch immortalized Spartan society in their histories; but today, little is left of the ancient city or the social structure of this momentous culture. One of the few antiquarian marks of the civilization that has survived lies scores of miles away from Sparta, at a narrow Greek mountain pass called Thermopylae. It was there that three hundred of Sparta's finest warriors... (more)

Band of Brothers : E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest

Band of Brothers : E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest

by Stephen Ambrose

As good a rifle company as any in the world, Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army, kept getting the tough assignments -- responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. In Band of Brothers, Ambrose tells of the men in this brave unit who fought, went hungry, froze, and died, a company that took 150 percent... (more)

We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese

We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese

by Elizabeth Norman

Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as a "grippingly told" story of "power and relevance," here is the true, untold account of the first American women to prove their mettle under combat conditions. Later, during three years of brutal captivity at the hands of the Japanese, they also demonstrated their ability to survive. Filled with the thoughts and impressions of the women who lived it, "every page of... (more)

And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II

And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II

by Evelyn Monahan

In World War II, 59,000 women voluntarily risked their lives for their country as U.S. Army nurses. When the war began, some of them had so little idea of what to expect that they packed party dresses; but the reality of service quickly caught up with them, whether they waded through the water in the historic landings on North African and Normandy beaches, or worked around the clock in hospital tents on the... (more)

Challenge of Command (West Point Military History Series)

Challenge of Command (West Point Military History Series)

by Roger H. Nye

Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power

Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power

by Victor Davis Hanson

Examining nine landmark battles from ancient to modern times--from Salamis, where outnumbered Greeks devastated the slave army of Xerxes, to Cortes’s conquest of Mexico to the Tet offensive--Victor Davis Hanson explains why the armies of the West have been the most lethal and effective of any fighting forces in the world. Looking beyond popular explanations such as geography or superior technology, Hanson argues... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

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by David Donovan

by Carlo D'Este

by T. R. Fehrenbach

by John Keegan

by John Keegan

by Eric M. Bergerud

by Anton Myrer

by George Wilson

by Guy Sajer

by Lynda Van Devanter

by Clara L. Adams-Ender

by Thomas Donnelly

by James Kitfield

by Charles E. Heller

by Steven Pressfield

by Stephen Ambrose

by Elizabeth Norman

by Evelyn Monahan

by Roger H. Nye

by Victor Davis Hanson