Showing titles in Military & War

Following the 9/11 attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld directed the Marine Corps to establish a unit that would answer to US Special Operations Command. The eighty-six-man "Detachment One" was formed with a two-year charter to train and deploy as a "proof-of-concept" to assess the viability of a larger Marine Special Operations contribution in support of the Global War on Terror. For such a departure from the norm, a special leader was needed. 

As a special operator in the US Navy’s most elite unit and actively engaged in the global war on terrorism, Eddie Penney had achieved his childhood dream. He was the tip of the nation’s spear, prepared for anything—except for becoming a single parent of three young children. Eddie learned powerful lessons from the roles of warrior and father. In Unafraid, he shares his story, insight gained, and the truths exposed when you reflect, regroup, and commit to personal growth.

“One of the 12 best business books of all time…. Timeless principles of empowering leadership.” – USA Today "The best how-to manual anywhere for managers on delegating, training, and driving flawless execution.” —FORTUNE Marquet was a Naval Academy graduate and an experienced officer...

Sidekick to SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and supervisor of Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, General Hans Kammler was responsible for the construction of Hitler's slave labor sites and concentration camps. He personally altered the design of Auschwitz to increase crowding, ensuring that epidemic diseases would complement the work of the gas chambers. Why has the world forgotten this monster? Kammler was declared dead after the war. But the aide who testified to Kammler's supposed "suicide" never produced the general's dog tags or any other proof of death.

They were called Easy Company, but their mission was never easy. Immortalized as the Band of Brothers, they suffered huge casualties while liberating Europe in an unparalleled record of bravery under fire. Dick Winters led them through the Battle of the Bulge, the attack on Foy, where Easy Company reached its breaking point, and finally into Germany, by which time each member had been wounded. Outside Munich, they liberated an S.S. death camp and captured Berchtesgaden, Hitler's alpine retreat.

Following the success of his #1 New York Times bestseller Make Your Bed, Admiral William H. McRaven is back with amazing stories of bravery and heroism during his career as a Navy SEAL and commander of America's Special Operations Forces. "Fascinating ... McRaven's war stories deliver remarkable...

Erich Honecker’s life traces the arc of a century defined by ideology, ambition, and the hard edges of power. Rising from a modest childhood in the Saarland to become the unyielding leader of the German Democratic Republic, Honecker built a state that promised socialism and delivered surveillance, stability, and repression in equal measure. This biography follows his journey from young communist activist to the architect of East Germany’s rigid political order, revealing the convictions that drove him and the contradictions that ultimately consumed his regime. It explores the world he ...

The celebrated 2010 HBO miniseries The Pacific, winner of eight Emmy Awards, was based on two classic books about the War in the Pacific, Helmet for My Pillow and With The Old Breed. Audible Studios, in partnership with Playtone, the production company co-owned by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and creator of the award-winning HBO series Band of Brothers, John Adams, and The Pacific, as well as the HBO movie Game Change, has created new recordings of these memoirs, narrated by the stars of the miniseries.

Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession is a quintessential American tale of a young man's unbridled escapades across the vastness of the Western Frontier. From humble beginnings in Boston, Chamberlain journeyed to Texas to fight in the Mexican-American War and eventually fell in with the notorious Glanton Gang, a brutal group of scalp-hunters immortalized in Cormac McCarthy's Western masterpiece Blood Meridian.

In no less than seven concentration and extermination camps, the Polish-Jew Noach (Natan) Żelechower was imprisoned during World War II. His first wife and their daughter were transported from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka and perished there during the Great Deportation of the Warsaw Jews in the summer of 1942, and he was left alone to face the threat of Nazi persecution and death. With great resilience, fortitude, and the hope to be reunited with his wife and daughter, Noach was able to withstand and survive the hardships of the camp world, forced labor, and death marches. Throughout the...

Winner of the Association for Mormon Letters Biography Award A compelling true story of three LDS teens’ fight for freedom. “Rudi Wobbe: Charged with Preparation to High Treason and Aiding and Abetting the Enemy” Thus began the trial of Rudi Wobbe and two of his teenage friends as they stood before the justices of the dreaded Volksgerichtshof, the infamous supreme court of Nazi Germany. All the power and indignation of the Third Reich now focused on these three young LDS men who dared to distribute the truth about the war to their neighbors. If found guilty, they faced imprisonment—...

War demanded leaders of courage—but it created legends out of men like George S. Patton. Patton: Victory at Any Price is a powerful and compelling biography that brings readers inside the mind and battles of the most aggressive and controversial American commander of the Second World War. This vivid account traces Patton’s rise from an ambitious officer who believed he was destined for greatness to the hard-driving general who led American forces in some of the war’s most decisive campaigns. Known for his ruthless discipline, bold maneuvers, and unshakable confidence, Patton inspired ...

Any war is a mix of patriotism, brotherhood, and a whole lot of luck. This is the incredible, oftentimes hilarious story of Pat Moffett, a very lucky twenty-year old, a self-admitted street-smart wise-ass kid from Brooklyn who joined the United States Army’s famed 101st Airborne Division, and was shipped 8,000 miles away to the bloody war in Vietnam—and somehow, despite one misadventure after another, lived to tell this tale.

What truly happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the final days of World War II? Beyond the iconic mushroom cloud images, what do science and history reveal about the events that changed the world forever? In "20 Facts You Didn’t Know About Hiroshima and Nagasaki," a Ph.D. physicist provides a clear, rigorous, and accessible analysis of the nuclear bombings that marked the end of the War in the Pacific. Moving beyond complex physics, this book reaches into the profound human dimension of the catastrophe, answering questions that have persisted for generations. Why did Hiroshima return...

They save our lives every day, and we’ve never heard their stories. Experience the life-or-death intensity of working on the front lines, in this important book putting a spotlight on America’s greatest unsung heroes. Around the clock, across the country, these highly skilled and...

Kaddish for my Father, Flowers for my Mother is not just a testament to the remarkable lives of the author’s parents, Holocaust survivors Rosa and Gershon Lewkowicz. It’s a warning at a time of rising intolerance around the world. Through courage and luck, they were among the tiny fraction of Poland’s three million Jews to survive Hitler’s industrial-scale extermination program. During six years of Nazi occupation they faced and witnessed unspeakable cruelties. Losing their entire families.

In his memoir, All I Could Be, retired Major Scott Meehan has written about his twenty-five year Army career as both an enlisted soldier and officer. Having lived a very broad life of extremes, ranging from humanitarian adventures to those of the most heavily trained soldiers you are likely to encounter, he has tested himself beyond what most people would even consider. Not your typical "rip-snortin" adventure tale, Meehan's actions are supported by his beliefs, making the story uniquely genuine. An introspective read covering a wide gambit of experiences--from Bogota, Colombia to Berlin, ...

Solomon Northup's story did not end with freedom. It continues in memory, movement, and meaning. Hope Out of Darkness chronicles the remarkable journey of a monumental bronze statue created to honor Solomon Northup--the free Black man kidnapped into slavery whose memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, awakened a nation. More than a sculpture, the statue became a living witness, traveling hundreds of miles to the very places that shaped Northup's life, suffering, and resolve.

In 1965, the Oklahoma City Star looked forward to the bicentennial celebration of America's birthday in 1976, predicting, “When that time comes, people will undoubtedly seek an appropriate commemorative hymn. If they look around, they do not have to search far. Right at hand are those stanzas that were first sung in Brandon just one hundred years earlier. Nothing, it would seem, could be more in keeping with America’s traditions of religious faith and reverence [...].” And so we can rightly claim that “God of Our Fathers”, the popular hymn written by Daniel Crane Roberts, deserves...

Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1943. Toen hij haar voor het eerst zag, wist David Wisnia direct dat Helen 'Zippi' Spitzer bijzonder was. David en Zippi werden elkaars lichtpunt in de duisternis. Daar, op de onwaarschijnlijkste plek ter wereld, bloeide een grote liefde op. In 1944, toen het Russische leger Auschwitz naderde, dwongen de nazi's de gevangenen het kamp te verlaten; de zogeheten dodenmarsen. David en Zippi deden elkaar een belofte: als ze de oorlog overleefden, zouden ze in Warschau op elkaar wachten. Het zou zeventig jaar duren voor hij antwoorden kreeg.