Author: Philip Dwyer Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 1785333089 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
Although war memoirs constitute a rich, varied literary form, they are often dismissed by historians as unreliable. This collection of essays is one of the first to explore the modern war memoir, revealing the genre’s surprising capacity for breadth and sophistication while remaining sensitive to the challenges it poses for scholars. Covering conflicts from the Napoleonic era to today, the studies gathered here consider how memoirs have been used to transmit particular views of war even as they have emerged within specific social and political contexts.
Author: Robert Leckie Publisher: Ravenio Books ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 335
Book Description
Helmet for My Pillow is a gripping memoir that transports readers to the frontlines of World War II through the eyes of Robert Leckie, a young Marine who fought in some of the most brutal battles of the Pacific Theater. With raw honesty and vivid prose, Leckie recounts his experiences from boot camp to the bloody battles of Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, and Peleliu, offering a deeply personal perspective on the sacrifices, camaraderie, and horrors of war. This powerful narrative serves as a testament to the courage and resilience of the men who fought and died in the Pacific, making it an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the realities of combat and the human cost of war.
Author: Marguerite Duras Publisher: ISBN: 9781565842212 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 183
Book Description
The extraordinary pages of The War, written in 1944 but finished in 1985, form a totally new image of the heroine of The Lover and, through her, of Paris during the Nazi occupation and the first months of liberation. Married and living in Paris, part of a resistance network headed by Francois Mitterand, Duras is swept up in the turmoil of the period. She tells of nursing her starving husband back to life on his return from Bergen-Belsen, interrogating a suspected collaborator, and playing a game of cat and mouse with a Gestapo officer who is attracted to her. The result is a book as moving as it is harrowing--perhaps Duras's finest.
Author: Robert M. Gates Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0307959481 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 673
Book Description
From the former secretary of defense, a strikingly candid, vivid account of serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House, he thought he’d long left Washington politics behind: After working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happily serving as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty.
Author: Carl Benn Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 1421412187 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 223
Book Description
Rare firsthand accounts from Native Americans who fought in the War of 1812. Native peoples played major roles in the War of 1812 as allies of both the United States and Great Britain, but few wrote about their conflict experiences. Two famously wrote down their stories: Black Hawk, the British-allied chief of the still-independent Sauks from the upper Mississippi, and American soldier William Apess, a Christian convert from the Pequots who lived on a reservation in Connecticut. Carl Benn explores the wartime passages of their autobiographies, in which they detail their decisions to take up arms, their experiences in the fighting, their broader lives within the context of native-newcomer relations, and their views on such critical issues as aboriginal independence. Scholars, students, and general readers interested in indigenous and military history in the early American republic will appreciate these important memoirs, along with Benn's helpful introductions and annotations.
Author: Luciano Louis Charles Graziano Publisher: LifeRich Publishing ISBN: 1489720499 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 150
Book Description
It was January 1943 when twenty-year-old Louis Graziano received a letter from Uncle Sam ordering him to report to Fort Niagara, New York, for a physical. Although he knew the United States was at war, he had no idea what was ahead of him. After making a promise to dutifully defend his country, Louis never realized how much his military experience would change the course of his life. In a memoir that reveals the good, bad, and ugly of war and beyond, Louis leads others through his life experiences via personal stories and historical photographs that provide a candid glimpse into what it was like to be a young soldier before, during, and after World War II. While revealing his experiences and thoughts, Louis demonstrates how he exhibited courage amid heartbreaking loss, trusted God to protect him, and found love with a beautiful fellow soldier. Among his documented experiences were landing with the third wave on D-Day on Omaha Beach, fighting the Battle of the Bulge, and witnessing the signing of the Instrument of Surrender at the Little Red Schoolhouse. Included are personal letters and commendations as well as interesting historical facts. A Patriot’s Memoirs of World War II shares a veteran’s personal story and photographs that document his experiences during the biggest and deadliest war in history.
Author: E. B. Sledge Publisher: National Geographic Books ISBN: 1598537040 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
In one volume, three unforgettable memoirs that capture the brutality, fear, and heroism of the American land, air, and sea war in the Pacific. “Every generation is a secret society,” former Marine pilot Samuel Hynes wrote. “The secret that my generation—the one that came of age during the Second World War—shared was simply the war itself.” This volume brings together the powerful memoirs of three Americans who came of age fighting in the Pacific and who survived to tell their stories. Remarkable literary achievements that capture history with the immediacy of lived experience, all three—presented here in an illustrated collector’s edition—are classics of the modern literature of war. In With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa (1981) Marine veteran E. B. Sledge bears unflinching witness to the horror, fear, and degradation of prolonged close-quarters combat. A mortarman serving in a front-line rifle company, Sledge survived thirty days of nightmarish fighting on the remote coral island of Peleliu, where heat, thirst, filth, and fear and hatred of the Japanese “eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all.” On Okinawa he faced an even greater test of endurance amid deep mud, driving rain, and incessant shelling, as men “fought and bled in an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell’s own cesspool.” Written with precision and clarity, Sledge’s memoir is a haunting testament to his struggle to hold on to decency and sanity, and a moving tribute to the esprit de corps of the U.S. Marines. Flights of Passage (1988) is Samuel Hynes’ evocative and elegiac memoir of his “fairly ordinary flying war.” A “true believer in the religion of flight,” he writes with lyricism, candor, and humor about the joys and dangers of his stateside training as a dive-bomber pilot, the beauty and excitement he experienced flying in combat over the Ryukyu Islands, and his wartime education in the realities of friendship, sex, love, and sudden, random death. Alvin Kernan enlisted in the Navy in 1941 at age seventeen to escape life on a failing Wyoming ranch. Crossing the Line (1994, revised 2007) is a vividly written account of his remarkable service on three aircraft carriers, first as an aviation ordnanceman and then as an air gunner. A perceptive and thoughtful observer of the sailor’s life at sea and on shore, Kernan witnessed the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack and the launching of the Doolittle Raid, armed planes at Midway, survived the sinking of the Hornet, and flew on the final mission of the fighter ace Butch O’Hare. With thirty-two pages of photographs and endpaper maps.
Author: Philip Dwyer
Author: Robert Leckie
Author: Marguerite Duras
Author: Robert M. Gates
Author: Carl Benn
Author: Luciano Louis Charles Graziano
Author: Henry Lee
Author: E. B. Sledge
Author: David Lloyd George
Author: Sir Winston Churchill