American Military History

Spector reassesses US and Japanese strategy and offers some provocative interpretations. He shows that the dual advance across the Pacific by MacArthur and Nimitz was less a product of strategic calculation and more a pragmatic solution to bureaucratic, doctrinal, and public relations problems facing the Army and Navy. He also argues that Japan made its fatal error not in the Midway campaign but in abandoning its offensive strategy after that defeat and allowing itself to be drawn into a war of attrition.

Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second is the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches. Although listeners may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined just how and when the American West opened up.

Omar Nelson Bradley was the youngest and last of nine men to earn five-star rank and the only army officer so honored after World War II. This new biography by Steven L. Ossad gives an account of Bradley’s formative years, his decorated career, and his postwar life. Bradley’s decisions shaped the five Northwest European Campaigns from the D-Day landings to VE Day. As the man who successfully led more Americans in battle than any other in our history, his long-term importance would seem assured.

Operating in the vast and varied trans-Appalachian west, the Army of Tennessee was crucially important to the military fate of the Confederacy. But under the principal leadership of generals such as Braxton Bragg, Joseph E. Johnston, and John Bell Hood, it won few major battles, and many regard its inability to halt steady Union advances into the Confederate heartland as a matter of failed leadership.

On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611 men of the US 7th Cavalry rode toward the banks of the Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory, where 3,000 Indians stood waiting for battle. The lives of two great warriors would soon be forever linked throughout history: Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong Custer.

America in the antebellum years was a deeply troubled country, divided by partisan gridlock and ideological warfare. The Civil War that followed brought America to the brink of self-destruction. But it also created a new country from the ruins of the old one - bolder and stronger than ever. No event in the war was more destructive, or more important, than William Sherman's legendary march through Georgia - crippling the heart of the South's economy, freeing thousands of slaves, and marking the beginning of a new era.

“In this brief sketch of our great Southern hero, I have endeavored to portray, amid the blaze of his matchless military genius, the unchanging rectitude of his conduct, the stern will-power by which he conquered all difficulties, his firm belief in an overruling Providence, and his entire submission to the Divine Will. These traits of character were the cornerstones upon which he reared the edifice of his greatness, and upon which the young people of our day will do well to build."

Lincoln at Cooper Union explores Lincoln’s most influential and widely reported pre-presidential address—an extraordinary appeal by the western politician to the eastern elite that propelled him toward the Republican nomination for president. Delivered in New York in February 1860, the Cooper Union speech dispelled doubts about Lincoln’s suitability for the presidency and reassured conservatives of his moderation while reaffirming his opposition to slavery to Republican progressives.

Robert E. Lee, one of the most famous figures in American history, vanished after his dramatic surrender at Appomattox. In fact, he lived only another five years, during which time he did more than any other American to heal the wounds between North and South during the tempestuous postwar period.

The Seven Days Campaign was a series of battles fought near Richmond at the end of June 1862. General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had routed General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. Depriving McClellan of a military decision meant the war would continue for two more years. The Seven Days depicts a critical turning point in the Civil War that would ingrain Robert E. Lee in history as one of the finest generals of all time.

As the war began to swing in the favor of the Allies, it became clear that no final defeat of the Third Reich would be possible until the armored monsters of the Panzerwaffe were defeated. But who would, or even could, take on the mighty Tigers and Panthers, just a handful of which could stop entire formations in their tracks? The answer lay with the formation of a new type of unit, the Tank Destroyer Battalion.

In an increasingly urbanized world, urban terrain has become a greater factor in military operations. Simultaneously, advances in military technology have given military forces sharply increased capabilities. The conflict comes from how urban terrain can negate or degrade many of those increased capabilities. What happens when advanced weapons are used in a close-range urban fight with an abundance of cover? Storming the City analyzes the performance of the US Army and US Marine Corps in urban combat in four major urban battles of the mid-20th century.

David Kenyon Webster's memoir is a clear-eyed, emotionally charged chronicle of youth, camaraderie, and the chaos of war. Relying on his own letters home and recollections he penned just after his discharge, Webster gives a firsthand account of life in E Company, 101st Airborne Division, crafting a memoir that resonates with the immediacy of a gripping novel.

Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. This Pulitzer Prize–winning history tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities. The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s.

James McPherson shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war.

With its emphasis on traditional values, family, faith, military service, good manners, small government, and independent-minded people, the South should certainly rise again. Far from being the backwater of prejudice and ignorance that the liberal media would have you believe, the South has always been the center of American culture.

The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Among its chief failures was the inability to chart a progressive course for race relations after the abolition of slavery and rise of Jim Crow. Reconstruction also struggled to successfully manage the Southern resistance towards a Northern, free-labor pattern. But the failures cannot obscure a number of notable accomplishments, with decisive long-term consequences for American life.

Here is one of the most extraordinary and invaluable documents in the annals of Native American history: the authentic testament of a remarkable "war shaman" who, for several years, held off both Mexico and the United States in fierce defense of Apache lands. During 1905 and 1906, Geronimo, the legendary Apache warrior and honorary war chief, dictated his story through a native interpreter to S. M. Barrett.

This book paints a vivid picture of Jefferson Davis as a multifaceted, often charismatic man who mirrored the turbulent times in which he lived and who stood solidly for the South that he loved. Ranging over the complete span of his long life, it shows him as a hardworking Mississippi planter, a compassionate slave owner, a hero of the Mexican War, and an able secretary of war under Franklin Pierce. But it is on the years of the Civil War and Davis’s controversial performance as president of the Confederacy that the book focuses.

Their story was almost forgotten by history. Now known as the Wereth Eleven, these brave African-American soldiers left their homes to join the Allied effort on the front lines of WWII. As members of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, they provided crucial fire support at the Siege of Bastogne. Among the few who managed to escape the Nazis' devastating Ardennes Offensive, they found refuge in the small village of Wereth, Belgium.