American Veteran

In 2009 Clinton Romesha of Red Platoon and the rest of the Black Knight Troop were preparing to shut down Command Outpost Keating, the most remote and inaccessible in a string of bases built by the US military in Nuristan and Kunar in the hope of preventing Taliban insurgents from moving freely back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three years after Keating's construction, the army was finally ready to concede what the men on the ground had known immediately: It was simply too isolated and too dangerous to defend.

A group of U.S. soldiers emailed their observations and experiences from Iraq and their candid opinions on fighting an insurgency. This book is the result. This startling collection of emails is a thoughtful and compelling narrative that carries the reader from the alleys and city streets to the homes of long-suffering Iraqis, and from the soldiers’ concrete bunkers to the “majestic” army base.

At 6:00 a.m. on the morning of October 3, 2009, Combat Outpost Keating was viciously attacked by Taliban insurgents. The 53 U.S. troops, having been stationed at the bottom of three steep mountains, were severely outmanned by nearly 400 Taliban fighters. Though the Americans ultimately prevailed, their casualties made it one of the war's deadliest battles for U.S. forces. And after more than three years in that dangerous and vulnerable valley a mere 14 miles from the Pakistan border, the U.S. abandoned and bombed the camp.

When the Irish Invaded Canada is the untold tale of a band of fiercely patriotic Irish Americans and their chapter in Ireland's centuries-long fight for independence. Inspiring, lively, and often undeniably comic, this is a story of fighting for what's right in the face of impossible odds.

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.

Harney County, Oregon, 1968: Nick Drake has a chest full of medals and enough demons to fill a duffel bag. He's been trained to kill but was never retrained to rejoin society. Drake flees to the lonesome high desert in search of redemption and takes a job patrolling wildlife refuges where the only conflicts are keeping out stray cows and ticketing poachers. But then he stumbles across a girl's body ritually placed in a gully. Her murder is only the beginning, and Drake must face humanity's heart of darkness once again if he's to stop a killer from turning even more gullies into graves.

James "Jim" Davis lived what he considered "an impossible dream" as he piloted a B-24, as part of the 8th Air Force, on nearly 30 missions in the European Theatre during World War II. In this memoir, Davis offers heart-wrenching detail concerning the difficulties of qualifying for the U.S. Army Air Forces pilot program, the strenuous nature of the pilot training program, the anxiety caused by a wartime marriage, and the dangers of flying combat missions over Nazi Germany.

For well over a century, traditional Civil War histories have concluded in 1865, with a bitterly won peace and Union soldiers returning triumphantly home. In a landmark work that challenges sterilized portraits accepted for generations, Civil War historian Brian Matthew Jordan creates an entirely new narrative.

Chief Warrant Officer Gary O'Neal is no ordinary soldier. For nearly 40 years, he has fought America's enemies, becoming one of the greatest Warriors this nation has ever known. Part Native American, O'Neal was trained in both military combat and the ways of his Native people, combining his commitment to freedom with his respect for the enemy, his technical fighting skills with his fierce warrior spirit.

Chris Thomas is not yet 30 years old when he finds himself managing the immense pressure, eccentric personalities, and extenuating circumstances of an international story, where one small misstep could adversely impact the search for a missing teenager and the reputation of her family. Now, 20 years later, Thomas takes listeners behind the scenes, providing new details, perspectives, and commentary on finding Elizabeth Smart.

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.

On November 25, 1950, during one of the toughest battles of the Korean War, the US Eighth Army Ranger Company seized and held the strategically important Hill 205 overlooking the Chongchon River. Separated by more than a mile from the nearest friendly unit, 51 soldiers fought several hundred Chinese attackers. Their commander, Lieutenant Ralph Puckett, was wounded three times before he was evacuated. For his actions, he received the country's second-highest award for courage on the battlefield and resumed active duty later that year as a living legend.

John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college tuition; it had seemed a small sacrifice to give up one weekend a month and two weeks a year in exchange for a free education. But one semester short of graduating, and newly married, he was called to active duty, to serve in Kuwait, then on the front lines of the invasion of Iraq, and ultimately in Baghdad. While serving in Iraq, Crawford began writing short nonfiction stories, his account of what he and his fellow soldiers experienced.

John McCain’s evocative history of Americans at war, told through the personal accounts of 13 remarkable soldiers who fought in major military conflicts, from the Revolutionary War of 1776 to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm Just a Supply Sgt. is a compelling narrative of the Vietnam War with a very personal, psychological perspective that is difficult to find in most histories. Don Stout's ability to comprehend and record his feelings during the war, and his struggles after the war, provide not only a window into the suffering of many veterans but also a tool for catharsis for those afflicted with PTSD. Without a doubt, Don's story provides one of the most unique perspectives on the war and is not only a history of his service but a psychological epic.

In November 1942, Paul Andrew Kennedy (1912-1993) boarded the St. Elena in New York Harbor and sailed for Casablanca as part of Operation Torch, the massive Allied invasion of North Africa. As a member of the US Army's 2nd Auxiliary Surgical Group, he spent the next 34 months working in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany, in close proximity to the front lines and often under air or artillery bombardment. He was uncomfortable, struck by the sorrows of war, and homesick for his wife.

Ever since he was a young boy growing up on the streets of Staten Island, New York, Michael Ollis wanted to be a soldier. Inspired by his father, who fought in Vietnam, Mike’s deep desire to serve was cemented on the day his beloved city was attacked. From 9/11 onward, Mike’s one and only mission was to save lives.

In Why Veterans Run, Jeremy Teigen explains the tendency of parties to elevate those with armed forces experience to run for high office. He describes the veteran candidate phenomenon by examining the related factors and patterns, showing why different eras have more former generals running and why the number of veterans in election cycles varies. With both quantitative and qualitative analysis, Why Veterans Run investigates each postwar era in US electoral history and elaborates why so many veterans run for office.

Throughout its history, the United States, like most other countries, has faced the challenge of how to properly reward those who have risked, and often given, their lives to defend it. Should they be treated as professionals who were just doing a job? What about those who were drafted, many of whom fought against their own will? Could anyone really pay them for giving up years of their lives for others? If so, how much was enough to pay a man who had left a comfortable home to live in mud and near starvation?

As the American government began a disastrous mass evacuation of its Afghan allies, a group of American veterans saw the writing on the wall—the people who had supported them on the ground over the past two decades were going to be left behind. Instead of watching on the sideline, they sprang into action. The effort became known nationally as #DigitalDunkirk, in reference to the civilian aspect of the evacuation of soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940.