United States Military History

A History of the Civil War brings to life the realities of the war and the people who lived through it. It explains how the politics around slavery led to an unbridgeable divide between the North and South, and examines the strategies that led to the Union's eventual victory in 1865.

Hitler's American Friends, by Bradley W. Hart, is an audiobook examining the strange terrain of Nazi sympathizers, nonintervention campaigners, and other voices in America who advocated on behalf of Nazi Germany in the years before World War II. Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less-popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: Until the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided.

Learn about the roles of airmen and their training, as well as the advanced equipment, aircraft, and weapons the Air Force uses.

The U.S. Navy traces its roots back to the American Revolutionary War. Then, its small fleet was outnumbered. Today, it is the largest navy in the world. Learn about the roles of sailors and their training, as well as the different types of ships, aircraft, equipment, and weapons the U.S. Navy uses to complete missions around the world.

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer. However, Captain William Kidd was no career cut-throat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates. Across the oceans of the world, the pirate hunter, Kidd, pursued the pirate, Culliford. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a page-turner.

Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the US government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation that would kill thousands during the months after the blast.

In The Weight of Vengeance, Bickham provides a provocative new account of America's forgotten war, underscoring its significance for both sides by placing it in global context. This shifting balance of power provided the United States with the opportunity to challenge Britain's dominance of the Atlantic world. territorial expansion.

It was a mild May morning in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1862, the second year of the Civil War, when a 23-year-old slave named Robert Smalls did the unthinkable and boldly seized a Confederate steamer. With his wife and two young children hidden on board, Smalls and a small crew ran a gauntlet of heavily armed fortifications in Charleston Harbor and delivered the valuable vessel and the massive guns it carried to nearby Union forces.

Americans debating the fate of slavery often invoked the specter of disunion to frighten their opponents. As Elizabeth R. Varon shows, "disunion" connoted the dissolution of the republic - the failure of the founders' effort to establish a stable and lasting representative government. For many Americans in both the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare, a cataclysm that would plunge the nation into the kind of fear and misery that seemed to pervade the rest of the world.

Learn about the roles of Marines and their training, as well as the advanced equipment, aircraft, and weapons the Marines use to complete their tough missions.

Learn about the roles of Coast Guard members and their training, as well as the different types of ships, aircraft, and equipment this branch uses to complete its important missions around the world.

To the original text of what has become a classic of American historical literature, Bernard Bailyn adds a substantial essay, "Fulfillment", as a postscript. Here he discusses the intense nationwide debate on the ratification of the Constitution, stressing the continuities between that struggle over the foundations of the national government and the original principles of the Revolution.

The opening years of the French and Indian War were disastrous for the British. Hindered by quarrelsome provincial councils, incompetent generals, and the redcoats' inability to adapt to wilderness warfare, Britain was losing the war. Learning that most of Britain's military resources were allocated to Louisbourg, the French launched a campaign along the weakened frontier. French Commander Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and his American Indian allies laid siege to Fort William Henry; Monro could not hold out and was forced to surrender.

This groundbreaking audiobook offers a new analysis of the British Army during the "American rebellion" at both operational and tactical levels. Presenting fresh insights into the speed of British tactical movements, Spring discloses how the system for training the army prior to 1775 was overhauled and adapted to the peculiar conditions confronting it in North America.

Riveting, moving, and impossible to put down, War, Terrible War takes us into the heart of the Civil War, from the battle of Manassas to the battle of Gettysburg and on to the South's surrender at Appomattox Court House. Follow the common soldiers in blue and gray as they endure long marches, freezing winter camps, and the bloodiest battles ever fought on American soil.

From rockbound coast, from farm and logging camp came the men of the Twentieth Maine, a volunteer regiment in the Civil War. It was at Little Round Top that the Twentieth Maine, with Joshua Chamberlain in command, performed one of the miracles of the Civil War and saved the left flank of the Union battle line.

On April 18, 1775, a riot over the price of flour broke out in the French city of Dijon. That night, across the Atlantic, Paul Revere mounted the fastest horse he could find and kicked it into a gallop. So began what have been called the "sister revolutions" of France and America. In a single, thrilling narrative, this audiobook tells the story of those revolutions and shows just how deeply intertwined they actually were.

The author was drawn into the United States Army through ROTC, and he went through training to fly helicopters in combat over Vietnam. His experiences are notable because he flew both Huey “Slicks” and Huey “Gunships”: the former on defense as he flew troops into battle, and the latter on offense as he took the battle to the enemy. Through this book, the author relives his experiences flying and fighting, with special attention given to his and other pilots’ day-to-day lives.

"Hold On with a Bulldog Grip and Chew and Choke as Much as Possible": The Grand Offensive: (May–August 1864): The Spring Offensive is launched. A bogus presidential proclamation calling for volunteers and prayers causes panic throughout the North. Grant and Lee battle for six weeks until severe losses force them to a halt. Congressional Radicals pass a bill that will allow Southern States readmittance to the Union as long as they give an oath that they never supported the Confederacy. Southern leaders spread bogus peace overtures. Lincoln reaffirms his commitment to the Emancipation.

The image of the Baron de Steuben training Washington's ragged, demoralized troops in the snow at Valley Forge is part of the iconography of our Revolutionary heritage, but most history fans know little more about this fascinating figure.