United States Military History

On November 22, 1952, 52 American soldiers departed on a C-124 Globemaster plane heading for Anchorage, Alaska. They never made it to their destination. When a rescue was deemed too expensive by the military, these men were left to the Alaskan wilderness and found their untimely demise. 60 years later, their true fate was still unknown to their loved ones and the world. Instead of living with this uncertainty, Tonja Anderson-Dell decided to take on the government to learn the secret of this disaster and return the bodies of the passengers from the C-124 Globemaster.

Author William S. Kiser reshapes the history of the Southwest, underlining the role of the military not just in obtaining territory but in retaining it.

Agrippa Hull: The Life and Legacy of the Revolutionary War’s Most Famous Black Soldier profiles one of the Revolution’s most unique participants.

Carl Lavin was a high school senior when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The Canton, Ohio, native enlisted when he turned 18, a decision that would take him with the US Army from training across the United States and Britain to combat with the 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge. Home Front to Battlefront is the tale of a foot soldier who finds himself thrust into a world where he and his unit grapple with the horrors of combat, the idiocies of bureaucracy, and the oddities of life back home - all in the same day.

On June 25, 1876, five troops of the U. S. Seventh Cavalry, under command of General George Armstrong Custer, rode into the valley of the Little Big Horn River expecting to rout the Indian encampment there. Instead they were met by the gathered strength of the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, who did not run, but turned to battle the soldiers.

Our first President is often remembered as a humble, grey wigged, elder statesman. But by the end of 1776 the American Revolution almost came to an end. General Washington made a bold move that saved the American cause. The Continental Army Crossed the Delaware River on Christmas Day to attack the Hessians in Trenton. This was America's First D-day.

Can you keep a secret? Maybe you can, but the United States government cannot. Since the birth of our country, nations large and small, from Russia and China to Ghana and Ecuador, have stolen the most precious secrets of the United States. Written by Michael Sulick, former director of CIA's clandestine service, Spying in America presents a history of more than 30 espionage cases inside the United States.

An exciting and accurate portrayal of the military action in the southern colonies that led to a new American nation. A companion to Pancake's study of the northern campaign, 1777: The Year of the Hangman, this volume deals with the American Revolution in the Carolinas. Together, the two books constitute a complete history of the Revolutionary War.

It was a war that saw many firsts. The long list of Civil War firsts include America's first income tax, the first battle between ironclad ships, the first extensive use of black soldiers and sailors in US service, the first use of quinine to treat typhoid fever, America's first military draft, and many others. There were advances in medical treatment, military tactics, the chaplain service, and other fields. Over the course of the Civil War, weapons ranged from obsolete flintlocks to state-of-the-art repeaters.

On the 12th of April 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia marched to the field in front of Appomattox Court-House, stacked their arms, folded their colors, and walked off empty handed to find their distant, blighted homes. These are detailed and moving first-hand accounts from a number of prominent witnesses to Robert E. Lee's surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox.

Your daughter asks about Appomattox. You say you had yours taken out. You need the facts. Fast. With this audio program, you can become an Instant Genius on the subject of U.S. wars before 1900 in about an hour. How exactly did America win its Independence? Over what was the Mexican war fought? What was the significance of the battles at Bull Run and Antietam? Learn the answers to these questions and many others when Instant Genius U.S. Wars Before 1900 clearly explains the wars the U.S. fought from the time before it was the U.S. up through the Spanish-American War...

In 1832, the Sauk warrior Black Hawk attempted to forge an alliance to preserve the homelands of the confederated tribes on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. Patrick J. Jung examines the causes, course, and consequences of the ensuing war with the U.S. Correcting mistakes that plagued previous histories, and drawing on recent ethno-historical interpretations, Jung shows the outcome can be understood by discussing intertribal rivalry, military ineptitude, and racial dynamics.

How does a man serving in the Imperial Japanese Army feel when he suddenly sees his brother in the uniform of the enemy United States? How does a Japanese mother, surrounded by barbed wire in an American internment camp for enemy aliens, feel when her only son writes: "I am now an American soldier. I must fight and, if necessary, die for my country"? How does a Hawaiian-born youth feel as he lies near death in Hiroshima, a victim of history's first nuclear attack, launched by the United States?

Long called by some the “Andersonville of the North”, the prisoner of war camp in Elmira, New York, is remembered as the most notorious of all Union-run POW camps. It existed for only a year - from the summer of 1864 to July 1865 - but in that time, and for long after, it became darkly emblematic of man’s inhumanity to man. Confederate prisoners called it “Hellmira”. Derek Maxfield contextualizes the rise of prison camps during the Civil War, explores the failed exchange of prisoners, and tells the tale of the creation and evolution of the prison camp in Elmira.

Spring of 1864 brought a whole new war to the Western Theater, with new commanders and what would become a new style of warfare. Federal armies, perched in Chattanooga, Tennessee, after their stunning victories there the previous fall, poised on the edge of Georgia for the first time in the war. Atlanta sat in the far distance. Major General William T. Sherman, newly elevated to command the Union’s western armies, eyed it covetously - the South’s last great untouched prize.

The Battle of Saratoga in 1777 ended with British general John Burgoyne’s troops surrendering to the American rebel army commanded by General Horatio Gates. Historians have long seen Burgoyne’s defeat as a turning point in the American Revolution because it convinced France to join the war on the side of the colonies, thus ensuring American victory. But that traditional view of Saratoga overlooks the complexity of the situation on the ground.

Robert Stone was a singular American writer, a visionary whose award-winning novels - including Dog Soldiers, Outerbridge Reach, and Damascus Gate - earned him comparisons to literary lions ranging from Samuel Beckett to Ernest Hemingway to Graham Greene. Stone had an almost prophetic grasp of the spirit of his age, which he captured with crystalline clarity in each of his novels. Of course, he was also a sharp and brilliant observer of American life, and his nonfiction writing is revelatory.

You might already know that World War I was the Great War, and be familiar with its images: muddy trenches, poison gas, and a no-man's land of craters and barbed wire. But when it comes to understanding its causes, why it dragged on for four years, and how it set the stage for World War II, you might be lost behind enemy lines. Don't wave the white flag just yet! The Complete Idiot's Guide to World War I audiobook gives you a comprehensive overview of the first global war, from the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sandwiched between the Revolution and the Civil War, the War of 1812 is one of America’s forgotten conflicts, and the stalemated nature of the war (which resolved virtually none of either side’s war aims) has also ensured that it is often given merely a cursory overview. Under President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) and James Madison (1809-1817), the United States tried to steer a course that would keep it from being drawn into the European war and defend its neutrality on the high seas.

Volume Four opens as the British abandoned Boston in March 1776. They moved their troops to Long Island and their fleet to New York Harbor. Washington, anticipating such a strategy, came out to face the Redcoats in Brooklyn, but was driven back to the city. More British troops arrived, forcing Washington to withdraw north. As the winter of 1777 approached with Redcoats occupying Philadelphia, Washington restricted the British army's supply line. But almost nobody believed the British could be defeated and few believed Washington's army could survive.