United States Military

The dramatic story of one of the most famous events in Texas history is written by Ben H. Procter. Procter describes in colorful detail the background, character, and motives of the prominent figures at the Alamo - Bowie, Travis, and Crockett - and the course and outcome of the battle itself. This concise and engaging account of a turning point in Texas history will appeal to students, teachers, historians, and general listeners alike.

During the brutal winter of 1775-1776, an untested Boston bookseller named Henry Knox commandeered an oxen train hauling 60 tons of cannons and other artillery from Fort Ticonderoga near the Canadian border. He and his men journeyed some 300 miles south and east over frozen, often treacherous terrain to supply George Washington for his attack of British troops occupying Boston. The result was the British surrender of Boston and the first major victory for the Colonial Army.

At the end of World War I, the United States Army maintained a horse-mounted cavalry from a bygone era. From the end of World War I until well into World War II, senior leaders remained convinced that traditional cavalry units were useful in reconnaissance, and horses retained a leading role. Morton has examined myriad official records, personal papers, doctrine, and professional discourse from an era of intense debate about the future of the U.S. Cavalry. He has captured the emotion of the conflict that ultimately tore the branch apart.

For America, the gun is a story of innovation, power, violence, character, and freedom. From the founding of the nation to the pioneering of the West, from the freeing of the slaves to the urbanization of the 20th century, our country has had a complex and lasting relationship with firearms. Now, in First Freedom, nationally syndicated columnist and veteran writer David Harsanyi explores the ways in which firearms have helped preserve our religious, economic, and cultural institutions for more than two centuries.

At the dawn of the 19th century, the great powers of Western Europe treated the United States like a disobedient child. America's complaints were ignored, until President James Madison declared a second war on Great Britain. British forces would descend on the United States, but America rallied and survived. With stunning detail on land and naval battles, the role Native Americans played in the hostilities, and the larger backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, this is the story of the turning points of this strange conflict, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner".

Lone Star Nation is the gripping story of Texas' precarious journey to statehood, from its early colonization in the 1820s to the shocking massacres of Texas loyalists at the Alamo and Goliad by the Mexican army, from its rough-and-tumble years as a land overrun by the Comanches to its day of liberation as an upstart republic.

In this gripping tale, Jerome A. Greene-renowned specialist on the Indian wars-explores why the bloody engagement happened and demonstrates how it became a brutal massacre. Epic in scope and poignant in its recounting of human suffering, American Carnage presents the reality-and denial-of our nation's last frontier massacre.

George Washington insisted that his portrait be painted with one. Daniel Boone created a legend with one. Abraham Lincoln shot them on the White House lawn. And Teddy Roosevelt had his specially customized. Now, in this first-of-its-kind audiobook, historian Alexander Rose delivers a colorful, engrossing biography of an American icon: the rifle.

The destruction of Atlanta is an iconic moment in American history - it was the centerpiece of the hugely successful book and movie Gone with the Wind. But though the epic sieges of Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Berlin have all been explored in best-selling histories, the one great American example has been treated only cursorily as a footnote. Marc Wortman remedies that conspicuous absence in grand fashion with The Bonfire.

A groundbreaking new history, telling the stories of hundreds of African-American activists and officeholders who risked their lives for equality - in the face of murderous violence - in the years after the Civil War. By 1870, just five years after Confederate surrender and 13 years after the Dred Scott decision ruled blacks ineligible for citizenship, Congressional action had ended slavery and given the vote to black men. That same year, Hiram Revels and Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African-American U.S. senator and congressman respectively.

While it is in the eastern United States where most Americans identify our military history, the vast resource-rich Pacific Northwest, stretching from Northern California through British Columbia, endured a series of battles and wars over the course of the 19th century that were of regional and national importance. Beginning with the earliest known accounts of wars among the American Indians of the region, Fighting for Paradise: A Military History of the Pacific Northwest describes early European contact.

The Battle of the Rosebud may well be the largest Indian battle ever fought in the American West. The monumental clash on June 17, 1876, along Rosebud Creek in southeastern Montana, pitted George Crook and his Shoshone and Crow allies against Sioux and Northern Cheyennes under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. It set the stage for the battle that occurred eight days later when, just 25 miles away, George Armstrong Custer blundered into the very same village that had outmatched Crook.

When the Revolutionary War began, Congress established a national army and appointed George Washington its commander in chief. Congress then took it upon itself to choose numerous subordinate generals to lead the army’s various departments, divisions, and brigades. How this worked out in the end is well known.

Rethinking American Grand Strategy assembles a roster of leading historians to examine America's place in the world. Its innovative chapters reexamine familiar figures, such as John Quincy Adams, George Kennan, and Henry Kissinger, while also revealing the forgotten episodes and hidden voices of American grand strategy. They expand the scope of diplomatic and military history by placing the grand strategies of public health, race, gender, humanitarianism, and the law alongside military and diplomatic affairs to reveal hidden strategists as well as strategies.

The conflict that historians have called King Philip’s War still ranks as one of the bloodiest per capita in American history. An Indian coalition ravaged much of New England, killing 600 colonial fighting men (not including their Indian allies), obliterating 17 white towns, and damaging more than 50 settlements. The version of these events that has come down to us focuses on Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay - the colonies whose commentators dominated the storytelling. But because Connecticut lacked a chronicler, its experience has gone largely untold.

Buried deep in the US defense and special forces architecture is an elite, ultra-black unit created expressly to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists and rogue regimes. Their covert, surgical strikes eliminate grave threats so the rest of America can sleep without fear. Until now. After returning from a successful operation in Pakistan, the entire team is assassinated within 48 hours. Only their leader, Michael Garin, survives.

The Mosquito Fleet is a documentary about America's small but strategically important fleet of PT boats during the Second World War. After Pearl Harbor, the American Naval Fleet was at a severe disadvantage to the mighty Japanese fleet. Enter the PT or patrol torpedo boat of the US Navy. Built for speed and carrying four torpedoes, the wooden craft proved to be a significant "irritant" to the enemy in terms of their effectiveness in combat.

The most horrific struggle of the American Revolution occurred just 100 yards off New York, where more men died aboard a rotting prison ship than were lost to combat during the entirety of the war. Moored off the coast of Brooklyn until the end of the war, the derelict ship, the HMS Jersey, was a living hell for thousands of Americans either captured by the British or accused of disloyalty. Crammed below deck - a shocking one thousand at a time - without light or fresh air, the prisoners were scarcely fed food and water.

The majority of Jewish immigrants who made their way to the United States between 1820 and 1924 arrived nearly penniless; yet today their descendants stand out as exceptionally successful. How can we explain their dramatic economic ascent? Have Jews been successful because of cultural factors distinct to them as a group, or because of the particular circumstances that they encountered in America?

"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.