War Military Women

Confederate Daughters: Coming of Age During the Civil War explores gender, age, and Confederate identity by examining the lives of teenage daughters of Southern slaveholding, secessionist families. These young women clung tenaciously to the gender ideals that upheld marriage and motherhood as the fulfillment of female duty and to the racial order of the slaveholding South, an institution that defined their status and afforded them material privileges. When differences between the North and South proved irreconcilable, Southern daughters demonstrated extraordinary agency in seeking to protect their futures as wives, mothers, and slaveholders.

It’s hard to be an American girl in 1957. Especially when your dad’s job means you have to move four thousand miles from home. Especially if you’d rather play baseball than wear a dress. Especially if you see your mom fraying a little more from anxiety each day. And especially if being five minutes older means you have to protect your fragile twin brother.

This is a story of all the plots against Hitler, of secret meetings in freezing fields, of bombs in briefcases, of conspiracies against the life of the Fuhrer, with a cast-list of soldiers, senior politicians, members of the resistance, schoolteachers, theologians, and even a humble carpenter. In all, there were more than 32 attempts against Adolf Hitler's life, and this book documents every doomed effort to dismantle the Nazi machine by striking off its head.

Louisa on the Frontlines is the first narrative nonfiction book focusing on Louisa May Alcott's career as a nurse during the Civil War. Though her service was brief, the dramatic experience was one that she considered pivotal in helping her write the classic Little Women....

Mary Roberts Rinehart, known for her best-selling mystery novels such as The Circular Staircase published in 1907, earned a reputation as “the American Agatha Christie” through the success of her novels. Yet Rinehart was also a WWI correspondent. After convincing her editor at The Saturday Evening Post to send her to the Belgian front, and armed with letters of introduction, her status as a well-known writer and member of the American Red Cross, as well as plenty of fearless initiative, she became the first American to report from the front.

When Zeke’s sister-in-law Rachel Caen was found dead on Christmas Eve, her family assumed that she had taken her own life. Now five years later, one of the emeralds that Rachel was wearing at the time of her death is discovered at a stonecutter’s house in Portland, Oregon. With his brother Simon under suspicion for Rachel’s murder and stealing the emeralds, Zeke and detective Sarah are under pressure to clear his name. But with troubles of their own and in need of a place to hide, the duo return to Zeke’s hometown where a spiritual force helps Sarah find another emerald....

With each sensational chapter, A Dangerous Woman documents the life of Florence Gould, a fabulously wealthy socialite and patron of the arts, who hid her dark past as a Nazi collaborator in 1940s Paris. Born in turn-of-the-century San Francisco to French parents, Florence moved to Paris, aged 11. Believing that only money brought respectability and happiness, she became the third wife of Frank Jay Gould, son of the railway millionaire Jay Gould.

Tiger Woman depicts a brief period of unconventional warfare that tests the boundaries of humanity in a haunting tale of unremitting evil no ordinary soldier ever trains to face. Captain Christen, a dedicated intelligence officer with the 25th Infantry Division, directs an all-out hunt for a roguish female who leads a small guerrilla force with chilling efficiency as she employs depraved acts of psychological warfare to instill terror in those she opposes.

Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever. The Other Side of the War reveals the war as experienced by the thousands of women volunteered to work in hospitals and for the Sanitary Commission, the organization that advocated better practices and lobbied for increased supplies. Katharine Prescott Wormeley was one of those volunteers, an American nurse in the Civil War, as well as author, editor, and and one of America’s best-known translators of French language literary works.

Best-selling author and award-winning former BBC Chief News Correspondent Kate Adie reveals the ways in which women's lives changed during World War One and what the impact has been for women in its centenary year. In 1914 the world changed forever. When World War One broke out and a generation of men went off to fight, best-selling author and From Our Own Correspondent presenter Kate Adie shows how women emerged from the shadows of their domestic lives. Now a visible force in public life, they began to take up essential roles - from transport to policing, munitions to sport, entertainment, even politics.

Excellent biographies have been written about Clara Barton, Sarah Josepha Hale, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Tubman, but their lives have never been looked at together as they intertwined with the Civil War narrative. Plumb compares and contrasts the qualities of the women to discover their common attributes for success and what was unique to each woman. Without leading troops in battle or wielding political power, these five women profoundly influenced the start of the war and its conduct throughout as North and South clashed.

U.S. Army Captain Kimberly N. Hampton was living her dream: flying armed helicopters in combat and commanding D Troop, 1st Squadron, 17th Cavalry, the armed reconnaissance aviation squadron of the 82nd Airborne Division. On January 2, 2004, Captain Hampton was flying an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter above Fallujah, Iraq, in support of a raid on an illicit weapons marketplace, searching for an illusive sniper on the rooftops of the city. A little past noon her helicopter was wracked by an explosion....

Women are officially barred from combat in the American armed services, yet in today’s wars, where there are no front lines, the ban on combat is virtually meaningless. More than in any previous conflict in our history, American women are engaging with the enemy, suffering injuries, and even sacrificing their lives in the line of duty. When Janey Comes Marching Home juxtaposes forty-eight photographs by Sascha Pflaeging with oral histories collected by Laura Browder to provide a dramatic portrait of women at war.

They marched under the heat with 40-pound rucksacks on their backs. They fired weapons out of the windows of military vehicles, defending their units in deadly battles. And they did things their male counterparts could never do—gather intelligence on the Taliban from the women of Afghanistan. Beyond the Call follows the groundbreaking journeys of three women as they first fight military brass and culture and then enemy fire and tradition. And like the men with whom they served, their battles were not over when they returned home.

The United States Naval Academy has no monopoly on heroes—naval, marine, or otherwise. But over the last 10 years, the most popular living author of American sea fiction has spent thousands of hours researching for Shipmate, the Academy's magazine. The extraordinary personal stories of adventure and courage he's collected span American history, from the Mexican War to the War on Terror.

The original international woman of mystery, Mata Hari is maligned as a spy and a traitor. Having seduced a number of the most powerful men in Europe, she was accused of spying for both Allied and Central Powers during the First World War. Mata Hari’s biography tells a different story. From her remarkable transformation from a captain’s wife and mother in the Dutch East Indies to the most celebrated stage presence in Europe, Mata Hari fought for what she believed in.

August 1943. As World War II consumes much of the globe, Americans at home have no idea the extent of the horror their servicemen face. What they also don’t know is that Eleanor Roosevelt has boarded a military transport plane, heading to the Pacific theater on a mission to discover and report first hand accounts of the war. Anticipating familiar backlash from those who would prefer a prim and proper First Lady, as well as to help ensure her safety, Eleanor and the rest of the White House keep the journey a closely guarded secret.

Donut Dolly puts you in the Vietnam War face down in the dirt under a sniper attack, inside a helicopter being struck by lightning, at dinner next to a commanding general, and slogging through the mud along a line of foxholes. You see the war through the eyes of one of the first women officially allowed in the combat zone.

Recruited by the US Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than 10,000 women served as codebreakers during World War II. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surviving code girls, best-selling author Liza Mundy brings to life this riveting and vital story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.

Amy McGrath grew up in Edgewood, Kentucky, a childhood shaped by love of country, baseball (the Cincinnati Reds), and, from the age of 12, a fascination with fighter jets. Her devastation at learning that a federal law prohibited women from flying in combat fueled her determination to do just that - and then, to help change the laws to improve the lives of all Americans.