Book Reviews
Though the “Mighty Eighth” based in England earned the most headlines, the U.S.A.A.F.’s Fifteenth based in Italy played no less important—and every bit as dangerous—a role in bombing targets in Nazi Germany, France and Eastern Europe. Read more
Book Reviews
Kapitänleutnant Reinhard Hardegen watches through his periscope as the shape of an oil tanker moves dimly past Long Island’s Montauk Point, both the ship and the lighthouse are under blackout orders now that America is in the war. Read more
Book Reviews
With nearly a million Soviet soldiers taking on the entrenched Germans outside of Berlin, there was little doubt about the outcome in May 1945. Read more
Book Reviews
While the fighting raged in Europe and the Pacific during WWII, those on the homefront had to deal with all manner of threats—both imagined and real, maintaining constant vigilance in the hunt for spies and saboteurs, both homegrown and those landed on America’s shores by German submarines. Read more
Book Reviews
Long and difficult, beset by bureaucracy, xenophobia and suspicion, the process of trading Allied civilians who had become trapped in Axis countries with the outbreak of world war for Axis civilians who had likewise become trapped in the United States was an exhausting process for American diplomat James Hugh Keeley Jr., Read more
Book Reviews
The enigmatic Colonel Evans Fordyce Carlson, a “racially progressive, bleeding-heart communist sympathizer,” returned to China in 1937 for almost two years to observe the Chinese Communist Party’s 8th Route Army, led by Mao Tse-Tung, and spent nearly a year with guerrillas behind Japanese lines. Read more
Book Reviews
Craven first delved into this topic with an investigative article featured in the May/June 2022 issue of Mother Jones with the headline, “Hazing, Fighting, Sexual Assaults: How Valley Forge Military Academy Devolved Into ‘Lord of the Flies.’” Read more
Book Reviews
A pilot since the age of 16, later trained by the RAF, the author has assembled a dashing narrative of the Royal Air Force’s Special Duties pilots, who performed clandestine operations such as inserting or extracting agents, dropping supplies, and flying secret missions into occupied Europe, often using aircraft like the Westland Lysander—noted for its Short Take-Off and Landing (STOLT) capabilities. Read more
Book Reviews
Viking literature has been popular since the 13th century and is more so than ever in the 21st, with television shows such as Vikings, Vikings: Valhalla, The Northman and The Last Kingdom (based on Bernard Cornwell’s books)—as well as the Viking-adjacent Game of Thrones (based on George R. Read more
Book Reviews
Following the end of the Revolutionary War, parts of Florida reverted to Spain, becoming a continuing source of conflict boundaries, the presence of formerly enslaved people and Native Americans from the region attacking the United States. Read more
Book Reviews
Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Rob Zettel, veteran who flew MiG-21 and MiG-23 fighters in the mid-1980s, shares an inside view of the U.S. Read more
Book Reviews
Haygood’s vivid, engaging prose brings to life the experiences of those he knew growing up in Columbus, Ohio, who served in Vietnam and the struggle of those who returned. Read more
Book Reviews
Author of the award-winning Act of War—detailing the 1968 capture of the spy ship USS Pueblo by North Korean gunboats—comes a new look at one of America’s most serious foreign policy blunders. Read more
Book Reviews
In January 1864, with the Union’s Army of the Potomac in winter quarters about 80 miles north the Confederates decided to move many of the Union prisoners of war out of Richmond, Virginia. Read more
Book Reviews
Before the stealth bombers could fly from Middle America to the Middle East and back, there was the secret mission code-named “Senior Surprise”—also nicknamed “Secret Squirrel” after the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character. Read more
Book Reviews
The second installment of the author’s day-by-day history of World War II (e-book World War II Plus 75—The Road to War: A Day-by-Day History) this volume covers the six days of September 1, 1939, to September 6, 1939. Read more
Book Reviews
The Spanish Civil War served as a proving ground for airpower’s importance as an independent force. Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces overthrew the Republican (Loyalist) Government supported heavily by the Condor Legion of planes and pilots sent by Nazi Germany. Read more
Book Reviews
The apologue of the “boiling frog,” which postulates that an amphibian placed in a pot of tepid water that is gradually heated to the point of boiling won’t notice the increase and jump out. Read more
Book Reviews
The Battle of Anzio (January 22-May 25, 1944) was aimed at bypassing the German’s daunting Gustav Line in an effort to capture Rome. Read more
Book Reviews
Much has been written on the politics and institutions of Germany during the rise of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) from 1933 to 1945. Read more
