Book Reviews
On May 27, 1905, the Russian fleet went into battle against the Japanese navy. For months, this fleet sailed around the world, beginning its long journey in the Baltic Sea. Read more
Book Reviews
Corporal Frank Sisson spent eight freezing hours in a truck, riding through France toward Belgium. A day earlier, Frank and his fellow GIs of the 667th Field Artillery Battalion, 10th Armored Division lay comfortably billeted in a French town, warm and relatively safe. Read more
Book Reviews
The First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal began with a delay. Shortly before 1:30 am on November 13, 1942, the American cruiser USS Helena spotted a Japanese task force: “Radar contact. Read more
Book Reviews
John “Chick” Donohue stood in the chaos of the American embassy in Saigon in early 1968 as the Tet Offensive raged around it. Read more
Book Reviews
On April 1, 1945, Major Arthur Shaw leaned against the railing of an attack transport ship and stared into the distance at the island of Okinawa. Read more
Book Reviews
“If you are wounded, pretend to be dead; wait until the Germans come up; then select one of them and kill him! Read more
Book Reviews
Balikpapan was the most important oil refinery complex in the Pacific during World War II. Located on the island of Borneo in what was then the Dutch East Indies, one expert considered it “the most complete oil refinery outside the continental limits of the United States.” Read more
Book Reviews
The Winter Line was the German Army’s defensive position in Southern Italy in late 1943. Set into high mountains which dominated the surrounding terrain, numerous Allied attacks against it failed, always with heavy casualties. Read more
Book Reviews
As Gene Metcalfe floated down toward the earth in his parachute, the first thing he saw below him was a German soldier walking down a path with girl on his arm. Read more
Book Reviews
The F-86 Sabre was the iconic American fighter of the Korean War era. The struggle was the first war that pitted jet fighter aircraft against each other. Read more
Book Reviews
The carriers weren’t there.
Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky looked out over the Pacific Ocean from the cockpit of his Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber and saw nothing. Read more
Book Reviews
Captain Frank Lillyman drifted down toward a French field in the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944. Frank was a pathfinder, one of the paratroopers assigned to prepare the way for the main airborne drop on D-Day. Read more
Book Reviews
During the spring 1291 an enormous Muslim host moved against Acre along the Mediterranean coast. At the time it was Christendom’s last foothold in the Holy Land, a region fought over for centuries during
the religious wars known as the Crusades. Read more
Book Reviews
In the predawn darkness of February 23, 1945, a patrol went out toward the towering mass of Mount Suribachi. Read more
Book Reviews
Major Marcus Reno’s column fired the opening shots of the Battle of the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876. Read more
Book Reviews
On November 1, 1943, a gunfight unfolded on the high seas. It began with a more conventional naval battle, a depth-charge attack by an American destroyer on a German U-boat. Read more
Book Reviews
Just after 6 am on July 5, 1943, Vasiliy Krysov spotted the enemy. Six tanks moved slowly toward him and the SU-122 self-propelled gun he commanded. Read more
Book Reviews
A black Opel automobile raced through the streets of Cologne, Germany, on March 6, 1945. The driver, 40-year-old Michael Delling, was making a run for it. Read more
Book Reviews
Lines of drab-uniformed soldiers emerged from their night march and moved down a forested road into open country on September 26, 1918. Read more
Book Reviews
Lieutenant William Paul Chapman’s fellow soldiers were tank hunting on the afternoon of August 11, 1944. The Battle of Mortain was raging around them, a counterattack by a German armored spearhead against the growing and inexorable advance of the Allied armies out of the Normandy beachhead. Read more
