On April 10, 1942, Captain Benjamin F. Stakes was taken prisoner on Bataan. For the next three and a half years, he would serve as a POW detained within five different camps and treated, along with thousands of others, to the most horrific and inhumane conditions imaginable. Before his liberation in September of 1945, over forty thousand prisoners of war would perish at the hands of the Japanese.This is a true story of survival. From his forced participation in what would later bec...

The inspiration behind the HBO series THE PACIFICThis was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands...Landing on the beach at Peleliu in 1944 as a twenty-year-old new recruit to the US Marines, Eugene Sledge can only try desperately to survive. At Peleliu and Okinawa - two of the fiercest and filthiest Pacific battles of WWII - he witnesses the dehumanising brutality display...

From Robert Leckie, the World War II veteran and New York Times bestselling author of Helmet for My Pillow, whose experiences were featured in the HBO miniseries The Pacific, comes this vivid narrative of the astonishing six-month campaign for Guadalcanal.From the Japanese soldiers’ carefully calculated—and ultimately foiled—attempt to build a series of impregnable island forts on the ground to the tireless efforts of the Americans who struggled against a...

Soon after we landed it became apparent that there was more than enough artillery here, that the enemy were excellent shots, and that their ammo supply seemed to be endless.With the Japanese deeply entrenched and determined to die rather than surrender, Robert Dick and his fellow soldiers quickly realized that theirs would be a war fought inch by bloody inch–and that their Sherman tanks would serve front and center. As driver, Dick had to maneuver his five-man crew in and out of da...

"The authors of the bestselling Halsey's Typhoon do a fine job recounting one brutal, small-unit action during the Korean War's darkest moment." — Publishers WeeklyNovember 1950, the Korean Peninsula. After General MacArthur ignores Mao's warnings and pushes his UN forces deeper into North Korea, his 10,000 First Division Marines find themselves surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by 100,000 Chinese soldiers near the Chosin Reservoir. Their only...

TO HELL AND BACKFor the U.S., Guadalcanal was a bloody seven-month struggle under brutal conditions against crack Japanese troops deeply entrenched and determined to fight to the death. For Charles Walker, this horrific jungle battle–one that claimed the lives of 1,600 Americans and more than 23,000 Japanese–was just the beginning. On the eve of battle, 2nd Lt. Walker was ordered back to the States for medical reasons. But there was a war to be won, and he had no intention of missi...

This extraordinary adventure of three brothers at the center of the most dramatic turning points of World War II in the Pacific Theater is “liable to break the hearts of Unbroken fans, and it’s all true” (The New York Times).The three Jersey brothers are all Navy men who end up coincidentally and extraordinarily at the epicenter of three of the war’s most crucial moments. Bill, a naval intelligence officer, is tapped by FDR to set up and run his s...

The gripping story of an extraordinary American hero, the most decorated man in US Marine Corps history, from a New York Times–bestselling author."We are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29:1. They can't get away from us now!" —Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, USMCIn the glorious chronicles of the US Marine Corps, no name is more revered than that of Lt. Gen. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller. The only fighting man to receive the Navy C...

The true story of U.S. Marine Edmond Babler who was forced to surrender during the early days of the U.S. involvement in World War II when the fortress Island of Corregidor fell to the Japanese. Not written in the typical historical context but in a biographical view, the manuscript, transcribed from his own narrative, is Ed's story from the time he joined the Marine Corps until his return from 1,220 days of brutal captivity in Japanese prisoner of war camps. It is intended, in Ed's own wo...

The author and Korean War veteran vividly describes his time on the frontlines in this military memoir: "war reporting at its best . . . reads like a novel" (Walter Cronkite).In 1947, seeking to avoid the draft, nineteen-year-old Jim Brady volunteered for a Marine Corps program that made him a lieutenant in the reserves on the day he graduated college. He didn't expect to be sent overseas three years later to lead a rifle platoon against a deadly enemy. But in Kore...

Army, Air Force, or Marine—read all about them in the latrine!Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and the Coast Guard—the patriotic folks at the Bathroom Readers Institute have stormed the proverbial beaches of Normandy and beyond to bring you this salute to the greatest force for good on planet Earth! Make your way through the ranks and read about the history, triumphs, trials, trivia, and humor of those who serve. At nearly 500 pages, this is the book you want by you...

George Weller was a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter who covered World War II across Europe, Africa, and Asia. At the war’s end in September 1945, under General MacArthur’s media blackout, correspondents were forbidden to enter both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But instead of obediently staying with the press corps in northern Japan, Weller broke away. The intrepid newspaperman reached Nagasaki just weeks after the atomic bomb hit the city. Boldly presenting himself as a U.S. colonel to the Japa...