Band of Brothers
As
good a rifle company as any, Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, US
Army, kept getting tough assignments responsible for everything from
parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's
Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. In "Band of Brothers," Ambrose tells of
the men in this brave unit who fought, went hungry, froze & died, a
company that took 150% casualties & considered the Purple Heart a
badge of office. Drawing on hours of interviews with survivors as well
as the soldiers' journals & letters, Stephen Ambrose recounts the
stories, often in the men's own words, of these American heroes.
D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Battle for the Normandy Beaches
It
is the young men born into the false prosperity of the 1920s and
brought up in the bitter realities of the Depression of the 1930s that
this book is about. The literature they read as youngsters was anti-war
and cynical, portraying patriots as suckers, slackers and heroes. None
of them wanted to be part of another war. They wanted to be throwing
baseballs, not hand grenades; shooting .22s at rabbits, not M-1s at other
young men. But when the test came, when freedom had to be fought for or
abandoned, they fought (from the Prologue).
Citizen Soldiers: The US Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany
From
Stephen E. Ambrose, bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day ,
the inspiring story of the ordinary men of the U.S. army in northwest
Europe from the day after D-Day until the end of the bitterest days of
World War II.
In this riveting account, historian Stephen E.
Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Citizen
Soldiers opens at 0001 hours, June 7, 1944, on the Normandy beaches, and
ends at 0245 hours, May 7, 1945, with the allied victory. It is
biography of the US Army in the European Theater of Operations, and
Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal,
and tragic war. From the high command down to the ordinary soldier,
Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience
with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to
the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II
from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.
Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier
'This
was much more than a bunch of guys out on an exploring and collecting
expedition. This was a military expedition into hostile territory'. In
1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain
Meriwether Lewis, to lead a pioneering voyage across the Great Plains
and into the Rockies. It was completely uncharted territory; a wild,
vast land ruled by the Indians. Charismatic and brave, Lewis was the
perfect choice and he experienced the savage North American continent
before any other white man. Undaunted Courage is the tale of a hero, but
it is also a tragedy. Lewis may have received a hero's welcome on his
return to Washington in 1806, but his discoveries did not match the
president's fantasies of sweeping, fertile plains ripe for the taking.
Feeling the expedition had been a failure, Lewis took to drink and piled
up debts. Full of colourful characters Jefferson, the president
obsessed with conquering the west; William Clark, the rugged
frontiersman; Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition;
Drouillard, the French-Indian hunter - this is one of the great
adventure stories of all time and it shot to the top of the US
bestseller charts. Drama, suspense, danger and diplomacy combine with
romance and personal tragedy making Undaunted Courage an outstanding
work of scholarship and a thrilling adventure.
Witness to America: An Illustrated Documentary History of the United States from the Revolution to Today
Witness
to America includes nearly 150 works drawn from America's history, from
the first shots of the Revolutionary War to the twenty-first century.
From Patrick Henry's rousing "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" speech
to John Brown's stand at Harpers Ferry; from Franklin D. Roosevelt's
promise of a New Deal to Neil Armstrong's account of walking on the
moon; from 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina to Barack Obama's landmark speech
on race: this sweeping volume brings the milestones in American history
vividly to life.
Here are unique and revealing selections from
such historical figures as John Adams, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Dwight
D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy, as well as influential individuals,
among them Booker T. Washington, Charles Lindbergh, Ernie Pyle, Rosa
Parks, and Betty Friedan. While many of the selections come from notable
citizens, most are from ordinary Americans schoolteachers, students,
homemakers, pioneers, and soldiers who describe the everyday events that
have epitomized American life over the course of its history, indelibly
demonstrating both the variety and vitality of the American character.
Witness
to America sweeps across the vast territory that is our nation,
illuminating the movements, ideas, inventions, and events that have
shaped and defined us from the Pony Express to the personal computer;
from the frontier to the rise of suburbia; from farming to modernization
and the information age. Within these pages discover the art of
whaling, learn about survival on the Gold Rush trail, experience the
glory and trauma of war, and glean new insight on the great leaders.
Here are debates and speeches, diary entries, letters, memoirs, court
records, and more including many first-person accounts that make history
come alive as never before, such as a powerful description of the
atomic explosion from a correspondent on the Enola Gay and a young
student's evaluation of the changing roles of women at her high school.
Witness
to America is a fascinating, highly readable, and entertaining
collection that shows us what America is and where it may go.
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-69
Nothing
Like It in the World gives the account of an unprecedented feat of
engineering, vision, and courage. It is the story of the men who built
the transcontinental railroad the investors who risked their businesses
and money; the enlightened politicians who understood its importance;
the engineers and surveyors who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives;
and the Irish and Chinese immigrants, the defeated Confederate
soldiers, and the other laborers who did the backbreaking and dangerous
work on the tracks.
The U.S. government pitted two companies the
Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads against each other in a
race for funding, encouraging speed over caution. Locomotives, rails,
and spikes were shipped from the East through Panama or around South
America to the West or lugged across the country to the Plains. In
Ambrose's hands, this enterprise, with its huge expenditure of
brainpower, muscle, and sweat, comes vibrantly to life.
To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian
In
"To America," Stephen E. Ambrose, one of the country's most influential
historians, reflects on his long career as an American historian and
explains what an historian's job is all about. He celebrates America's
spirit, which has carried us so far. He confronts its failures and
struggles. As always in his much acclaimed work, Ambrose brings alive
the men and women, famous and not, who have peopled our history and made
the United States a model for the world.Taking a few swings at today's
political correctness, as well as his own early biases, Ambrose grapples
with the country's historic sins of racism, its neglect and ill
treatment of Native Americans, and its tragic errors (such as the war in
Vietnam, which he ardently opposed on campus, where he was a
professor). He reflects on some of the country's early founders who were
progressive thinkers while living a contradiction as slaveholders,
great men such as Washington and Jefferson. He contemplates the genius
of Andrew Jackson's defeat of a vastly superior British force with a
ragtag army in the War of 1812. He describes the grueling journey that
Lewis and Clark made to open up the country, and the building of the
railroad that joined it and produced great riches for a few barons.
Ambrose
explains the misunderstood presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, records the
country's assumption of world power under the leadership of Theodore
Roosevelt, and extols its heroic victory of World War II. He writes
about women's rights and civil rights and immigration, founding museums,
and nation- building. He contrasts the presidencies of Dwight
Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Throughout, Ambrose celebrates the unflappable American spirit.
Most
important, Ambrose writes about writing history. "The last five letters
of the word 'history' tell us that it is an account of the past that is
about people and what they did, which is what makes it the most
fascinating of subjects."
"To America" is an instant classic for all those interested in history, patriotism, and the love of writing.
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