First World War History

Few are aware of the risks that the pioneering airmen of the First World War took. On a Wing and a Prayer is a narrative history that conveys the perils of those early days, the thrills of learning to fly, and the horrors of war in the air at a time when pilots carried little defensive armament and no parachutes.

Storming the Gap: First Strike reveals the explosive origins of the Third World War and delves into the opening salvos of the conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in a world where the Cold War turns hot in 1985. This epic story is told from a range of viewpoints - through the eyes of the decision-makers in Washington as well as the tankers and infantry fighting through hills and towns of southern Germany.

War. World War. This is the story of the first world war, the great war. The then-biggest war to shake the globe. It is the story of the leaders, technological advancements, politics, and people that fueled a four-year conflict between countries and empires from every continent on the globe. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand sparked an ultimatum that would ignite the war. Nearly 11 million soldiers and seven million civilian lives were lost on both sides of the battle.

The growing buzz of aircraft engines disturbed the Japanese military construction personnel hauling equipment ashore on the beige coral sand of Tulagi Island at 8:20 AM on May 4, 1942. Offshore, the large IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy) minelayer Okinoshima, flagship of Admiral Shima Kiyohide, lay at anchor, along with two destroyers, Kikuzuki and Yutsuki, and transport ships. Six Japanese Mitsubishi F1M2 floatplanes also rested on the gentle, deep blue swell, marking Tulagi's future as an IJN floatplane base.

The Iran hostage crisis was a watershed moment in American history. It was America's first showdown with Islamic fundamentalism, a confrontation at the forefront of American policy to this day. It was also a powerful dramatic story that captivated the American people, launched yellow-ribbon campaigns, made celebrities of the hostage's families, and crippled the reelection campaign of President Jimmy Carter.

As a tough but smart Italian American kid, Ernest Cuneo played Ivy League football at Columbia University and was in the old Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise before becoming a city hall lawyer and “Brain Trust'' aide to President Roosevelt. He was on the payroll of national radio columnist Walter Winchell and mingled with the famous and powerful. But his status as a spy remained a secret, hiding in plain sight. During this time, Cuneo began a close friendship with British spy Ian Fleming and helped inspire Fleming's James Bond novels.

An unforgettable and moving story of tragedy, heroism, resilience, and redemption that is sure to become an enduring document of American history, All the Brave Men is a sailor's moment-by-moment eyewitness account of the Japanese surprise attack that decimated the US Pacific Fleet in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, and his inspiring return to active duty to carry on the Allied fight in the Pacific.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to World War I and II for Kids and learn about the captivating stories of the two world wars.

Big league baseball would seem to have been a hard sell in 1942. World War II was not going well for the United States in the Pacific and not much better in Europe. Moreover, the country was in drastically short supply of ships, planes, submarines, torpedoes, and other war materials, and Uncle Sam needed men, millions of them, including those from 21 through 35 years of age who had been ordered to register for the draft, the age range of most big league baseball players.

The USS Cowpens and her crew weren’t your typical heroes. She was a flattop that the US Navy initially didn’t want, with a captain nearly scapegoated for the loss of his last command, pilots who self-trained on the planes they would fly into combat, and sailors that had been in uniform barely longer than the ship had been afloat. Despite their humble origins, Cowpens and her band of second-string reservists and citizen sailors served with distinction, fighting in nearly every major carrier operation from 1943 to 1945, including the Battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf.

When W. E. B. Du Bois, believing in the possibility of full citizenship and democratic change, encouraged African Americans to “close ranks” and support the Allied cause in World War I, he made a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Seeking both intellectual clarity and personal atonement, for more than two decades Du Bois attempted to write the definitive history of Black participation in World War I. His book, however, remained unfinished.

The Houdini Club captures the personal drama of World War II Special Forces warfare. The men of maverick Colonel William O. Darby's Rangers had abundant tales of glory, yes, but also tales of misery, fear, and murderous intent. Then, there was the utter exhaustion contrasted by the thrill of combat, the devastating final battle that all but destroyed them, and the ingenuity and sheer determination that made the highly vaunted German Afrika Korps and veteran German Parachute and Panzer units marvel at their guerilla tactics and their prison breakouts.

In the summer of 1942, a band of citizen soldiers were brought together by the desire to be better than the other guy. At its peak, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Army, was as good a rifle company as any in the world. From their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 through Utah Beach, Market-Garden, the Bulge, and Hitler's Eagle's Nest, WWII historian Stephen Ambrose tells the story of this remarkable company.

The story of the battle of the Saint-Gond marshes during the battle of the Marne. The few vital days when the fate of France hung in the balance. The marshes were the furthest point reached by the invading armies and, not for the first time in history, they where the place where the tables were turned, and France won a great victory in the face of the most powerful army in the world.

Sir Philip Gibbs served as one of five official British reporters during the First World War. In this book he relays the experiences of British soldiers and offers a detailed narrative of the events of World War I, while trying to draw broader conclusions about the nature of war and how it can be prevented in the future.

This is the story of the average Canadian who volunteered for the Canadian Expeditionary Force told through the lens of one battalion - the 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish) of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division. This Highland Regiment fought in the Ypres Salient and in the Somme, at Vimy, Passchendaele, and Amiens. It suffered the first gas attack; its ranks were decimated as it fought at virtually every major battle in the European theatre.

The sixth volume of Poincaré's memoirs as President of the French Republic, and the second to deal with the Great War, from the beginning of 1915 to midsummer. There is stalemate on the western front, the Russians are retreating on the eastern front and British and French governments are scanning the horizon to seek out new fronts to open, to try desperately to break the deadlock. Poincaré is as ever, treading a difficult and narrow path of constitutional responsibility, and at the same time having to deal with the ever more turbulent politics of war: both internally, with a cantankerous ...

September 1942 marked the high point of Axis conquest in World War II. In the Pacific, Japan's soldiers had seemed unstoppable. However, the tide was about to turn. On Sunday, 6 September 1942, Japanese land forces suffered their first conclusive defeat at the hands of the Allies. At Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea, a predominantly Australian force - including 75 Squadron (fresh from their action in 44 Days) - fought for two weeks to successfully defend a vital airstrip against a determined Japanese invasion.

Travelling throughout Europe, the authors have gained access to an enormous quantity of primary material largely untouched by general histories. From this trove they will tell the story of 1914 with verve, empathy, and an eye on presenting a truly comprehensive and inclusive popular history of the war. This will be a people's view of the war, using unparalleled access to primary sources and collective knowledge of nine languages, Ring of Fire will tell a pacy, touching, and relentlessly surprising narrative of a year we all think we know.

The Great War of 1914-1918 confronted the United States with one of the most wrenching crises in the nation's history. It also left a residue of disruption and disillusion that spawned an even more ruinous conflict scarcely a generation later. Over Here is the single most comprehensive discussion of the impact of World War I on American society.