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In early December 1941 in the Philippines, a young Navy ensign named Kemp Tolley was given his first ship command, an old 76-foot schooner that had once served as a movie prop in John Ford's «The Hurricane.» Crewed mostly by Filipinos who did not speak English and armed with a cannon that had last seen service in the Spanish-American War, the Lanikai was under top-secret presidential orders to sail south into waters where the Japanese fleet was thought to be. Ostensibly the crew was to spy on Japanese naval movements, but to Tolley it was clear that their mission was to create an incident that would provoke war.Events overtook the plan, however, when Pearl Harbor was bombed before the Lanikai could get underway. When Bataan and Corregidor fell, she was ordered to set sail for Australia and became one of the few U.S. naval vessels to escape the Philippines. In this book Tolley tells the saga of her great adventure during these grim, early days of the war and makes history come alive as he regales the reader with details of the operation and an explanation of President Roosevelt's order. Tolley's description of their escape in Japanese warship-infested waters ranks with the best of sea tales, and few will be able to forget the Lanikai's 4,000-mile, three-month odyssey.

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With all the immediacy of an eyewitness account, Anthony Pitch tells the dramatic story of the British invasion of Washington in the summer of 1814, an episode many call a defining moment in the coming-of-age of the United States. The British torched the Capitol, the White House, and many other public buildings, setting off an inferno that illuminated the countryside for miles and sending President James Madison scurrying out of town while his wife Dolley rescued a life-sized portrait of George Washington from the flames. The author's gripping narrative–hailed by a White House curator, a Senate historian, and the chairman of the National Geographic Society, among others–is filled with vivid details of the attack. Not confining his story to Washington, Pitch also describes the brave, resourceful defense of nearby Fort McHenry and tells how Francis Scott Key, a British hostage on a ship near the Baltimore harbor during the fort's bombardment, wrote a poem that became the national anthem.

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Calling the Combined Chiefs of Staff the glue that held the British-American alliance together in World War II, David Rigby describes the vital contributions to Allied victory made by the organization, which drew its members from the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the British Chiefs of Staff Committee, and the British Joint Staff Mission. Readers get a good understanding of the personalities involved and insights into the relationships between the Chiefs and Allied theater commanders. The role of the Combined Chiefs in economic mobilization and the bitter inter-Allied strategic debates are fully examined. Detailed information is also given about the Casablanca Conference and the Chiefs’ often highly contentious meetings in Washington. The book gives the Combined Chiefs what they have long deserved—a book not weighted towards the Americans or the British and not strictly naval, army, or air oriented, but combined in an international as well as an inter-service manner.

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This is the first book to examine Thomas Holcomb s crucial role as commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps during the Great Depression and World War II. It blends biographical, institutional, and operational history with leadership studies, organizational theory, and social and cultural history to explain how and why Holcomb succeeded in expanding the Marine Corps from 18,000 officers and men in 1936 to 385,000 by 1943. David Ulbrich contends that Holcomb s abilities and achievements match those of Chester W. Nimitz and George C. Marshall. Despite Holcomb s success, however, he has been given short shrift in histories of the Marine Corps. To correct the oversight, this biography draws on a wide range of sources to tell the story of the Marine commandant who molded the Corps into a modern force-in-readiness that would not only led the way to victory in the pacific, but also would eventually help fight the ColdWar and the war on terror.A Leatherneck Original, published with the Marine Corps Association.Foreword by Lt. Col. Charles P. Neimeyer, USMC (Ret.), Director and Chief of Marine Corps History. A Leatherneck Original, published with the Marine Corps Association.

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Although bad eyesight kept him from receiving a commission in the U.S. Navy when he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1933, Draper Kauffman became a hero of underwater demolition in World War II and went on to a distinguished naval career. Today Admiral Kauffman is remembered as the nation's first frogman and the father of the Navy Seals. His spectacular wartime service disarming enemy bombs, establishing bomb disposal schools, and organizing and leading the Navy's first demolition units is the focus of this biography written by Kauffman's sister. Elizabeth Kauffman Bush, who also is the aunt of President George W. Bush, draws on family papers as well as Navy documents to tell Kauffman's story for the first time. Determined to defend the cause of freedom long before the U.S. ever entered the war, Kauffman was taken prisoner by the Germans as an ambulance driver in France, and after his release joined the Royal Navy to defuse delayed-action bombs during the London blitz. After Pearl Harbor his eyes were deemed adequate and he was given a commission in the U.S. Naval Reserve. With his experience, he was asked to establish an underwater demolition school in Fort Pierce, Florida, where he personally trained men to defuse bombs and neutralize other submerged dangers. His men were sent to demolish the obstacles installed by the Nazis at Normandy, and Kauffman himself led underwater demolition teams in the Pacific at Saipan, Tinian, and Guam and later directed UDT operations at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. His men remember him as an exceptional leader who led by example. He trained and fought alongside them, impervious to danger. Because of the high standards he set for those who became «frogmen,»thousands of American lives were saved in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Draper Kauffman's early established UDT traditions of perseverance, teamwork, and a lasting brotherhood of men of extraordinary courage is carried on by Navy Seals. This is his legacy to the U.S. Navy and his country.

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Called one of the most inspiring stories to come out of World War II when first published in 1959, this epic account of Arleigh Burke's legendary Destroyer Squadron 23 is much more than a story of ships and their tactical deployment. It is a story of men in action–some four thousand of them–and how they lived and fought as a magnificent combat team.Ken Jones not only records their heroic deeds but helps explain what prompted those deeds, including the leadership qualities that fired the men into action. In doing so he brings to life the outfit's fighting spirit–that mysterious combination of qualities inspired by great leaders that wins battles–and the man who led them. Commodore Arleigh Burke was the right man at the right place at the right time; his leadership fused the squadron into a superb combat organization.This book offers a vivid account of the fighting in the South Pacific during one of the most crucial periods of the war. In authentic, minute-by-minute detail drawn from once-secret documents, Jones describes the battles of Tassafaronga, Savo Island, Empress Augusta Bay, and Cape St. George. But the focus throughout is on the men as they meet the test of battle with a common bravery as staunch as any in the Navy's annals. No squadron in any navy is said to have won more battle honors in less time than the Fighting Twenty-third.

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The book is a short review of British air and naval power from 1909 -1940 and represents an attack upon “independent” airpower. When Bleriot became the first man to fly the English Channel in a heavier-than-air flying machine in 1909, it seemed to mark the beginning of a fundamental decline in British attitudes towards maritime defense. Exploiting prevalent invasion paranoia, press baron, Lord Northcliffe invited distinguished writers such as William Le Queue and H G Wells to write articles on the theme “We are no longer an Island”.Bleriot’s exploit encouraged the politicians to reassess how Britain would be defended in the future. An important government committee heard evidence that led directly to the forming of the Royal Flying Corps – an organization that initially included army and naval wings. Superficially, the Royal Navy was moving from strength to strength as it expanded in the naval arms race with Germany. The service remained in high public esteem but a section of the ruling Liberal party wanted money diverted for welfare – a new and powerful competitor for funds. The Two-Power Standard was quietly dropped in 1909 and the astronomical costs of battleship building forced the Navy to look for cheaper substitutes such as submarines and aircraft. A forceful critic of naval expenditure, Winston S. Churchill fostered the early development of airpower when he became First Lord in 1911 and continued to do so when out of office.The German air raids of 1917 panicked the wartime government into making an ill-considered merger of naval and army air arms that supported imaginative but untried theories of airpower. In 1938, a later government submitted to the national psychosis of bombing by allowing the Royal Air Force to be the only service to rearm without regard to the nation’s ability to afford it. In 1940, the contribution of the Royal Navy was minimized as Churchill praised the RAF for saving the nation from invasion in the Battle of Britain. As a result the RAF’s story has achieved an iconic status that is part of British national identity. Consequently, more important operations including the Dunkirk evacuation; Battle of the Atlantic; Battle of Mers El Kebir and the naval operations against the Italian fleet have been underrated and misunderstood. This ultimate justification of independent airpower continues to undermine understandings of maritime defense and may have skewed US and UK defense policies in the wrong direction for decades.

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When William Bradford Huie, a reporter for H. L. Mencken's American Mercury, joined the U.S. Navy in 1943, he received a commission as a public relations officer in the little-known Civil Engineer's Corps Construction Battalions–the Seabees. With the publication of Can Do! the following year, Americans soon came to appreciate the significance of the corps's work and the danger of their wartime activities. As readable and entertaining today as it was some fifty years ago, this account tells the story of the Seabees who landed with the Marines at Guadalcanal and Wake Island, Sicily and Salerno. Experienced civilian engineers, carpenters, steam-shovel operators, plumbers, truck drivers, surveyors, and the like, they landed with the first waves of American assault troops, bringing heavy equipment ashore to build roads, bridges, and airfields and repair whatever they could. Often working under enemy fire, they incurred many casualties and won the deep respect of everyone who came into contact with them.Huie's book is filled with spirited accounts of the Seabees's achievements in the Aleutians, the South Sea islands, Europe, and Africa. A passionate and convincing advocate, Huie wrote the book not only to call attention to their accomplishments but to serve as an inspiration to others, and he often has the Seabees tell their stories in their own words. Appendixes offer valuable details, including lists of casualties, award recipients, and Seabees' poems. An introduction by Donald R. Noble is included in this new paperback edition.

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Key Selling Points<br> 1. Audience<br> &bull; Will appeal to readers interested in immigration, in fact and literature: “Greenhorns” opens a window into the historical experience of Jewish immigration in the 20th Century, and the problematic process of assimilation. As such it connects to the current public and political interest in immigrants and immigration, with parallels between the successful integration of past immigrants and current patterns of Americanization. Immigration and assimilation has also been a major theme in contemporary fiction, in the works of Gish Jen, Amy Tan, David Bezmozgis, Jumpa Lahiri, and many others. <br> &bull; Jewish readers: The book deals with the experience of three generations of Jewish immigrants, people of the author's generation but also the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of American Jews now in their 30s and 40s.<br> &bull; Author has a reputation as a historian and historical novelist, and readers will be interested in the connection of this book to his earlier work.<br> <br> 2. Notable Author<br> &bull; recently cited in New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/movies/hostiles-review-christian-bale.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0 &bull; best known for an award-winning trilogy of scholarly books on the myth of the frontier in American cultural history. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Wesleyan University Press; was a finalist for a National Book Award, and received the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association, which cited it as “a turning point in the study of American intellectual history.” The second volume received the Little Big Horn Associates Literary Award. George Frederickson, writing in the <i>New York Review of Books</i>, called Fatal Environment “Without question . . . the most ambitious and provocative work in American studies to appear in recent years.” Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century America (Atheneum, 1992) was a Finalist for the 1993 National Book Award. The citation praised it as the culmination of a “magisterial multi-volume study of the myth of the frontier . . . cultural history at its best – well argued, richly supported, critically astute, and written with genuine craft.” <br> &bull; Other work links cultural history with military history: Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality (Holt, 2005); No Quarter: The Battle of the Petersburg Crater, 1864 (Random House, 2009); Long Road to Antietam: How the Civil War Became a Revolution (Norton, 2012), etc.<br> &bull; Three historical novels. Abe: A Novel of the Young Lincoln (Holt, 2000) was a New York Times Notable Book and won the Michael Shaara Award for Civil War Fiction (2001) and the Salon.com Book Award (2000). The Return of Henry Starr (Atheneum, 1988); The Crater (Atheneum, 1980) was the first work of fiction to be adopted as a selection by the History Book Club.<br> &bull; Author has been awarded fellowships from the NEH and Rockefeller Foundation; was elected a Fellow of the Society of American Historians in 1986, and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.<br> &bull; Serves as consultant and on-screen interviewee for media projects on violence, racism, popular culture, the Civil War, World War I and the American West. A 2013 episode of “Moyers & Company” was devoted to the author's book Gunfighter Nation. Recent projects include “The Great War” (PBS, 2017), “Clint Eastwood” (American Masters, 2000), “Colt: Legend and Legacy” (PBS/1998), «Big Guns Talk» (TNT, 1997), “Gunpower: One Nation Under Fire” (Discovery Channel, 1996), “Guns” (ABC Turning Point, 1994), “Last Stand at Little Big Horn,” (American Experience/ PBS, 1992).<br> <br> 3. The Competition<br> Unlike the work of other writers of new-immigrant fiction (David Bezmozgis, Gary Shteyngart), or Jewish-American writers like Philip Roth, “Greenhorns” roots the story of Jewish Americans in the primal experience of Jewish emigration, the passage from the Pale of Settlement &mdash; the bloody and impoverished Polish/Russian borderland &mdahs; to America in the early 20th Century. It sets the immigrant experience against the specifics of historical events, specifically the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and the Russian Civil War of 1919-23. It traces the effects of that heritage of trauma on later generations, again through particular historical moments &mdash; army life in WW2, and school and college life in the 1950s and early 1960s. <br>

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"A fast-paced narrative. . . . compelling and intense reading, by turns funny, tender, and horrifying, Girl Singer is the real deal&#8212;a captivating, well-told tale." &#8212;Fred Kasten, Edward R. Murrow Award-winning journalist"Carlon is a natural heir of Robert Louis Stevenson. If you like good fiction, you'll like Girl Singer ." &#8212;Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz "Carlon is a unique educational force, bringing young readers into the pleasures and drama of jazz." &#8212;Nat Hentoff, Jazz Country , Boston Bay , etc. "An arresting and wonderful story that communicates&#8212;through a deep relationship between a singer and a Holocaust survivor&#8212;the joy of music, self-discovery, pain, and racism." &#8212;Dick Golden, host of George Washington University Presents American Jazz"Avery's story tackles hard topics&#8212;racism, women's rights&#8212;which transcend time and place. A tale with deep resonance and educational force, that will keep readers turning pages." &#8211;Marilyn Lester, executive director, the Duke Ellington Center for the ArtsHarlem 1938: eighteen-year-old Avery, aspiring singer, is heard by Lester «Pres» Young, Count Basie's tenor saxophonist. Pres recommends her to Basie, and Avery is whisked into the jazz life. Years later, with several hit records to her credit, Avery settles in Greenwich Village. But her life takes a sharp turn when she meets Karl, a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany. Mick Carlon is a thirty-year veteran English and journalism teacher at the high and middle school levels, and the author of the middle-grade novels Riding on Duke's Train and Travels with Louis . He is a frequent contributor to Jazz Times .

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