They called him Mickey Free. His kidnapping started the longest war in American history, and both sides blamed him for it. A mixed-blood warrior who moved uneasily between the worlds of the Apaches and the American soldiers, he was never trusted by either but desperately needed by both. Free was the only man Geronimo ever feared. He played a pivotal role in this long war for the Southwest with his pursuit of the renegade scout, Apache Kid.In this sprawling, monumental work, Paul Hu...

A bracing account of a war that lingers in our collective memory as both ambiguous and unjustly ignored.For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953 that has long been overshadowed by World War II, Vietnam, and the War on Terror. But as Bruce Cumings eloquently explains, for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long fight that still haunts contemporary events. And in a very real way, although its true roots and repercussions conti...

Winner of the 2008 Foundation for Coast Guard History Book AwardThe images of soldiers and marines coming ashore on hostile shores are embedded in our collective memory of World War II. But what of the sailors who manned the landing craft, going back and forth under fire with nowhere to take cover, their craft the special targets of enemy gunners?In this book, Ken Wiley, a Coast Guardsman on an Attack Transport in the Pacific, relates the intricate, often n...

As tension over slavery and western expansion threatened to break the US into civil war, the Southern states found themselves squeezed between two nearly irreconcilable realities: the survival of the Confederate economy would require the importation of more slaves—a practice banned in America since 1807—but the existence of the Confederacy itself could not be secured without official recognition from Great Britain, who would never countenance reopening the Atlantic slave trade. How, then, ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of A. Lincoln, a major new biography of one of America’s greatest generals—and most misunderstood presidentsFinalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Military History Book PrizeIn his time, Ulysses S. Grant was routinely grouped with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the “Trinity of Great American Leaders.” But the battlefield commander–turned–commander-in-chief fell out of favor in...

The centerpiece of a major national campaign to indentify and preserve forgotten history, Here Is Where is acclaimed historian Andrew Carroll’s fascinating journey of discovery in which he travels to each of America’s fifty states and explores locations where remarkable individuals once lived or where the incredible or momentous occurred.Sparking the idea for this audiobook was Carroll’s visit to the spot where Abraham Lincoln’s son was once saved by the brother of Lincoln...

At the center of the debate over American intervention in World War II stood the two most famous men in America: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who championed the interventionist cause, and aviator Charles Lindbergh, who as unofficial leader and spokesman for America's isolationists emerged as the president's most formidable adversary. Their contest of wills personified the divisions within the country at large, and Lynne Olson makes masterly use of their dramatic personal stories to cre...

The USS Intrepid is a warship unlike any other. The 27,000-ton, Essex-class aircraft carrier has sailed into harm’s way around the globe. At Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, she sank Japanese warships and endured kamikaze and torpedo attacks. She fought at Okinawa and other Pacific battles, surviving to be the recovery ship for America’s first astronauts and later returning to action in Vietnam.Intrepid brings this history to life in a stirring tri...

With a unique, witty, and conversational voice historian Robert O'Connell breaks down the often paradoxical, easily caricatured character of General William T. Sherman for the most well-rounded portrait of the man yet written. There were many Shermans, according to O'Connell. Most prominently was Sherman the military strategist (indeed, one of the greatest strategists of all time), who gained an appreciation of geography from early campaigns out west and applied it to his famed Civil War m...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEWritten with the style of a great novelist and the intrigue of a Cold War thriller, Embers of War is a landmark work that will forever change your understanding of how and why America went to war in Vietnam. Tapping newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations, Fredrik Logevall traces the path that led two Western nations to tragically lose their way in the jungles of Southeast Asia. He brings to life the bloodiest ba...

Beginning with the assassination of McKinley and ending with the defeat of the League of Nations by the United States Senate, the twenty-year period covered by John Dos Passos in this lucid and fascinating narrative changed the whole destiny of America. This is the story of the war we won and the peace we lost, told with a clear historical perspective and a warm interest in the remarkable people who guided the United States through one of the most crucial periods.Foremost in the ca...

World War II from a Leader Who Saw the War from Both the White House and the Bridge of a BattleshipVice Admiral John L. McCrea worked with the president of the United States on difficult and unusual assignments, associated with royalty and world-famous political and military leaders, and he commanded the USS Iowa and a task force in the Pacific. Over the years, many urged him to write a book, and before his passing he finally recorded his reminiscences.