Books like Unconditional Surrender by Albert Marrin

A true‑story chronicle of the University of Washington’s 1936 eight‑oar crew, whose perseverance and teamwork led them to Olympic gold amid the Great Depression and the rise of Nazi Germany.

Obama's presidential memoir: A personal account of history's making.

During World II, a Navajo boy named Ned Begay, after learning that his language is deemed useless in a white‑run boarding school, joins the Marines as a Code Talker, using Navajo to transmit secret messages in combat.

Louis Zamperini’s extraordinary journey from Olympic gold‑medalist to a World War II bombardier, through a Pacific plane crash, 47 days adrift, and harrowing imprisonment by the Japanese, is a gripping tale of survival and resilience.

Ulysses S. Grant’s personal memoirs chronicle his military career from West Point cadet to Union general‑in‑chief, offering clear, direct accounts of the Mexican War and the Civil War.

A World War II officer’s harrowing journey from invasion to the concentration camps.

Tom Brokaw chronicles the lives of American veterans who shaped the modern United States, from the Great Depression through World War II and beyond, offering intimate portraits of duty, courage, and the enduring impact of the Greatest Generation.

A powerfully written, emotion-packed, highly biased account of America's involvement in Vietnam. Marrin mentions a variety of views on the war, but his sympathies are clearly with the Americans who fought there. While he details the grunts confusion, frustration, and suffering and apologizes for the atrocities they committed as aberrations, he depicts the communists as ruthless and power-hungry, the South Vietnamese as corrupt, the US government as blind and indecisive, the news media as sensation-seeking, and the antiwar activists as spoiled brats. He also emphasizes the suffering of American POWs (and, to a lesser degree, some of the Vietnamese). Though he quotes a number of Vietnamese sources and presents some background on the country, the Vietnamese are the villains in virtually every comparison with Americans; Marrin's presumption of motives is good for American soldiers, bad for everyone else. To his credit, he attributes quotes and offers a reasonably complete bibliography. Useful as a digest of some of the adult oral histories, but not as an objective summary. Index and b&w photos not seen.

The Gulf War and its aftermath have testified once again to the significance placed on the meanings and images of Vietnam by US media and culture. Almost two decades after the end of hostilities, the Vietnam War remains a dominant moral, political and military touchstone in American cultural consciousness. Vietnam War Stories provides a comprehensive critical framework for understanding the Vietnam experience, Vietnam narratives and modern war literature. The narratives examined - personal accounts as well as novels - portray a soldier's and a country's journey from pre-war innocence, through battlefield experience and consideration, to a difficult post-war adjustment. Tobey Herzog places these narratives within the context of important cultural and literary themes, including inherent ironies of war, the "John Wayne syndrome" of pre-war innocence, and the "heavy Heart-of-Darkness trip" of the conflict itself.

During the American Civil War in Florida, a Yankee colonel’s daughter and a staunch Confederate supporter find love that defies their opposing loyalties, illustrating how passion can bridge deep political divides.

An in‑depth biography of Ulysses S. Grant, tracing his rise from Ohio roots to leading the Union Army during the Civil War and later serving as President of the United States.

Overview: "It was a cold December morning in 1944, deep in the Ardennes forest of Belgium. Eighteen men of a small intelligence platoon commanded by twenty-year-old lieutenant Lyle Bouck were huddled in their foxholes, desperately trying to keep warm. Suddenly the early morning silence was broken by the roar of a huge artillery bombardment. Hitler had launched his bold and risky offensive against the Allies - his "last gamble" - and the American platoon was facing the main thrust of the entire German assault." "Vastly outnumbered, the platoon repulsed three German assaults in a fierce day-long battle to defend a strategically vital hill. Only when Bouck's men had run out of ammunition did they surrender." "But their long winter was just beginning." As POWs, Bouck's platoon experienced an ordeal far worse than combat - surviving in captivity with trigger-happy German guards, Allied bombing raids, and a starvation diet. While hundreds of other captured Americans in German POW camps were either killed or died of disease, the men of Bouck's platoon miraculously survived - all of them - and returned home after the war. More than thirty years later, when President Carter recognized the unit's "extraordinary heroism" and the U.S. Army approved combat medals for all eighteen men, they became America's most decorated platoon of World War II.

While there have been many books covering escapes from German POW camps, the exploits of those POWs in Japanese captivity have been strangely neglected - until now. Of the tens of thousands of Allied personnel captured by the victorious Japanese during late 1941 and early 1942 only a small number of brave souls attempted to escape to freedom rather than suffer brutality, starvation and very possibly death as POWs. The author draws on escape attempts from Hong Kong, Thailand, the Phillipines, Borneo, China by officers and men of British, Commonwealth and US armed forces. Few ended in freedom but all are examples of outstanding, desperate courage.