Why am I passionate about this?

Scott McGaugh is a former journalist, founding marketing director (2004-2020) of the USS Midway Museum in San Diego, CA, and the author of 10 nonfiction books, including the New York Times bestselling Civil War biography, Surgeon in Blue. His current project is The Brotherhood of the Flying Coffin about the volunteer combat glider pilots of World War II. He has appeared on NPR, the History Channel, and elsewhere.


I wrote...

Honor Before Glory: The Epic World War II Story of the Japanese American GIs Who Rescued the Lost Battalion

By Scott McGaugh,

Book cover of Honor Before Glory: The Epic World War II Story of the Japanese American GIs Who Rescued the Lost Battalion

What is my book about?

The riveting true story of Japanese Americans who volunteer In World War II from behind internment camp barbed wire for…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Winds Of War

Scott McGaugh Why did I love this book?

Though a novel, the research and factual basis of this classic oozes from almost every page. A book that examines the people, innocent and otherwise, who make World War II a compelling subject and a worthy, thought-provoking read to this day.

By Herman Wouk,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Winds Of War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II, which begins with THE WINDS OF WAR and continues in WAR AND REMEMBRANCE, stands as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers.

Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events - the drama, the romance, the heroism and the tragedy of World War II - as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very centre of the maelstrom.

"First-rate storytelling." - New York Times

"Compelling . . . A panoramic, engrossing story." - Atlantic…


Book cover of With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

Scott McGaugh Why did I love this book?

An unvarnished memoir of war in the Pacific that inspires and horrifies. The deeply personal horrors witnessed and exacted by young men on both sides makes it almost a character study of the battlefield. A compulsory read for anyone who wants to understand true sacrifice in uniform far beyond the headlines of the day.

By E.B. Sledge,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked With the Old Breed as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The inspiration behind the HBO series THE PACIFIC

This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands...

Landing on the beach at Peleliu in 1944 as a twenty-year-old new recruit to the US Marines, Eugene Sledge can only try desperately to survive. At Peleliu and Okinawa - two of the fiercest and filthiest Pacific battles of WWII - he witnesses the dehumanising brutality displayed by both sides and the animal hatred that each soldier has for his enemy.

During temporary lapses in the fighting, conditions on…


Book cover of The Guns of August

Scott McGaugh Why did I love this book?

The classic Pulitzer Prize book about the outbreak of World War I. This book weaves detail that pulls the reader in, without distraction. A groundbreaking distillation of historical research into a storytelling style that captivates both readers and authors.

By Barbara W. Tuchman,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Guns of August as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • “A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’”—Newsweek
 
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time

In this landmark account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step…


Book cover of The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

Scott McGaugh Why did I love this book?

This book shines a spotlight on the humanitarian side of war, seemingly mutually exclusive concepts. Yet those who suffer the most often raise to the greatest heights of sacrifice in rescuing others. A riveting tale, thoroughly researched and hard to put down.

By Gregory A. Freeman,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Forgotten 500 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The astonishing, never before told story of the greatest rescue mission of World War II—when the OSS set out to recover more than 500 airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia...

During a bombing campaign over Romanian oil fields, hundreds of American airmen were shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. Local Serbian farmers and peasants risked their own lives to give refuge to the soldiers while they waited for rescue, and in 1944, Operation Halyard was born. The risks were incredible. The starving Americans in Yugoslavia had to construct a landing strip large enough for C-47 cargo planes—without tools, without alerting…


Book cover of Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission

Scott McGaugh Why did I love this book?

This book reads as a gripping thriller rooted in gruesome fact in the Philippine jungle. I’ve read this book several times for inspiration in crafting my books. A great balance between the necessary detail to establish the context and the laser focus on remarkable devotion to duty.

By Hampton Sides,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Ghost Soldiers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “The greatest World War II story never told” (Esquire)—an enthralling account of the heroic mission to rescue the last survivors of the Bataan Death March.

On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected U.S. troops slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty rugged miles to rescue 513 POWs languishing in a hellish camp, among them the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. A recent prison massacre by Japanese soldiers elsewhere in the Philippines made the stakes impossibly high and left little time to plan the complex operation.

In Ghost Soldiers Hampton Sides vividly…


Don't forget about my book 😀

Honor Before Glory: The Epic World War II Story of the Japanese American GIs Who Rescued the Lost Battalion

By Scott McGaugh,

Book cover of Honor Before Glory: The Epic World War II Story of the Japanese American GIs Who Rescued the Lost Battalion

What is my book about?

The riveting true story of Japanese Americans who volunteer In World War II from behind internment camp barbed wire for a segregated army commanded by white officers, and who become the most-decorated unit of its size in the war. The book focuses on the rescue of a “lost battalion” after other units had failed and its movie rights have been optioned.

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The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower

By Robert F. Barsky,

Book cover of The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower

Robert F. Barsky Author Of Clamouring for Legal Protection: What the Great Books Teach Us about People Fleeing from Persecution

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Writer Professor of Humanities Borders Radicalist

Robert's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter—voted “most important public intellectual in the world today” in a 2005 magazine poll—Chomsky inspires fanatical devotion and fierce vituperation.

In The Chomsky Effect, Chomsky biographer Robert Barsky examines Chomsky's positions on a number of highly charged issues—including Vietnam, Israel, East Timor, and his work in linguistics—that illustrate not only “the Chomsky effect” but also “the Chomsky approach.”

Chomsky, writes Barsky, is an inspiration and a catalyst. Not just an analyst…

The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower

By Robert F. Barsky,

What is this book about?

"People are dangerous. If they're able to involve themselves in issues that matter, they may change the distribution of power, to the detriment of those who are rich and privileged."--Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter--voted "most important public intellectual in the world today" in a 2005 magazine poll--Chomsky inspires fanatical devotion and fierce vituperation. In The Chomsky Effect, Chomsky biographer Robert Barsky examines Chomsky's positions on a number of highly charged issues--Chomsky's signature issues,…


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