Here are 100 books that The Cloudbuster Nine fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m an “Army brat” who attended five different middle and high schools, graduated from West Point (where I majored in international history), and later attended law school. The law is my profession, but writing is my avocation, and I’ve been fortunate to have several military histories published. I reside in Birmingham, Alabama, with my wife, our youngest son, and two untrained, incorrigible dogs. As far as my latest book is concerned, they like to say at West Point that “the history that we teach was made by people we taught.” In my case, I guess it was “the history I wrote about was made by people wearing the same uniform that I wore.”
On November 29, 1941, Army played Navy in their annual football classic. But, eight days later, the United States was suddenly at war. The All Americans follows four of the men who played in that fateful Army-Navy game—two from West Point, and two from Annapolis—through the next four years of war. Anderson’s book was clearly a labor of love and it reminds the reader of the words of Douglas MacArthur: “Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown that seeds that, on other fields, on other days, will bear the fruits of victory.”
On November 29, 1941, Army played Navy in front of 100,000 fans. Eight days later, the Japanese attacked and the young men who battled each other in that historic game were forced to fight a very different enemy. Author Lars Anderson follows four players-two from Annapolis and two from West Point-in this epic true story, The All Americans.
Bill Busik: Growing up in Pasadena, California, Busik was best friends with a young black man named Jackie, who in 1947 would make Major League Baseball history. Busik would have a spectacular sports career himself at the Naval Academy, earning All-American honors…
I’m an “Army brat” who attended five different middle and high schools, graduated from West Point (where I majored in international history), and later attended law school. The law is my profession, but writing is my avocation, and I’ve been fortunate to have several military histories published. I reside in Birmingham, Alabama, with my wife, our youngest son, and two untrained, incorrigible dogs. As far as my latest book is concerned, they like to say at West Point that “the history that we teach was made by people we taught.” In my case, I guess it was “the history I wrote about was made by people wearing the same uniform that I wore.”
1942’s Rose Bowl game was moved, in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, from Pasadena, California, to safer environs on the East Coast in Durham, North Carolina. In North Carolina, Oregon State beat host Duke 20-16, but even greater—and far more deadly—contests were ahead for the team’s players. Brian Curtis takes his readers from the Rose Bowl to the battles ultimately fought in Italy, Normandy, the Ardennes, and the Pacific.
Shortly after this unforgettable game, many of the players and coaches entered the military and went on to serve around the world on famous battlegrounds, from Iwo Jima and Okinawa to Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, where fate and destiny would bring them back together on faraway battlefields, fighting on the same team.
I’m an “Army brat” who attended five different middle and high schools, graduated from West Point (where I majored in international history), and later attended law school. The law is my profession, but writing is my avocation, and I’ve been fortunate to have several military histories published. I reside in Birmingham, Alabama, with my wife, our youngest son, and two untrained, incorrigible dogs. As far as my latest book is concerned, they like to say at West Point that “the history that we teach was made by people we taught.” In my case, I guess it was “the history I wrote about was made by people wearing the same uniform that I wore.”
You probably know Eric Liddell’s story from the film Chariots of Fire—or, at least the first part of his story, leading up to his triumph in the 1924 Olympics in Paris. In many ways, however, Liddell’s following twenty years—mostly spent as a missionary in China—were even more impressive. Hamilton’s book takes Liddell’s story through those two decades and into his final, and fatal, five years of quiet, stoic heroism and leadership in a Japanese internment camp.
"Hamilton is a guarantee of quality." -Financial Times
"Duncan Hamilton's compelling biography puts flesh on the legend and paints a vivid picture of not only a great athlete, but also a very special human being." -Daily Mail
The untold and inspiring story of Eric Liddell, hero of Chariots of Fire, from his Olympic medal to his missionary work in China to his last, brave years in a Japanese work camp during WWII
Many people will remember Eric Liddell as the Olympic gold medalist from the Academy Award winning film Chariots of Fire. Famously, Liddell would not run on Sunday because…
The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.
This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United States…
I’m an “Army brat” who attended five different middle and high schools, graduated from West Point (where I majored in international history), and later attended law school. The law is my profession, but writing is my avocation, and I’ve been fortunate to have several military histories published. I reside in Birmingham, Alabama, with my wife, our youngest son, and two untrained, incorrigible dogs. As far as my latest book is concerned, they like to say at West Point that “the history that we teach was made by people we taught.” In my case, I guess it was “the history I wrote about was made by people wearing the same uniform that I wore.”
The Eagles were a collection of Japanese American youth interned, with their families, at a relocation camp at the base of Heart Mountain, outside of Cody, Wyoming. In the fall of 1943, they embarked upon an undefeated high school football season, although their triumphs were tempered by the injustice of their families’ incarceration and, ironically, the looming threat of the graduating seniors being drafted into the same military that guarded the perimeter of their camp. Pearson’s is a disturbing, but ultimately uplifting, look at a dark chapter in America’s history.
“One of Ten Best History Books of 2021.” —Smithsonian Magazine
For fans of The Boys in the Boat and The Storm on Our Shores, this impeccably researched, deeply moving, never-before-told “tale that ultimately stands as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit” (Garrett M. Graff, New York Times bestselling author) about a World War II incarceration camp in Wyoming and its extraordinary high school football team.
In the spring of 1942, the United States government forced 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes in California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona and sent them to incarceration camps across the West. Nearly…
Typically, we follow sports only on the playing field. I share that interest but I’ve become fascinated by sports off the field, and how they influence and reflect American society. After my fanatical baseball-playing childhood, I pursued an academic career, teaching and writing books and essays on politics and history, and wondering why it wasn’t more rewarding. Then I rediscovered sports, and returned again to my childhood passion of baseball. I began teaching a popular baseball course as a mirror on American culture. And I began writing about baseball and society, recently completing my sixth baseball book. The books recommended here will help readers to see baseball with new eyes.
There’s a neglected history of baseball’s relationship with U.S. foreign and military policy, for better or worse. Prior to World War II, the sport was used as a form of baseball diplomacy between two baseball-loving nations: the U.S. and Japan, to hopefully forestall war. It helped but not enough.
Amidst the diplomacy was something more surreptitious. On the frequent U.S. baseball tours of Japan in the 1930s, a marginal ballplayer who happened to speak Japanese secretly filmed Tokyo and other cities for the OSS. Moe Berg was an American spy who used baseball as his cover and whose films facilitated the U.S. counterattack after Pearl Harbor.
A remarkable polymath, Berg later spied for the CIA in Latin America. This is his fascinating story.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER Now a major motion picture starring Paul Rudd
“A delightful book that recounts one of the strangest episodes in the history of espionage. . . . . Relentlessly entertaining.”—The New York Times Book Review
Moe Berg is the only major-league baseball player whose baseball card is on display at the headquarters of the CIA. For Berg was much more than a third-string catcher who played on several major league teams between 1923 and 1939. Educated at Princeton and the Sorbonne, he as reputed to speak a dozen languages (although it was also said he couldn't hit in any…
As the author of 73 published books, I have four goals for writing. I want to write more women into history, emphasize how everyday activities children accomplish are important, empower young readers, and tell a story that moves readers, either through an emotional response or the knowledge that they can do what whoever I wrote about did. My biographies cover role models who have been groundbreakers in their time and place. Readers can be, too.
I love to read (and write) about talented, dedicated females.
This middle-grade biography about Dottie Kamenshek tells of how one talented woman of many dazzled spectators in the groundbreaking All-American Girls Softball League. Her talent lifted the spirits of a nation worried about men drafted into the military to fight during World War II.
What started as a stunt to keep viewers while male players were away turned into an amazing experiment where female athletes could shine. Go Kammie!
Dorothy Mary Kamenshek was born to immigrant parents in Norwood, Ohio. As a young girl, she played pickup games of sandlot baseball with neighborhood children; no one, however, would have suspected that at the age of seventeen she would become a star athlete at the national level.
The outbreak of World War II and the ensuing draft of able-bodied young men severely depleted the ranks of professional baseball players. In 1943, Philip K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, led the initiative to establish a new league-a women's league-to fill the ballparks while the war ground on in Europe and…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…
No one really knows who invented baseball. Games involving balls hit with sticks, runners, and bases are as old as time. By the middle of the 1800s, everybody in America was playing baseball. And I mean everybody—girls, boys, women, and men from all walks of life and heritage. While researching baseball history for The House That Ruth Built, I read stacks of baseball books about baseball legends—for the most part, White players like Babe Ruth or Black players like Jackie Robinson who broke the color barrier. I was surprised and delighted when I came across books about baseball players who represented the rest of everybody—hence this list.
Baseball fans of today, watching Shohei Ohtani and other players of Japanese heritage, might find it difficult to imagine how during World War Two, thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but that’s the world as it was.
Shorty and his father’s efforts to build a baseball diamond and form a league while imprisoned is the story of determination, overcoming adversity, and gaining self-respect, told simply and heartfully.
Best Multicultural Title - Cuffies Award, Publisher's Weekly Choices, Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) Editor's Choice, San Francisco Chronicle Not Just for Children Anymore Selection, Children's Book Council
Twenty-five years ago, Baseball Saved Us changed the picture-book landscape with its honest story of a Japanese American boy in an internment camp during World War II. This anniversary edition will introduce new readers to this modern-day classic.
One day my dad looked out at the endless desert and decided then and there to build a baseball field.
"Shorty" and his family, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans, have been forced…
I’m a Kiwi who has spent most of the past three decades in Asia. My books include Formosan Odyssey, You Don't Know China, and Taiwan in 100 Books. I live in a small town in southern Taiwan with my Taiwanese wife. When not writing, reading, or lusting over maps, I can be found on the abandoned family farm slashing jungle undergrowth (and having a sly drink).
Taiwan’s national sport helped forge a national identity and provided succor when the country was becoming increasingly isolated on the international stage. Between the years that saw the PRC take the China seat at the United Nations and Washington switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, Taiwan’s Little Leaguers enjoyed one of the greatest sporting runs of all time; from 1971 to 1981 they went unbeaten at the annual LLB championship in Williamsport. A whole generation of Taiwanese grew up rooting for these schoolboy teams, and among them was author Junwei Yu. He describes the history of baseball in Taiwan with passion and expertise, yet is not afraid to douse nostalgia with a cold bucket of scandal. An enjoyable read, even for non-baseball fans such as myself.
Despite the political instability characterizing twentieth-century Taiwan, the value of baseball in the lives of Taiwanese has been a constant since the game was introduced in 1895. The game first gained popularity on the island under the Japanese occupation, and that popularity continued after World War II despite the withdrawal of the Japanese and an official lack of support from the new state power, the Chinese Nationalist Party. The remarkable success of Taiwanese Little League teams in the 1970s and 1980s cemented Taiwan's relationship with the game. Taiwanese native Junwei Yu's Playing in Isolation presents a comprehensive account of that…
After more than thirty years of teaching Russian literature and culture at Yale and Harvard, and publishing numerous academic articles and monographs, I switched to writing historical biographies for a general audience. The catalyst was my discovery of Frederick Bruce Thomas, the remarkable son of former slaves in Mississippi who became a multimillionaire impresario in tsarist Moscow and the “Sultan of Jazz” in Constantinople. This resulted in The Black Russian, a widely praised biography that is now well on track to being made into a TV series. I am always drawn to stories of people whose grit makes them rebel against the limits that life seems to impose and allows them to achieve something transcendent.
Because it’s the amazing story of how a supremely gifted and charismatic young Black man overcame his impoverished background and the racism endemic in the United States to break the color barrier in the national sport—baseball, and became an iconic figure in the struggle for civil rights. Rampersad’s unprecedented access to Robinson’s papers allowed him to paint a detailed, intimate, and moving portrait of a courageous and defiant man.
The extraordinary life of Jackie Robinson is illuminated as never before in this full-scale biography by Arnold Rampersad, who was chosen by Jack's widow, Rachel, to tell her husband's story, and was given unprecedented access to his private papers. We are brought closer than we have ever been to the great ballplayer, a man of courage and quality who became a pivotal figure in the areas of race and civil rights.
Born in the rural South, the son of a sharecropper, Robinson was reared in southern California. We see him blossom there as a student-athlete as he struggled against poverty…
From the author of Washington’s Spies, the thrilling story of two rival secret agents — one Confederate, the other Union — sent to Britain during the Civil War.
The South’s James Bulloch, charming and devious, was ordered to acquire a clandestine fleet intended to break Lincoln’s blockade, sink Northern…
I am a historian of the U.S. South. While writing a biography of Mississippi Governor William Winter, I discovered that a factor contributing to his future racial moderation was his service as an instructor of black troops in World War II’s segregated military. While historians have long recognized that WWII changed the region, I wanted to know more about how wartime economic and military mobilization impacted the South and Southerners. I explored some little-known wartime case studies, such as stories about the Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the Bell Bomber Aircraft Plant in Marietta, Georgia, and the Black 364th Infantry Regiment story.
Three years before Jackie Robinson desegregated Major League Baseball in 1947, he took another stand for civil rights.
While training with the 761st Tank Battalion at Camp Hood in Texas, Robinson refused the order of a civilian bus driver to move to the back of the bus, as well as the demand from a white captain (his superior officer) that he follow the bus driver’s direction. This book ably tells the story of this little-known event and the court-martial of Robinson that followed.
Robinson was acquitted, but his court-martial kept him from being deployed to Europe with the 761st, service that could have derailed his future baseball career. In addition to the narrative, I appreciated the appendix, which provides a collection of interesting documents, including the court-martial trial transcript.
Eleven years before Rosa Parks resisted going to the back of the bus, a young black second lieutenant, hungry to fight Nazis in Europe, refused to move to the back of a U.S. Army bus in Texas and found himself court-martialed. The defiant soldier was Jack Roosevelt Robinson, already in 1944 a celebrated athlete in track and football and in a few years the man who would break Major League Baseball's color barrier. This was the pivotal moment in Jackie Robinson's pre-MLB career. Had he been found guilty, he would not have been the man who broke baseball's color barrier.…
