I work in aviation, so it was natural to write about it when I started as a freelance writer. But I quickly realized that writing about aviation people is much more interesting than writing about airplanes. Because of my military background I found myself writing veterans’ stories. I’ve uncovered many stories that have never been told or have been forgotten over the years. And because I was in the Air Force in the 1980s and 1990s, I knew the events in my new book had never been told. During my research, I found more books with hidden histories and rediscovered some I read decades ago. This list is my favorites.
This book represents another facet of military women, those with a double whammy: Black women. This was especially a problem during WWII, when the army still practiced segregation and initially prohibited Black women from serving overseas, unlike their white counterparts.
After pressure from groups such as the NAACP and intervention by President Roosevelt, the army formed the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion as an all-Black Women’s Army Corps unit. About 850 women served in the 6888th, which was stationed in the UK and France from January 1945 until March 1946. The unit was responsible for routing mail to about 7 million U.S. personnel who served in the European Theater of Operations.
This “double whammy” is a topic that I hope is explored more in future books!
The story of the historic 6888th, the first United States Women's Army Corps unit of African American women to serve overseas
While African American men and white women were invited, if belatedly, to serve their country abroad, African American women were excluded for overseas duty throughout most of WWII. However, under political pressure from legislators like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the NAACP, the Black press, and even President Roosevelt, the US War Department was forced to deploy African American women to the European theater in 1945.
African American women answered the call to serve from all over the country, from…
A Canadian academic, Michael J. Prince is an award-winning author in the field of modern politics, government, and public policy. The Lansdowne Professor of Social Policy at the University of Victoria, he has written widely on issues of disability activism and social change, including on veterans and their families. He is co-author, with Pamela Moss, ofWeary Warriors: Power, Knowledge, and the Invisible Wounds of Soldiers, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014.
As American veterans and academics, both authors personally and professionally know the subject of modern warfare, stress disorders, and military mental health. This book examines the invisible injuries of psychiatric casualties from combat. The authors scrutinize what they call the dark side of military mental health and, in considerable detail, expose this darkness, which they show to be systemic and multifaceted in how it inflicts wounds on military personnel. The book ends with options for changing military mental healthcare and moving toward a resilient and mentally healthy military. I appreciate this book because it demonstrates from the perspective of insiders how military culture and practices continue to harm those veterans with invisible wounds.
The psychological toll of war is vast, and the social costs of war's psychiatric casualties extend even further. Yet military mental health care suffers from extensive waiting lists, organizational scandals, spikes in veteran suicide, narcotic overprescription, shortages of mental health professionals, and inadequate treatment. The prevalence of conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder is often underestimated, and there remains entrenched stigma and fear of being diagnosed. Even more alarming is how the military dismisses or conceals the significance and extent of the mental health crisis.
The trauma experts Mark C. Russell and Charles Figley offer an impassioned and meticulous critique…
My passion for this topic is my background as a military wife, daughter, sister, niece, and mother of men and women who served. I'm also a descendant of men who fought in the American Revolution and women who remained strong on the home front. Moving around the country as a military wife and mother gave me an inside understanding of some of the hardships and difficulties faced by women throughout American history. It’s important to share how women helped shaped this country and supported the military men and women who fought for the freedoms we have and need to continue to preserve. I've been weaving in historical stories into my current devotional series and articles.
These heartfelt prayers for the military loved ones who serve and the reader provides a faith connection and hope for those at home. It also helps the member serving to know they someone at home cares and prays for them. As a mother of a son who served, Edie wrote these first for herself and then shared them for readers who also have a family member serving. Her authenticity in the prayers reveals the emotions of one who knows she has someone in harm’s way and also shares the joy of their homecoming from each tour. I met Edie after one of her sons served and see her great compassion for those who have a friend or family member currently serving.
With over 2.3 million active and reserve military personnel, there are many families who are waiting at home and praying for their well being. While My Soldier Serves Hardcover Journal is the perfect place to record your thoughtful prayers and meditations. Whether you are praying for the needs of your soldier such as for wisdom, faith, and protection, or for the challenges you face on the homefront, including fear, loneliness, and patience, these lightly lined pages with inspirational quotes throughout invite and encourage you to keep your soldier close to your heart.
I never thought I’d become a historian of the US military. Like most Americans raised in the era of the All-Volunteer Force, I grew up with no close personal connections to the US military. Yet its symbols, metaphors, and power flooded my life, from movies to games to politics. Every encounter with a memoir, an operational history, a biography, or a government study offered a new understanding of how the US military came to play such a vital role in US society, and how US society in turn shaped practices and people in the military. These five histories did more than any others to shape my understanding of the military’s relationship to American society in the twentieth century.
A classic work of war and society by a brilliant scholar of the gay experience during World War II. This deeply researched, lively book tells the personal stories of the gay men and women who were swept into military service in the 1940s. Berube documents how wartime induction put the military at the forefront of defining concepts of homosexuality at mid-century, and he describes the ambiguities and ambivalences that wartime service produced, both for the military and for gay service personnel. While the war brought hundreds of thousands of queer young people together and allowed them chances to create a vibrant new gay life, the military also grew increasingly repressive about homosexuality and instituted policies and practices to diagnose, disparage, and discharge gay men and women.
During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding antihomosexual policies and procedures of the military. In Coming Out Under Fire , Allan Berube examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontation--not as a story of how the military victimized homosexuals, but as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed between gay citizens and their government, transforming them both. Drawing on GIs' wartime letters, extensive interviews with gay veterans, and declassified military documents, Berube…
Almost all of my books have been historical novels, but this one is the one most dear to me, an attempt to understand the fault line that the Vietnam War laid across American society, leaving almost every man of my generation with scars physical or psychic. My picks are all books that illuminate the multiple upheavals of that time.
Winter Soldiers offers firsthand accounts of more than thirty of members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, some of whom first joined the military with a deep belief in the rightness of America’s role in that conflict.
Eventually they made common cause with the protesters against the war and their voices had a role in its ending. Winter Soldiersfollows them from their lives before the war, through their service, and into its aftermath.
In 1971, Vietnam veterans testified in public hearings about atrocities they had participated in or witnessed during the war. Here, Stacewicz seeks to tell their story by interviewing more than 30 members of Vietnam Veterans Against War and draws on their archives for supporting evidence.
Professor Elie Wiesel was instrumental in my translating and researching my mother’s journals. My awakening to the dark period in the chapter of the Jewish history happened between 1971-1974 at CCNY, when our paths crossed while I was taking his classes at the department of Jewish studies. It was in his classes that the things that bewildered me as a child growing up in communist Poland in the shadows of the Holocaust aftermath started to make sense. I asked my mother to commit to paper the painful memories, she buried deep inside her. She and the next generations have an obligation to bear witness, to be this history's keepers.
Remembering the heroes, Witold Pilecki got himself arrested. After two and half years as a prisoner in Auschwitz, he escaped. He witnessed the brutality, the mass gassing of Europe’s Jews, thousands each day. He was among the first to set off the alarms that Auschwitz was the epicenter of the Nazis' plan to exterminate Europe’s Jews.
COSTA BOOK AWARD WINNER: BOOK OF THE YEAR • #1 SUNDAY TIMES (UK) BESTSELLER
“Superbly written and breathtakingly researched, The Volunteer smuggles us into Auschwitz and shows us—as if watching a movie—the story of a Polish agent who infiltrated the infamous camp, organized a rebellion, and then snuck back out. ... Fairweather has dug up a story of incalculable value and delivered it to us in the most compelling prose I have read in a long time.” —Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and Tribe
The incredible true story of a Polish resistance fighter’s infiltration of Auschwitz to sabotage…
I’ve devoted my career to helping people achieve their potential and improve their wellbeing. One of the greatest challenges we’re all facing today is the highly unnatural world of work in which we all must perform. I’ve been fortunate both to lead large teams in this environment and to guide the Fortune 1000 on how to help their people thrive in its midst. Achieving sustainable peak performance requires that we understand what we are up against. This book list is a great place to start!
Quite a lot about what the defining forces in today’s world of work became clear to our military leaders many decades ago. Warfare was once centralized, linear, and choreographed. Modern war is fragmented, dynamic, and unpredictable. The term VUCA itself came from the military.
Scales is one of our greatest military thinkers leading the way on how we should be approaching soldier readiness in this new reality. We need to think much more about psychological agility and resilience so that the front lines are enabled to respond to an unforeseeable challenge. He’s ahead of the corporate curve in this thinking, but just by a hair.
Scales on War is a collection of ideas, concepts, and observations aboutcontemporary war taken from over thirty years of research, writing, andpersonal experience by retired Major General Bob Scales. Scales' unique styleof writing utilizes contemporary military history, current events, and hisphilosophy of ground warfare to create a very personal and expansive view ofthe future direction of American defense policies.
Each chapter in the book addresses a distinct topic facing the upcomingprospects of America's military, including tactical ground warfare, future gazing,the draft, and the role of women in the infantry. Fusing all of these topicstogether is Scales' belief that, throughout its…
I served for seven years in the Irish Reserve Defence Forces, finishing as a weapons specialist in the infantry. I’m very grateful for the time I served in uniform and the lifelong lessons I learned that have helped me in my personal and professional life. Being a lifelong fan of military science fiction, I wrote Big Red from the point of view of a young Irish soldier thrown into a genocidal war on Mars. I’m a co-founder of the British and Irish Writing Community and our online magazine Bard of the Isles.
Ireland is known as the land of a thousand welcomes, but most people aren’t aware of its sixty unbroken years of Peacekeeping duty with the UN and even less know of its elite special forces unit known as the Army Ranger Wing (ARW).
The ARW is seen by many as one of the most effective special forces in operation. Shadow Warriors gives an in depth look into the history of the ARW, set up against the backdrop of rising instances of international terrorism and its deployment in a variety of roles across dozens of countries. This is an easy and straightforward read for anyone interested in military related books.
In the spring of 1980, the Irish Department of Defence sanctioned the establishment of a new unit within the Irish Defence Forces and the Irish Army Ranger Wing (ARW) came into being. In the decades that followed, its soldiers have been deployed on active service at home and abroad, generally without the knowledge of the wider public. The ARW is made up of seasoned men from across the island, who are selected through tough competition. Only the best of the best make it through and are trained in an extraordinary range of specialist skills. Being one of these elite operators…
War is a horror story, laying bare the harm that humankind is capable of. Being a stubborn historian, I set myself the task of finding humanity in the face of conflict. I am especially intrigued by first-hand accounts that leave little to the imagination, yet I am not drawn to record the distress of the individual, but rather the ability to live through a war and find peace. I am a South African historian with a PhD from Stellenbosch University. I write about individuals in war, and I am determined to give a voice to those South African servicemen who were forgotten when they came home in 1945.
Many war graves in Italy are inscribed with South African names, attesting to the hard-won victories and the tragic losses of the 6th Armoured Division in Italy.
As a stickler for detail, I was impressed by Bourhill’s descriptions and meticulous attention to the minutia that makes for an immersive reading experience. It is especially the first-hand accounts of servicemen that bring this book to life and give a clear picture of what it was like to fight and live in Italy during the war.
Using archival sources and private documents recently unearthed, Come Back to Portofino chronicles the journey taken by volunteers in the 6th South African Armoured Division. From training camps in Egypt through to the blissful summer of 1945 the 'Div' left its mark on towns and villages across Italy. From Monte Cassino to the outskirts of Venice and the River Po, the campaign lasted exactly twelve months.
During the advance through Rome up to Florence, it was a case of constant movement and violent contact with the enemy. Experiences which left an enduring impression on returned soldiers included the periods of…
I’m pretty well qualified to provide you with a list of five great books about men at war because, frankly, I’ve spent half my life reading them and the other half trying to write them (you be the judge!). My degree in Military Studies was focused on the question of what makes men endure the lunacy of war (whether they be ‘goodies’ or ‘baddies’), and it was in fiction that I found some of the clearest answers–clue: it’s often less about country and duty and more about the love of the men alongside the soldier. In learning how to write, I also learned how to recognize great–enjoy!
If the other four books I’ve recommended are founded in grim reality, this one’s that guilty pleasure that an ancient world author might not want to be caught reading. But, if war is a timeless and undeniable fact of human existence—and it seems to be right now—then Marko Kloos’s story of men and women at war in the 22nd century, with an enigmatic alien species as the enemy, is pretty much timeless, too.
Yes, there’s a high-tech kit, but it’s never the McGuffin, and the same themes as ever—duty, honor, and the planet—come to the fore. Easy to read but never lazy, I found this series as gripping as the others. If you (like me) read a lot of historical fiction but have a soft spot for sci-fi, then this is about as highly recommended as they come.
"There is nobody who does [military SF] better than Marko Kloos. His Frontlines series is a worthy successor to such classics as Starship Troopers, The Forever War, and We All Died at Breakaway Station." -George R. R. Martin
The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements: You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world . . . or you can join the service.
