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The incredible wartime saga of the only American submariners to survive the sinking of their ship and evade enemy capture in WWII On the night of August 13, 1944, the U.S. submarine Flier struck a mine in the Sulu Sea in the southern Philippines as it steamed along the surface. All but fifteen of the more than eighty-strong crew went down with the vessel. Of those left floating in the dark, eight survived by swimming for seventeen hours before washing ashore on an uninhabited island. The story o...

US Defence Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom examines the thirty-year transformation in American military thought and defence strategy that spanned from 1973 through 2003. During these three decades, new technology and operational practices helped form what observers dubbed a 'Revolution in Military Affairs' in the 1990s and a 'New American Way of War' in the 2000s. Robert R. Tomes tells for the first time the story of how innovative approaches to solving battlefield challenges...

While faith in the Enlightenment was waning elsewhere by 1850, at the United States Military Academy at West Point and in the minds of academy graduates serving throughout the country Enlightenment thinking persisted, asserting that war was governable by a grand theory accessible through the study of military science. Officers of the regular army and instructors at the military academy and their political superiors all believed strongly in the possibility of acquiring a perfect knowledge of war...

This work offers a full-length, popular history of the American War of Independence - the "cruel accursed war" that changed the world forever. The story of this war has usually been told in terms of a conflict between blundering British generals and their rigidly disciplined red-coated troops on the one side, and heroic American patriots in homespun shirts and coonskin caps on the other. Here, the author portrays the realities of a war condemned by thousands of Americans, in which George Washing...

ARCO's #1 seller, fully updated to reflect major revisions to the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Now offered with CD!

The Marines of First Battalion, Ninth Marines earned their macabre moniker 'The Walking Dead' in the Vietnam War. _Into Helmand with the Walking Dead_ follows the experiences of two Marine infantrymen from 1/9 fighting in Afghanistan. Following the 11 September attacks in 2001, Operation Enduring Freedom catalysed the longest war in United States history. The lives of thousands of Afghans, Americans, and many others were forever altered due to the ensuing war. The book is a brutally honest port...

On April 15th 1861, the day after the fall of Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to enlist for three months' service to defend the Union. This 90-day period proved entirely unrealistic and was followed by further, and much more extensive, mobilizations. Despite this, for the first few months the defence of the Capitol depended heavily on a hastily gathered, but extremely loyal, army of militiamen and volunteers. Mostly inexperienced, poorly trained, weakly...

On the morning of April 10, 1963, the world's most advanced submarine was on a test dive off the New England coast when she sent a message to a support ship a thousand feet above her on the surface: experiencing minor problem . . . have positive angle . . . attempting to blow . . . Then came the sounds of air under pressure and a garbled message: . . . test depth . . . Last came the eerie sounds that experienced navy men knew from World War II: the sounds of a submarine breaking up and compartm...

From America's preeminent military historian, Stephen E. Ambrose, comes the definitive telling of the war in Europe, from D-Day, June 6, 1944, to the end, eleven months later, on May 7, 1945. This authoritative narrative account is drawn by the author himself from his five acclaimed books about that conflict, most particularly from the definitive and comprehensive D-Day and Citizen Soldiers, about which the great Civil War historian James McPherson wrote, "If there is a better book about the ex...

“I have now nothing to trouble your Lordship with, but an affair that happened on the 19th instant . . .” General Thomas Gage penned the above line to his superiors in London, casually summing up the shots fired at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The history of the Battles of Lexington and Concord were the culmination of years of unrest between those loyal to the British monarchy and those advocating for more autonomy and dreaming of independence from Great Britain in the futre. On th...

The 7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th Georgia volunteer infantry regiments spent most of the Civil War fighting under Brig. Gen. George Thomas “Tige” Anderson in Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Until now, no biographical roster of their members has ever been published. These Georgians saw it all, from the bloody battle of First Manassas through the ferocious combat of Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and the long siege of Petersburg. They finally furl...

Now in paperback, Glory or the Grave: The Breakthrough, the Union Collapse, and the Defense of Horseshoe Ridge, September 20, 1863 is the second volume in The Chickamauga Campaign, David Powell’s magnificent three-volume study of this overlooked and often misunderstood campaign. Chickamauga (Cherokee for “River of Death”), lived up to its grim sobriquet in September 1863 when the Union Army of the Cumberland and Confederate Army of Tennessee waged a sprawling bloody combat along the banks of W...

The end of the War of 1812 brought with it great political, economic, and social upheaval. The sixth and final book of the Upper Canada Preserved - War of 1812 series, The Ashes of War examines in detail the closing stages of the war on the Northern Frontier, including the two-month siege of Fort Erie, the engagement at Cook's Mills, the American attempt to recapture Michilimackinac (Mackinac), the tale of the Nancy, and the American raids into southwestern Upper Canada. It explores the impact t...

The First Battle of Manassas claimed the lives of approximately 878 soldiers and wounded another 2,489. With a battlefield stretching nearly five miles, 15,000 Union and 14,000 Confederate soldiers clashed for four fateful days, many of them young and terrified and receiving their first taste of a long and bitter war. Their courage, military skill, and brute strength were tested, leading some brigades and many individuals to receive reputations that followed them into history. Now, for the first...