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Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II
by Evan ThomasA riveting, immersive account of the agonizing decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan—a crucial turning point in World War II and geopolitical history—with you-are-there immediacy by the New York Times bestselling author of Ike&’s Bluff and Sea of Thunder.&“As Christopher Nolan&’s movie Oppenheimer shows, the shockwaves reverberate still. The veteran biographer Evan Thomas now enters the debate.&”—The Wall Street JournalAN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEARAt 9:20 a.m. on the morning of May 30, General Groves receives a message to report to the office of the secretary of war &“at once.&” Stimson is waiting for him. He wants to know: has Groves selected the targets yet?So begins this suspenseful, impeccably researched history that draws on new access to diaries to tell the story of three men who were intimately involved with America&’s decision to drop the atomic bomb—and Japan&’s decision to surrender. They are Henry Stimson, the American Secretary of War, who oversaw J. Robert Oppenheimer under the Manhattan Project; Gen. Carl &“Tooey&” Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in the Pacific, who supervised the planes that dropped the bombs; and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, the only one in Emperor Hirohito&’s Supreme War Council who believed even before the bombs were dropped that Japan should surrender. Henry Stimson had served in the administrations of five presidents, but as Oppenheimer&’s work progressed, he found himself tasked with the unimaginable decision of determining whether to deploy the bomb. The new president, Harry S. Truman, thus far a peripheral figure in the momentous decision, accepted Stimson&’s recommendation to drop the bomb. Army Air Force Commander Gen. Spaatz ordered the planes to take off. Like Stimson, Spaatz agonized over the command even as he recognized it would end the war. After the bombs were dropped, Foreign Minister Togo was finally able to convince the emperor to surrender.To bring these critical events to vivid life, bestselling author Evan Thomas draws on the diaries of Stimson, Togo and Spaatz, contemplating the immense weight of their historic decision. In Road to Surrender, an immersive, surprising, moving account, Thomas lays out the behind-the-scenes thoughts, feelings, motivations, and decision-making of three people who changed history.
Road to Valor: A True Story of WWII Italy, the Nazis, and the Cyclist Who Inspired a Nation
by Aili McConnon Andres McConnonRoad to Valor is the inspiring, against-the-odds story of Gino Bartali, the cyclist who made the greatest comeback in Tour de France history and secretly aided the Italian resistance during World War II. Gino Bartali is best known as an Italian cycling legend: the man who not only won the Tour de France twice, but also holds the record for the longest time span between victories. During the ten years that separated his hard-won triumphs, his actions, both on and off the racecourse, ensured him a permanent place in Italian hearts and minds. In Road to Valor, Aili and Andres McConnon chronicle Bartali’s journey, starting in impoverished rural Tuscany where a scrawny, mischievous boy painstakingly saves his money to buy a bicycle and before long, is racking up wins throughout the country. At the age of 24, he stuns the world by winning the Tour de France and becomes an international sports icon. But Mussolini’s Fascists try to hijack his victory for propaganda purposes, derailing Bartali’s career, and as the Nazis occupy Italy, Bartali undertakes secret and dangerous activities to help those being targeted. He shelters a family of Jews in an apartment he financed with his cycling winnings and is able to smuggle counterfeit identity documents hidden in his bicycle past Fascist and Nazi checkpoints because the soldiers recognize him as a national hero in training. After the grueling wartime years, Bartali fights to rebuild his career as Italy emerges from the rubble. In 1948, the stakes are raised when midway through the Tour de France, an assassination attempt in Rome sparks nationwide political protests and riots. Despite numerous setbacks and a legendary snowstorm in the Alps, the chain-smoking, Chianti-loving, 34-year-old underdog comes back and wins the most difficult endurance competition on earth. Bartali’s inspiring performance helps unite his fractured homeland and restore pride and spirit to a country still reeling from war and despair. Set in Italy and France against the turbulent backdrop of an unforgiving sport and threatening politics, Road to Valor is the breathtaking account of one man’s unsung heroism and his resilience in the face of adversity. Based on nearly ten years of research in Italy, France, and Israel, including interviews with Bartali’s family, former teammates, a Holocaust survivor Bartali saved, and many others, Road to Valor is the first book ever written about Bartali in English and the only book written in any language to fully explore the scope of Bartali’s wartime work. An epic tale of courage, comeback, and redemption, it is the untold story of one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century.
Road to War (My Story)
by Valerie WildingIt's 1917 and the Great War rages in Europe. When Daffy Rowntree's brother goes missing in action she refuses to sit safely in England, and determines to do something to help win the war. Soon she finds herself in the mud and horror of the battlefields of France, driving an ambulance transporting the wounded of the trenches...
Road to Yorktown, The: Jefferson, Lafayette and the British Invasion of Virginia
by John R. MaassIn 1781, Virginia was invaded by formidable British forces that sought to subdue the Old Dominion. Lieutenant General Charles, Lord Cornwallis, led thousands of enemy troops from Norfolk to Charlottesville, burning and pillaging. Many of Virginia's famed Patriots--including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and Nathanael Greene--struggled to defend the commonwealth. Only by concentrating a small band of troops under energetic French general the Marquis de Lafayette were American forces able to resist British operations. With strained support from Governor Jefferson's administration, Lafayette fought a campaign against the veteran soldiers of Lord Cornwallis that eventually led to the famed showdown at Yorktown. Historian John R. Maass traces this often overlooked Revolutionary struggle for Virginia and details each step on the road to Yorktown.
Roads: A Novel
by Marina Antropow CramerWhen Nazi forces occupy the beautiful coastal city of Yalta, Crimea, everything changes. Eighteen-year-old Filip has few options; he is a prime candidate for forced labor in Germany. His hurried marriage to his childhood friend Galina might grant him reprieve, but the rules keep shifting. Galina’s parents, branded as traitors for innocently doing business with the enemy, decide to volunteer in hopes of better placement. The work turns out to be horrific, but at least the family stays together. By winter 1945, Allied air raids destroy strategic sites; Dresden, a city of no military consequence, seems safe. The world knows Dresden’s fate. Roads is the story of one family lucky enough to escape with their lives as the city burns behind them. But as the war ends, they are separated and their trials continue. Looking for safety in an alien land, they move toward one another with the help of refugee networks and pure chance. Along the way, they find new ways to live in a changed world—new meanings for fidelity, grief, and love.
Roadside: My Journey to Iraq and the Long Road Home
by Dylan Park-PettifordA military memoir by a biracial child of refugees and survivors, Roadside is about life and death, about family lost and gained, and about America, as a dream and a reality. It's about the roads one takes to leave home and find it again. As a half-Black, half-Korean kid in Campbell, California, Dylan Park-Pettiford never really fit in, so he and his little brother Rory became joined at the hip. But after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, swept up in patriotism, Dylan enlisted in the US Air Force and was sent to Iraq, and the brothers were separated. There Dylan's days alternated between boredom and terror, and rare moments of levity and learning came thanks to an Iraqi boy named Brahim. Like Rory, Brahim was wise beyond his years, and he and Dylan bonded as much over rap music as about life. Over the following year, Dylan would bring Brahim food and toiletries to keep him going; Brahim would bring intel to keep Dylan and his friends alive. When they said goodbye at the end of Dylan's tour of duty, he knew it was for the last time. Or was it? Dylan returned to a world that had moved on without him. He would go through a soul-crushing divorce, a bout of homelessness, and struggles with prescription drugs, alcohol, and his own mental health. Eventually, he caught a few breaks and overcame the odds—until the violence Dylan thought he'd left in the Middle East followed him home.Just when his life was at its darkest, fate intervened again, but this time to orchestrate an impossible reunion. In a world marred by a seemingly endless wave of negativity, this story of love, loss, and brotherhood may offer a faint glimmer of hope as we face an uncertain future.
Roaring Fierce Soldier: Volume 1 (Volume 1 #1)
by Xiao Fenghe was the instructor of a mysterious troop and the number one soldier that all forces feared when he returned to the city and the dragons entered the sea he was also a prodigal who had fallen into the trap of millions of young ladies
Roaring Fierce Soldier: Volume 2 (Volume 2 #2)
by Xiao Fenghe was the instructor of a mysterious troop and the number one soldier that all forces feared when he returned to the city and the dragons entered the sea he was also a prodigal who had fallen into the trap of millions of young ladies
Roaring Fierce Soldier: Volume 3 (Volume 3 #3)
by Xiao FengHe was the instructor of a mysterious troop and the number one soldier that all forces feared when he returned to the city and the dragons entered the sea he was also a prodigal who had fallen into the trap of millions of young ladies.
Roaring Fierce Soldier: Volume 4 (Volume 4 #4)
by Xiao FengHe was the instructor of a mysterious troop and the number one soldier that all forces feared when he returned to the city and the dragons entered the sea he was also a prodigal who had fallen into the trap of millions of young ladies.
Roaring Fierce Soldier: Volume 5 (Volume 5 #5)
by Xiao FengHe was the instructor of a mysterious troop and the number one soldier that all forces feared when he returned to the city and the dragons entered the sea he was also a prodigal who had fallen into the trap of millions of young ladies.
Roaring Fierce Soldier: Volume 6 (Volume 6 #6)
by Xiao FengHe was the instructor of a mysterious troop and the number one soldier that all forces feared when he returned to the city and the dragons entered the sea he was also a prodigal who had fallen into the trap of millions of young ladies.
Roaring Fierce Soldier: Volume 7 (Volume 7 #7)
by Xiao FengHe was the instructor of a mysterious troop and the number one soldier that all forces feared when he returned to the city and the dragons entered the sea he was also a prodigal who had fallen into the trap of millions of young ladies.
Roaring Fierce Soldier: Volume 8 (Volume 8 #8)
by Xiao FengHe was the instructor of a mysterious troop and the number one soldier that all forces feared when he returned to the city and the dragons entered the sea he was also a prodigal who had fallen into the trap of millions of young ladies.
Roaring Fierce Soldier: Volume 9 (Volume 9 #9)
by Xiao FengHe was the instructor of a mysterious troop and the number one soldier that all forces feared when he returned to the city and the dragons entered the sea he was also a prodigal who had fallen into the trap of millions of young ladies.
Roaring Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Jet Age Trilogy #1)
by Walter J. BoyneThe story of the jet age of aviation revolves around remarkable geniuses including Sir Frank Whittle, the British inventor of the jet engine; Hans von Ohain, a German jet engine designer; famed aeronautical engineer Kelly Johnson; the daring test pilot Tex Johnston; and many more brilliant men who conceived early, extraordinary airplanes and had the courage to fly them to new horizons. Roaring Thunder blends real life adventures of the industry giants with the fictional Vance Shannon and his aviation family. Shannon, a prototypical American test pilot, sees and guides the birth of American jet aviation. His sons, Tom and Harry, fly the new jets in combat. Their aviation careers are blessed by skill and courage, and they help usher in the greatest advance in aviation history with the birth of the transport. The Shannons serve as counterparts to the real-life heroes, creating continuity and explaining the intricacies, successes, and setbacks of a brand new industry.This dramatic, accurate story of the beginning of the jet age is presented against a background of real and fictional personalities who bring the story to life.
Roaring Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Novels Of The Jet Age Ser.)
by Walter J. BoyneThe story of the jet age of aviation revolves around remarkable geniuses--including Sir Frank Whittle, the British inventor of the jet engine; Hans von Ohain, a German jet engine designer who comes to work for the U.S.; famed aeronautical engineer Kelly Johnson; the daring test pilot Tex Johnston, and many more--brilliant men who conceived these early extraordinary airplanes and had the courage to fly them to new horizons.Roaring Thunder blends real life adventures of the industry giants with the fictional Vance Shannon and his aviation family. Shannon, a prototypical American test pilot, sees and guides the birth of American jet aviation, while his sons, Tom and Harry fly the new jets in combat. Their aviation careers are blessed by their skill and courage, and they help usher in the greatest advance in aviation history with the birth of the jet transport. The Shannons serve as counterparts to the real-life heroes, creating continuity and explaining the intricacies, successes, and setbacks of a brand new industry.The dramatic, totally accurate story of the beginning of the jet age is presented against a background of personalities, real and fictional who bring the story to life, and represent the first stage in the first ever fiction trilogy about the history of the aerospace industry.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Robert A. Lovett And The Development Of American Air Power
by David M. JordanRobert Lovett grew up in Texas, went to Yale, and earned his wings as a naval air force hero in World War I. He played a key role in the development of the Army Air Force in World War II. His emphasis on strategic bombing was instrumental in defeating Hitler's Germany. During his postwar State Department service, he was influential in initiating the Marshall Plan, the formation of NATO and planning the Berlin Airlift. He served as Truman's Secretary of Defense during the Korean War, was a consultant for his friend Dwight Eisenhower and served John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Between tours of duty in Washington, he was an international banker on Wall Street. This first complete biography covers his life and career in detail.
Robert Bacon — Life And Letters [Illustrated Edition]
by Field-Marshal Earl Haig Elihu Root James Brown ScottNumerous portraits, prints and photographs throughout.Robert Bacon stands as one of the pivotal figures in the United States around the turn of the Twentieth Century. A native of Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard before becoming a senior figure at J.P. Morgan & Co, instrumental in brokering the deals that formed the U.S. Steel Corporation and the Northern Securities Company. Following a brief period of inactivity, he was named Assistant Secretary of State in 1905, a position he held until 1909. He was even acting Secretary of State in the absence of Elihu Root (who wrote the introduction to this book). After this, he was posted to the vital role of Ambassador to France in Paris as the storm clouds of the First World War started to appear, and, following a brief spell back in America, returned to work with the American Ambulance Service in France in 1914.Once America had committed to military involvement in the First World War, Bacon held various senior positions on General Pershing's staff. His post as Chief of the American Military Mission at British General Headquarters brought him into contact with Field Marshal Haig (who wrote a foreword to this book) and many of the other British generals.
Robert Baden-Powell: A Biography
by Lorraine GibsonRobert Baden-Powell was Britain’s first celebrity. A conflicted character - militarist and pacifist, macho man and drag artist, elitist and socialist - he was one of the 20th century’s most influential and, latterly, controversial Englishmen, finding fame not once, but twice – and for two very different reasons. Before donning his trademark shorts, the man known for inventing the Scouts is hailed a hero of the Second Boer War, the first military conflict covered in great detail by the media. Reports of his unconventional methods of holding a Boer army at bay, despite being woefully outnumbered, at the South African town of Mafeking, make global headlines and when he returns home to England, hordes of adoring fans pack London’s streets, waving flags and declaring him the Hero of Mafeking. The same ingenuity, reconnaissance skills and spectacular eccentricity that win him this military acclaim become the foundations of his second mission, that of saving Victorian boys from poverty and despair, and himself from having to grow up, by teaching them scouting. A youth movement is born which today boasts 54 million members throughout the world. This book examines Baden-Powell’s dual personality, or his ‘two lives’ as he called them, including his difficult childhood with a domineering and unaffectionate mother whom he loved even after she forced him into the army at 19, dashing his dreams of becoming an artist. It looks at his military career and his love of drama and at why protesters wanted to topple his statue on Poole Quay in the pandemic summer of 2020. It also considers a recently-discovered telegraph that adds fuel to the speculation over the nature of his relationship with a fellow-soldier that endured for 30 years - until he married a 22-year-old woman in secret when he was 55. Baden-Powell achieved great prominence, as well as notoriety, in both his military and scouting lives, driven largely by a constant yearning to win his mother’s approval.
Robert Burns: The Patriot Bard
by Patrick Scott HoggFollowing the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns (1759-96), Patrick Scott Hogg presents the greatest of Scotland's poets within the true context of his times. Exploding the Burns myth, Robert Burns: The Patriot Bard replaces the ram-stam lad of popular cliché with the real, living Burns - a Scottish patriot of the heart, an idealist who wished for 'Freedom and Liberty' for his beloved country, but also a man who was pragmatically a British patriot and risked his life for democratic reform. Here Burns is painted in his native colours as a highly complex, hyper-intelligent writer in both prose and poetry, not the semi-confused, contradictory simpleton of previous biographies. The fascinating legend of Burns as a ladies' man is placed where it should be - as less important than the message of the bard.The real day-to-day Burns was irascible, stubborn-minded, independent, controversial and opinionated. He detested many of his social superiors within the feudal order and attacked them as hypocrites and oppressors of the common people. The voice of Burns, always in the language of the people, and his idealist vision of a better world endeared him as a poet of humanity 'the world o'er'. Drawing from Burns' existing canon of poetry and letters, plus some newly attributed works suppressed for over two centuries, this life story is a roller-coaster narrative that charts the success and untimely death of the greatest songwriter of all time, the real Robert Burns.
Robert Craufurd: The Life and Times of Wellington's Wayward Martinet
by Ian FletcherTo most students of the Peninsular War the name Robert Craufurd evokes images of a battle-hardened martinet, flogging his men across Portugal and Spain, driving them hard and generally taking a tough stance against anything and everything that did not meet with his own strict disciplinarian code. But that is only a partial picture of this most complex character, and it is the other side of Craufurd’s personality that is revealed in this, the first full-length biography to be written in the last hundred years. Craufurd’s letters to his wife are published here for the first time, and they show that he was a far more interesting and varied man in his private life than he appeared to be on campaign. Ian Fletcher follows Craufurd’s controversial career from India, Ireland and South America to the Iberian Peninsula where he achieved immortality as one of Wellington’s finest generals.
Robert E. Lee
by Manfred WeidhornRobert E. Lee's life has been regarded as one of great honor and esteem and he has been a man admired for his loyalty, patriotism, and conduct as not only an American, but also a Virginian. And when he made the decision to turn down Lincoln's offer to command a large army of Union Soldiers in the war against the secession, and instead chose to extend his loyalty to the Confederate Army, his intentions were to defend his land and the people in Virginia and not to fight for either secession or slavery. Lee's patriotism of an unfamiliar shade confused some, but made consequential waves in the Civil War. He followed in the footsteps of his father, a Revolutionary War General, and is here portrayed by Weidhorn as the "finest general of the Civil War", a title he honorably earned.
Robert E. Lee In Texas
by Carl Coke RisterRobert E. Lee In Texas introduces a little known phase of the great General's career--his service in Texas during the four turbulent years just preceding the Civil War--at Camp Cooper, watching the federal government's "humanizing" experiment with the wild Comanches; at San Antonio, commanding the Department of Texas; and at Fort Mason, headquarters of the Second United States Cavalry.In this account Carl Coke Rister, a leading historian of the West, takes us with Lee to his lonely posts on the border, and we share with him the hazardous and often fruitless chases after renegade Indians and Mexican bandits. We see through the eyes of the "Academy man" the raw life on the frontier and hear from his lips his impressions of the country and people.These were critical years for the nation and for the future military leader of the Confederacy. When Lieutenant Colonel Robert Edward Lee was transferred from the superintendency of West Point to Camp Cooper on an Indian frontier, where isolation, rawness, inconvenience, deprivation, and even death were commonplace, it seemed to him and to some of his friends that his military career was coming to a dead end. Nevertheless, while he was "lost on the frontier," he gained strength, wisdom, and maturity. He worked with, and for the most part commanded, the famous Second Cavalry, many of the officers of which became either Northern or Southern field commanders in the Civil War. To know these officers, their points of strength and weakness, their whims and caprices, and their likes and dislikes served him well later in military crises.When in 1861 Lee came from the Texas wilderness to report to General Winfield Scott in Washington, he was prepared to assume the role of the South's peerless leader--to justify General Scott's Mexican War characterization of him as "America's very best soldier."
Robert E. Lee in War and Peace: The Photographic History of a Confederate and American Icon
by Donald A. HopkinsRobert E. Lee is well known as a Confederate general and as an educator later in life, but most people are exposed to the same handful of images of one of America’s most famous sons. It has been almost seven decades since anyone has attempted a serious study of Lee in photographs, and with Don Hopkins’s painstakingly researched and lavishly illustrated Robert E. Lee in War and Peace, the wait is finally over. Dr. Hopkins, a Mississippi surgeon and lifelong student of the Civil War and Southern history with a recent interest in Robert E. Lee’s “from life” photographs, scoured manuscript repositories and private collections across the country to locate every known Lee image (61 in all) in existence today. The detailed text accompanying these images provides a sweeping history of Lee’s life and a compelling discussion of antique photography, with biographical sketches of all of Lee’s known photographers. The importance of information within the photographer’s imprint or backmark is emphasized throughout the book. Hopkins offers a substantial amount of previously unknown information about these images, how each came to be, and the mistakes in fact and attribution other authors and writers have made describing photographs of Lee to the reading public. Many of the images in this book are being published for the first time. In addition to a few rare photographs and formats that were uncovered during the research phase of Robert E. Lee in War and Peace, the author offers—for the first time—definitive and conclusive attribution of the identity of the photographer of the well-known Lee “in the field” images, and reproduces a startling imperial-size photograph of Lee made by Alexander Gardner of Washington, D.C. Students of American history in general and the Civil War in particular, as well as collectors and dealers who deal with Civil War era photography, will find Hopkins’s outstanding Robert E. Lee in War and Peace a true contribution to the growing literature on the Civil War. About the Author: Born in the rural South, Donald A. Hopkins has maintained a fascination with Southern history since he was a child. In addition to published papers in the medical field, he has written several Civil War articles and The Little Jeff: The Jeff Davis Legion, Cavalry, Army of Northern Virginia for which he received the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal. Dr. Hopkins served as Battalion Surgeon for the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, (better known as “The Walking Dead”) in Vietnam. He was awarded the purple heart and the Bronze Star with combat “V.” Dr. Hopkins is a surgeon in Gulfport, Mississippi, where he lives with his wife Cindy and their golden retriever Dixie.