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Personal Narratives by Veterans
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The Life of a Union Army Sharpshooter: The Diaries and Letters of John T. Farnham
by John T. Farnham
John T. Farnham, a sharpshooter in the Union Army, wrote a substantial diary entry nearly every day during his three-year enlistment, sent over 50 long articles to his hometown newspaper, and mailed some 600 letters home. He described training, battles, skirmishes, encampments, furloughs, marches, hospital life, and clerkships at the Iron Brigade headquarters and the War Department. He met Lincoln and acquired a blood-stained cuff taken from his assassinated body. He befriended freed slaves, teaching them to read and write and helped build a school. He campaigned for Lincoln’s re-election. He paints a detailed portrait of the lives of ordinary soldiers in the Union Army, their food, living conditions, relations among officers and men, ordeals, triumphs, and tragedies.
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Thank You for Your Service
by David Finkel
Journalist David Finkel spent several months in 2007 embedded with Army Infantry Battalion 2-16 during their deployment in Iraq; his 2009 book The Good Soldiers reports on how the troops of the 2-16 experienced the war. After their return to the U.S., Finkel reconnected with the men to learn about their post-war life. Thank You for Your Service offers compelling testimony about challenges the men face: severe mental illness, families and employers who can't understand (or don't want to), and a Veterans Administration health system that is inadequate to meet vets' needs. These powerful, moving accounts give ironic significance to the everyday expression, "Thank you."
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Living with No Excuses: The Remarkable Rebirth of an American Soldier
by Noah Galloway
Galloway sheds light on his upbringing in rural Alabama, his military experience, and the battle he faced to overcome losing two limbs during Operation Iraqi Freedom. From reliving the early days of life to his acceptance of his "new normal" after losing his arm and leg in combat, he reveals his ambition to succeed against all odds. Whether it be overcoming injury, conquering the Dancing with the Stars ballroom, or taking the next steps forward in life with his young family, Galloway demonstrates how to live life to the fullest, with no excuses.
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D-Day Diary: Life on the Front Line in the Second World War
by Carol Harris
Eyewitness accounts of the experiences of those who participated in D-Day, including sailors, soldiers, airmen, and civilians from both sides. Historian Carol Harris collects together remarkable tales of bravery, survival, and sacrifice from what was one of the war's most dramatic and pivotal episodes, and presents them arranged as a chronological narrative.
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Dispatches
by Michael Herr
Michael Herr, who wrote about the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine, gathered his years of notes from his front-line reporting and turned them into what many people consider the best account of the war to date, when published in 1977. Dispatches is a documentation of the day-to-day realities of the war in Vietnam experienced by men on patrol, under siege at Khe Sanh, strapped into helicopters, and faced with continuing nightmares after their return to the United States. He captured the feel of the war and how it differed from any theater of combat ever fought, as well as the flavor of the time and the essence of the people who were there.
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Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq
by Kirsten A. Holmstedt
Profiles twelve women soldiers who have served in the Iraq War, describing their experiences in the war, discussing the pressures of the job, and touching on the difficulties of being a woman in the military.
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War
by Sebastian Junger
Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm) turns his empathetic eye to the reality of combat--the fear, the honor, and the trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. Through the experiences of these young men at war, he shows what it means to fight, to serve, and to face down mortal danger on a daily basis.
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Crossings: A Doctor-Soldier's Story
by Jon Kerstetter
In Iraq, as a combat physician and officer, Jon Kerstetter balanced two impossibly conflicting imperatives - to heal and to kill. In this gorgeous memoir that moves from his impoverished upbringing on an Oneida reservation, to his harrowing stints as a volunteer medic in Kosovo and Bosnia, through the madness of Iraq and his intense mandate to assemble a team to identify the remains of Uday and Qusay Hussein, and the struggle afterward to come to terms with a life irrevocably changed, Kerstetter beautifully illuminates war and survival, the fragility of the human body, and the strength of will that lies within.
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Charlie Mike: A True Story of Heroes Who Brought Their Missions Home
by Joe Klein
Traces how two veterans of the wars in the Middle East organized ways that injured veterans could continue to serve, sharing inspiring stories of disaster relief in Haiti and post-Sandy New York as well as tales of support for newly returned and traumatized vets.
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Born on the Fourth of July
by Ron Kovic
Details the author's life story from a patriotic soldier in Vietnam, to his severe battlefield injury, to his role as the country's most outspoken anti–Vietnam War advocate, spreading his message from his wheelchair.
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American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History
by Chris Kyle
Retired Navy SEAL Chris Kyle served with distinction in Iraq as a specialist, employing his unusually keen skills as a sniper: he could infiltrate enemy territory without being detected before killing his targets with a single shot. American Sniper portrays the experiences of an ordinary human being who achieved extraordinary things, setting Kyle's Navy SEAL training and career against the background of his unassuming Texas childhood. This "first-rate military memoir" (Booklist) provides a vivid account of the Iraq War, enhanced with passages contributed by his wife that offer glimpses into his family's experiences and feelings during his deployment.
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Helmet for My Pillow
by Robert Leckie
Robert Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in January 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Recounting his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu, Leckie spares no detail of the horrors and sacrifices of war, painting an unvarnished portrait of how real warriors are made, fight, and often die in the defense of their country. From the live-for-today rowdiness of marines on leave to the terrors of jungle warfare against an enemy determined to fight to the last man, Leckie describes what war is really like when victory can only be measured inch by bloody inch. Woven throughout are Leckie’s hard-won, eloquent, and thoroughly unsentimental meditations on the meaning of war and why we fight.
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The Medic: Life and Death in the Last Days of WWII
by Leo Litwak
A World War II medic shares his story for the first time, detailing the intense combat and human drama he experienced as he patched up men on the frontlines during the final days of the war.
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What It is Like to Go to War
by Karl Marlantes
In this memoir the author of Matterhorn, an award-winning novel about the Vietnam war, presents his personal experiences in Vietnam as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. Focusing on the terrible psychic toll that warfare, especially the act of killing other humans, exacts on soldiers, Karl Marlantes both plumbs the devastating circumstances that lead to PTSD and offers hope for those who must face them. He vividly describes his own emotional struggles to recover from the war, proposing a therapeutic model for recovery through ritual that was inspired by a story about Navajo soldiers returning home.
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Thirteen Soldiers: A Personal History of Americans at War
by John McCain
The coauthors of Faith of My Fathers present an evocative history of Americans at war through the personal accounts of 13 remarkable soldiers who fought in major military conflicts, from the Revolutionary War to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Loon: A Marine Story
by Jack McLean
Nothing could have prepared privileged-boy Jack McLean for the horror of Landing Zone Loon--a three-day battle that took place on a remote hill tucked into the border of North Vietnam and Laos in June 1968, killing twenty-seven men, wound nearly one hundred others, and leave several dozen survivors to defend an ever-shrinking perimeter with little water or ammo. A powerful coming-of-age portrait that defines some of the most tumultuous events in our history, both in Vietnam and back home.
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Tough as They Come: A Memoir
by Travis Mills
A retired paratrooper and one of the only five soldiers to have survived quadruple-amputee injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, the author describes how his faith and his mantra of “never give up—never quit” has helped him rebuild his life since Afghanistan.
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Through the Valley: My Captivity in Vietnam
by William Reeder
Through the Valley is the captivating memoir of the last U.S. Army soldier taken prisoner during the Vietnam War. A narrative of courage, hope, and survival, Through the Valley portrays the thrill and horror of combat, the fear and anxiety of captivity, and the stories of friendships forged and friends lost..
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Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor
by Clinton Romesha
A comprehensive, firsthand account of the fourteen-hour firefight at the Battle of Keating by Medal of Honor recipient Clinton Romesha. In 2009, Clinton Romesha of Red Platoon and the rest of the Black Knight Troop were preparing to shut down Command Outpost Keating, the most remote and inaccessible in a string of bases built by the U.S. military in Nuristan and Kunar in the hope of preventing Taliban insurgents from moving freely back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three years after its construction, the army was finally ready to concede what the men on the ground had known immediately: it was simply too isolated and too dangerous to defend. On October 3, 2009, after years of constant smaller attacks, the Taliban finally decided to throw everything they had at Keating.
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The Twins Platoon: An Epic Story of Young Marines at War in Vietnam
by Christy W. Sauro
In the evening of June 28, 1967, 150 young Americans were sworn into the Marine Corps as part of the pre-game ceremonies of a Minnesota Twins baseball game. Before the end of the fourth inning these volunteers were on their way to boot camp. It was a journey that would take them from a boyhood of baseball in the American heartland to manhood on the killing fields of Vietnam. Christy Sauro was one of the Twins Platoon, and in this book he tells what it was like—from the pomp and ceremony of induction to the all-too-real initiation by fire that would shortly follow: in mere months, he and most of the Twins Platoon were on the ground in Vietnam and promptly faced with some of the toughest fighting of the war, the Siege of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive, including the brutal Battle for Hue. From baseball to boot camp to brutal combat, his is a firsthand story of American life being lived at the limits—and changed forever.
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Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War
by Helen Thorpe
Describes the experiences of three women soldiers deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq to reveal how their military service has affected their friendship, personal lives and families, detailing the realities of their work on bases and in war zones and how their choices and losses shaped their perspectives.
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My Life as a Foreign Country
by Brian Turner
An Iraq War veteran retraces his war experiences from deployment to homecoming, combining his recollections with a search for meaning and parallels with family members who served in different wars.
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Eat the Apple: A Memoir
by Matt Young
A combat veteran and writing instructor traces the darkly comic story of his youth and masculinity as they were shaped in an age of continuous war, describing how he joined the Marines as a way to temper his reckless nature before enduring three Iraq deployments shaped by Marine Corps culture and the misguided motivations that compel young men in wartime.
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Michigan City Public Library 100 E. 4th Street Michigan City, Indiana 46360 219-873-3044mclib.org/ |
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