Wars & Conflicts

From Brandywine to Yorktown, follow the astonishing real-life journey of the Revolutionary War’s most mythic warrior. “One-Man Army” was George Washington’s nom de guerre for Peter Francisco. Abducted from the Azores and deposited in the colony of Virginia at the age of four, little...

They dropped from the skies, roared over the hedgerows, and turned the tide of history—this is the untold story of the airmen who helped liberate France. By June 1944, Allied air forces were ready to unleash hell on the Germans in occupied France. Massive numbers of bombers and fighters had...

From Napoleon to nuclear war, War Is Hell unravels the brutal rise of total war and its devastating impact on soldiers and civilians alike. General William Tecumseh Sherman said it best during the American Civil War: “War is hell” – for soldiers as well as for civilians. As a pioneer and...

Follow Lincoln's day-by-day path from peacemaker to war leader as the Union edges toward Civil War. The months after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, between March 4 and May 3, 1861, mark one of the most significant periods in American history. Antagonism between the North and South, which...

The Last Full Measure tells the forgotten story of the sacred mission to return America’s fallen from foreign battlefields. In the fall of 1944, German flak shredded an American bomber in the skies over Austria. Four crew parachuted from the burning aircraft, but six spiraled five miles to...

The year opened with the Axis powers inflicting a series of disasters on the newly formed Allies: Pearl Harbor, followed by Japan's conquest of the Philippines and Southeast Asia; Rommel running unchecked in North Africa; devastating defeats of the Red Army at Kharkov, Crimea, and southern...

In answering these questions, retired Lieutenant Colonel ML Cavanaugh traces the campaigns of America’s greatest commanders at war. By following Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower, we can see the key winning ingredient in their leadership wasn’t technology, resources, or luck—but superior judgment, empathy, and grit. Supreme commanders make decisions; decisions make history.

When Lt. Cdr. Waldo Drake, USNR arrived in Pearl Harbor in June 1941 as the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s first Public Relations Officer (PRO), he was an admired maritime reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Reserve Officer appointed to intelligence duties. By October 1944, he was hated by most of...

This revealing history explores Hermann Goering’s desperate creation of twenty-two Luftwaffe Field Divisions—air force personnel hastily repurposed as infantry and sent to the Eastern Front with disastrous results. Michael J. Stout delivers the first full account of these ill-fated units...

Award-winning author, Thomas J. Cutler offers an in-depth and inspiring look at the truly heroic story of Ernest Evans and the crew of USS Johnston during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. The term “hero” is overused today, but the story of Ernest Evans and the crew of USS Johnston...

Bloomsbury presents Java Sea 1942: Japan's conquest of the Netherlands East Indies by Mark Stille, read by Thomas Judd A study of the battle of the Java Sea, a key Japanese victory in their advance throughout Southeast Asia. The battle of the Java Sea, fought in February 1942, was the first...

What is 'Central Europe'? Where do its borders lie? Does it even exist? Attempts to define it usually yield more questions than answers. But perhaps the wrong questions are being asked. Luka Ivan Jukic disentangles the enigma of Central Europe through its birth, death, and rebirth. Today, Poland...

Bloomsbury presents 1942: Hitler's Gamble for Victory by Richard Hargreaves, read by Charles Armstrong A unique history of the Axis powers attempt to win the Second World War in 1942, told through the eyes of those who were there. Drawing upon sources in German, Russian, Italian, Hungarian...

A gripping firsthand account of courage, resilience, and survival during the Great War. In My German Prisons, Captain Horace Gray Gilliland delivers an uncensored, deeply personal narrative of his experiences as a British officer captured during the brutal battles of World War I. For two and a...

In this lively debut work of history, Edward Kritzler tells the tale of an unlikely group of swashbuckling Jews who ransacked the high seas in the aftermath of the Spanish Inquisition. At the end of the fifteenth century, many Jews had to flee Spain and Portugal. The most adventurous among them...