Stationed at a lonely wind-pounded outpost in an isolated backwater of World War II, the nineteen men of the Greenland Ice Cap Detachment were charged with erecting a weather/rescue station on the ten-thousand-foot-high Ice Cap to serve the Polar aircraft-ferrying route to Europe and to provide vital weather data for the expanding war effort. "Greenland's Icy Fury" is a lighthearted accounting of one of the least accessible and least known but most stunning parts of the globe--southeast Greenland--and its natural history, geography, geology, glaciers, and foremost, its savage weather and...

When America entered World War II, the surge of patriotism was not confined to men. Congress authorized the organization of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (later renamed Women's Army Corps) in 1942, and hundreds of women were able to join in the war effort. Charity Edna Adams became the first black woman commissioned as an officer.
Black members of the WAC had to fight the prejudices not only of males who did not want women in their "man's army," but also of those who could not accept blacks in positions of authority or responsibility, even in the segregated military.
With...

"Tactical bombing," Gen. Jimmy Doolittle reportedly observed, "is breaking the milk bottle. Strategic bombing is killing the cow." Most nations have historically chosen between building tactical and strategic air forces; rarely has a state given equal weight to both. The advantages of tactical air power are obvious today as small wars and petty tyrants bedevil us, but in a Cold War world split between continental superpowers, strategic bombing took precedence. According to Craig C. Hannah, the effect on America's tactical air arm was just short of calamitous.
In the 1960s, the U.S. Air...

At the pivotal battles of Twin Tunnels and Chipyong-ni in February 1951, U.N. forces met and contained large-scale attacks by Chinese forces. Colonel Paul Freeman and the larger-than-life Colonel Ralph Monclar led the American 23rd Infantry Regiment and the French Bataillon de Coree, respectively, in the fierce and dangerous battles that followed the precipitous U.N. retreat down the Korean Peninsula.
In "Leadership in the Crucible, " Kenneth Hamburger details the actions of the units in the United Nations counteroffensive following the Chinese intervention, including routine patrols, the...

As German pressure on Europe escalated in the late 1930s, a young Belgian pacifist completing his Ph.D. in chemistry watched with horror the preparation for the inevitable invasion of his country. In the face of advancing German troops, his passion for freedom and his growing hatred of Hitler led him and a group of his friends into the resistance movement and five years of privation, danger, and, for some, torture and death, at the hands of the Gestapo.
This dramatic memoir traces Herman Bodson's transformation from a pacifist and scientist to, in his own words, "a cold fighter and a...

"The Defense of Vicksburg: ""A"" Louisiana Chronicle" is the story of the Louisiana soldiers who fought at Vicksburg, as told through their letters, diaries, and remembrances. Most histories of this famous Civil War siege have been written by the victors; this one presents a day-by-day account from the Confederate vantage point. Indeed, these long-dead men come to life as we read their experiences and perceptions told in their own voices, which ring clear and without apology.
In 1862 the Dixie Rebels of DeSoto Parish left for New Orleans. They and other Louisianians were formed into...