"America is too great for small dreams." - Ronald Reagan It is the spirit, the resilience, and the guts of America andits people that has made the United States the nation it is today. This collection of more than175 inspirational quotes by the presidents of the United States celebrating the spirit of America is awonderful gift book for any occasion. "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what isright with America." - Bill Clinton "Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I aman American. America, my fellow citizens - I do not say it in disparagement ofany other great people - America is the only idealistic nation in theworld." - Woodrow Wilson
Based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning story, Jim Sheeler's unprecedented look at the way our country honors its dead; Final SaluteIs a stunning tribute to the brave troops who have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and to the families who continue to mourn them They are the troops that nobody wants to see, carrying a message that no military family ever wants to hear. It begins with a knock at the door. "The curtains pull away. They come to the door. And they know. They always know," said Major Steve Beck. Since the start of the war in Iraq, marines like Major Beck found themselves thrown into a different kind of mission: casualty notification. It is a job Major Beck never asked for and one for which he received no training. They are given no set rules, only impersonal guidelines. Marines are trained to kill, to break down doors, but casualty notification is a mission without weapons. For Beck, the mission meant learning each dead marine's name and nickname, touching the toys they grew up with and reading the letters they wrote home. He held grieving mothers in long embraces, absorbing their muffled cries into the dark blue shoulder of his uniform. He stitched himself into the fabric of their lives, in the simple hope that his compassion might help alleviate at least the smallest piece of their pain. Sometimes he returned home to his own family unable to keep from crying in the dark. In Final Salute, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jim Sheeler weaves together the stories of the fallen and of the broken homes they have left behind. It is also the story of Major Steve Beck and his unflagging efforts to help heal the wounds of those left grieving. Above all, it is a moving tribute to our troops, putting faces to the mostly anonymous names of our courageous heroes, and to the brave families who have made the ultimate sacrifice for this country. Final Saluteis the achingly beautiful, devastatingly honest story of the true toll of war. After the knock on the door, the story has only begun.
From New York Times bestselling author Molly Guptill Manning comes The War of Words, the captivating story of how American troops in World War II wielded pens to tell their own stories as they made history. At a time when civilian periodicals faced strict censorship, US Army Chief of Staff George Marshall won the support of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to create an expansive troop-newspaper program. Both Marshall and FDR recognized that there was a second struggle taking place outside the battlefields of World War II—the war of words. While Hitler inundated the globe with propaganda, morale across the US Army dwindled. As the Axis blurred the lines between truth and fiction, the best defense was for American troops to bring the truth into focus by writing it down and disseminating it themselves. By war’s end, over 4,600 unique GI publications had been printed around the world. In newsprint, troops made sense of their hardships, losses, and reasons for fighting. These newspapers—by and for the troops—became the heart and soul of a unit. From Normandy to the shores of Japan, American soldiers exercised a level of free speech the military had never known nor would again. It was an extraordinary chapter in American democracy and military history. In the war for “four freedoms,” it was remarkably fitting that troops fought not only with guns but with their pens. This stunning volume includes fourteen pages of photographs and illustrations.
