Marines Ain't So Tough

Marines Ain't So Tough

Author: Jim Williams

Publisher: Dorrance Publishing

Published: 2023-06-28

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13:

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About the Book Marines Ain’t So Tough is just one of the dozens of short stories created by master storyteller Jim Williams. Each story uses a human emotion or experience as its genesis. Love, hate, courage, grief, revenge, lust, fear, and madness all serve as a backdrop for page-turning, thoughtful prose written in the style of Hemingway and Poe. A man tests his courage in Men Who Want to Fight; a grieving woman searches for answers in Where There’s Smoke; a clever sexy lady plays with a lustful man in Cindy; young lovers spend a memorable time in A Day At The Beach; three old folks, prisoners in a nursing home, rise to new heights and succeed in Old Fart TV; a young man meets God and explains his emotions during sex in God Jumped Into My Car; and many more stories are designed to explore the essence of what makes us human. Williams also explores elements of science fiction. His story, Mirror Mirror, captures both a technical experiment gone wrong with madness as an outcome. In The Land Of The Blind, there is an emotional and strange result as the velocity of the earth increases as it hurls through space and time and its effect on humankind. When you read Marines Ain’t So Tough, you will delight in each story's structure and outcome. Thought provoking, sometimes mystical, sometimes just funny... a good read and an experience worth remembering. About the Author Jim Williams is a world traveler, sailor, published author, and an Irish American who loves storytelling.


Hard Rain Falling

Hard Rain Falling

Author: Don Carpenter

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2010-06-23

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1590173902

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A hardboiled novel about life in the American underground, from the pool halls of Portland to the cells of San Quentin. Simply one of the finest books ever written about being down on your luck. Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for good—a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary confinement. In the meantime Billy has joined the middle class—married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end.


Tough As They Come

Tough As They Come

Author: Travis Mills

Publisher: Convergent Books

Published: 2016-10-25

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1101904801

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Thousands have been wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Five have survived quadruple amputee injuries. This is one soldier's story. Thousands of soldiers die every year to defend their country. United States Army Staff Sergeant Travis Mills was sure that he would become another statistic when, during his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, he was caught in an IED blast four days before his twenty-fifth birthday. Against the odds, he lived, but at a severe cost—Travis became one of only five soldiers from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to survive a quadruple amputation. Suddenly forced to reconcile with the fact that he no longer had arms or legs, Travis was faced with a future drastically different from the one he had imagined for himself. He would never again be able to lead his squad, stroke his fingers against his wife’s cheek, or pick up his infant daughter. Travis struggled through the painful and anxious days of rehabilitation so that he could regain the strength to live his life to the fullest. With enormous willpower and endurance, the unconditional love of his family, and a generous amount of faith, Travis shocked everyone with his remarkable recovery. Even without limbs, he still swims, dances with his wife, rides mountain bikes, and drives his daughter to school. Travis inspires thousands every day with his remarkable journey. He doesn’t want to be thought of as wounded. “I'm just a man with scars,” he says, “living life to the fullest and best I know how.”


Making the Corps

Making the Corps

Author: Thomas E. Ricks

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 0684848171

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Inside the marine corps and what it takes to become "One of the few, the proud, the Marines."


Don't Bunch Up

Don't Bunch Up

Author: William van Zanten

Publisher: Presidio Press

Published: 2009-03-25

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0307521516

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Captain William Van Zanten was one of the “Magnificent Bastards” of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, in 1966–a year when any day could bring death or dismemberment from a Bouncing Betty or a punji stake, a firefight or a sniper bullet. He and his men faced B-52-sized mosquitoes, rain, heat, disease, and a determined and elusive enemy who kept the Marines off-balance, edgy, and sleepless. Yet Van Zanten persevered with a soldierly professionalism built on rigorous training. Dedication and boot camp forged the volunteer Marines of the early war years, so when the stakes went through the roof in Vietnam, commitment of man to man and man to unit was total. They supported each other with a soldier’s intimacy and endured with a soldier’s humor–and together that meant survival.


We Ain't Much, But We're Gettin' Better

We Ain't Much, But We're Gettin' Better

Author: Paul D. Waldrop

Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.

Published: 2024-07-30

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13:

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Experiencing severe abuse during childhood, Paul struggled to manage life. His struggles were complicated by attention deficit disorder and dyslexia. Paul turned to faith in God and prayer in facing the challenges of life. After a near-death experience and a brutal beating, he ran away and walked through the New Mexico desert with prayer and a promise to God to always go to church, perform missionary service, get an education, and marry in the church. Paul was rescued by a family at 1:00 am. on a dark and lonely road after being told by the spirit to "Go to the highway as fast as you can. Run, don't stop." Soon after being rescued, Paul quit school with a ninth-grade education and joined the United States Marine Corps when he turned seventeen. He completed his enlistment in the Marine Corps, performed missionary service, married in the church, and attended the University of Utah, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree. Paul retired after a forty-two-year career as a nuclear and fossil power plant principal engineer and manager.


A Veteran's Toughest Fight

A Veteran's Toughest Fight

Author: David T. Klein

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2024-08-30

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1476695415

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They survived the insanity of the Vietnam War by telling themselves, "It don't mean nuthin'." But it did. This collection of nonfiction short works tells the story of how war damages our soldiers, and then pulls back the curtain of trauma treatment to offer a rare glimpse of how these veterans strive to integrate those combat experiences and to recover. Though intimately revealing the human shadow and darkness of war, this is a hopeful book: it is about transformation, restoring meaning and connection, and navigating the archetypal hero's journey as survivors come home from war. It seeks to unite our warriors and civilian public together in learning and healing. Their stories are this liminal bridge. This narrative arose from the psychotherapeutic process of treating our nation's combat veterans for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But this book is also about the author's own self-discovery, tracing his evolution as a clinical psychologist and combat trauma specialist dedicated to working with Vietnam veterans. The author serves as a therapist, narrator, advocate, keeper of veterans' sacred "dark" wisdom, and fellow traveler.


April 1945

April 1945

Author: Thomas Nelson

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2022-02-22

Total Pages: 527

ISBN-13: 1400217113

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Acclaimed historian and New York Times bestselling author Craig Shirley delivers a compelling account of 1945, particularly the watershed events in the month of April, that details how America emerged from World War II as a leading superpower. In the long-awaited follow-up to the widely praised December 1941,Craig Shirley's April 1945 paints a vivid portrait of America--her people, faith, economy, government, and culture. The year of 1945 bought a series of watershed events that transformed the country into an arsenal of democracy, one that no longer armed the world by necessity but henceforth protected the world by need. At the start of 1945, America and the rest of the world were grieving millions of lives lost in the global conflict. As President Roosevelt was sworn into his fourth term, optimism over an end to the bloody war had grown--then, in April, several events collided that changed the face of the world forever: the sudden death of President Roosevelt followed by Harry S. Truman's rise to office; Adolph Hitler's suicide; and the horrific discoveries of Dachau and Auschwitz. Americans doubled down on their completion of the atomic bomb and their plans to drop them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the destruction ultimately leading the Japanese Empire to surrender on V-J day and ending World War II for good. Combining engaging anecdotes with deft research and details that are both diminutive and grand, April 1945 gives readers a front-row seat to the American stage at the birth of a brand-new world.


Cincinnati Magazine

Cincinnati Magazine

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1982-08

Total Pages: 106

ISBN-13:

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Cincinnati Magazine taps into the DNA of the city, exploring shopping, dining, living, and culture and giving readers a ringside seat on the issues shaping the region.