The Highway War is the compelling Iraq War memoir of then-Capt. Seth Folsom, commanding officer of Delta Company, First Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps. Mounted in eight-wheeled LAVs (light armored vehicles), this unit of 130 Marines and sailors was one of the first into Iraq in March 2003. It fought on the front lines for the war's entire offensive phase, from the Kuwaiti border through Baghdad to Tikrit. Folsom's thoughtful account focuses on his maturation as a combat leader--and as a human being enduring the austere conditions of combat and coming to terms with loss of life on both sides. Moreover, The Highway War is the story of a junior officer's relationships with his company's young Marines, for whose lives he was responsible, and with his superior officers. Folsom covers numerous unusual military actions and conveys truthfully the pace, stress, excitement, mistakes, and confusion of modern ground warfare. The Highway War is destined to be a Marine Corps classic.
The Road to War examines how presidential commitments can lead to the use of American military force, and to war. Marvin Kalb notes that since World War II, "presidents have relied more on commitments, public and private, than they have on declarations of war, even though the U.S. Constitution declares rather unambiguously that Congress has the responsibility to "declare" war.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a fear of invasion swept North America—particularly the West Coast. Immediate steps needed to be taken to defend the Far Northwest. With Canada’s approval, Washington drew up plans for an Alaska Highway to connect Edmonton, Alberta, with Fairbanks, Alaska, and a pipeline to connect oil fields in the Northwest Territories with the Pacific Coast. Between 1942 and 1946, about 40,000 American military and civilian personnel invaded the Canadian Northwest. Where there had been few or no roads, a highway more than 1,500 miles long was built in less than a year. Navigation facilities were improved, and pipelines were laid from Fairbanks to the Pacific. Airfields were upgraded and new ones built, and a telephone network was constructed. The Northwest was totally unprepared for this friendly invasion. The Alaska Highway ran through semi-wilderness where many inhabitants pursued a nomadic lifestyle, and towns and settlements were overwhelmed by the American “army of occupation.” This lively history of an American civil and military engineering milestone draws on interviews with veterans and local residents and research in Canadian and U.S. archives. The participants’ stories provide humor and insights on the building of this transformational highway.
This WWII history and battleground guide offers a fascinating look at the vital and infamous stretch of road through the Netherlands. After the Allied victory at Normandy, Operation Market Garden was intended to cut a path to Germany through the Netherlands. Essential to the plan was a two-lane road that came to be known as Hell's Highway. This was the route that the British 3rd Guards Armored Division had to advance down rapidly to relieve the American Paratroopers of the 82d Airborne at Nijmegen and the British I st Airborne Division at Arnhem. Beginning with the famous capture of Joe’s Bridge by the Irish Guards—an essential preliminary action before the start of Operation Market Garden—historian Tim Saunders guides visitors through the seizure of bridges, the liberation of small towns, and other actions undertaken by the famous Screaming Eagles. With vivid personal accounts throughout, this guide features practical visitor information about monuments and other important sites.
Philbert Bono and Buddy Red Bird are about to prove that the spirit of the great warriors is still alive and kicking. Their “war pony,” a burned-out, rusty 1964 Buick LeSabre, has left a trail of dust from Montana’s Lame Deer Reservation halfway down Interstate 25 as they take off to bail Buddy’s sister out of jail. The basis for the great movie of the same name, this quiet debut novel, first published in 1979, has become a classic of American Indian literature.
A VIVID AND FASCINATING LOOK AT AMERICAN HISTORY THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE COUNTRY’S MOST STORIED HIGHWAY, THE BOSTON POST ROAD During its evolution from Indian trails to modern interstates, the Boston Post Road, a system of over-land routes between New York City and Boston, has carried not just travelers and mail but the march of American history itself. Eric Jaffe captures the progress of people and culture along the road through four centuries, from its earliest days as the king of England’s “best highway” to the current era. Centuries before the telephone, radio, or Internet, the Boston Post Road was the primary conduit of America’s prosperity and growth. News, rumor, political intrigue, financial transactions, and personal missives traveled with increasing rapidity, as did people from every walk of life. From post riders bearing the alarms of revolution, to coaches carrying George Washington on his first presidential tour, to railroads transporting soldiers to the Civil War, the Boston Post Road has been essential to the political, economic, and social development of the United States. Continuously raised, improved, rerouted, and widened for faster and heavier traffic, the road played a key role in the advent of newspapers, stagecoach travel, textiles, mass-produced bicycles and guns, commuter railroads, automobiles—even Manhattan’s modern grid. Many famous Americans traveled the highway, and it drew the keen attention of such diverse personages as Benjamin Franklin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, P. T. Barnum, J. P. Morgan, and Robert Moses. Eric Jaffe weaves this entertaining narrative with a historian’s eye for detail and a journalist’s flair for storytelling. A cast of historical figures, celebrated and unknown alike, tells the lost tale of this road. Revolutionary printer William Goddard created a postal network that united the colonies against the throne. General Washington struggled to hold the highway during the battle for Manhattan. Levi Pease convinced Americans to travel by stagecoach until, half a century later, Nathan Hale convinced them to go by train. Abe Lincoln, still a dark-horse candidate in early 1860, embarked on a railroad speaking tour along the route that clinched the presidency. Bomb builder Lester Barlow, inspired by the Post Road’s notorious traffic, nearly sold Congress on a national system of expressways twenty-five years before the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. Based on extensive travels of the highway, interviews with people living up and down the road, and primary sources unearthed from the great libraries between New York City and Boston—including letters, maps, contemporaneous newspapers, and long-forgotten government documents—The King’s Best Highway is a delightful read for American history buffs and lovers of narrative everywhere.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates
