Filled with photographs, drawings, maps, firsthand accounts, and essays, a lavishly illustrated and thorough history of one of the most lethal battles in all of American history provides a gripping narrative that captures the personalities, struggles, and decisions on both sides of the battlefield. Reprint.

American Heritage History of the Battle of Gettysburg

History

Craig L. Symonds

Americas

Harpercollins

A Battlefield Atlas of the Civil War

Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America

A visual and narrative overview of the major battles of the American revolution chronicles the emergence of a nation

A Battlefield Atlas of the American Revolution

The Nautical & Aviation Pub. Co. Of America

There are few moments in military history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway. At dawn of June 4, 1942, a rampaging Japanese navy ruled the Pacific. By sunset, their vaunted carrier force (the Kido Butai) had been sunk by American planes. Though the Second World War had three more years to run, the Imperial Japanese Navy would never again initiate a strategic offensive.
In this spellbinding account of a key turning point, one of America’s leading naval historians, Craig L. Symonds, paints a portrait of ingenuity, courage, sacrifice, and chance. Symonds begins with the arrival of Admiral Chester A. Nimitz at Pearl Harbor after the devastating Japanese attack, and describes the events leading to the climactic battle, including both Coral Sea—the first in history involving opposing carrier forces—and Jimmy Doolittle’s daring raid of Tokyo. He focuses throughout on the people involved, offering telling portraits of Admirals Nimitz, King, Halsey, and Spruance as well as the leading Japanese figures, including the poker-enthusiast Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku and Admiral Nagumo Chuichi. Indeed, Symonds illuminates the aspects of Japanese culture—such as their single-minded devotion to combat, which led to poorly armored planes and inadequate fire-safety measures on their ships—that contributed to their defeat.
Symonds’ account of the battle itself is deft and exhaustive, weaving together the many disparate threads of attack—attacks that failed in the early going—that ultimately created a five-minute window in which three of the four Japanese carriers were mortally wounded, changing the course of the Pacific war in an eye-blink.
The American victory at Midway was both less incredible and miraculous than it has sometimes been portrayed. It was, instead, the result of a web of contingencies and decisions than can be traced back to their origins and reconnected. As Symonds’ book brilliantly demonstrates, doing so detracts nothing from the battle’s significance and drama, nor loosens its enduring hold on our imaginations.

Battle of Midway, The

Military

BRILLIANCE AUDIO ^

Seventy years ago, more than 6000 Allied ships carried more than a million soldiers across the English Channel to a 50-mile-wide strip of the Normandy coast in German-occupied France. It was the greatest sea-borne assault in human history. The code names given to the beaches where the ships landed the soldiers have become immortal: Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah, and especially Omaha, the scene of almost unimaginable human tragedy. The sea of crosses in the cemetery sitting today atop a bluff overlooking the beaches recalls to us its cost. Most accounts of this epic story begin with the landings on the morning of June 6, 1944. In fact, however, D-Day was the culmination of months and years of planning and intense debate. In the dark days after the evacuation of Dunkirk in the summer of 1940, British officials and, soon enough, their American counterparts, began to consider how, and, where, and especially when, they could re-enter the European Continent in force. The Americans, led by U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, wanted to invade as soon as possible; the British, personified by their redoubtable prime minister, Winston Churchill, were convinced that a premature landing would be disastrous. The often-sharp negotiations between the English-speaking allies led them first to North Africa, then into Sicily, then Italy. Only in the spring of 1943, did the Combined Chiefs of Staff commit themselves to an invasion of northern France. The code name for this invasion was Overlord, but everything that came before, including the landings themselves and the supply system that made it possible for the invaders to stay there, was code-named Neptune. Craig L. Symonds now offers the complete story of this Olympian effort, involving transports, escorts, gunfire support ships, and landing craft of every possible size and function. The obstacles to success were many.

Neptune

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

The Naval Institute Historical Atlas of U.S. Navy

Covers U.S. Navy history from the Revolutionary War to the Gulf War, looking at important naval battles and operations

The Naval Institute Historical Atlas of the U.S. Navy

William J. Clipson

Naval_Institute_Press

World War II at Sea: A Global History

Highbridge Audio and Blackstone Publishing

This compact, yet comprehensive volume provides both narrative history and a cartographic display of the Battle of Gettysburg that makes the enets of the engagement both vivd and easy to understand.

Gettysburg: A Battlefield Atlas

Nautical & Aviation Pub Co of Amer

From Fort Sumter to Appomattox, this military history explains the principal campaigns of the Civil War and all the major battles in lively text. A clear, concise and authoritative volume ideal for battlefield tours or classroom studies.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Craig L. Symonds. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Craig L. Symonds

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Craig L. Symonds. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

American Heritage History of the Battle of Gettysburg

A Battlefield Atlas of the Civil War

A Battlefield Atlas of the American Revolution

Battle of Midway, The

Neptune

The Naval Institute Historical Atlas of the U.S. Navy

World War II at Sea: A Global History

Gettysburg: A Battlefield Atlas

A Battlefield Atlas of the Civil War