Helen Plum Library

Some warriors are drawn to the thrill of combat and find it the defining moment of their lives. Others fall victim to fear, exhaustion, impaired reasoning, and despair. This was certainly true for twentieth-century American ground troops. Whether embracing or being demoralized by war, these men risked their lives for causes larger than themselves with no promise of safe return. Focusing on both soldiers and marines, Peter S. Kindsvatter draws on histories...

"Throughout 1943, the German army, heirs to a military tradition that demanded and perfected relentless offensive operations, succumbed to the realities of its own overreach and the demands of twentieth-century industrialized warfare. In his new study, prizewinning author Robert Citino chronicles this weakening Wehrmacht, now fighting desperately on the defensive but still remarkably dangerous and lethal. Drawing on his impeccable command of German-language...

In the Vietnam War, American "rough riders" drove trucks through hostile territory delivering supplies, equipment, ammunition, weapons, fuel, and reinforcements to troops fighting on the war's ever-shifting front lines. But, all too often, the convoys themselves became the front lines. Frank McAdams, a Marine Corps lieutenant, learned that the hard way during a tour of duty that began right after the 1968 Tet Offensive and the siege at Khe Sanh. In...

With Allied armies poised on the banks of the Rhine, Nazi Germany tottered on the brink of collapse. The ensuing battles on German soil-especially those in the so-called Ruhr Pocket-were as fierce and hard-fought as any in the European theater. Going well beyond previous accounts, Derek S. Zumbro chronicles this key military campaign from a unique and fresh perspective-that of the defeated German soldiers and civilians caught in the final maelstrom...