Frank Carlson Library

The Battle of Dunkirk, in May/June 1940, is remembered as a stunning defeat, yet a major victory as well. The Nazis had beaten back the Allies and pushed them across France to the northern port of Dunkirk. In the ultimate race against time, more than 300,000 Allied soldiers were daringly evacuated across the Channel. This moment of German aggression was used by Winston Churchill as a call to Franklin Roosevelt to enter the war. Now, historian Joshua...

Recounts the most spectacular conflicts between Grant and Lee and details the end of hope for the Confederacy in the final year of the Civil War.

Taking off from England on March 16, 1944, young Lt. George Starks and the nine-man crew of his Flying Fortress were assigned to the “coffin corner,” the most exposed position in the bomber formation headed for Germany. They never got there. Shot down over Nazi-occupied France, the airmen bailed out one by one, scattered across the countryside. Miraculously, all ten survived, but as they discarded their parachutes in the farmland of Champagne,...

"At a glittering society party in St. Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon?s army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey, and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants, to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In War and Peace, Tolstoy entwines grand themes--conflict...

"Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell returned from his star-crossed mission in Afghanistan with his bones shattered and his heart broken. So many had given their lives to save him-- and he would have readily done the same for them. As he recuperated, he wondered why he and others, from America's founding to today, had been willing to sacrifice everything-- including themselves-- for the sake of family, nation, and freedom. In Service, we follow Marcus Luttrell...

"The heroic American contribution to World War I is one of the great stories of the twentieth century, and yet is largely overlooked by history. In Sons of Freedom, historian Geoffrey Wawro presents the dramatic narrative of the courageous American troops who took up arms in a conflict 4,000 miles across the Atlantic, and in doing so ensured the Allies' victory. Historians have long dismissed the American war effort as too little too late: a delayed...

This book is a white-knuckle account of the 1st Infantry Division's harrowing D-Day assault on the eastern sector of Omaha Beach. Nicknamed the Big Red One, 1st Division had fought from North Africa to Sicily, earning a reputation as stalwart warriors on the front lines and rabble-rousers in the rear. Yet on D-Day, these jaded combat veterans melded with fresh-faced replacement to accomplish one of the most challenging and deadly missions ever. As...

In July of 1780, when the Revolutionary War in the Southern states doomed to failure, a small but important battle took place on James Williamson's plantation in what is now York County, South Carolina. The Battle of Williamson's Plantation, of "Huck's Defeat" as it later came to be known, laid the groundwork for the vicious partisan warfare waged by the militiamen on the Carolina frontier against the superior forces of the British Army, and it paved...

In the first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of Europe in WW II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the riveting story of the war in North Africa. The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. That first year of the Allied war was a pivotal point in American history, the moment when the United States began to act like a great...

Året er 1945 og verden er i krig. Hideki bor sammen med familien sin på øya Okinawa, utenfor Japan. Når krigen ankommer øya, drar Hideki av sted for å kjempe i den japanske hæren. Han får utdelt en granat og instruksjoner om å ikke komme tilbake før han tatt livet av en amerikansk soldat. Ray, en ung gutt fra den amerikanske marinen, har akkurat ankommet Okinawa. Dette er Rays første kamp, og han vet ikke hva han skal forvente - eller om...