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In Elegance Bratton's deeply moving film inspired by his own story, a young, gay Black man, rejected by his mother and with few options for his future, decides to join the Marines, doing whatever it takes to succeed in a system that would cast him aside. But even as he battles deep-seated prejudice and the grueling routines of basic training, he finds unexpected camaraderie, strength, and support in this new community, giving him a hard-earned sense of belonging that will shape his identity and forever change his life

• Newtown Square
• Philadelphia
• Guantánamo
• Luzon, Philippines
• Northern China
• Samar, Philippines
• The Isthmus
• Subic Bay, Philippines
• Nicaragua
• The Canal Zone
• Veracruz
• Haiti
• Dominican Republic
• Port-au-Prince
• France
• Philadelphia
• Shanghai
• America

"A groundbreaking journey tracing America's forgotten path to global power-and how its legacies shape our world today-told through the extraordinary life of a complicated Marine. Smedley Butler was the most celebrated warfighter of his time. Bestselling books were written about him. Hollywood adored him. Wherever the flag went, "The Fighting Quaker" went-serving in nearly every major overseas conflict from the Spanish War of 1898 until the eve of World War II. From his first days as a 16-year-old recruit at the newly seized Guantánamo Bay, he blazed a path for empire: helping annex the Philippines and the land for the Panama Canal, leading troops in China (twice), and helping invade and occupy Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Mexico, and more. Yet in retirement, Butler turned into a warrior against war, imperialism, and big business, declaring: "I was a racketeer for capitalism." Award-winning author Jonathan Myerson Katz traveled across the world-from China to Guantánamo, the mountains of Haiti to the Panama Canal-and pored over the personal letters of Butler, his fellow Marines, and his Quaker family on Philadelphia's Main Line. Along the way, Katz shows how the consequences of the Marines' actions are still very much alive: talking politics with a Sandinista commander in Nicaragua, getting a martial arts lesson from a devotee of the Boxer Rebellion in China, and getting cast as a P.O.W. extra in a Filipino movie about their American War. Tracing a path from the first wave of U.S. overseas expansionism to the rise of fascism in the 1930s to the crises of democracy in our own time, Gangsters of Capitalism tells an urgent story about a formative era most Americans have never learned about, but that the rest of the world cannot forget"-- Provided by publisher

Instant New York Times Bestseller "Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights is an American classic. With The Mosquito Bowl, he is back with a true story even more colorful and profound. This book too is destined to become a classic. I devoured it." - John Grisham An extraordinary, untold story of the Second World War in the vein of Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat, from the author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war - the invasion of Okinawa-their ranks included one of the greatest pools of football talent ever assembled: Former All Americans, captains from Wisconsin and Brown and Notre Dame, and nearly twenty men who were either drafted or would ultimately play in the NFL. When the trash-talking between the 4th and 29th over who had the better football team reached a fever pitch, it was decided: The two regiments would play each other in a football game as close to the real thing as you could get in the dirt and coral of Guadalcanal. The bruising and bloody game that followed became known as "The Mosquito Bowl." Within a matter of months, 15 of the 65 players in "The Mosquito Bowl" would be killed at Okinawa, by far the largest number of American athletes ever to die in a single battle. The Mosquito Bowl is the story of these brave and beautiful young men, those who survived and those who did not. It is the story of the families and the landscape that shaped them. It is a story of a far more innocent time in both college athletics and the life of the country, and of the loss of that innocence. Writing with the style and rigor that won him a Pulitzer Prize and have made several of his books modern classics, Buzz Bissinger takes us from the playing fields of America's campuses where boys played at being Marines, to the final time they were allowed to still be boys on that field of dirt and coral, to the darkest and deadliest days that followed at Okinawa. .
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"An honest reckoning with the war on terror, masculinity, and the violence of American hegemony abroad, at home, and on the psyche, from a veteran whose convictions came undone. When Lyle Jeremy Rubin first arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School, he was convinced that the "war on terror" was necessary to national security. He also subscribed to a strict code of manhood that military service conjured and perpetuated. Then he began to train and his worldview shattered. Honorably discharged five years later, Rubin returned to the United States with none of his beliefs, about himself or his country, intact. In Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body, Rubin narrates his own undoing, the profound disillusionment that took hold of him on bases in the U.S. and Afghanistan. He both examines his own failings as a participant in a prescribed masculinity and the failings of American empire, examining the racialized and class hierarchies and culture of conquest that constitute the machinery of U.S. imperialism. The result is a searing analysis and the story of one man's personal and political conversion, told in beautiful prose by an essayist, historian, and veteran transformed"--Amazon

• The Making of a Young Marine: Pearl Harbor to Cuba
• "Where're You Going, Marine?"
• The Road From Cuba to the South Pacific
• Guadalcanal: The Fighting Ninth Meets the Island of Death.
• A Forgotten Victory: The Rendova/New Georgia Campaign
• "R & R": Brief Interlude in the Russells
• Operation FORAGER: The Invasion and Occupation of Guam
• "Home Alive in '45"
• Epilogue: The Laughter and the Tears
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A
• After the Colors Faded:
• A Selective History of What Happened to
• Them After the War
• Appendix B
• Organizational Chart
• Appendix C
• Navy Unit Commendation for the 9th Defense Battalion.

_"RADIOMAN tells a universal story -- about war, family, and growing up. Andy Hesterman's 25 years in the Marines span a huge range of world events and personal experiences. I found myself laughing, rooting for him, and shaking my head at the insanity of it all. A great book!" _- Nathaniel Fick, NY Times best-selling author of ONE BULLET AWAY _ From a recruit surviving boot camp to a Major flying combat helicopters and controlling F/A-18s in Iraq, Andy Hesterman shares the pride of the Corps and the pain of saying goodbye to your family for yet another deployment. With Radioman, you'll feel like you've put on the Marine cammies and marched alongside Hesty for over two decades of service to our country. _ - Dell Epperson, Captain, U.S. Navy (Retired) _"Radioman is far more than the story of one man's 25-year journey through the modern Marine Corps - as fascinating as that story is. It is also an account of the extraordinary changes - technological, tactical, moral - that have utterly transformed the American military in that time. Both gripping and honest, Radioman is also told with a humor and humility that makes for an extremely pleasurable read."_ - "Scott Anderson, New York Times best-selling author of THE QUIET AMERICANS" From a Gulf War grunt to a full-fledged Marine Major in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Andrew Hesterman saw it all. _Radioman_ offers a highly personal and unfiltered view of the Marine Corps as it transitioned from the post-Vietnam analog Reagan era to the post-9/11 high-tech George W. Bush and Obama years. _Radioman_ begins with Andy as a recruit at boot camp and the ensuing training that leads to formally becoming a Marine. After comm school and the reserves, Andy is called to active duty in 1991 for the Gulf War, where he experiences combat up close in Kuwait. The next personally, professionally, and politically tumultuous decade brings marriage (and divorce), flight school and helicopter missions in Kosovo, the shock of 9/11, another marriage, and children. Andy's journey culminates as an officer in Iraq, where he directs air support for the Marines in Fallujah. Co-authored by Robert Einaudi, a close friend of Hesterman's since high school, _Radioman_ provides an honest and vivid military portrait of the Marine Corps and the modern US military seen through the experiences of one Marine.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Death and memory
• How we mourned, why we fought
• Left behind
• What we're fighting for
• Fear and loathing in Mosul
• We have no idea what we're doing in Iraq. We didn't before we killed Suleimani
• War, loss, and unthinkable youth
• Citizen-soldier : moral risk and the modern military
• The good war
• Duty and pity
• The lesson of Eric Greitens, and the Navy SEALs who tried to warn us
• The warrior at the mall
• The soldiers we leave behind
• A history of violence
• After war, a failure of the imagination
• Fact and fiction
• Public rage won't solve any of our problems
• Visions of war and peace : literature and authority in World War I
• Tales of war and redemption
• Man of war
• Can the trauma of war lead to growth, despite the scars?

"When Phil Klay left the Marines a decade ago, after serving as an officer in Iraq, he found himself part of the community of veterans who have no choice but to grapple with the meaning of their wartime experiences-for themselves and for the country. American identity has always been bound up in war-from the revolutionary war of our founding, to the civil war that ended slavery, to the two world wars that launched America as a superpower. What did the current wars say about who we are as a country, and how should we respond as citizens? Unlike previous eras of war, few other Americans have had to do any real grappling with the endless, invisible wars of the post-9/11 world at all; in fact, increasingly, few people are even aware they are still going on. It's as if there's a dark star with a strong gravitational force that draws a relatively small number of soldiers and their families into its orbit, while remaining inconspicuous to most other Americans. In the meantime, the consequences of American military action abroad may be out of sight and out of mind, but they are very real indeed. This chasm between military and civilian in American life, and the moral blind spot it has created, is one of the great themes of Uncertain Ground, Phil Klay's powerful series of reckonings in essay form over the past ten years with some of our country's thorniest concerns. In the name of what do we ask young Americans to kill, and to die? In the name of what does this country hang together? As we see at every turn in these pages, those two questions have a great deal to do with one another, and how we answer them will go a long way toward deciding where our troubled country goes from here"-- Provided by publisher

• Semper Fi: An Anomalous Organization in Search of a Mission
• Waging War in the Most Remote Place on Earth: The Pacific Theater
• Central Pacific Offensive
• Closing in on Japan
• Conclusion, Gaining and Losing Combat Command

The Marine Corps covered itself in glory in World War II with victories over the Japanese in hard-fought battles such as Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima. While these battles are well known, those who led the Marines into them have remained obscure until now. In Commanding the Pacific: Marine Corps Generals in World War II, Stephen R. Taaffe analyzes the fifteen high-level Marine generals who led the Corps' six combat divisions and two corps in the conflict. He concludes that these leaders played an indispensable and unheralded role in organizing, training, and leading their men to victory. Taaffe insists there was nothing inevitable about the Marine Corps' success in World War II. The small pre-war size of the Corps meant that its commandant had to draw his combat leaders from a small pool of officers who often lacked the education of their Army and Navy counterparts. Indeed, there were fewer than one hundred Marine officers with the necessary rank, background, character, and skills for its high-level combat assignments. Moreover, the Army and Navy froze the Marines out of high-level strategic decisions and frequently impinged on Marine prerogatives. There were no Marines in the Joint Chiefs of Staff or at the head of the Pacific War's geographic theaters, so the Marines usually had little influence over the island targets selected for them. In addition to bureaucratic obstacles, constricted geography and vicious Japanese opposition limited opportunities for Marine generals to earn the kind of renown that Army and Navy commanders achieved elsewhere. In most of its battles on small Pacific War islands, Marine generals had neither the option nor inclination to engage in sophisticated tactics, but they instead relied in direct frontal assaults that resulted in heavy casualties. Such losses against targets of often questionable strategic value sometimes called into question the Marine Corps' doctrine, mission, and the quality of its combat generals. Despite these difficulties, Marine combat commanders repeatedly overcame challenges and fulfilled their missions. Their ability to do so does credit to the Corps and demonstrates that these generals deserve more attention from historians than they have so far received.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Acknowledgments Preface: Even Heroes Have Heroes One-An Epic Moment Two-The Making of the Man Three-Marine Recruit Four-The Boxer Rebellion Five-Peking Siege Six-Love in War Seven-Sea Soldier Eight-Vera Cruz Nine-Haiti Ten-Dominican Republic Eleven-Over There Twelve-Chateau Thierry Thirteen-Belleau Wood Fourteen-The Third Medal of Honor Fifteen-Soissons Sixteen-St. Mihiel Seventeen-Blanc Mont Ridge Eighteen- Meuse-Argonne Nineteen-Final Years Twenty-Daly's Legacy Sergeant Major Daniel J. Daly's Medals and Citations Chapter Notes Bibliography Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

More than 40 million Americans have served in the U.S. military during wartime. Only 3500 have been awarded the Medal of Honor. Of these, three have received the medal twice. One was recommended for it a third time. Marine Corps Sergeant Major Daniel J. Daly was an unlikely hero at five feet, six inches tall and 132 pounds. What he lacked in size he made up for in grit. He received his first Medal of Honor for single-handedly holding off enemy attacks during China's Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the second for his daring, one-man action during an ambush in Haiti in 1915. He was nominated for (but not awarded) an unprecedented third medal in World War I for his valor at Belleau Wood, where he led a charge against the German stronghold with the battle cry, "Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?" This first full-length biography presents a detailed examination of a Marine Corps legend.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Prologue: The music of the night
• The making of a Marine. Born to serve ; The house of horrors ; Drill instruction ; Finishing school ; Shipping out
• The Kill Zone. First contact ; Joining the varsity team ; M-I-S-E-R-Y ; Operation Buffalo ; The Kill Zone
• Marching against the war. Leaving the Corps ; : Big vet on campus ; Joining the VVAW ; Public speaking ; Finding the others
• Epilogue: Coming full circle

"A Marine's searing and intimate memoir about surviving Vietnam and its aftermath."-- Provided by publisher
Service, patriotism, faith, and civic pride. Musgrave grew up looking forward to the day when he could enlist to serve his country as his father had done. During his senior year in high school, with the Vietnam War already raging, he signed up for the Marine Corps. Here he renders his wartime experience with a powerful intimacy and immediacy: from the rude awakening of boot camp, to daily life in the Vietnam jungle, to a chest injury that very nearly killed him. He describes the difficulty of returning home to a society rife with antiwar sentiment, his own survivor's guilt, and the slow realization that he and his fellow veterans had been betrayed by the government they served. Ultimately, Musgrave found peace among his fellow veterans working to end the war. -- adapted from jacket