December, 2018 - Ebooks for Students

The Wounded Don’t Cry by Quentin Reynolds

December 22, 2018/0 Comments/in For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, Military History, World War II /by Jim McCabe

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kindle.

As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this website to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

Download mobi file here.

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An Excerpt from the New York Times Review of January 26, 1941:

“THE WOUNDED DON’T CRY” is one of the phrases in which an American journalist expresses his admiration for British spirit, and more specifically the spirit of London under fire. In the book to which he has given that symbolic title (and which he dedicates To my neighbors, the people of London”) Quentin Reynolds has made an excellent selection of representative word pictures, which show in one clear-cut detail after another what England is going through and how English courage, endurance and humor are meeting the present happenings of war. It is a journalist’s book from start to finish, a book of flashes, sharp, racy, significant: one of the very good books of its kind…

…But for all the brightness with which he says it, most of what his book has to say is serious stuff.

At an R. A. F. airdrome as the men go out and come back (the lad they call “Old Brownie” is just 23; on a trawler in Channel convoy; in an aircraft factory; with friends in their country home; on the streets, and in many pubs—this Is the England Quentin Reynolds knows…

…For the French soldiers and airmen, with whom he was first stationed, Mr. Reynolds has also words of glowing admiration. He has a report from neutral Ireland too. But the best of his book is in its pictures from England — unconquered, undiscouraged, still laughing, not even tired.

“A lot of us think England won the war at Dunkerque,” he says. But why Hitler allowed the country to catch its breath then, instead of invading when he could, will always be a mystery.

Pancho Villa: Strong Man of the Revolution by Larry Harris

December 21, 2018/0 Comments/in Biography, For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, Latino History /by Jim McCabe

Download an Epub or Mobi File?

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices and in one case for Amazon devices. As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send to Kindle program. A great feature of the Send to Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for on your Amazon device in ES File Explorer or another app.

So if you intend to use the Send to Kindle feature, please download the epub format. If you use the mobi format in Send to Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

As mentioned, if you are using this ebook on Apple, or Android devices, or in the Send to Kindle program, you can download this epub file below.

Download Now!

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

Download Now!

Pancho Villa was the son of a field laborer and was orphaned at an early age. In revenge for an assault on his sister, he killed one of the owners of the estate on which he worked and was afterward forced to flee to the mountains, where he spent his adolescence as a fugitive.

In 1910 Villa joined Francisco Madero’s uprising against the dictator of Mexico, Porfirio Díaz. During the rebellion, Villa, who lacked a formal education but had learned to read and write, displayed his talents as soldier and organizer. Combined with his intimate knowledge of the land and the people of northern Mexico, those gifts enabled him to place at Madero’s disposal a division of trained soldiers under his command. After the success of the revolution, Villa remained in the irregular army.

Larry Harris tells this story of a man who rose against the bitter oppression of the Mexican caste system to become a leader who would hear the chant “Viva Villa!” echo off crumbling adobe walls in dozens of poor villages where there had been no hope and no future. Villa promised both. He captures life of Villa-as bandit, revolutionary, and military leader-with the facts of history and the immediacy of on-the-spot journalism.

The Underdogs, a Story of the Mexican Revolution by Mariano Azuela

December 20, 2018/0 Comments/in Fiction, Free Ebooks, Latino History, With a Study Guide /by Jim McCabe

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“The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution” is Mariano Azuela’s fictional account of the Mexican Revolution. Originally published as a newspaper serial in 1915, then as a complete novel in 1920, it was first translated into English in 1929 and was a critical and financial success. Based closely on Azuela’s own experiences, it is the story of Demetrio Macias, a peasant who is mistreated by government soldiers and must flee his home. He runs to the mountains and forms a group of revolutionaries to help overthrow the corrupt dictator, Porfirio Diaz. Macias and his comrades are a motley group of outcasts who are often unsure of what precisely they are fighting for and are sometimes no better than the cruel government they are rebelling against. Rather than a simple struggle of honorable peasants against an unjust government, Azuela’s tale is sophisticated and nuanced and captures in stunning detail the lives of the poor, the passion of the revolutionaries, and the heartbreaking disillusionment they must often face. In Azuela’s depiction of Demetrio Macias, he captures the complicated spirit of the Mexican people and his masterful telling of this conflict between the rebels and the federales helped to establish him as one of Mexico’s preeminent novelists.

The novel seems to offer a number of opportunities for writing responses. Compare the Mexico of Demetrio Macias with the Mexico or the United States of today. How is power or wealth allocated in societies? etc.

Vietnam 1969 Progress of Pacification, Prospects for Vietnamization by James G. Lowenstein & Richard M. Moose

December 20, 2018/0 Comments/in Free Ebooks, Military History, Vietnam /by Jim McCabe

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kindle.

Download Now!

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

Download Now!

Editorial Reviews

In their report to the Senate Foreign Relatons Committee in 1969, Lowenstein and Moose wrote about their interviews with the senior political and military leadership in Vietnam and also with villagers in the countryside. They complain in the report of often receiving contradictory answers to the same questions depending on whom they are asking. And they complain that briefings are rarely objective.

“In sum, whether inadvertently or deliberately, briefings do not objectively present the pros and cons but rather emphasize progress and accomplishment. Being briefed in Vietnam is somewhat like being told to buy product X without being told what is wrong with it or why to buy product Y.”

The New York Times called thieir report “a bombshell.”
“They interviewed all the major figures — Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, Gen. Creighton Abrams, Vietnamese politicians — but also midlevel officers. They read volumes of field reports and traveled the length of South Vietnam, meeting with village elders.

“Their report, released in a redacted version to the public in early 1970, was a bombshell. The administration’s plans, they wrote, ‘seem to rest on far more ambiguous, confusing and contradictory evidence than pronouncements from Washington and Saigon indicate.’”

“The war, they concluded, ‘appears to be not only far from won but far from over.’”

U.S. Marines in Vietnam: Small Unit Action 1966 by Captain Francis J. “Bing” West Jr.

December 20, 2018/0 Comments/in Free Ebooks, Vietnam /by Jim McCabe

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Download for Kindle Fire tablets and Amazon ereaders:

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Grade Level from the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Score is 6.2.

The battle scenes are dramatic but are too graphic for middle school readers in our opinion.

And the text of the book is much easier reading than the blurb below:

Vietnam, summer 1966. On a steep mountainside 20 miles inland, a reconnaissance platoon of 18 men holds off hundreds of enemy soldiers for over 12 hours. In a four-day scouting mission near the demilitarized zone, a small patrol ambushes and destroys a Viet Cong base camp. This was the action behind the headlines in Vietnam.

From routine night raids to full-scale assaults, Small Unit Action in Vietnam presents a compelling perspective on the courage, dedication and patriotic enthusiasm of U.S. Marines in the early stages of the war.

Originally published as a strategic training manual, this remarkable and moving document is an authentic eyewitness account of nine separate actions at the company and battalion level. Most books look at the broad picture of the war. Small Unit Action in Vietnam sharpens the focus to show the individual battles as they were actually fought. Captain West’s book describes with taut precision the lightning judgments, tactical decisions and moments of bravery of individual soldiers fighting a deadly enemy in an overwhelmingly hostile environment.

Through his vivid descriptions—of the rugged terrain, the movements of the units, the use of support troops and artillery, the ruses and psychological ploys so crucial in defeating a brilliant, determined and resourceful foe—we experience with stunning clarity the challenges of combat on the front.

Last Flight from Singapore with Maps and Illustrations by Arthur G. Donahue

December 19, 2018/0 Comments/in For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, Military History, Primary Source, World War II /by Jim McCabe

Fighting on after the Fall of Singapore

To read this ebook on a computer or tablet using Google Play Books, or iBooks on your tablet or iPad, download this epub format.

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845 Downloads

To download a mobi file for your Amazon device, click here

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1076 Downloads

Directions on how to email this file to your Kindle device are here.
To add this mobi file to your Kindle for PC software to read the chapters on your computer, see these instructions .

The Kindle Personal Document Service allows teachers, or librarians to send a mobi file to up to 15 student Kindle email addresses at a time.

With the Calibre app, you and your students can read this ebook in epub format on computer screens. By changing the background color, and enlarging the font, the reading experience on a computer screen is reasonable. With Chromebooks, the device will offer a choice of ereading apps when you open the epub file.

As one of the storied few who defeated the Nazi Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain, American Arthur G. Donahue-Royal Air Force Flight Lieutenant and recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross-wished to continue his service and requested overseas duty.

In October 1941, he was sent to the British protectorate of Singapore as a precaution against a possible threat from Japan, which was already conducting a war in China. This posting soon put him on the spot as the Japanese Army swept down the Malayan peninsula to assault the fortress island.

Within two months, all of Asia was thrown into turmoil as Japan simultaneously bombed Hawaii and invaded the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. Japanese forces swiftly conquered much of Southeast Asia and began moving toward Burma and India. Standing in the face of this onslaught was the British stronghold of Singapore.

Donahue and his squadron began around-the-clock sorties, reminiscent of their battle against Germany a little more than one year earlier. This time, however, the British forces were overwhelmed and they were forced to surrender the city to the Japanese in February 1942, an event Winston Churchill called “the worst disaster” in British history.

During the final phase of the battle, Donahue was wounded while strafing Japanese transports unloading troops to storm Singapore. He managed to land, and was airlifted on the last flight from the city and ultimately to a hospital in India. In Last Flight from Singapore, Donahue tells his dramatic story, accompanied by photographs he took himself, of the intense and futile battle against the Japanese for control of the gateway to the Malay Peninsula. He continues his story through his convalescence to his return to England, where he once again began patrols over Europe. The manuscript for “Last Flight from Singapore” was found among his effects after he did not return from a patrol in 1942 and was presumed lost.

From the New York Times review:
“Donahue is no literary artist and he makes no attempt either to dramatize or to underplay his experience. He tells them in a simple, unvarnished manner, much as if he were sitting down with some friends back home. The result is pretty close to what the real thing must have been. There are times when the horror and futility of the Singapore incident shine through with sickening clarity…
“Donahue was one of the expendables, one of the few who stood in the breach while the rest of us found out what was happening. He was one of the few of whom Churchill spoke when he cited the great debt of the many.”

The Wounded Don’t Cry by Quentin Reynolds

Pancho Villa: Strong Man of the Revolution by Larry Harris

Download an Epub or Mobi File?

The Underdogs, a Story of the Mexican Revolution by Mariano Azuela

Vietnam 1969 Progress of Pacification, Prospects for Vietnamization by James G. Lowenstein & Richard M. Moose

Editorial Reviews

U.S. Marines in Vietnam: Small Unit Action 1966 by Captain Francis J. “Bing” West Jr.

Last Flight from Singapore with Maps and Illustrations by Arthur G. Donahue

Fighting on after the Fall of Singapore

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