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James Madison: Father of the Constitution by Alfred Steinberg

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The son of a Virginia planter, James Madison was at Princeton when he first became fired with an unshakable dream—the importance of a unified nation with freedom and liberty for all. This persistent idea was later to become the nucleus in his design for a strong national government under the rule of “We the people . . .”

A shy man of twenty-five, but with firm convictions, he was elected to the Virginia legislature and drafted a con­stitution for that state. Elected to the Continental Congress when he was not yet thirty, he served for four years, and later for another two. During this time he was instrumental in calling together a Federal Constitutional Convention, and was master architect in the actual drafting of the Constitution.

Always a champion of liberal causes, Madison had proposed amendments to the Constitution guaranteeing to the people such basic rights as freedom of speech, assembly and worship. When enacted, these amendments became part of the Bill of Rights, the keystone of American democracy.

Masterly in argument, shrewd in controversy, he helped repeal the hated Alien and Sedition Acts that threatened the rights of every American. And as Secretary of State under Jefferson, he was involved in such dramatic events as the Louisiana Purchase and the Hamilton-Burr duel.

As fourth president of the United Stales, Madison fell heir to the strained diplomatic relations with England that culminated in the War of 1812. When the British burned the White House, his wife Dolley saved the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In 1817 he retired to his Virginia estate where he wrote extensively on public affairs until his death at the age of eighty-five.

A penetrating portrayal of a man whose dedication to freedom helped shape America’s most important document.

Road to Huertgen Forest, Forest in Hell by Paul Boesch

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From Goodreads

“It’s hell,” he said flatly. “Pure unadulterated hell. That’s the only word for it. It’s hell.”

The Battle of Huertgen Forest was one of the bloodiest engagements of the Second World War.

Fought between American and German forces between 19th September to 16th December it was the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought.

During those three months six American Infantry Divisions — the 1st, 4th, 8th, 9th, 28th and 83rd — and part of the 5th Armored Division fought against the battle-hardened Germans.

Lt. Paul Boesch provides an eyewitness account of the horrors that he and his men saw as they struggled through the rain and mud, avoiding artillery, mortars and mines.

This book is a remarkable account of one of the most vicious battles in World War Two told honestly by a man who was there.

“A true but little-told account of what it means to be an Infantryman.” Major General William G. Weaver.

 

Slightly Out of Focus by Robert Capa

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“Charming and profound, Slightly Out of Focus is a marvelous memoir told in words and superb pictures. He just maybe the greatest battlefield photographer to grace the earth.”

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From Goodreads

“The story Capa sets down is so worthwhile and revealing, with some stunning photographs littered throughout the book. It jumps straight into his World War II coverage with slight reference to his earlier work that opened the door for the chance to cover the war in Europe. Included is a detailed text of his time between 1942 and 1945 in places like France, Italy and Algeria. He experienced some of the most trying conditions imaginable, yet his compassion and wit shine on every page of this book. While rarely referred to directly in the text, the photographs give a good understanding of the work Capa was doing in the circumstances he describes. Included is his account of the famous D-Day landing, and four of the eight frames that survived the well-known darkroom accident where his negatives were overheated in a London film dryer. There is nothing quite like reading what the personality had to say in telling the story of his or her life. This is a fine starting point in understanding one of photojournalism’s true masters. Charming and profound, Slightly Out of Focus is a marvelous memoir told in words and superb pictures. He just maybe the greatest battlefield photographer to grace the earth.”

Another reviewer:

“Fast paced WW2 memoir of one of the great photographers. The tone is very different from similar books from the Iraq war like Generation Kill or The Forever War. This is has more of a jet set vibe as Capa hops planes to get to the front, take war photos, and then retreat back to hang out with Hemmingway or Ernie Pyle. Its certainly a different perspective from books like To Hell and Back or With the Old Breed.”

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No Woman’s World by Iris Carpenter

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From The Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2021. Five Best: Woman Writing about World War II.

More than 200 female journalists were accredited to the Allied forces by the end of World War II, but it wasn’t until the final months of the war that a select few were allowed to report from the front. Writers like Iris Carpenter had found their own illicit ways to the fighting, but did so at their own peril. “No Woman’s World” is a coruscating indictment of the system against which they had to battle.

Nonetheless, it covers the struggle impressively, from the Battle of Britain on through V-E Day. The power of the book derives less from its coverage of battles than its unsentimental honesty. Carpenter records her own confused emotions on first entering Germany and having to decide how to view ordinary German citizens—as suffering victims, or the enemy, or both?

She is no less forthright in her descriptions of the American soldiers with whom she traveled—many of them poignantly young and courageous but also brutalized by years at war. Her bluntness make this memoir a riveting read.

 

From Time, Monday, Sept. 09, 1946.

When U.S. trucks and tanks hit Omaha Beach, says Iris Carpenter, drivers “cried and vomited” as they crunched over the bodies of G.I.s fallen in the first infantry waves. It was sickening and terrible, but the beachhead held firm.

Blonde, British-born Iris Carpenter, thirtyish, BBC commentator and war correspondent (London Daily Herald, Boston Globe), says that she held firm, too. Although ready to grant from the start that it was no woman’s world, she thought a “newspaper girl” had as much right to report what was happening as anyone else. Correspondent Carpenter stayed until V-E day and beyond, ended up with a new feeling of authority on military strategy, a shattered eardrum (enemy bombing) and a fiancé: Colonel Russell F. Akers Jr. of the U.S. First Army staff.

Much of No Woman’s World reads about as a woman’s war report might be expected to read: human-interest stories, hard-boiled anecdotes, Perils-of-Pauline asides. In field hospitals Correspondent Carpenter saw “the hideous mess which high-explosive makes of human flesh.” In newly liberated Paris she lived on “K rations, cognac and champagne.” On the Rhine she rushed over the newly captured Remagen Bridge while MPs shouted, “Keep ten paces between you and the next guy—it’s hot around here.”

Correspondent Carpenter also includes a critical tactical narrative of the fighting from D-day to the end. Having had access (she does not say through whom, but it is a fair guess) to First Army staff documents, she notes that First Army G-2 had the “first inkling” of Rundstedt’s Ardennes offensive weeks before it began, but that Bradley’s Twelfth Army group did not act on the information. Her conclusion: it was closer to “complete catastrophe . . . than any Allied commander would ever care to admit.”

 

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cover showing a Japanese prison guard

Give Us This Day by Sidney Stewart

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“Unforgettable”—The New York Times

“I have read scores of books that came out of World War II, but I have read none that took such a tremendous grip on my emotions, nor one that evoked so strikingly the horror of war…This is more than a book, finely written as it is—it is a living experience.”  —Chicago Tribune

“Probably several million words have been written about the Bataan Death March, but no matter how many all have now been superseded by this splenlid book. If the men of that march needed a monument other than their own heroism they have it now in GIVE US THIS DAY. —Omaha World Herald

 

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Action in the East by O.D. Gallagher

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I found the book to be an exciting read, and it gave me a view of the war and the geography of the war which I had not been aware of. The reading level is 7.1.

Reviews from Goodreads:

Gallagher was one of two journalists aboard the Repulse when she was sunk (the other was Cecil Brown. See “Suez to Singapore”). After the fall of Singapore, he went to Rangoon and Mandalay. This is his story. I like the books by journalists that are published during the war. They give a sense of immediacy and an analysis of greater events is not aided by the lens of history. These reports also sometimes tend to jingoism. Gallagher typically refers to the Japanese as “Japs” and several times as “apes”.

Not the best of the journalist reports I’ve read (I thought Brown’s book was better), but a quick read and entertaining.

*******

Another library book sale find. Very easy reading as to style but content is hard to read emotionally. Mr. Gallagher brings the early days of the Pacific war to life in all their terror and frustration. Each chapter of this book could be expanded into a book of its own-so many stories just casually mentioned.

*******

A fun book about a Second World War adventure of an American news correspondent.

 

 

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Berlin Command by General Frank L. Howley

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The New York Times did not love Berlin Command by General Frank L. Howley. The Times suggested that Howley was a little full of himself. It did not like his arguments with his superiors, and his criticisms of other officials involved in the Berlin Airlift. I disagree with the Times. I enjoyed the narrative. It was energetic and straightforward, if at times a little opinionated. But General Howley had the right to take some of the credit for the success of the Airlift.

He was the military manager of the American sector of Berlin. With the airlift of food and coal from West Germany to Berlin, he and his colleagues rescued the over 2 million people in the Allied sectors of Berlin from lives under Soviet tyranny after the Russians had stopped road, rail, and waterway traffic to Berlin in 1948 and 1949.

I would suggest that you advise your students to skip most of the first chapters where Howley talks about the division and administration of Germany before the airlift was necessary. I think that Howley produced an interesting introduction to the Cold War. He shows how the distrust between the U.S. and Russia came about. The tension created by the Berlin Airlift influenced American politicians and military leaders for decades.

The grade level is 10.3.

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The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary

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The classic memoir that explodes the myth of the romance of war.

Young Richard Hillary, a Spitfire pilot in the RAF, thought that flying one-on-one against Hitler’s “roster of rogues” the Luftwaffe, would be exciting, gallant, and heroic.

However, when he is shot down, horribly burned and disfigured in the Battle of Britain, he faces a different battle in which he must confront the toughest enemy of all—himself—and learn true courage and heroism.

“Hillary takes us into the clouds of his flight-and into the depths of his suffering.”—Publishers Weekly
“FEW BOOKS ARE WRITTEN SO WELL OR PACK SUCH AN EMOTIONAL WALLOP.—UPI

More Editorial Reviews

“A small masterpiece” —The New York Times

“A classic of air warfare” —Washington Post

“Admirable skill … A real writer.” —J. B. Priestly

“A war book that is destined to live … It will, I think, become a Classic.”
—from a BBC broadcast by Sir Desmond MacCarthy

“A haunting memoir of wartime courage”—Philadelphia Inquirer

“THE LAST ENEMY has been a classic in England since its publication. It deserves the same status here.” —Tulsa World

“A philosophical treatise on war which ranks with the
best.” —Montgomery Journal-Advertiser

Cover with captured U-505

U-505 by Daniel V. Gallery

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Reviews

Admiral Daniel V. Gallery boarded and captured a German U-Boat at sea in June, 1944—the first American officer to so capture an enemy warship since 1815! U-505 is Admiral Gallery’s own story of his extraordinary feat—and also a gripping narrative of the fierce Allied war against the German U-Boat fleet.

“Excellent in several ways: it provides a fine quick survey of the whole Atlantic war, it describes the operation of the German U-boat service, and, most dramatically, it tells how an American task force under Admiral Gallery achieved the unique feat of capturing a German submarine.”—Publishers’ Weekly

“One of the best non-fiction books about World War II.”—Raleigh News & Observer

“U-505 IS ONE OF THE WAR’S MOST EXCITING MEMOIRS.”—Chicago Daily News

“A first-rate adventure tale…suspense and excitement told with a seaman’s salty zest…excellent reading.”—Chicago Sunday Tribune

“A humdinger of a sea story…a highly readable book, trimmed from stem to stern with the writer’s irrepressible sense of humor.”—Chicago Sunday Times

“EXCELLENT.”—Chicago Tribune

“Brimming with thrills.”—Philadelphia News

“An engrossing tale…Pungent, entertaining, informative.”—Navy Times

“A masterful job that merits the attention of every lover of sea stories.”—Pittsburgh Press

 

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The Road to Stalingrad by Benno Zieser

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On the last day of January, 1943, the German Sixth Army surrendered to the Russians at Stalingrad. After a winter cam­paign of unparalleled horror and hardship, the Wehrmacht was beaten.

THE ROAD TO STALINGRAD is a shattering eyewitness account of that lost battle-written by a survivor. Benno Zieser was drafted at the age of nineteen and fought in the infantry at Stalingrad, in this book he tells of his first naive enthusiasm—then the shocking realities:

The frozen wastes of an unconquerable continent . . . gutted roads strewn with abandoned equipment . . . the anonymous graves by the wayside . . . the colossal fraud behind Hitler’s promise of victory.

Not since ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT has a German author written such a powerful indictment of war—but Benno Zieser’s book is fact, not fiction.