Cover of Guardians of Liberty

Guardians of Liberty: Sam Adams and John Hancock by Olga Hall-Quest

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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.

f 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 mobi file here.

 

Olga Hall-Quest tells the story of the beginnings of the Revolution and of the men who made it with the same lively skill that made her Jamestown Adventure so popular. The excitement of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill are captured anew, as two of the great figures of eighteenth-century America, Sam Adams and John Hancock, come to life again.

Sam Adams worked untiringly to bring about an independent America. He fought against any infringement of colonial liberties with every skill at his command. It was Adams, who by his writings and his gift of persuasion, his hatred of Tory and aristocratic pretensions, rallied the people of Massachusetts Bay against the Stamp Act. It was he who drafted the call for the Stamp Act Congress, and who won Paul Revere and Joseph Warren to the cause of liberty.

To the dismay of the aristocratic Governor Thomas Hutchinson, Adams managed to turn John Hancock, one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, into an advocate of liberty and a supporter of the Whig faction. Adams well knew the value of John Hancock to a cause. Hancock paid for entertainment, food, and so on, at Whig rallies and outings, and by his generosity to the poor of Boston won a large popular following.

Ruthless, unyielding, Sam Adams was, perhaps, our first publicist. Vernon Parrington wrote of him: “Behind the imposing figure of John Hancock, or the eloquence of John Adams, was certain to be the directing mind of the ‘Master of the puppets,’ as Thomas Hutchinson sneeringly called Sam Adams.”

Paul Revere’s famous engraving of the Boston Massacre, which we have adapted for our jacket, is an example of how Sam Adams used events to further his goal of an independent America, for this highly exaggerated drawing depicts Adams’s version of the “massacre.”

The reading level from the Flesh-Kincaid scale is 9.0.

images of men standing

Founding Fathers by Kenneth Umbreit

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 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 mobi file here.


 

Clever Character Sketches

I found this book delightful. Kenneth Umbreit is a storyteller. Here is the lead sentence from the chapter on George Washington. “The deeper one delves into the record the more evident it becomes that if it had not been for George Washington there would never have been a United States.” This pulled me into the chapter; I needed to know how Washington helped launch the United States.

He respects the Founders but is not worshipful. He writes of their beliefs and courage and tenacity in accounts that are both readable and instructive. A reviewer wrote that Umbreit wrote “clever character sketches.” And even though the book was written over a generation ago, Umbreit’s point of view is modern. He notes defects. He did not ignore Jefferson’s backward views on slavery and wrote that he stayed “safe” on slavery in order not to offend fellow plantation owners.

The first chapter on Thomas Jefferson is a little complicated. Umbreit explains the influences of common law and natural law and the beliefs of the Anglo-Saxons in England on Jefferson’s thinking. Easier starting points are the chapters on Sam Adams, Patrick Henry and John Hancock. The reading level of Sam Adams is 9.7, Patrick Henry 10.1. and John Hancock, 9.2. The first chapter on Thomas Jefferson is 10.9.

Reviews at the time the original publication were positive. “Umbreit’s book is the work of a historical scholar with a flair for popularizing biography and drawing clever character sketches,” wrote Roy F. Nichols in The New England Quarterly. “Skillful strokes make intriguing portraits of Jefferson, John Adams, Hancock, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry and George Washington. …One gets the impression that somehow Jefferson is the villain of the piece. Hancock is displayed as an astute self-serving politician whose vanity made it possible for clever men to use him. John Adams appears as usual. Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry are master politicians with the latter treated more gently than usual of late because the author thinks him the victim of Jefferson’s talent for “the assassination of reputation.” The hero is Washington, without whom Umbreit thinks “there would never be a United States.” Umbreit thinks of him as one of the “fierce men” in history,” like William the Conqueror with a talent for organization and money-making. Thus these six men are portrayed with a wealth of detail illuminating the complexities of their characters.”

image of James Madison

James Madison: Father of the Constitution by Alfred Steinberg

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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 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 mobi file here.

 

Road to Huertgen Forest, Forest in Hell by Paul Boesch

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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 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 or Libby on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

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

“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.”

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 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.

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.”

Photo of 6 Female Journalists

No Woman’s World by Iris Carpenter

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

“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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Book Cover with Photographs of Frank Howley

Berlin Command by General Frank L. Howley

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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 mobi file here.

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.

Book Cover of Last Enemy

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

Epub or Mobi?

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 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.

So 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.

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.

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