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

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

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

 

Cover with Soldier with Rifle

The Road to Stalingrad by Benno Zieser

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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.

 

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.

So Big by Edna Ferber

So Big by Edna Ferber

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Winner of the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, So Big is widely regarded as Edna Ferber’s crowning achievement. A rollicking panorama of Chicago’s high and low life, this stunning novel follows the travails of gambler’s daughter Selina Peake DeJong as she struggles to maintain her dignity, her family, and her sanity in the face of monumental challenges. This is the stunning and unforgettable “novel to read and to remember” by an author who “critics of the 1920s and 1930s did not hesitate to call the greatest American woman novelist of her day” (New York Times).

So Big is a brilliant literary masterwork from one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished and admired writers, and still resonates today with its unflinching views of poverty, sexism, and the drive for success.

Launching Plane at Kitty Hawk

here

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

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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 Calibre, 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. On Chromebooks, the operating system will offer an ereading app when you open the epub file.

 

In this fascinating, highly readable biography, Fred C. Kelly, a former newspaperman, author, and an old friend of the Wrights, tells the story of the two brilliant, dedicated, flight-obsessed bicycle mechanics from Ohio who first realized mankind’s age-old dream of conquering the skies.

Long considered the definitive Wright biography (the manuscript was read and approved by Orville Wright), this book recounts the Wrights’ small-town boyhood, their early interest in all things mechanical, the establishment of the Wright Cycle Shop, and the complete behind-the-scenes story of how they designed, built, tested, and flew (December 1903) the first “Flyer.”

Enhanced with sixteen rare photographs, Mr. Kelly’s engaging account avoids minute technical description, yet describes simply and clearly the technological innovations that enabled the two brothers to succeed where so many others had failed. Anyone interested in the mechanics of flight or early aviation will find this volume a splendid introduction to the Wright brothers and their epochal achievement.

Grade level from a sample of four chapters in the Flesch-Kincaid analysis is 10.3.

Cover of the Wounded Don't Cry

The Wounded Don’t Cry by Quentin Reynolds

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.

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.