The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices and the Send-to-Kindle feature on Amazon devices.
To read on a device from Amazon, here is the ebook in mobi format.
Editorial Reviews
The New York Times, September, 1957.
“…This is an old story, but it is told in a fresh and lovely voice. Robert Leckie writes with charm, with personal humility, with humor, with a rare gift for capturing all that is human in the most inhuman of man’s activities.
He makes no bones about it—the war is what happened to him. The point of view is not the grand strategy of victory, but the immediate tactic of personal survival. By turns a boot, a machine gunner on Guadalcanal, a liberty hound in Australia, an intelligence scout on Peleliu—briefly a self-styled “brig rat” subsisting on bread and water and finally a casualty —Private Leckie fought the enlisted man’s battle.
By David Dempsey
From the Marine Corps Association and Foundation
Revisiting a Pacific War Classic by Lt. Col. Michael Grice
Robert Leckie’s “Helmet for My Pillow” has been my single favorite military book for over 30 years. Written from the perspective of a young participant in the great endeavor that was World War II, it is a soulful, wrenching, humorous, and insightful account of one youth’s journey into manhood via the Pacific campaigns spearheaded by the 1st Marine Division.
I first read it as a junior high school student in 1980, and I have reread it nearly every year since. It has framed my perspectives of the Marine Corps, of leadership, of enlisted service, of officers, and of combat as I have aged, matured, and risen through the ranks. Leckie doesn’t provide a technical, historical account consisting of units, maps, and strategy, but instead provides a humanistic view of the Marine Corps at war from the perspective of an often-bewildered observer caught up in the whirlwind of events.
Beginning with his rush to service after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Leckie brings the reader along as a fellow traveler on his journey to war. He presents his story through a framework of symbolism, simile, and metaphor; almost no character is identified by actual name but instead by title or attribute that the author chooses to best typify them. Generally warm to his peers (to whom have been bestowed titles such as “Hoosier,” “Chuckler,” and “Runner,” all so called because of their origins, habits, or claims to fame), he is critical of his seniors, most notably his officers. “Commando,” for example, was what we would consider an exceptionally motivated officer in the modern sense, but his Marines viewed him with suspicion and occasional terror as he attempted to utilize urban combat techniques in the dank jungles of the Pacific. “Commando sits on his brains,” says Leckie and his mates; they recognize that he is incredibly brave, but such bravery is not the only quality that a leader needs to possess in order to inspire men. He writes of officers who only venture into the lines when they hear that Leckie has somehow obtained a box of cigars; true to his status as a carefree private he ensures that they receive none.
Leckie is not uncomplimentary to all of his leaders, however, as he admiringly terms one of his lieutenants “Spearmint” because he has the lowly affectation for chewing gum. Spearmint they follow out of respect and admiration; Commando they follow because they are Marines, and Marines follow orders. The juxtaposition of leadership types and styles from the perspective of an articulate young private is an object lesson that all Marine leaders should heed, and there is no finer case study than Helmet for My Pillow.
The book should not be read only for the study in leadership, but also from the perspective of a Marine engaged in a seemingly endless conflict. Leckie speaks of timeless war where rumors of returning home rise and fall with the completion of each assault. He chronicles the chaotic creation of a newly formed division as it prepares to fight; the murderous landings and campaigns in Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu; and the adventures and misadventures of liberty in Australia.
His writing style is not the staccato regurgitation of battle lines, company positions, and enemy orders of battle, but instead it is the wrenching and visceral viewpoint of a machinegunner in a dank and slimy pit who waits in the dark for the yellow peril to blot him savagely from existence. He writes of idly watching crocodiles feast on the Japanese dead in the Tenaru River, most notably one he names “Chowhound” because the dead soldier floats in a soup of rice ripped free from his haversack when the amphibious animals savage his body. He speaks easily of the petrifying terror felt by them all when the banzai charges came, and of the following relief when the attacks are repulsed and the field of battle is thick with the corpses of slain Japanese soldiers. He writes much as Norman Mailer did in The Naked and the Dead; his story is about the military experience but is not intended to be a military book. He writes of life and love and, most intensely, of fear:
I had not looked into its foliage before the darkness and now I fancied it infested with Japanese. Everything and all the world became my enemy, and soon my very body betrayed me and became my foe . . . . I lay quivering, in that rotten hole while the darkness gathered and all creation conspired for my heart. How long? I lay for an eternity. There was no time. Time had disintegrated in that black void. There was only emptiness, and that is something; there was only being: there was only consciousness. Like the light that comes up suddenly in a darkened theatre, daylight came quickly. Dawn came, and so myself came back to myself. I could see the pale outlines of my comrades to right and left, and I marveled to see how tame my tree could be, how unforbidding could be its branches.
I know now why men light fires.
Marines of all ranks and ages should read Leckie’s memoir. It contains lessons that pertain to us all—lessons about combat, lessons about life and, most importantly, lessons about leadership. Leckie, who managed to reach the rank of private first class on several occasions, rose from bread and water in a transport’s brig to being decorated for valor while fighting the Japanese. His observations on his lot in life, his friends, and his leaders are not so dissimilar from those being made today in places like Marjeh in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. I have read his work dozens of times and will reread it many times more. I learn a little more each time I read it, and it is so well written that I look forward to reading it again.
Reprinted with permission of Lt. Colonel Michael Grice.
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Alamein to Zem Zem by Keith Douglas
in For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, Military History, Primary Source, World War IIThe epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including the Send-to-Kindle feature in Amazon.
Download the mobi file for Amazon devices except the Send to Kindle feature here.
The reading level is 7.6 on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. This book is in the public domain due to the author’s death in 1944 in Normandy. Copyright in the U.K. lasts for 70 years after the author’s death.
Reviews from Goodreads (4.18 rating with 620 ratings and 36 reviews):
One of the most vivid books of WW2 reportage ever written. It reads as quirky and unvarnished as ever and captures the brutality and sheer oddness of tank warfare.
An excellent book. What distinguishes it from the very many desert war memoirs is the details of daily life. This is because the book was built-up from very detailed diary entries, so that the excitement of looting some decent coffee, for example, or the author’s irritation at getting his prized uniform damaged beyond repair by the regimental doctor (to save his life!) are recorded in a detail rarely seen in more sweeping memoirs. This makes it a fascinating read in which one comes closer to understanding the actual life of a desert rat than in any other book I’ve read…
A marvelous read , full of humour and humanity. It has the ring of truth full of characters well described. He does not hide from the sheer awfulness of war but the anecdotes and lively description of his situation raise this memoir above the ordinary. Can recommend.
No preliminary b.s. in this book. By page 3 the author has gone A.W.O.L. from his desk job and headed into the North African desert to fight in Crusader tanks. This is small book but is full of terrible fighting, down time and the constant search for food, water and loot. It shows all the confusion of combat and how horrendous some of the injuries can be.
The author survived North Africa only to be killed on his third day in Normandy.
With this gripping and moving memoir Keith Douglas made a truly valuable contribution to the literary canon of the Second World War. Douglas drops us into his story with minimal introduction or context and ends with a trivial and tasteless comment about going out to gather loot. What happens to Keith and his unit, the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, after they leave Zem Zem is left unexplained. This is a book written very much in the moment, and Douglas’ observations and comments on his comrades, the enemy, his surroundings, and the war in general, have an immediacy that would likely be lost in a work written more analytically or at greater distance.
His wry observations are often both memorable, amusing and affecting: “it is exciting and amazing to see thousands of men, very few of whom have much idea why they are fighting, all enduring hardships, living in an unnatural, dangerous, but not wholly terrible world, having to kill and to be killed, and yet at intervals moved by a feeling of comradeship with the men who kill them and whom they kill, because they are enduring and experiencing the same things. It is tremendously illogical – to read about it cannot convey the impression of having walked through the looking-glass which touches a man entering a battle.” Douglas recognizes the irony and dark humour in the war and this suffuses his writing throughout the book, both in how he records his experiences and in his reflections on them.
Again he has the poets eye for beauty and emotional resonance, such as in this poignant passage: “Sometimes the surface of the desert where we halted for a few hours or a few days was thick with flowers which changed the ridges and hollows whose sandy colour had for weeks been relieved only by stones, the hiding places of scorpions – or the dead grey spouts of camelthorn – into undulating distances of blue-green. The sweet scent of the flowers would come up to your nostrils even in a tank turret, moving along; it could overcome all the odours of machines.” It’s not quite England’s green and pleasant land, and the war overshadows everything, but Douglas can readily tap into his own and his readers feelings, and not merely record the external details of his experiences. That same ability is apparent both in more pastoral passages such as the above, and in his more breathless memories of being under fire.
I’m glad I read this, and anyone with an interest in the Second World War will likely enjoy it. I’ll leave the last word of wisdom to Keith Douglas himself, in what is a fine proverb and rule for life:
“Books and flowers are invincible beautifiers. I have often used them to make horrible surroundings habitable.”
Mrs. R: The Story of Eleanor Roosevelt by Alfred Steinberg
in Biographies, Free Ebooks, Trade Biography or HistoryDownload in epub format for Android and Apple devices:
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“Mrs. R.” is a clear objective year-by-year account of the life of one of the world’s most famous women. Enjoy a biography by a writer who knew Eleanor Roosevelt and was able to interview her contemporaries.
The writer Alfred Steinberg is well known for his biographies of Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Sam Rayburn. He also wrote more than 200 magazine articles, as well as book reviews and features for the Washington Post, the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s, Collier’s, and American Heritage.
Mr. Steinberg’s books included “Mrs. R,” this biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, whom he had known when she was United States Representative to the United Nations; “The Man From Missouri,” a biography of Truman, and “Sam Johnson’s Boy,” about Lyndon Johnson.
This was the first full-length biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, based upon her personal papers, when published in 1958. Previously known only through her own three-volume autobiography, Mrs. Roosevelt had remained something of a mystery and a legend, beloved by millions and disliked by some.
Over 4,000 of her personal letters and other private papers at the Hyde Park memorial library were studied by the author. He has woven all known sources of information into an extremely lively story, with the warmth and mastery of a fine novelist.
Here is the lonely childhood, disrupted by the death of loved ones, the shy emergence into wealthy society, the court-ship by Franklin under the possessive authority of his mother, the day-to-day events of Campobello and polio, the young wife’s reluctant participation in politics as the “eyes, ears and legs” of the man of destiny.
The reader will also see how the programs of the New Deal developed during the Depression, and how the Roosevelts worked together to repeal the Neutrality Acts in order to aid Great Britain at the start of World War II.
Eleanor Roosevelt became one of the world’s great travelers in her search for pertinent information concerning the state of all nations. Always the champion of the underdog, she gradually evolved into a figure alone and apart. Neither her husband’s death nor her own advancing age cut down the influence of this notable woman upon notable events.
An Excerpt from a Review by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The New York Times, October 12, 1958.
First Lady of the World
Mrs. R.: The Story of Eleanor Roosevelt. By Alfred Steinberg. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Mr. Steinberg has gone through the Roosevelt literature and talked with many survivors of the Roosevelt era. He was also, he states, permitted to examine “the personal papers, record books and voluminous correspondence of Mrs. Roosevelt.” (Unfortunately “Mrs. R.” contains no footnotes, and one cannot usually distinguish between what is quoted from a document and what has popped up in someone’s recollection.) He begins with the troubled childhood, describes the reluctant emergence of the shy and awkward girl and follows through the transformation into the capable but somewhat gushing matron and finally into the incomparable First Lady of the World.The story is told briskly and sympathetically but not. altogether uncritically; on such matters as the Roosevelts as parents, Mr. Steinberg writes with candor. The result is a piece of intelligent and readable, journalism. …
…I think,too, that Mrs Roosevelt who emerges from this book as a somewhat blander character than she really is. Mr, Steinberg quotes from one of her letters to President Truman. “There are two things which I wish to avoid above all else,” Mrs, Roosevelt wrote, “one, war; two, a Republican victory.” These two wishes express succinctly the different aspects of Mrs. Roosevelt’s personality: on the one hand, the luminous idealist, yearning for the good, the true and the beautiful; on the other, the old pro, filled with canny and salty realism. Mr. Steinberg does more Justice to the first than to the second.
Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific
in For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, Military History, Primary Source, World War IIThe epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices and the Send-to-Kindle feature on Amazon devices.
To read on a device from Amazon, here is the ebook in mobi format.
Editorial Reviews
The New York Times, September, 1957.
“…This is an old story, but it is told in a fresh and lovely voice. Robert Leckie writes with charm, with personal humility, with humor, with a rare gift for capturing all that is human in the most inhuman of man’s activities.
He makes no bones about it—the war is what happened to him. The point of view is not the grand strategy of victory, but the immediate tactic of personal survival. By turns a boot, a machine gunner on Guadalcanal, a liberty hound in Australia, an intelligence scout on Peleliu—briefly a self-styled “brig rat” subsisting on bread and water and finally a casualty —Private Leckie fought the enlisted man’s battle.
By David Dempsey
From the Marine Corps Association and Foundation
Revisiting a Pacific War Classic by Lt. Col. Michael Grice
Robert Leckie’s “Helmet for My Pillow” has been my single favorite military book for over 30 years. Written from the perspective of a young participant in the great endeavor that was World War II, it is a soulful, wrenching, humorous, and insightful account of one youth’s journey into manhood via the Pacific campaigns spearheaded by the 1st Marine Division.
I first read it as a junior high school student in 1980, and I have reread it nearly every year since. It has framed my perspectives of the Marine Corps, of leadership, of enlisted service, of officers, and of combat as I have aged, matured, and risen through the ranks. Leckie doesn’t provide a technical, historical account consisting of units, maps, and strategy, but instead provides a humanistic view of the Marine Corps at war from the perspective of an often-bewildered observer caught up in the whirlwind of events.
Beginning with his rush to service after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Leckie brings the reader along as a fellow traveler on his journey to war. He presents his story through a framework of symbolism, simile, and metaphor; almost no character is identified by actual name but instead by title or attribute that the author chooses to best typify them. Generally warm to his peers (to whom have been bestowed titles such as “Hoosier,” “Chuckler,” and “Runner,” all so called because of their origins, habits, or claims to fame), he is critical of his seniors, most notably his officers. “Commando,” for example, was what we would consider an exceptionally motivated officer in the modern sense, but his Marines viewed him with suspicion and occasional terror as he attempted to utilize urban combat techniques in the dank jungles of the Pacific. “Commando sits on his brains,” says Leckie and his mates; they recognize that he is incredibly brave, but such bravery is not the only quality that a leader needs to possess in order to inspire men. He writes of officers who only venture into the lines when they hear that Leckie has somehow obtained a box of cigars; true to his status as a carefree private he ensures that they receive none.
Leckie is not uncomplimentary to all of his leaders, however, as he admiringly terms one of his lieutenants “Spearmint” because he has the lowly affectation for chewing gum. Spearmint they follow out of respect and admiration; Commando they follow because they are Marines, and Marines follow orders. The juxtaposition of leadership types and styles from the perspective of an articulate young private is an object lesson that all Marine leaders should heed, and there is no finer case study than Helmet for My Pillow.
The book should not be read only for the study in leadership, but also from the perspective of a Marine engaged in a seemingly endless conflict. Leckie speaks of timeless war where rumors of returning home rise and fall with the completion of each assault. He chronicles the chaotic creation of a newly formed division as it prepares to fight; the murderous landings and campaigns in Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu; and the adventures and misadventures of liberty in Australia.
His writing style is not the staccato regurgitation of battle lines, company positions, and enemy orders of battle, but instead it is the wrenching and visceral viewpoint of a machinegunner in a dank and slimy pit who waits in the dark for the yellow peril to blot him savagely from existence. He writes of idly watching crocodiles feast on the Japanese dead in the Tenaru River, most notably one he names “Chowhound” because the dead soldier floats in a soup of rice ripped free from his haversack when the amphibious animals savage his body. He speaks easily of the petrifying terror felt by them all when the banzai charges came, and of the following relief when the attacks are repulsed and the field of battle is thick with the corpses of slain Japanese soldiers. He writes much as Norman Mailer did in The Naked and the Dead; his story is about the military experience but is not intended to be a military book. He writes of life and love and, most intensely, of fear:
I had not looked into its foliage before the darkness and now I fancied it infested with Japanese. Everything and all the world became my enemy, and soon my very body betrayed me and became my foe . . . . I lay quivering, in that rotten hole while the darkness gathered and all creation conspired for my heart. How long? I lay for an eternity. There was no time. Time had disintegrated in that black void. There was only emptiness, and that is something; there was only being: there was only consciousness. Like the light that comes up suddenly in a darkened theatre, daylight came quickly. Dawn came, and so myself came back to myself. I could see the pale outlines of my comrades to right and left, and I marveled to see how tame my tree could be, how unforbidding could be its branches.
I know now why men light fires.
Marines of all ranks and ages should read Leckie’s memoir. It contains lessons that pertain to us all—lessons about combat, lessons about life and, most importantly, lessons about leadership. Leckie, who managed to reach the rank of private first class on several occasions, rose from bread and water in a transport’s brig to being decorated for valor while fighting the Japanese. His observations on his lot in life, his friends, and his leaders are not so dissimilar from those being made today in places like Marjeh in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. I have read his work dozens of times and will reread it many times more. I learn a little more each time I read it, and it is so well written that I look forward to reading it again.
Reprinted with permission of Lt. Colonel Michael Grice.
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 instructions at http://tinyurl.com/y8gsazq.
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.
Guardians of Liberty: Sam Adams and John Hancock by Olga Hall-Quest
in Biographies, Biography, For Young Adults, Founders, Free EbooksThe 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.
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.
Before the Mayflower-A History of the Negro in America, 1619-1962 by Lerone Bennett, Jr.
in African-American History, Free EbooksReviews from Goodreads.com
* * * * *
This a great introduction, if not then the best introduction, to African American History. If you are wanting to know more about the story of African Americans this book is very readable and accurate. When I taught our school African American History class this was my text. My students liked it so much most of them went out and bought their own copies.
* * * * *
Mr. Bennett gives voice to Black Americans, and to the cultures they brought with them. Through impeccable research, he has uncovered history and culture that was not readily available those many years ago. This book was published and available at almost the same time I finished my degree. I found it later when I had the luxury of being able to read what I wanted, rather than that which was assigned, and have used it to some degree in home schooling my son (though it is too difficult for most high school students). Highly readable and enormously enlightening.
* * * * *
This was an amazing piece of work. I knew that people of color in this country had it rough but this truly shows just how bad. Even with all of the hardships people of color tried again and again to be the best that society would not let them. I was inspired by this book to continue to strive for progress and thus success. The stories of my ancestors have shown me that I come from a strong stock that can survived the worst of times so that I may have the best of times.
* * * * *
From the inside flap of the print edition of 1962:
This is a history of the American Negro, whose ancestors arrived at Jamestown a year before the arrival of the “Mayflower.”
The book begins in Africa with the great empires of the Nile Valley and the western Sudan and ends with the Second Reconstruction, which Martin Luther King Jr. and the Sit-in Generation are fashioning in the North and South. Written in a dramatic, readable style, Before The Mayflower throws a great deal of light on today’s headlines. As such, it will be a valuable addition to the library of every discerning American.
Grounded on the work of scholars and specialists, the book is designed for the non-specialist. Based on the trials and triumphs of Negro Americans, the book tells a story which is relevant to all men.
Here are the Negro Minute Men of Lexington and Concord and the black soldiers who stood with Andrew Jackson at New Orleans and Ulysses S. Grant at Petersburg.
Here also are the forgotten figures of American history: Phillis Wheatley, the slave poet who became the second American woman to write a book; Nat Turner, the mystic who led a bloody slave revolt; P. B. S. Pinchback, the Negro who sat in the Louisiana governor’s mansion and dreamed of the vice presidency.
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BROTHERS: BLACK SOLDIERS IN THE NAM BY STANLEY GOFF & ROBERT SANDERS
in African-American History, Free Ebooks, Military History, VietnamThe 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.
Reviews
This book is a collection of raw, first-person accounts, written by two black soldiers who were drafted into the U.S. Army in 1968 and who eventually went to Vietnam. The informal, conversational style makes for easy reading. The subject matter is absolutely fascinating. The two writers sometimes mention issues associated with race. At the same time, race does not dominate the narrative. Source: https://vietnamblacksoldiersportraitproject.com/index.php/the-perfect-gift/
“Life at the Cutting Edge” The Military Review
“A Moving story!” Booklist
One Soldier by John H. Shook
in For Young Adults, Free Ebooks, Military History, Primary Source, VietnamWho, or what, was the real enemy in Vietnam? The ever-elusive, jungle-wise Viet Cong and their NVA allies? The oppressive heat and torrential rains? The leeches, mosquitoes, and the jungle itself? Or the army whose regulations made you carry a .45 even though the firing pin was broken? Perhaps, each in their own way, they all were… and John Shook battled them all.
In One Soldier, he recounts his experiences and describes how he faced—and overcame—all the enemies a machine-gunner encountered in the Nam. Straight-from-the-shoulder, Shook tells of search and destroy patrols and night ambushes and slogging through a rice paddy, wondering when the first shot was going to come. You’ll be at his side during bull sessions on getting a “million-dollar” wound that would mean a return to the States and in firefights that turned his M-60 machine gun from a shoulder-numbing burden into a staccato, lead-spewing lifesaver.
Most of all, One Soldier is a story of combat, written in the immediate, gut-wrenching language that men at war resort to: “A burst of automatic rifle fire rips through the hooch inches above my elevated perch. Knowing exactly where my rifle hangs I reach out for it but grasp only air and wooden wall. … The firing in both directions is heavier now. There is yelling on the bridge. It is a black night, a void of vision punctuated by muzzle flashes and the crisscrossing streaks of tracers… Is that your 16?’ I yell. ‘What the f—. Who cares?’… ‘Where was your rifle when this s— started?'”
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The New Legions by Donald Duncan
in Free Ebooks, Military History, VietnamEpub 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
Donald Duncan wanted be the best soldier possible. He was regular Army, then Airborne, then Green Beret.
In Vietnam, he led reconnaissance patrols deep into enemy-held territory to assess the strength of the Viet Cong, the communist guerrillas. He returned home with questions about Vietnam. Did the peasants on the farms in South Vietnam want another foreign power in their country? Were they as anti-communist as Americans, or anti-foreigner? What did their attitudes mean to the success of the intervention of United States in Vietnam? He went even further as you will see. He asked if South Vietnam was really a separate country in the eyes of the Vietnamese.
Read about his patriotism, his courage and his questions.
Editorial Reviews :
“Frequently provocative.” –The Saturday Review.
“Duncan’s merits are obvious. He has written a buoyant work filled with rueful reflections on our past and present errors, but charged with hopes for the future. In relating his impressions of army life he is at his best; some really fine pages describe the counterinsurgency training of the Green Berets; the numerous missions of the Special Forces into Viet Cong-held territory; the shop talk of war-weary soldiers groping to discover a rational explanation for their presence in Vietnam; the almost totally negative reactions of these same soldiers to the South Vietnamese army, government, and people; and the sorry plight in the armed forces of the American Negro, who still suffers from discrimination despite the efforts of his government to eradicate it.
“… There is much of value in The New Legions. Evident on every page is Duncan’s humanity. And the nobility of his cause— the end of the war and the triumph of peace, justice, and integrity throughout the world—is, of course, incontestable. His book is often illuminating and frequently provocative…”
Saturday Review August 12, 1967
Use Websites to Build the Habit of Reading-Part 1
in BlogEvery week as the media reports on the pandemic, you can see students diligently looking at computer screens in their classrooms. But are they reading books or playing computer games?
Given that national reading scores have not improved for the last eight years as Chromebooks have poured into classrooms, (See NAEP data for more on this,) there is reason to believe technology is not leading to more reading experiences for our nation’s youngsters.
As we all know, the volume of reading students accomplish matters. Several changes could increase the volume of reading without depleting the new CARES funding that schools are receiving.
School systems could actually market individual books on their web sites. I can’t find a single recommendation for a history book at my local school district in Montgomery County Maryland. Instead the web site for social studies lists topic after topic. Can all the ninth graders even read the assigned textbooks? Should there be biographies at a variety of grade levels available? This question does not seem to interest Montgomery County administrators. There is no information about the textbooks and their grade levels online. Given that results on the state achievement tests are very weak in some of the high schools on the east and north sides of the county, you might think the quality of reading experiences might receive more attention.
Include teachers and students in these marketing efforts on the websites of school districts. Where are the testimonials from teachers about how their students responded to a print book or ebook? What did they think of “Helmet for My Pillow”? Is it too dark? What do students have to say about their reading assignments in history? Will parents ever know?
Should school buy Chromebooks which can be used as reading tablets? Are school districts buying Chromebooks which can be flipped to be used as tablets for reading ebooks at night? Or should they be buying tablets as ereaders? I don’t see any information about convertible or flip Chromebooks at the schools districts in the Washington DC metro area, or any information about tablets. I don’t love convertible Chromebooks as reading devices. The 13″ ones with large enough keyboards such as the Lenovo Flex 5 are too bulky to read on, and my 11″ Lenovo C340 has a cramped keyboard. The 8″ Amazon Fire tablet is comfortable for reading, and at $55 during sales, an amazing value.
Reduce the bureaucracy that discourages teachers from buying books. Too many levels of approval for the purchases of books are needed. See below for a look at the bureaucracy in the Montgomery County Public Schools. Source
Large Fonts and Struggling Readers
in How To Share Ebooks with Your StudentsThis post from Professor Terry Cavanaugh about the importance of font size for struggling readers is no longer available on Teleread.com, but the excerpt below shows what he had to say.
“Actually font size change is important for many who have print disablities, not just that it could be done. One of the first things that we try to do for students with disabilties is get all the texts that they use in a digital format if possible. Screen maginifaction just doesn’t do the same thing as it impeeds saccades and fixations in the reading process.
“As the print is made larger, students view fewer words on the page, thus enabling them to focus more easily and decrease the chance of losing their place while reading – something that is easy to lose while moving with magnification. Larger print is also important when reading at a greater distance, at lower light levels, and when moving. While the use of large print text has usually been associated with assisting the special needs of students with visual impairments or older people, the benefits gained with the use of large print are actually applicable to others who may not have a learning disability, specifically the struggling, reluctant, and remedial readers.
“Font size, paper and ink colors, and formatting are several factors that all have an effect on readability of text material. especially those susceptible to visual stress, were found to make more errors on the smaller than on the larger text. From this Hughes and Wilkins (2000) concluded that the reading development of some children could benefit from a larger text size and spacing than is currently the norm. Reading miscues, including misreading syllables or words; skipping syllables, words, or lines; rereading lines; and ignoring punctuation cues were found to be virtually eliminated when students read large print books.
“Fewer words on a page mean struggling readers have to visually process less per page, but it still allows the readers to make progress with comprehension, tracking, and fluency, with fewer decoding errors. Additionally, having fewer words on the page lowers anxiety levels concerning the text in struggling readers. The ability to change to a larger print provides a positive and powerful tool for struggling, reluctant, and visually challenged readers. Increased font size and spacing of large print scaffolds struggling readers to develop the skills they need. Larger print assists students in: recognizing words accurately, comprehending what they are reading, and reading more fluently.
“Currently many teachers and librarians already use large print materials for their students who have:
* Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
* Difficulty with encoding or decoding
* Dyslexia
* Large or small motor deficits
* Amblyopia or “Lazy Eye”
* Light sensitivity
* Short term memory deficits
* Tracking issues
* Visual impairments”