Washoe County Library System

"In The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history. Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the "Bomber Mafia", asked:...

Admiral Yamamoto was a cigar-smoking, poker-playing, Harvard-educated expert on America, and that knowledge served him well as architect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the next sixteen months, this military genius lived up to his prediction that he would run wild in the Pacific. After American code-breakers learned that the admiral would be vulnerable for a few hours, a handful of colorful and expendable U.S. Army pilots flew the longest...

Recounts the experiences of the soldiers who served on Torpedo Squadron Eight, focusing on their heroic efforts in helping an outmatched U.S. fleet win critical victories during World War II.

The author recounts his World War II encounters with Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the revolutionary B-29 bomber who would eventually select him to lead the atomic mission to Nagasaki.

In 1943, while World War II raged on in the Pacific Theater, Lieutenant Louis Zamperini was the only survivor of a deadly plane crash in the middle of the ocean. Zamperini had a troubled youth, yet honed his athletic skills and made it all the way to the 1934 Olympics in Berlin. However, what lay before him was a physical gauntlet unlike anything he had encountered before: thousands of miles of open ocean, a small raft, and no food or water.

They were called Easy Company, but their mission was never easy. Immortalized as the Band of Brothers, they suffered 150% casualties while liberating Europe, an unparalleled record of bravery under fire. Dick Winters was their commander, and this is his story based on his wartime diary. Only Winters was present from the activation of Easy Company until the war's end. On D-Day, Dick Winters parachuted into France and assumed leadership of the company...

"Get out! Run! We must leave this place! They are going to destroy this whole place! Go, children, run first! Go now! These were the final shouts nine year-old Kim Phuc heard before her world dissolved into flames--before napalm bombs fell from the sky, burning away her clothing and searing deep into her skin. It's a moment forever captured, an iconic image that has come to define the horror and violence of the Vietnam War. Kim was left for dead in...

"A vivid narrative history, packed with first-hand accounts, of the US Eighth Air Force's VIII Fighter Command from its foundation in 1942 through to its victory in the skies over Nazi Germany. On August 7, 1942, two events of major military importance occurred on separate sides of the planet. In the South Pacific, the United States went on the offensive, landing the First Marine Division at Guadalcanal. In England, 12 B-17 bombers of the new Eighth...

"The fateful days and weeks surrounding 6 June 1944 have been extensively documented in histories of the Second World War, but less attention has been paid to the tremendous impact of these events on the populations nearby. The Lost Paratroopers of Normandy tells the inspiring yet heartbreaking story of ordinary people who did extraordinary things in defense of liberty and freedom. On D-Day, when transport planes dropped paratroopers from the 82nd...

Describes the secret mission of a small band of U.S. soldiers who battled against Taliban forces on horseback and captured the Afghan city of Mazåar-i Sharåif, a critical location for further campaigns.