The Rye Public Library Military Book Group has chosen The Admirals by Walter Bomeman as the title for their June 6 discussion at 6:30 PM. The Military Book Group meets on the first Thursday of the month.
Only four men in American history have been promoted to the five-star rank of Admiral of the Fleet: William Leahy, Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, and William Halsey. These four men were the best and the brightest the navy produced, and together they led the U.S. navy to victory in World War II, establishing the United States as the world’s greatest fleet.
In THE ADMIRALS, award-winning historian Walter R. Borneman tells their story in full detail for the first time. Drawing upon journals, ship logs, and other primary sources, he brings an incredible historical moment to life, showing us how the four admirals revolutionized naval warfare forever with submarines and aircraft carriers, and how these men-who were both friends and rivals-worked together to ensure that the Axis fleets lay destroyed on the ocean floor at the end of World War II.
The Rye Public Library Military Book Group has chosen MacArthur by Courtney Whitney as the title for their May 2nd discussion at 6:30 PM. The Military Book Group meets on the first Thursday of the month.
A sympathetic account of his life by one of his senior staff officers.
The Rye Public Library Military Book Group has chosen Americans at War by Stephen Ambrose as the title for their April 4th discussion at 6:30 PM. The Military Book Group meets on the first Thursday of the month.
Collected here for the first time are fifteen essays that span over 100 years of American history–and the remarkable thirty-year career of America’s foremost historian. Ambrose’s vivid and compelling essays take you to the heart of America’s wars, from Grant’s stunning Fourth of July victory at Vicksburg, to Nixon’s surprise Christmas bombing of Hanoi. Ambrose brings to life the ambition and charisma that led to Custer’s great success in the Civil War and fateful disaster at Little Big Horn.
The Rye Public Library Military Book Group has chosen Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub as the title for their March 7th discussion at 6:30 PM. The Military Book Group meets on the first Thursday of the month.
In the early months of World War I, on Christmas Eve, men on both sides of the trenches laid down their arms and joined in a spontaneous celebration. Despite orders to continue shooting, the unofficial truce spread across the front lines. Even the participants found what they were doing incredible: Germans placed candlelit Christmas trees on trench parapets, warring soldiers sang carols, and men on both sides shared food parcels from home. They climbed from the trenches to meet in “No Man’s Land” where they buried the dead, exchanged gifts, ate and drank together, and even played soccer.
Throughout his narrative, Stanley Weintraub uses the stories of the men who were there, as well as their letters and diaries, to illuminate the fragile truce and bring to life this extraordinary moment in time.
The Rye Public Library Military Book Group has chosen Part 2 of “A World on Fire” by Amanda Foreman as the title for their February 7th discussion at 6:30 PM. The Military Book Group meets on the first Thursday of the month.
‘No two nations have ever existed on the face of the earth which could do each other so much good or so much harm’ – President Buchanan, State of the Nation Address, 1859. “A World on Fire” tells, with extraordinary sweep, one of the least known great stories of British and American history. As America descended into Civil War, British loyalties were torn between support for the North, which was against slavery, and defending the South, which portrayed itself as bravely fighting for its independence. Rallying to their respective causes, thousands of Britons went to America as soldiers – fighting for both Union and Confederacy – racing ships through the Northern blockades, and as observers, nurses, adventurers, guerillas and spies. At the heart of this international conflict lay a complicated and at times tortuous relationship between four individuals: Lord Lyons, the painfully shy British Ambassador in Washington; William Seward, the blustering US Secretary of State; Charles Francis Adams, the dry but fiercely patriotic U.S. ambassador in London; and, the restless and abrasive Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell. Despite their efforts, and sometimes as a result of them, America and Britain came within a whisker of declaring war on each other twice in four years.
The Rye Public Library Military Book Group has chosen “Lili Marlene: The Soldiers’ Song of World War II “ by Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller as the title for their January 3rd discussion at 6:30 PM. The Military Book Group meets on the first Thursday of the month.
“Lili Marlene,” the unlikely anthem of World War II, cut across front lines and ideological divides, uniting soldiers across the globe. This love song, telling the story of a young woman waiting for her lover to return from the battlefield, began as a poem written by a German solider during World War I. The soldier-poet’s words found their way to Berlin’s decadent cabaret scene in the 1930s, where they were set to music by one of Hitler’s favored composers. The song’s singer, however, soon found herself torn between her desire for fame and a personal hatred of the Nazi regime. In a gripping and suspenseful narrative, the three artists’ remarkable stories of arrests and close calls intertwine with the recollections of soldiers on all sides who fought their way through deserts and towns, seeking solace and finding hope in “Lili Marlene.”
The Rye Public Library Military Book Group has chosen Part 1 of “A World on Fire” by Amanda Foreman as the title for their December 6 discussion at 6:30 PM. The Military Book Group meets on the first Thursday of the month.
‘No two nations have ever existed on the face of the earth which could do each other so much good or so much harm’ – President Buchanan, State of the Nation Address, 1859. “A World on Fire” tells, with extraordinary sweep, one of the least known great stories of British and American history. As America descended into Civil War, British loyalties were torn between support for the North, which was against slavery, and defending the South, which portrayed itself as bravely fighting for its independence. Rallying to their respective causes, thousands of Britons went to America as soldiers – fighting for both Union and Confederacy – racing ships through the Northern blockades, and as observers, nurses, adventurers, guerillas and spies. At the heart of this international conflict lay a complicated and at times tortuous relationship between four individuals: Lord Lyons, the painfully shy British Ambassador in Washington; William Seward, the blustering US Secretary of State; Charles Francis Adams, the dry but fiercely patriotic U.S. ambassador in London; and, the restless and abrasive Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell. Despite their efforts, and sometimes as a result of them, America and Britain came within a whisker of declaring war on each other twice in four years.
The Rye Public Library Military Book Group has chosen “If by Sea” by George C. Daughan as the title for their November 1st discussion at 6:30 PM. The Military Book Group meets on the first Thursday of the month.
The American Revolution-and thus the history of the United States-began not on land but on the sea. Paul Revere began his famous midnight ride not by jumping on a horse, but by scrambling into a skiff with two other brave patriots to cross Boston Harbor to Charlestown. Revere and his companions rowed with muffled oars to avoid capture by the British warships closely guarding the harbor. As they paddled silently, Revere’s neighbor was flashing two lanterns from the belfry of Old North Church, signaling patriots in Charlestown that the redcoats were crossing the Charles River in longboats. In every major Revolutionary battle thereafter the sea would play a vital, if historically neglected, role. When the American colonies took up arms against Great Britain, they were confronting the greatest sea-power of the age. And it was during the War of Independence that the American Navy was born. But following the British naval model proved crushingly expensive, and the Founding Fathers fought viciously for decades over whether or not the fledgling republic truly needed a deep-water fleet. The debate ended only when the Federal Navy proved indispensable during the War of 1812. Drawing on decades of prodigious research, historian George C. Daughan chronicles the embattled origins of the U.S. Navy. From the bloody and gunpowder-drenched battles fought by American sailors on lakes and high seas to the fierce rhetorical combat waged by the Founders in Congress, If By Seacharts the course by which the Navy became a vital and celebrated American institution.
The Rye Public Library Military Book Group has chosen “Love My Rifle More Than You” by Kayla Williams as the title for their October 4th discussion at 6:30 PM. The Military Book Group meets on the first Thursday of the month.
Kayla Williams is one of the 15 percent of the U.S. Army that is female, and she is a great storyteller. With a voice that is “funny, frank and full of gritty details” (New York Daily News), she tells of enlisting under Clinton; of learning Arabic; of the sense of duty that fractured her relationships; of being surrounded by bravery and bigotry, sexism and fear; of seeing 9/11 on Al-Jazeera; and of knowing she would be going to war.
With a passion that makes her memoir “nearly impossible to put down” (Buffalo News) Williams shares the powerful gamut of her experiences in Iraq, from caring for a wounded civilian to aiming a rifle at a child. Angry at the bureaucracy and the conflicting messages of today’s military, Williams offers us “a raw, unadulterated look at war” (San Antonio Express News) and at the U.S. Army. And she gives us a woman’s story of empowerment and self-discovery.
The Rye Public Library Military Book Group has chosen “The Grey Seas Under“ by Farley Mowat as the title for their September 6 discussion at 6:30 PM.
Released in 1958 and 1961, respectively, these books are Mowat’s paean to tugboats of the North Atlantic. Though often overlooked, these vessels have rescued thousands of stranded ships from watery graves. Mowat proves that being a member of a deep-water tug crew is one of the most dangerous jobs a sailor can have during peacetime.
The Rye Public Library Military Book Group has chosen The Admirals by Walter Bomeman as the title for their June 6 discussion at 6:30 PM. The Military Book Group meets on the first Thursday of the month.
