The Twins Platoon

The Twins Platoon
Author: Christy W. Sauro
Publisher: Zenith Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2006-03-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780760323878

In the evening of June 28, 1967, 150 young Americans were sworn into the Marine Corps as part of the pre-game ceremonies of a Minnesota Twins baseball game. Before the end of the fourth inning these volunteers were being hustled on to buses, on their way to boot camp. It was a journey that would take them from a boyhood of baseball in the American heartland to manhood on the killing fields of Vietnam. Christy Sauro was one of the Twins Platoon, and in this book he tells what it was like-from the pomp and ceremony of induction to the all-too-real initiation by fire that would shortly follow: in mere months, he and most of the Twins Platoon were on the ground in Vietnam and promptly faced with some of the toughest fighting of the war, the Siege of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive, including the brutal Battle for Hue. From baseball to boot camp to brutal combat, his is a firsthand story of American life being lived at the limits-and changed forever.

Through the Wheat

Through the Wheat
Author: Thomas Boyd
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1952438438

Powerful and poignant, a masterpiece. 'Through the Wheat' depicts the horrors of World War 1: the first modern war fought in trenches with mustard gas, artillery, and tanks. Thomas Boyd brings home the psychological damage done to men under extreme pressure fighting for their livers thousands of miles from home. Unforgettable!

Three Junes

Three Junes
Author: Julia Glass
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 652
Release: 2002-09-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0375422420

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An astonishing novel that traces the lives of a Scottish family over a decade as they confront the joys and longings, fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises. In June of 1989 Paul McLeod, a newspaper publisher and recent widower, travels to Greece, where he falls for a young American artist and reflects on the complicated truth about his marriage.... Six years later, again in June, Paul’s death draws his three grown sons and their families back to their ancestral home. Fenno, the eldest, a wry, introspective gay man, narrates the events of this unforeseen reunion. Far from his straitlaced expatriate life as a bookseller in Greenwich Village, Fenno is stunned by a series of revelations that threaten his carefully crafted defenses.... Four years farther on, in yet another June, a chance meeting on the Long Island shore brings Fenno together with Fern Olitsky, the artist who once captivated his father. Now pregnant, Fern must weigh her guilt about the past against her wishes for the future and decide what family means to her. In prose rich with compassion and wit, Three Junes paints a haunting portrait of love’s redemptive powers.

The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried
Author: Tim O'Brien
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0547420293

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

How It Feels to Float

How It Feels to Float
Author: Helena Fox
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 052555436X

"Profoundly moving . . . Will take your breath away." —Kathleen Glasgow, author of Girl in Pieces "Give this to all your friends immediately . . . It tackles mental health, depression, sexual identity, and anxiety with beauty and empathy." —Cosmopolitan.com A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best of the Year Biz knows how to float, right there on the surface—normal okay regular fine. She has her friends, her mom, the twins. She has Grace. And she has her dad, who shouldn't be here but is. So Biz doesn't tell anyone anything—not about her dark, runaway thoughts, not about kissing Grace or noticing Jasper, the new boy. And not about seeing her dad. Because her dad died when she was seven. But after what happens on the beach, the tethers that hold Biz steady come undone. Her dad disappears and, with him, all comfort. It might be easier, better, sweeter to float all the way away? Or maybe stay a little longer, find her father, bring him back to her. Or maybe—maybe maybe maybe—there's a third way Biz just can't see yet. Debut author Helena Fox tells a story about love, grief, and inter-generational mental illness, exploring the hard and beautiful places loss can take us, and honoring those who hold us tightly when the current wants to tug us out to sea. "I haven't been so dazzled by a YA in ages." —Jandy Nelson, author of I'll Give You the Sun (via SLJ) "Mesmerizing and timely." —Bustle "Nothing short of exquisite." —PopSugar "Immensely satisfying" —Girls' Life * "Lyrical and profoundly affecting." —Kirkus (starred review) * "Masterful...Just beautiful." —Booklist (starred review) * "Intimate...Unexpected." —PW (starred review) * "Fox writes with superb understanding and tenderness." —BCCB (starred review) * "Frank [and] beautifully crafted." —BookPage (starred review) "Deeply moving...A story of hope." —Common Sense Media "This book will explode you into atoms." —Margo Lanagan, author of Tender Morsels "Helena Fox's novel delivers. Read it." —Cath Crowley, author of Words in Deep Blue "This is not a book; it is a work of art." —Kerry Kletter, author of The First Time She Drowned "Perfect...Readers will be deeply moved." —Books+Publishing

Too Like the Lightning

Too Like the Lightning
Author: Ada Palmer
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2016-05-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466858745

From the winner of the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Ada Palmer's 2017 Compton Crook Award-winning political science fiction, Too Like the Lightning, ventures into a human future of extraordinary originality Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer--a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away. The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labelling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life. And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life... Terra Ignota 1. Too Like the Lightning 2. Seven Surrenders 3. The Will to Battle At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Real Team

The Real Team
Author: Richard Marcinko
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2000-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0671024655

The retired naval commander chronicles the real-life exploits of the Navy SEALs who inspired the characters in his best-selling Rogue Warrior series, profiling the members of his team, their training, their combat missions, and the characteristics that made them successful warriors.

Return Via Rangoon

Return Via Rangoon
Author: Philip Stibbe
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Total Pages: 250
Release: 1994-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0850524768

This is one young officer's war story about training and inspiration in the Burmese jungle behind enemy lines. Beaten up and water tortured, yet only giving his captors false information, Stibbe was moved around Burma until he was eventually imprisoned in Rangoon jail. Now stricken with Parkinson's disease, probably as a result of his prison diet, Stibbe with his eldest son, also a soldier, has revised his book and this edition published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Wingate's second triumphant Chindit expedition.

The Boys in the Boat (Movie Tie-In)

The Boys in the Boat (Movie Tie-In)
Author: Daniel James Brown
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2023-12-05
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0593512308

The inspiration for the Major Motion Picture Directed by George Clooney—exclusively in theaters December 25, 2023! The #1 New York Times bestselling true story about the American rowing triumph of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin—from the author of Facing the Mountain For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.

Along These Highways

Along These Highways
Author: Rene S. Perez
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0816530106

Rene Perez has the ability to stop time. In fact, time stops as soon as you start reading one of his short stories. You find yourself transported into the minds and lives of people you thought you didn't know. Suddenly they are your best friends. They live in Texas. Most of them are Hispanic. But their problems are universal. Like Alfredo, driving home from Dallas to Greenton with the body of his friend "Frankie" Ochoa in the back of his hearse and his son Ramon ready to drive if Alfredo's eyesight fails again. Or Joey, just back from basic training and ready to ship out with his Marine platoon. He's having beers with his best friend J.R. at Flojo's, a bar outside of Greenton run by Liz and Vicente, "the toughest couple in town." Or Benny, who drops into Flojo's for the first time in years and finds his one-time friend Gumby drinking himself into oblivion. Turns out Gumby's luck is even worse than Benny's. Or Virginia, the schoolteacher who's trying to become better educated in the hope that her son who went to Stanford will come back home to Corpus Christi. Or Eric, who spent all his money on two flashy wheels for his car and put them both on the passenger side so that they'll impress everyone on the sidewalk as he passes. Or Andy, who breaks into a home he's always wanted to see from the inside. You'll want to know them all. And you will count yourself fortunate to have met them.