From the Air Force to College by
The Air Force can be the initial platform of a lifelong career pathway for individuals interested in serving one contract or those who stay on active-duty for a full career. The education and certification options available to airmen can enhance the career viability of those who choose to take advantage of the benefits, but learning about and navigating the possibilities can be difficult. From the Air Force to College: Transitioning from the Service to Higher Education is designed to help readers navigate through this process and to assist them throughout their Air Force journey, including individuals who are just about to join, active-duty airmen, and those preparing to transition back into the civilian sector. This book serves as the go-to guide for those who actively seek opportunities to further develop their education and improve their current and future career prospects. The Air Force offers many different opportunities for career-enhancement and self-betterment, but if an airman does not know whom to seek out for advice, the process can get complicated. Plus, deciphering the world of higher education and navigating the available active-duty and veterans' benefits is challenging. Incorrect choices can mean extended periods of time backtracking later on or running out of payment options.
From the Army to College by
Today's soldiers are highly motivated to serve, but face numerous challenges, especially considering the sacrifices they have made over the past decade of war. As the service branches face budget cuts and draw downs, soldiers need to be aware of the resources and options available to help make them more competitive for promotion or more credible for potential civilian-sector employers. From the Army to College: Transitioning from the Service to Higher Education fulfills this need by serving as a long-term reference manual that will support soldiers throughout their higher education or vocational pursuits and assist with navigating the available funding resources. Aspiring civilians looking to join the Army, soldiers already on active duty, or those transitioning into the civilian sector will gain invaluable information to help them properly prepare, plan, and perform the tasks necessary for a successful transition into the world of education. If a soldier's goal is to expand his or her credentials through education or training, this book is the definitive field manual.
From the Marine Corps to College by
The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars have taken a harsh toll on our military's population. Some service members come back from combat ready for a change of pace, others get caught up in the draw down currently occurring within the services. Many of these service members decide to pursue higher education. Veterans' education benefits are a source of much discussion, but often hard to decipher. From the Marine Corps to College: Transitioning from the Service to Higher Education aims to simplify this process. Designed to help Marines navigate the world of higher education and their available state and federal benefits, this accessible guide will better prepare veterans for tackling their new mission: college. From the Marine Corps to College can be read as a book from cover-to-cover, or as a reference manual section-by-section. The easy to follow format will assist Marines in furthering their educational goals.
From the Navy to College by
From the Navy to College: Transitioning from the Service to Higher Education is an education and career reference guide for Sailors looking to join the Navy, already on active duty, or transitioning into the civilian sector. Serving as a long-term support guide for Sailors seeking further education and training, this book will enable Sailors hoping to pursue higher education and vocational training to navigate and understand all possible options. From getting started to degree completion, all available funding resources to help cover costs and Navy-based program options are detailed for the reader in order to assist throughout the course of an individual's chosen path. The Navy offers numerous programs for its service members while on active duty, but very few sailors are aware of the variety of those options or how to take advantage of them. No Navy manual exists that details these programs, outlines eligibility parameters, or describes the admissions process. From the Navy to College aims to correct this problem by disseminating the needed information in one easily accessible reference. Arming readers with the tools for success, this work is a necessary resource for all Sailors and Navy counseling personnel.
The Draft, 1940-1973 by
Individual liberty is ingrained in American culture. Yet, in contrast to this cherished ideal, American men were inducted into military service under a system that flourished for more than twenty years before its rationalization was seriously questioned by more than a small minority of citizens. Analyzing this paradox, George Flynn provides the first comprehensive look at an institution that managed to sustain political and public favor through two wars before dying out under a barrage of protests during a third. Placing the American draft within a historical context, he shows how social and political considerations determined the character of conscription in the United States. The draft developed as it did, he argues, not mainly because of military needs or strategy, but because of political decisions initiated by civilians with nonmilitary agendas. Explaining why the draft remained relatively immune to political criticism prior to the Vietnam conflict, Flynn chronicles the draft's military and strategic successes and failures in America's mid-century wars. He shows how major institutions and lobbies representing science, education, and various professions and religions influenced it and how, ultimately and ironically, the selective character of the draft eventually made the system inequitable and helped cause its downfall. Challenging the assertion that centralization of state power has been a constant characteristic of twentieth-century America, Flynn reveals how local interests were frequently at odds with national interests and that often the local powers prevailed. Thus, he argues, the operation of Selective Service helped curb centralization and assured the continued power and influence of localism. A complex and volatile issue in America, the draft has been a perennial concern for our presidents and military leaders in their quest for military preparedness and mobilization. Tying military issues to the broader history of state and society, this book examines a continuing problem of the modern state--how to find enough of the right individuals to shoulder defense responsibilities.
Into the Desert by
In the decade following the first Gulf War, most observers regarded it as an exemplary effort by the international community to lawfully and forcefully hold a regional aggressor in check. Interpretations have changed with the times. The Gulf War led to the stationing of US troops in SaudiArabia, an important contributing cause of the 9/11 attacks. The war also led to a long obsession with Saddam Hussein that culminated in a second, far longer, American-led war with Iraq.In Into the Desert, Jeffrey Engel has gathered an all-star cast of contributors to reevaluate the first Gulf War: Michael Gordon of the New York Times; Sir Lawrence Freedman, former foreign policy advisor to Tony Blair; Ambassador Ryan Crocker; Middle East specialist Shibley Telhami; and RichardHaass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Engel and his contributors examine the war's origins, the war itself, and its long-term impact on international relations. All told, Into the Desert offers an astute reassessment of one of the most momentous events in the last quartercentury.
The Persian Gulf War and the War in Iraq by
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans were killed during the Persian Gulf War, which lasted from 1990 to 1991, and the Iraq War, which lasted from 2003 to 2011. Full of riveting primary sources and personal accounts and full-color photographs from the front lines, this book will provide readers with an in-depth look at the complicated relationship between Iraq and the United States, the reasons behind these two wars, the decision-makers, the important battles, and the global impact these conflicts have had which continues to affect us even today.
War Flower by
Brooke King has been asked over and over what it's like to be a woman in combat, but she knows her answer is not what the public wants to hear. The answers people seek lie in the graphic details of war--the sex, death, violence, and reality of it all as she experienced it. In her riveting memoir War Flower, King breaks her silence and reveals the truth about her experience as a soldier in Iraq. Find out what happens when the sex turns into secret affairs, the violence is turned up to eleven, and how King's feelings for a country she knew nothing about as a nineteen-year-old become more disturbing to her as a thirty-year-old mother writing it all down before her memories fade into oblivion. The story of a girl who went to war and returned home a woman, War Flower gathers the enduring remembrances of a soldier coming to grips with post-traumatic stress disorder. As King recalls her time in Iraq, she reflects on what violence does to a woman and how the psychic wounds of combat are unwittingly passed down from mother to children. War Flower is ultimately a profound meditation on what it means to have been a woman in a war zone and an unsettling exposé on war and its lingering aftershocks. For veterans such as King, the toughest lesson of service is that in the mind, some wars never end--even after you come home. Purchase the audio edition.
Veteran Narratives and the Collective memory of the Vietnam War
In the decades since the Vietnam War, veteran memoirs have influenced Americans' understanding of the conflict. Yet few historians or literary scholars have scrutinized how the genre has shaped the nation's collective memory of the war and its aftermath.
Late Thoughts on an Old War by
Philip D. Beidler, who served as an armored cavalry platoon leader in Vietnam, sees less and less of the hard-won perspective of the common soldier in what America has made of that war. Each passing year, he says, dulls our sense of immediacy about Vietnam's costs, opening wider the temptation to make it something more necessary, neatly contained, and justifiable than it should ever become. Here Beidler draws on deeply personal memories to reflect on the war's lingering aftereffects and the shallow, evasive ways we deal with them. Beidler brings back the war he knew in chapters on its vocabulary, music, literature, and film. His catalog of soldier slang reveals how finely a tour of Vietnam could hone one's sense of absurdity. His survey of the war's pop hits looks for meaning in the soundtrack many veterans still hear in their heads. Beidler also explains how "Viet Pulp" literature about snipers, tunnel rats, and other hard-core types has pushed aside masterpieces like Duong Thu Huong's Novel without a Name. Likewise we learn why the movie The Deer Hunter doesn't "get it" about Vietnam but why Platoon and We Were Soldiers sometimes nearly do. As Beidler takes measure of his own wartime politics and morals, he ponders the divergent careers of such figures as William Calley, the army lieutenant whose name is synonymous with the civilian massacre at My Lai, and an old friend, poet John Balaban, a conscientious objector who performed alternative duty in Vietnam as a schoolteacher and hospital worker. Beidler also looks at Vietnam alongside other conflicts--including the war on international terrorism. He once hoped, he says, that Vietnam had fractured our sense of providential destiny and geopolitical invincibility but now realizes, with dismay, that those myths are still with us. "Americans have always wanted their apocalypses," writes Beidler, "and they have always wanted them now."
Writing Vietnam, Writing Life by
Phillip Caputo, Larry Heinemann, Tim OOCOBrien, and Robert Olen Butler: four young midwestern Americans coming of age during the 1960s who faced a difficult personal decisionOCowhether or not to fight in Vietnam. Each chose to participate. After coming home, these four veterans became prizewinning authors telling the war stories and life stories of soldiers and civilians. The four extended conversations included in Writing Vietnam, Writing Life feature revealing personal stories alongside candid assessments of each authorOCOs distinct roles as son, soldier, writer, and teacher of creative writing."
The Things They Carried by
"O'Brien has written a vital, important book--a book that matters not only to the reader interested in Vietnam, but to anyone interested in the craft of writing as well."--Michiko Kakutani,New York Times 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.
The Not Forgotten War by
The Not Forgotten War chronicles the experiences of Private Nicholas Dick, who served in a machine gun crew during the last few months of the Korean conflict. Those last months were among the bloodiest, as both sides fought to claim as much territory as possible prior to reaching a cease-fire agreement. For years after his discharge, Nick was never able to talk about his horrific experiences and never mentioned the frequent nightmares he suffered. After a job injury forced him to take early retirement, he suddenly found himself becoming a victim of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Here is one GI's story of war and its aftermath.
A Morning in June by
By June 1953 the Korean War, marked at the outset by extremely fluid advances and retreats up and down the peninsula, had settled into position warfare very near the original pre-war demarcation line between North and South Korea. At this point both sides were fighting to win a peace, to achieve incremental advantages that could be translated into gains at the peace negotiations in Panmunjom. These last days of the war saw savage battles for control of important local terrain features, and in the trench warfare of the Chorwon Valley a young U.S. Army lieutenant was assigned to lead an infantry company charged with holding Outpost Harry against a determined Chinese assault. The battle devolved into hand-to-hand combat during a period of constant, intense fighting that lasted two days. The author, although seriously wounded that night, refused evacuation and remained on the hill to successfully lead his company in defense of the outpost. It wasn't romantic; it wasn't chivalrous; and many died or were badly wounded. Some of the survivors never fully overcame the mental and physical damage they suffered during the nightmare. With this book, one of those scarred by that experience recounts the events of the battle and his lifelong efforts to deal with the residual horrors. The Korean Conflict may be called "the forgotten war" by some, but not by those who were on the front lines.
The Korean Conflict by
A neglected war in the history of the United States, the Korean conflict played a key role in greatly expanding America's commitments worldwide and contributed to the U.S. decision to engage in direct military action in Vietnam fifteen years later. This up-to-date, readable analysis and ready-reference guide to the Korean War is designed to help students and interested readers understand the causes, events, and implications of the War and to provide a wealth of material for student research. Materials include a detailed timeline of events, six topical essays on various aspects of the war and its impact, seventeen lengthy biographical profiles of key players, the text of fifteen important primary documents, a glossary, and a comprehensive annotated bibliography. Following an introductory essay that explains the causes and history of the war, five topical essays examine the Western Alliance and, in particular, our relations with Great Britain over the War, an analysis and new insights on the role of the Soviet Union and China, the Chinese Communist intervention, the prisoners of war issue, and the meaning and implications of the Korean conflict. Primary documents include the text of speeches, memoranda, telegrams, and official government reports. Biographical sketches provide thorough discussion of the role of major players in the conflict. A section of photographs complements the text. Because it is based on the most recent scholarship and written for the high school and college student researcher, it is the ideal companion to a study of the Korean conflict and its implications for post-World War II America.
Combat Reporter by
A Pulitzer Prize-winning combat correspondent recounts his personal experience of covering World War II on the front lines. Legendary reporter Don Whitehead covered almost every important Allied invasion and campaign in Europe--from North Africa to landings in Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, and Normandy, and to the drive into Germany. His dispatches, published in Beachhead Don, are treasures of wartime journalism. From September 1942, as a freshly minted Associated Press journalist in New York, to the spring of 1943 as Allied tanks closed in on the Germans in Tunisia, he also kept a diary of his experiences as a rookie combat reporter. The diary stops in 1943, and it has remained unpublished until now. Later, Whitehead started work on a memoir of his extraordinary life in combat that would remain unfinished. In this book, John B. Romeiser has woven both the North African diary and Whitehead's memoir of the subsequent landings in Sicily into a vivid, unvarnished, and completely riveting story of eight months during some of the most brutal combat of the war. Here, Whitehead captures the fierce fighting in the African desert and Sicilian mountains, as well as rare insights into the daily grind of reporting from a war zone, where tedium alternated with terror. These writings by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner offer a unique and up-close view of the Second World War--as well as a reminder of the risks journalist take to bring us the first draft of history. "No one bore witness better than Don Whitehead . . . this volume, deftly combining his diary and a previously unpublished memoir, brings Whitehead and his reporting back to life, and twenty-first-century readers are the richer for it." --from the foreword by Rick Atkinson
The U. S. Coast Guard in World War II by
The intimate view of the U.S. Coast Guard’s dramatic World War II record has long been considered a classic. First published in 1957 and out of print for years, it is now available in paperback. Handsomely illustrated with more than 200 photographs, the book serves as a unique memento of one of the most illustrious periods in the Coast Guard’s 200-year history. The author offers a story replete with incidents of devotion far beyond the call of duty'daring rescues, adventurous high-sea missions, heroic combat action'to clearly demonstrate the vital role the service played in the Allied war effort. A seasoned World War I veteran who joined the Coast Guard Temporary Reserve in 1942, Malcolm Willoughby draws not only from firsthand experience but fro years of research and writing as a Coast Guard historian. His narrative covers every aspect of the Coast Guard’s involvement in the war at sea, in the air, and at home. From the invasion of Normandy, where Coast Guardsmen landed thousands of Americans and rescued some 1,500 stranded in the surf, to Guadalcanal, where they rescued three companies of Marines trapped on the beach, this chronicle vividly recounts these well-documented operations and little-known stories of individual triumphs and tragedies as well.
World War II by
World War II presents a unique blend of perspectives about what it felt like to be an American during the Second World War and the years that immediately preceded and followed it. This work examines how Americans faced the events and circumstances that shaped their lives during this difficult period. The differences that existed between civilian life at home and at work, between civilian and military life, and between life in each of the major armed forces branches meant that no American experienced these years in exactly the same way as any other. National issues from early contests over isolationism and interventionism to wartime debates over the protection of civil liberties to postwar deliberations over the role the United Nations should play in the world were also significant in determining individual experiences. Despite the differences, by the time the war years were behind them and the process of rebuilding had begun, there was an overwhelming sense among many Americans of having shared an unforgettable experience. World War II, a new addition to Facts On File's critically acclaimed Eyewitness History series, provides hundreds of firsthand accounts of the period from letters, speeches, and newspaper articles that illustrate how important historical events appeared to those who lived through them. Among the eyewitness testimonies included are those of Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Charles Lindbergh, James Farmer, John Steinbeck, William H. Hastie, Anne O Hare McCormick, George Marshall, James A. Michener, Douglas MacArthur, and Audie Murphy. In addition to the firsthand accounts, each chapter provides an introductory essay and a chronology of events. Valuable appendixes include excerpts from such informative documents as the Neutrality Act of 1937; Franklin Delano Roosevelt's address to Congress, December 8, 1941; the Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations; and the Nuremberg Trials Final Report as well as capsule biographies of more than 55 key figures and a look at the issue of refugees.
Women in World War I by
This title examines the various roles women played in the war effort, as well as the new opportunities and societal changes they faced during World War I. Compelling narrative text and well-chosen historical photographs and primary sources make this book perfect for report writing. Features include a glossary, a selected bibliography, websites, source notes, and an index, plus a timeline and essential facts. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
World War I by
From the highly acclaimed ""Eyewitness History"" series, ""World War I"" examines one of the most pivotal points in 20th-century history, exploring the social, cultural, military, and political impacts of this war on American society, as well as the role the United States played in the conflict. Unlike other references on the subject, this new volume discusses World War I's place in American history as the catalyst for World War II and the cold war, as well as explores its influences in today's world. Highlighting its historical connections to such timely topics as terrorism, the impact of technology on warfare, the rise of rogue states, the use of weapons of mass destruction, and the importance of the non-Western, especially Middle Eastern, countries, ""World War I"" brings this crucial time period to life through the eyes of those who lived through it. ""World War I"" provides hundreds of firsthand accounts - from diary entries, letters, speeches, and newspaper accounts - that focus on different warfare issues and on the social and cultural impacts of the war on Europe and the United States. As well as these primary source quotations, each illustrated chapter provides an introductory essay and a chronology of events. This volume also includes critical documents related to this topic, as well as capsule biographies of key figures, narrative sections, eyewitness testimonies, 102 black-and-white photographs, maps and graphs, a bibliography, notes, a glossary, chronologies, appendixes, and an index.
