A latest entry in the best-selling series dramatically portrays the events of World War II in 1944, when escalating Pacific battles between the forces of General Douglas MacArthur and the Japanese army lead to the development of humanity's deadliest weapon and newly appointed President Truman's impossible choice.

Taking off from England on March 16, 1944, young Lt. George Starks and the nine-man crew of his Flying Fortress were assigned to the "coffin corner," the most exposed position in the bomber formation headed for Germany. They never got there. Shot down over Nazi-occupied France, the airmen bailed out one by one, scattered across the countryside. Miraculously, all ten survived, but as they discarded their parachutes in the farmland of Champagne, their...

Describes the events of December 7, 1941, before, during, and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, as well as the reactions of the men who lived through the attack.

Drawn from interviews with survivors of Easy Company, as well as soldiers' journals and letters, Band of Brothers chronicles the experiences of these men who knew extraordinary bravery and extraordinary fear. They were an elite rifle company parachuting into France early on D-Day morning, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, and capturing Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. They were also a unit that suffered 150 percent casualties, and whose...

Clarence Smoyer began the war as a gentle giant, a factory worker from Pennsylvania coal country reluctant to unleash the power of the Sherman tank he crewed. But as his tank platoon fought its way from Normandy to the Rhine and beyond, and he watched his friends cut down one by one, he learned to kill with deadly accuracy and efficiency. His fight would climax in Cologne, in the shadow of the great cathedral, where he took a shot immortalized by...

War defies logic. Loss of life, destruction, unending pain and misery- the results never seem to make sense. But on the brighter side, war is also a breeding ground for other types of illogical occurrences, namely strange coincidences, premonitions, mysteries, twists of fate, and seemingly supernatural.

A baker's apprentice in Normandy endures shame and anger as her kind mentor is targeted and arrested for his Jewish heritage, a violation that compels the young woman to engage in discreet resistance activities, baking contraband loaves of bread for the hungry using surplus ingredients taken from occupying forces.

The United States of 1940, an isolationist country divided along class lines, still suffering the ravages of a decade-long depression, and woefully unprepared for war, was unified by a common threat and by the extraordinary leadership of Franklin Roosevelt to become, only five years later, the preeminent economic and military power in the world. At the center of the country's transformation was the complex partnership of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt....

The Italian campaign's outcome was never certain; in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisers engaged in heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even a good idea. But once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered, despite the agonizingly high price. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, and Monte Cassino were particularly difficult and lethal, yet as the months...

"Recruited from small Southern towns and posh New England colleges, 10,000 American women served the U.S. Army and Navy as code breakers during World War II. While their brothers and husbands took up arms, these women moved to Washington and, under strict vows of secrecy, learned the meticulous work of breaking German and Japanese military codes. Poring over reams of encrypted messages, the women worked tirelessly in makeshift facilities in Washington,...