By Harvey S. Horn. My story is about 36 days that changed my life. It is the story of a Jewish boy from Brooklyn who dreamt of flying and enlisted in the Army Air Corps to fight for his country. It is about survival. It is about walking, riding in trolleys, carts, and trains to go from Fiume, Italy to Nuremberg, Germany. It is about war. It is about the resiliency of the human being and the ability of the body to adapt to conditions beyond one's control. It is the story that all POWs keep replaying over and over and over and over. Could I have done more? Could I have done better? Did I perform as trained? Each day was a harrowing experience. I was the navigator in John Lincoln's Crew 11-30. We were attached to the 772nd Bomber Squadron, 463rd Bomber Group, 15th Air Force based in Foggia, Italy. On March 20, 1945, we were assigned to Flying Fortress B-17G "Pretty Baby's Boys." Our mission was to bomb the marshalling yards south of Vienna at Amstettin, Austria. We were hit by flak over Zagreb, Jugoslavia, and had to ditch into Quarnaro Bay off Fiume, Italy (now Rijeka, Croatia). We became prisoners of war of the German Navy. Being captured by the Germans is not the best of times; being Jewish and being captured by the Germans is the worst of times.Flight Officer Harvey S. Horn, 15th Air Force, 463rd Bomber Group, 772nd Bomber Squadron.

More than 150,000 American Jews served in the air war during World War II. Despite acts of heroism and commendations, they were subject to bigotry and scorn by their fellow servicemen. Jews were sometimes characterized as disloyal and cowardly, malingering in the slanderous (and non-existent) "Jewish Quartermaster Corps" or sitting out the war in easy assignments. Based on interviews with more than 100 Jewish air veterans, this oral history features the recollections of pilots, crew members and support personnel in all theaters of combat and all branches of the service, including Jewish women of the Women Airforce Service Pilots. The subjects recall their combat experiences, lives as POWs, and anti-Semitism in the ranks, as well as human interest anecdotes such as encounters with the Tuskegee Airmen.

True to My God and Country explores the role of the more than half a million Jewish American men and women who served in the military in the Second World War. Patriotic Americans determined to fight, they served in every branch of the military and every theater of the war. Drawing on letters, diaries, interviews, and memoirs, True to My God and Country offers an intimate account of the soul-searching carried out by young Jewish men and women in uniform. Ouzan highlights, in particular, the selflessness of servicewomen who risked their lives in dangerous assignments. Many GIs encountered antisemitism in the American military even as they fought the evils of Nazi Germany and its allies. True to My God and Country examines how they coped with anti-Jewish hostility and reveals how their interactions with Jewish communities overseas reinforced and bolstered connections to their own American Jewish identities.

The complete history of Thomas Jefferson's iconic American home, Monticello, and how it was not only saved after Jefferson's death, but ultimately made into a National Historic Landmark. When Thomas Jefferson died on the Fourth of July 1826, he was more than $100,000 in debt. Forced to sell thousands of acres of his lands and nearly all of his furniture and artwork, in 1831 his heirs bid a final goodbye to Monticello itself. The house their illustrious patriarch had lovingly designed in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, his beloved "essay in architecture," was sold to the highest bidder. So how did it become the national landmark it is today? Saving Monticello offers the first complete post-Jefferson history of this American icon and reveals the amazing story of how one Jewish family saved the house that became their family home. With a dramatic narrative sweep across generations, Marc Leepson vividly recounts the turbulent saga of this fabled estate. Monticello's first savior was the mercurial U.S. Navy Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, a sailor celebrated for his successful campaign to ban flogging in the Navy and excoriated for his stubborn willfulness. In 1833, Levy discovered that Jefferson's mansion had fallen into a miserable state of decay. Acquiring the ruined estate and committing his considerable resources to its renewal, he began what became a tumultuous nine-decade relationship between his family and Jefferson's home. After passing from Levy control at the time of the commodore's death, Monticello fell once more into hard times. Again, a member of the Levy family came to the rescue. Uriah's nephew, a three-term New York congressman and wealthy real estate and stock speculator, gained possession in 1879. After Jefferson Levy poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into its repair and upkeep, his chief reward was to face a vicious national campaign, with anti-Semitic overtones, to expropriate the house and turn it over to the government. Only after the campaign had failed, with Levy declaring that he would sell Monticello only when the White House itself was offered for sale, did Levy relinquish it to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 1923. Pulling back the veil of history to reveal a story we thought we knew, Saving Monticello establishes this most American of houses as more truly reflective of the American experience than has ever been fully appreciated.

Admiral Boorda's Navy is a biography of a brilliant, caring man and of the navy he loved. It also is a chronicle of history and politics during his career.

Big Mother 40 is a story well told and one in which aviation and special warfare veterans of the Vietnam conflict will identify, and about which they will tell their friends. Younger readers will enjoy the book simply as a great adventure. -- Michael Field, Captain USN (retired) Wings of Gold, Winter 2012 issueLiebman skips macho combat images to plunk us into the deeper connections of war, from fear and courage to the truer realms of human relationships. His detail is authentic, and he lends even greater validity to the operations he describes with valuable author notes at the back of the book including a historic analysis of the time, military glossary and roster of characters.

Founded in 1918, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association's basketball team, known as the SPHAS, was a top squad in the American Basketball League-capturing seven championships in thirteen seasons-until it disbanded in 1959. In The SPHAS, the first book to chronicle the history of this team and its numerous achievements, Douglas Stark uses rare and noteworthy images of players and memorabilia as well as interviews and anecdotes to recall how players like Inky Lautman, Cy Kaselman, and Shikey Gotthoffer fought racial stereotypes of weakness and inferiority while spreading the game's popularity. Team owner Eddie Gottlieb and Temple University coach Harry Litwack, among others profiled here, began their remarkable careers with the SPHAS. Stark explores the significance of basketball to the Jewish community during the game's early years, when Jewish players dominated the sport and a distinct American Jewish identity was on the rise. At a time when basketball teams were split along ethnic lines, the SPHAS represented the Philadelphia Jewish community. The SPHAS is an inspiring and heartfelt tale of the team on and off the court.