This “important contribution to WWII history” reveals the trucking convoy, manned by unsung black soldiers, who helped defeat the Nazis (Publishers Weekly). After the D-Day landings in Normandy, Allied forces faced a golden opportunity—and a critical challenge. They had broken across enemy lines, but there was no infrastructure to supply troops as they pushed into Germany. The US Army improvised a perilous solution: a convoy of trucks marked with red balls that would carry desperately needed ammunition, rations, and fuel deep into occupied Europe. The so-called Red Ball Express lasted eighty-one days and, at its height, numbered nearly six thousand trucks. The mission risked attacks by the Luftwaffe and German ground forces, making it one of the GIs’ most daring gambits. Without the soldiers who successfully executed this operation, World War II would have dragged on in Europe at a terrible cost of Allied lives. Yet the service of these brave drivers, most of whom were African American, has been largely overlooked by history. The first book-length study of the subject, The Road to Victory chronicles the exploits of these soldiers in vivid detail. It’s a story of a fight not only against the Nazis, but against an enemy closer to home: racism.

The Mediterranean theater in World War II has long been overlooked by historians who believe it was little more than a string of small-scale battles--sideshows that were of minor importance in a war whose outcome was decided in the clashes of mammoth tank armies in northern Europe. But in this ground-breaking new book, one of our finest military historians argues that the Mediterranean was World War II's pivotal theater. Douglas Porch examines the Mediterranean as an integrated arena, one in which events in Syria and Suez influenced the survival of Gibraltar. Without a Mediterranean alternative, the Western Allies would probably have committed to a premature cross-Channel invasion in 1943 that might well have cost them the war. Brilliantly argued, with vivid portraits of Churchill, Montgomery, FDR, Rommel, and Mussolini, this original, accessible, and compelling account of a little-known theater emphasizes the importance of the Mediterranean in the ultimate Allied victory in Europe in World War II.

Translation and commentary by Hidy Ochiai Although it was written more than 300 years ago as a treatise on strategy and combat, Musashi's The Book of Five Rings is treasured today as a classic work that speaks with equal power to the modern businessperson, philosopher and martial artist. In A Way to Victory, Ochiai - a legend in the martial arts world - provides a new translation with notes that clarify the original's lessons for the contemporary reader. With an in-depth analyses of the book's themes, this is a perfect compliment to Musashi's work.

No war has tested the resolve of the American people and her fighting men as did the battles in the Pacific. This book is a visual testament to the key battles fought in the Pacific. On December 7, 1941, as the Japanese dived out of the clouds above Pearl Harbor, America's future was fundamentally altered. Ever since the first world conflict, the United States had resisted the temptation to be drawn into wars outside of its borders. But with this one surprise attack America was inevitably thrown into the fray as the Second World War erupted. This history by military specialists, Osprey Publishing, reveals each of the battles America would fight against Imperial Japan from the naval clashes at Midway and Coral Sea to the desperate, bloody fighting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Each chapter reveals the horrors of battle and the grim determination to wrest victory from certain defeat. Using an astonishing collection of wartime imagery and complete with dozen of full-colour maps, this is an invaluable visual guide to the road to victory.

Meet Lucy E., a tough, driven woman, born in the mountain town of Mount Holly, Vermont about 1826. This is the story, based on fact, of her survival through increasingly hard times in Vermont and New Hampshire, beginning with the painful deaths of her father and husband, and her fateful second marriage to a Civil War veteran who turned out to be a drinker, gambler, arsonist and abusive husband, and who ended up in the state prison in Concord, New Hampshire. Through all of the roughness of her life, including three more hsubands, she persevered in her goals to be a landowner and farmer like her father." --Publisher's description.