A uniquely detailed exploration of life in the CCC, The New Deal’s Forest Army compellingly demonstrates how one New Deal program changed America and gave birth to both contemporary forestry and the modern environmental movement.

In an inspiring middle grade nonfiction work, P. O’Connell Pearson tells the story of the Civilian Conservation Corps—one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal projects that helped save a generation of Americans. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933, the United States was on the brink of economic collapse and environmental disaster. Thirty-four days later, the first of over three million impoverished young men were building parks and reclaiming the nation’s forests and farmlands. The Civilian Conservation Corps—FDR’s favorite program and “miracle of inter-agency cooperation”—resulted in the building and/or improvement of hundreds of state and national parks, the restoration of nearly 120 million acre of land, and the planting of some three billion trees—more than half of all the trees ever planted in the United States. Fighting for the Forest tells the story of the Civilian Conservation Corp through a close look at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia (the CCC’s first project) and through the personal stories and work of young men around the nation who came of age and changed their country for the better working in Roosevelt’s Tree Army.

Neil M. Maher examines the history of one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's boldest and most successful experiments, the Civilian Conservation Corps, describing it as a turning point both in national politics and in the emergence of modern environmentalism.

"In Depression-era northern Michigan, a young boy meets a teenager serving in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the work relief program established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to employ millions of young men during the Great Depression"--

Almost 75 years ago, MI9 dreamt up the most audacious escape and evasion plan of World War II. Formulated by Airey Neave, one of the first men ever to escape from Colditz, this plan was one of subterfuge, concealment, and deception on a scale never seen before. With numerous downed RAF and Allied pilots on the run in Europe and with the fabled Comete Escape Line having been infiltrated by double agents, Neave's plan was to hide these men right under the very noses of the Nazis rather than risk repatriation. Choosing a forest in the heart of France, right next to one of the German Army's largest ammunition bases, Neave, Belgian agents, and the French Resistance would secretly transport and hide Allied pilots and soldiers within feet of the enemy. This operation remained absolutely secret, to the point that the inhabitants of the villages surrounding the forest were unaware, until the end, of the existence of that allied force so close to them. Told through interviews with evaders, members of the Resistance, and the children charged with smuggling food into the forest, this book tells the compelling story of one of the most audacious operations in World War II.

This book demonstrates that there is much about the New Deal that can be characterized as environmental, once one substitutes the word 'environmental' for 'conservation'. Indeed, the scholarship that is contained within this extraordinary book will help correct the widely held view that the New Deal is virtually a blank space in the history of modern environmentalism. In fact, the New Deal carried forward and greatly extended the work of the Progressive Conservation Era, and in many ways helped establish the foundation for the modern environmental movement.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • One of the Washington Post Book World's 10 Best Books of the Year • Time's 10 Best Books of the Year • USA Today's Nonfiction Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book "Staggeringly vivid and persuasive . . . absolutely essential reading." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "The best account yet of the entire war." —Vanity Fair The definitive account of the American military's tragic experience in Iraq Fiasco is a masterful reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq through mid-2006, now with a postscript on recent developments. Ricks draws on the exclusive cooperation of an extraordinary number of American personnel, including more than one hundred senior officers, and access to more than 30,000 pages of official documents, many of them never before made public. Tragically, it is an undeniable account—explosive, shocking, and authoritative—of unsurpassed tactical success combined with unsurpassed strategic failure that indicts some of America's most powerful and honored civilian and military leaders.