On Friday, November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress approved a resolution for the organization of the Corps, creating what would become the hallowed few, the proud--the Marines. Since then, the men and women of the United States Marine Corps have created the finest traditions of service and honor, and supplied a pantheon of heroes who have upheld them. In The Greatest U.S. Marine Stories Ever Told, editor Iain Martin has accumulated these marines' most amazing true tales of service and sacrifice, from the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli, to the conflicts where they serve today.

"The Iliad of the Iraq war" (Tim Weiner)--a gut-wrenching, beautiful memoir of the consequences of war on the psyche of a young man. Eat the Apple is a daring, twisted, and darkly hilarious story of American youth and masculinity in an age of continuous war. Matt Young joined the Marine Corps at age eighteen after a drunken night culminating in wrapping his car around a fire hydrant. The teenage wasteland he fled followed him to the training bases charged with making him a Marine. Matt survived the training and then not one, not two, but three deployments to Iraq, where the testosterone, danger, and stakes for him and his fellow grunts were dialed up a dozen decibels. With its kaleidoscopic array of literary forms, from interior dialogues to infographics to prose passages that read like poetry, Young's narrative powerfully mirrors the multifaceted nature of his experience. Visceral, ironic, self-lacerating, and ultimately redemptive, Young's story drops us unarmed into Marine Corps culture and lays bare the absurdism of 21st-century war, the manned-up vulnerability of those on the front lines, and the true, if often misguided, motivations that drove a young man to a life at war. Searing in its honesty, tender in its vulnerability, and brilliantly written, Eat the Apple is a modern war classic in the making and a powerful coming-of-age story that maps the insane geography of our times.

The Marine Corps has always considered itself a breed apart. Since 1775, America’s smallest armed service has been suspicious of outsiders and deeply loyal to its traditions. Marines believe in nothing more strongly than the Corps’ uniqueness and superiority, and this undying faith in its own exceptionalism is what has made the Marines one of the sharpest, swiftest tools of American military power. Along with unapologetic self-promotion, a strong sense of identity has enabled the Corps to exert a powerful influence on American politics and culture. Aaron O’Connell focuses on the period from World War II to Vietnam, when the Marine Corps transformed itself from America’s least respected to its most elite armed force. He describes how the distinctive Marine culture played a role in this ascendancy. Venerating sacrifice and suffering, privileging the collective over the individual, Corps culture was saturated with romantic and religious overtones that had enormous marketing potential in a postwar America energized by new global responsibilities. Capitalizing on this, the Marines curried the favor of the nation’s best reporters, befriended publishers, courted Hollywood and Congress, and built a public relations infrastructure that would eventually brand it as the most prestigious military service in America. But the Corps’ triumphs did not come without costs, and O’Connell writes of those, too, including a culture of violence that sometimes spread beyond the battlefield. And as he considers how the Corps’ interventions in American politics have ushered in a more militarized approach to national security, O’Connell questions its sustainability.

Leon Uris said of Moskin's history of the Corps, "It's a hell of a piece of work." Loaded with facts, it is also a book that a Marine can read with pride. This third revised edition includes a newly written chapter on the Gulf War.

From the War of Independence through the dark days of the Cold War, the Marines have fought in all the nation's wars. Their readiness and prompt action at Harper's Ferry stopped John Brown's insurrection in its tracks. In 1917, as the "First to Fight" slogan demonstrated its electric effect, the 5th Marines sailed for France and joined up with the first convoy at sea, anxious to get on with the war. With courage, discipline, and typical small-unit initiative, the Marines triumphed at Belleau Wood, a victory that was to advantageously affect the quality and thinking of the Marine Corps ever after. Yet it is no accident that so much of the Marine Corps' fighting and expeditionary service has taken place between the major wars. Marines could be found detaining Abraham Lincoln's suspected assassins aboard the Montauk, conducting minor landings in Nicaragua or Korea in the late nineteenth century, or battling rebels in Haiti or Cuba in the twentieth century. Their flexibility and adaptability has earned them a solid reputation as a preeminent fighting force. Their contributions to America's military force have been many. Development of amphibious warfare during World War II was undoubtedly one of the most important tactical innovations in our history. As larger military services are reduced between wars, the Corps' traditional role as "a force in readiness" becomes more essential for peacetime strength. And when the Marines are called to action, their preparedness and effectiveness as a maritime fighting team is unequaled.