Tag: #WorldHistory

Posted in Book Tours

Navy SEALs: Their Untold Story

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

“[The] definitive history of the U.S. Navy SEALs and their forefathers” (Master Chief Bill Bruhmuller (USN, Ret.), founding member of SEAL Team two).
Written with the unprecedented cooperation of the Naval Special Warfare community, this vivid and definitive history of the U.S. Navy SEALs reveals the inside story behind the greatest combat operations of America’s most celebrated warriors.
New York Times–bestselling authors Dick Couch—a former SEAL—and William Doyle chart the SEALs’ story, from their origins in the daring Naval Combat Demolition Teams, Underwater Demolition Teams, Scouts and Raiders commando units, and OSS Operational Swimmers of World War II to their coming of age in Vietnam and rise to glory in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11.
Illustrated with forty pages of photographs and based on exclusive interviews with more than 100 U.S. frogmen (including multiple Medal of Honor recipients), here is “the first comprehensive history of the special operations force” (Military.com).

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Written with the unprecedented cooperation of the Naval Special Warfare community, here is the definitive history of the U.S. Navy SEALs, a thrilling chronicle that reveals the inside story behind the greatest combat operations of our nation’s most celebrated warriors. New York Times bestselling authors Dick Couch—former SEAL, Vietnam veteran, and highly respected military writer—and award-winning author William Doyle draw on exclusive interviews with more than 100 special operators (including multiple Medal of Honor recipients), as well as thousands of pages of declassified documents to create a vivid, unparalleled portrait of the SEALs in action.

Navy SEALs: Their Untold Story charts the dramatic evolution of the frogmen from their origins in World War II, when the daring Naval Combat Demolition Teams, Underwater Demolition Teams, Scouts and Raiders commando units, and OSS Operational Swimmers proved instrumental at D-Day, Okinawa, and many other critical campaigns. In the Korean War, the Navy UDTs cleared mines and scouted landing sites ahead of the main American forces. After their official founding in 1962 by order of President John F. Kennedy and early covert operations in Cuba, the SEALs came of age in the jungles of Vietnam, where they specialized in executing the most daring missions. Couch and Doyle trace their transformation in the 1980s and 1990s—when America’s special operations teams were centralized under the U.S. Special Operations Command—including untold accounts from Panama, Grenada, Somalia, and the first Gulf War. Finally, we follow their rise to preeminence in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11.

The SEALs and their forefathers have shaped the tides of history; from fighting Hitler to eliminating Osama bin Laden, the frogmen of the U.S. Navy are the spearhead of American military might: the toughest, most highly trained, best equipped—and most invisible—band of warriors. Now many of these quiet professionals, speaking for the first time, reveal what it’s like to be the men living on the knife’s edge. Navy SEALs: Their Untold Story gives these legendary warriors the epic chronicle they deserve.

Posted in Book Tours

Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

“Taps the fascinating history of a surprisingly understudied place—Dallas . . . to reorient our understanding of America’s Republican Right.” —Darren Dochuk, author of Anointed with Oil

On the morning of November 22, 1963, President Kennedy told Jackie as they started for Dallas, “We’re heading into nut country today.” That day’s events ultimately obscured and revealed just how right he was: Oswald was a lone gunman, but the city that surrounded him was full of people who hated Kennedy and everything he stood for, led by a powerful group of ultraconservatives who would eventually remake the Republican party in their own image.


In Nut Country, Edward H. Miller tells the story of that transformation, showing how a group of influential far-right businessmen, religious leaders, and political operatives developed a potent mix of hardline anticommunism, biblical literalism, and racism to generate a violent populism—and widespread power. Though those figures were seen as extreme in Texas and elsewhere, mainstream Republicans nonetheless found themselves forced to make alliances, or tack to the right on topics like segregation. As racial resentment came to fuel the national Republican party’s divisive but effective “Southern Strategy,” the power of the extreme conservatives rooted in Texas only grew.


Drawing direct lines from Dallas to DC, Miller’s captivating history offers a fresh understanding of the rise of the new Republican Party and the apocalyptic language, conspiracy theories, and ideological rigidity that remain potent features of our politics today.

“Well-researched and briskly written . . . A timely, intelligent, and penetrating book.” —The New York Times Book Review

Continue reading “Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy” →
Posted in Book Tours

John Quincy Adams

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

New York Times–Bestselling Author: An “extraordinary portrait of an extraordinary man” who accomplished much yet never sought attention or acclaim (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
One of January Magazine‘s Best Books of the Year

He fought for General Washington, served with Abraham Lincoln, witnessed Bunker Hill, and sounded the clarion against slavery on the eve of the Civil War. He negotiated an end to the War of 1812, engineered the annexation of Florida, and won the Supreme Court decision that freed the African captives of the Amistad. He served his nation as minister to six countries, secretary of state, senator, congressman, and president.


John Quincy Adams was all of these things and more. This “captivating” biography (Sacramento Bee) reveals Quincy Adams as a towering figure in the nation’s formative years and one of the most courageous figures in American history—the first entry in John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage.


A magisterial biography and a sweeping panorama of American history from the Washington to Lincoln eras, John Quincy Adams follows one of the nation’s most important yet least-known figures.


“First-class history from cover-to-cover . . . Nobody is better-equipped to write this biography, and we’re lucky that Unger has told the story of this underrated American icon, legendary diplomat, and tireless advocate of everything that is just and righteous in our country.” —Louisville Courier-Journal

“In the best tradition of David McCullough’s biographies, the pace and plotting pull readers forward even though they may know the ending . . . Masterful.” —Library Journal

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Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

The gunfight at the OK Corral lasted less than a minute—yet it became the basis for countless stories about the Wild West. At the time of the event, however, Wyatt Earp was not universally acclaimed as a hero. Among the people who knew him best in Tombstone, Arizona, many considered him a renegade and murderer.

This book tells the nearly unknown story of the prosecution of Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holiday following the famous gunfight. To the prosecutors, the Earps and Holiday were wanton killers. According to the defense, the Earps were steadfast heroes—willing to risk their lives on the mean streets of Tombstone for the sake of order.

The case against the Earps, with its dueling narratives of brutality and justification, played out themes of betrayal, revenge, and even adultery. Attorney Thomas Fitch, one of the era’s finest advocates, ultimately managed, against considerable odds, to save Earp from the gallows. But the case could easily have ended in a conviction—and Wyatt Earp would have been hanged or imprisoned instead of celebrated as an American icon.

Continue reading “Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp” →
Posted in Book Tours

The American Revolution on Long Island (Military)

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

A history of the Revolutionary War and British occupation in this part of New York, from the Culper spy ring to the prison ships where thousands died.

 The American Revolution sharply divided families and towns on New York’s Long Island. Washington’s defeat at the Battle of Long Island in August 1776 started seven years of British occupation—and Patriot sympathizers were subject to loyalty oaths, theft of property, and the quartering of soldiers in their homes. 

 Those who crossed the British were jailed on prison ships in Wallabout Bay in Brooklyn, where an estimated eleven thousand people died of disease and starvation. Some fought back with acts of sabotage and espionage—and Washington’s famed Culper spy ring in Oyster Bay, Setauket, and other areas successfully tracked British movements. In this book, historian Joanne S. Grasso explores the story of an island at war.