The Germans launched “Operation Citadel” on July 5th, 1943.  They wanted to encircle and destroy Soviet forces in a salient centered on the city of Kursk.  The Soviets knew they were coming and had spent months preparing.  What followed was the greatest land battle in history.  About two million men with 6,000 tanks, 35,000 guns, and 5,000 aircraft fought into late August.  Despite horrific losses, the Soviets stood their ground.  Lloyd Clark tells the story in “The Battle of the Tanks: Kursk 1943”.

John G. Bourke won the Medal of Honor during the American Civil War.  He stayed in the army and graduated from West Point in 1869.  Between 1869 and 1883, Bourke served on the frontier with much of that time spent as an aide to General George Crook.  Bourke saw action in the Apache Wars and Great Sioux War.  He clashed with Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo.  Bourke was a keen observer and chronicled his varied experiences.  He published them in 1892 under the title of "On the Border With Crook."  This book is a raw, insightful, and fascinating firsthand account of life in America's Old West. 

The Korean peninsula was split into two countries after the Second World War.  The Soviet backed North and the U.S. backed South.  North Korea tried to unify the two by invading South Korea in June 1950.  Initially North Korea had great success.  It pushed South Korea's small military aside and rushed down the peninsula while the United States tried to get forces onto the peninsula.  The North Koreans were finally stopped around the port of Pusan at the very bottom of the Korean peninsula.  While fighting around Pusan was going on, the U.S. commander, General Douglas MacArthur, contemplated his next move.  Instead of using his growing force to reinforce Pusan, MacArthur chose to do something far more risky.  He would conduct an amphibious landing deep in the rear of the North Korean army, cut its logistics, and cause it to collapse.  The place he picked for this landing was the port of Inchon.  Robert D. Heinl, Jr. tells the story in "Victory at High Tide: The Inchon Seoul Campaign."

Japan captured and occupied China’s sea ports at the onset of World War Two.  That lead to hundreds of thousands of Chinese laborers building a road through Burma to get supplies to China.  That road got blocked when Burma fell to the Japanese.  Next, American engineers began building another road through hundreds of miles of steep jungle while pilots flew supplies into China over the Himalayas.  Meanwhile, American and British forces fought to keep the Japanese at bay in remote jungle battles.  All this took place while America’s focus of effort was on defeating Germany first.  Donovan Webster tells the story in “The Burma Road.”

In 1899, the British went to war with the Boer Republics.  This was when the British Empire was close to its blazing zenith and unquestionably the ranking world power.  Any war against the somewhat backward Boers on a remote border of the empire in southern Africa would surely be quick and decisive.  It did not turn out that way.  As Rudyard Kipling put it, the Boers gave the British “no end of a lesson.”  Thomas Pakenham tells the story in “The Boer War.” 

The United States and Soviet Union stood on opposite sides of the Cold War.  Both tried to project strength and both possessed immense arsenals of nuclear weapons.  A fundamental problem for both superpowers was figuring out what the other side was doing.  What were they capable of?  What were they thinking?   The United States relied on its submarines to help answers those questions throughout the Cold War.  The missions these submarine crews went on were months long and involved great risks.  They were also carried out in absolute secrecy.  At least until now.  Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew tell the story in “Blind Man’s Bluff.” 

The Japanese attacked the Philippines almost simultaneous with their December 7th, 1941 attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.  Following Japanese air attacks, the Japanese 14th Army landed in the Philippines on December 8th.  By January 1942, the Japanese had U.S. and Filipino forces bottled up on the Bataan Peninsula.  Those U.S. and Filipino forces surrendered on May 8th.  It is arguably America’s worst military defeat ever.  Among the roughly 12,000 Americans taken prisoner were four Navy doctors.  John Glusman tells their story in “Conduct Under Fire: Four American Doctors and Their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941-1945.”

NAZI scientists relied on heavy water to produce the right uranium isotope for an atomic weapon.  They produced most of their heavy water at a hydroelectric in occupied Norway called Vemork.  In February 1943, a small group of Norwegian commandos slipped into Vemork, blew it up, and made their escape.  This is after months of reconnaissance and preparation in the frozen wilderness.  Neal Bascomb tells the story in “The Winter Fortress.”  

In October 2001, the United States began aerial bombing of Afghanistan in response to the terrorist group Al Queda’s attacks of September 11th.  Special Forces followed up by teaming with the Taliban’s opponents – the Northern Alliance – and by late November / early December 2001 the Taliban had been driven from power.  That didn’t mean the Taliban and Al Queda had gone away or given up.  They had moved and gone underground.  One of the places they went to was Afghanistan’s Shahikot Valley.  In March 2002, the U.S. conducted Operation Anaconda to root them out.  It was the first large scale ground operation of the war.  Sean Naylor tells the story of what happened in Not a Good Day to Die.

William Manchester served in the Marine Corps during the Second World War.  He was wounded during the Battle of Okinawa.  After the war, Manchester established himself as a journalist in Baltimore, an adjunct professor at Wesleyan University, and an author.  In 1978, he returned to the Pacific and visited various places connected either with his service or the Pacific campaign.  That trip forms the basis of this book, “Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War.”