Gerald Astor: 15 books

Praise for Gerald Astor "No one does oral history better than Gerald Astor. . . . Great reading." -Stephen Ambrose on The Mighty Eighth "Gerald Astor has proven himself a master. Here, World War II is brought to life through the hammer blows of their airborne triumphs...

Gerald Astor, author of THE MIGHTY EIGHTH, draws on the raw, first-hand accounts of marines, sailors, soldiers, and airmen under fire to recount the dramatic and gripping story of the last major battle of World War II. On the sea the Japanese rained down a deadly hail of kamikazes. On land...

From critically acclaimed military historian Gerald Astor comes Wings of Gold, the first account of how the airplane transformed the U.S. Navy and paved the way to victory in the Pacific in World War II. Astor tracks that fateful journey from its humble beginnings in 1910 when Eugene Ely flew the...

The Korean War, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon, El Salvador, Grenada, Iran-Contra, Nicaragua, Panama, the Gulf War, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq What do these events and scores of others have in common? Each of these wars, incursions, invasions,...

In ships and planes, they crossed the English Channel. On the other side Hitler’s army waited. And the longest day was about to begin.... In the spring of 1944, 120,000 Allied soldiers crossed the English Channel in the most ambitious invasion force ever assembled. Rangers, paratroopers,...

From the depths of defeat... On December 8, 1941, one day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Air Force struck the Philippines in the first blow of a devastating invasion. With an undersupplied patchwork army at his command, General Douglas MacArthur led a valiant defense...

The Few and the Brave Convinced by 1943 that the assault upon Nazi-held Europe would yield swiftly to elite troops, the U.S. Army created parachute regimental combat teams. Drawing on daring volunteers willing to hurl themselves from airplanes and hit the ground fighting, the 517th PRCT became...

Terry de la Mesa Allen’s mother was the daughter of a Spanish officer, and his father was a career U.S. Army officer. Despite this impressive martial heritage, success in the military seemed unlikely for Allen as he failed out of West Point—twice—ultimately gaining his commission through Catholic...

In the skies of World War II Europe, the Eighth Air Force was a defining factor in turning the tide against the Nazis. In these gripping oral histories, the sacrifice, savagery, and supremacy of the “Mighty Eighth” is described by those who experienced it...and survived it. At the outbreak...

The third volume of this American combat history of World War II highlights the exploits of General MacArthur in the Phillipines and General Patton in Germany and covers from the Battle of the Bulge to Hiroshima and the end of the war.

Here, one of America’s most popular military historians re-creates, using their own moving and powerful voices, the true stories of the U.S. Marine pilots who flew the Allies to victory in World War II. These riveting accounts recreate conflicts ranging from the Marines’ gallant defense of Wake...

Told by soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, this series is an oral history of World War II from those who were there. This second volume examines the storming of Omaha Beach on D-Day, and the advance of allied forces across Europe to the liberation of Paris.

One of the nation's most acclaimed military historians presents an authoritative and dramatic three-volume oral history of World War II. This volume includes gripping accounts from American sailors, soldiers, airmen, and marines who share their experiences from the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the fall of Bataan, up through the earliest battles on European soil.

The definitive account of one of World War II’s bloodiest campaigns—the five-month battle between American and German forces in the Huertgen Forest—told through the words of the men who were there. From the preface: “In the course of research and interviews while writing a series...