The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour
By James D. Hornfischer
WWII / Naval / Pacific / U.S. Military

On the morning of October 25, 1944, off the Philippine island of Samar, a few American destroyers, destroyer escorts, and small escort carriers known as Taffy 3 suddenly found itself as the only thing standing between the mightiest ships of the Japanese navy and the American invasion force in the Philippines. Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague sent his carriers running for cover and ordered his outgunned escorts to attack a force many times their strength. The battle cost close to 1,000 American lives, but Taffy 3 turned the Japanese back. Hornfischer drew on declassified documents and extensive interviews with veterans to bring the sailors and pilots to life in this New York Times bestseller.

$1.99

The Peninsular War
By Charles Esdaile
Napoleonic Wars / Peninsular War

Between 1808 and 1814, Napoleon's invasion of Spain and Portugal set off a war that killed more than a million Spaniards, broke the Spanish empire, and gave Wellington's redcoats one of Britain's great military epics. Charles Esdaile, a historian from the University of Liverpool, moves beyond the familiar British story to examine the guerrilla war and the conflict's devastating toll on Spain and Portugal, arguing it mattered far more to Iberian history than to Napoleon's downfall. He also traces its poisonous legacy forward to the Spanish Civil War.

$2.99

Fallujah Memoirs: A Grunt's Eye View of the Second Battle of Fallujah
By Alexander Saxby
Modern Warfare / Iraq War / U.S. Military / Memoir

The fight for Fallujah was the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War, with some of the heaviest urban combat American troops had seen since Hue City in 1968. Alexander Saxby fought through it as a Marine Corps rifleman, helping clear the city house by house with the rest of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marines. He tells the story strictly from the ground level, far from the generals and their maps, from losing a close friend on his own birthday a week into the battle to an assault on a mosque held by foreign fighters to what it was like having New York Times reporters embedded with his platoon.

$4.99

Deborah and the War of the Tanks 1917
By John A. Taylor
WWI / Battle of Cambrai / British Military

In November 1917, a British tank named Deborah helped lead the first successful massed tank attack in history at Cambrai, then lay buried beneath the battlefield for eighty years until it was excavated in 1998. John Taylor tells the story of the tank, her crew, and the early Tank Corps, tracking down the crewmen's descendants along the way. The recovered hull is now preserved as a memorial to the battle and the men who fought in it.

$2.99

The Vietnam War: A Military History
By Geoffrey Wawro
Vietnam / Cold War / U.S. Military

Geoffrey Wawro draws on thousands of pages of military, diplomatic, and intelligence documents to tell the story of a war of choice that was doomed from its inception. He narrates campaigns where American troops struggled even to find the enemy in the South Vietnamese wilderness, and shows how the war dragged on because presidents and military leaders feared the political cost of accepting defeat.

$2.99

The Desert Air Force in World War II: Air Power in the Western Desert, 1940-1942
By Ken Delve
WWII / North Africa / Aviation / British Military

From 1940 to 1942, an outnumbered band of RAF, South African, and Australian squadrons flying largely outdated aircraft fought in the skies across North Africa, from victory over the Italians to Rommel's drive deep into Egypt. RAF veteran Ken Delve weaves aircrew eyewitness accounts into a detailed look at the force's operations, aircraft, airfields, and training, giving a strong feel for daily life and air combat in the desert. Appendices cover orders of battle, squadron histories, and airfield locations.

$2.99

The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece
By Paul Cartledge
Ancient History / Greek Military

Sparta's citizen men were forbidden any trade but war, and that warrior ethos produced Leonidas and his 300 at Thermopylae along with a mystique that still grips the imagination. Paul Cartledge, long regarded as the leading authority on ancient Sparta, traces the city's rise and fall through figures like Lycurgus, Lysander, and Helen of Troy. The book covers Sparta's wars and explains how its military dominance eventually collapsed, but keep in mind this is a broad introduction to Spartan society rather than a strictly military history.

$2.99