Robert Leckie

Here is one of the most riveting first-person accounts ever to come out of World War II. Robert Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in January 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Helmet for My Pillow we follow his odyssey, from basic training on Parris Island, South Carolina, all the way to the raging battles in the Pacific, where some of the war’s fiercest fighting took place. Recounting his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu, Leckie spares no detail of the horrors and sacrifices of war, painting an unvarnished portrait of how real warriors are made, fight, and often die in the defense of their country. From the live-for-today rowdiness of marines on leave to the terrors of jungle warfare against an enemy determined to fight to the last man, Leckie describes what war is really like when victory can only be measured inch by bloody inch. Woven throughout are Leckie’s hard-won, eloquent, and thoroughly unsentimental meditations on the meaning of war and why we fight. Unparalleled in its immediacy and accuracy, Helmet for My Pillow will leave no reader untouched. This is a book that brings you as close to the mud, the blood, and the experience of war as it is safe to come.Now producers Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman, the men behind Band of Brothers, have adapted material from Helmet for My Pillow for HBO’s epic miniseries The Pacific, which will thrill and edify a whole new generation.

Penguin delivers you to the front lines of The Pacific Theater with the real-life stories behind the HBO miniseries. Former Marine and Pacific War veteran Robert Leckie tells the story of the invasion of Okinawa, the closing battle of World War II. Leckie is a skilled military historian, mixing battle strategy and analysis with portraits of the men who fought on both sides to give the reader a complete account of the invasion. Lasting 83 days and surpassing D-Day in both troops and material used, the Battle of Okinawa was a decisive victory for the Allies, and a huge blow to Japan. In this stirring and readable account, Leckie provides a complete picture of the battle and its context in the larger war.

Strong Men Armed relates the U.S. Marines' unprecedented, relentless drive across the Pacific during World War II, from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, detailing their struggle to dislodge from heavily fortified islands an entrenched enemy who had vowed to fight to extinction—and did. (All but three of the Marines' victories required the complete annihilation of the Japanese defending force.) As scout and machine-gunner for the First Marine Division, the author fought in all its engagements till his wounding at Peleliu. Here he uses firsthand experience and impeccable research to re-create the nightmarish battles. The result is both an exciting chronicle and a moving tribute to the thousands of men who died in reeking jungles and on palm-studded beaches, thousands of miles from home and fifty years before their time, of whom Admiral Chester W. Nimitz once said, "Uncommon valor was a common virtue." Strong Men Armed includes over a dozen maps, a chronology of the war in the Pacific, the Marine Medal of Honor Winners in World War II, and Marine Corps aces in World War II.

From Robert Leckie, the World War II veteran and New York Times bestselling author of Helmet for My Pillow , whose experiences were featured in the HBO miniseries The Pacific , comes this vivid narrative of the astonishing six-month campaign for Guadalcanal. From the Japanese soldiers’ carefully calculated—and ultimately foiled—attempt to build a series of impregnable island forts on the ground to the tireless efforts of the Americans who struggled against a tenacious adversary and the temperature and terrain of the island itself, Robert Leckie captures the loneliness, the agony, and the heat of twenty-four-hour-a-day fighting on Guadalcanal. Combatants from both sides are brought to General Archer Vandegrift, who first assembled an amphibious strike force; Isoroku Yamamoto, the naval general whose innovative strategy was tested; the island-born Allied scout Jacob Vouza, who survived hideous torture to uncover the enemy’s plans; and Saburo Sakai, the ace flier who shot down American planes with astonishing ease.Propelling the Allies to eventual victory, Guadalcanal was truly the turning point of the war. Challenge for the Pacific is an unparalleled, authoritative account of this great fight that forever changed our world.

An exciting trip back in time to the American Revolution, "a reminder of what history can be when written by a master."-- Publishers Weekly

"A first-class popular history of the war, lively, entertaining, and continuously informative."--Publishers Weekly "His ability to recreate the emotions of war makes this monumental work a living history."--Booklist

Iwo Jima is one of the most famous battles in World War II, and the greatest battle fought by the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II. From that battle came the most famous image of the war, the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi. Robert Leckie, the bestselling author of Helmet for My Pillow has written an extraordinary story of one of th bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history.

A fast-paced, compulsively readable one-volume narrative of the American Civil War, by the author of the acclaimed saga of World War II, Delivered from Evil .

With his celebrated sense of drama and eye for colorful detail, acclaimed military historian Robert Leckie charts the long, savage conflict between England and France in their quest for supremacy in pre-Revolutionary America. Packed with sharply etched profiles of all the major players-including George Washington, Samuel de Champlain, William Pitt, Edward Braddock, Count Frontenac, James Wolfe, Thomas Gage, and the nobly vanquished Marquis de Montcalm-this panoramic history chronicles the four great colonial wars: the War of the Grand Alliance (King William's War), the War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's War), the War of the Austrian Succession (King George's War), and the decisive French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War). Leckie not only provides perspective on exactly how the New World came to be such a fiercely contested prize in Western Civilization, but also shows us exactly why we speak English today instead of French-and reminds us how easily things might have gone the other way."Leckie is a gifted writer with the ability to explain complicated military matters in layperson's terms, while sustaining the drama involved in a life-and-death struggle. His portraits of the key players in that struggle . . . are seamlessly interwoven with his exciting narrative." -Booklist"As always, [Leckie] describes the maneuvers, battles, and results in telling detail with a cinematic style, and his portraits . . . are first-rate."-The Dallas Morning News"Leckie's accounts of battles, important individuals, and the role of Native Americans bring to life the distant drama of the French and Indian Wars."-The Daily Reflector

A dramatic narrative history continuing Robert Leckie's popular series on the history of the United States that covers the first 50 years following the American Revolution.

"Leckie treats not the causes of our wars, nor the controversies that have always attended them, nor their results, so often equivocal, debatable, or flatly disappointing, but the manner in which they were fought, their leadership, their pages of glory and of shame."--Allan Nevins, Saturday Review.

In June 1950 Communist forces poured across the 38th Parallel (the arbitrary, militarily indefensible line of latitude separating the Communist North from the independent Republic of Korea) to unite the country by force. Three bloody, bitter years of fighting ensued during which the seesawing fortunes of this frustrating war thwarted North Korea's ambitions while treating the ill-equipped, overconfident UN peacekeeping forces, mostly Americans, no less harshly. Conflict examines the war in all its military, political, and human the battles at Pusan Perimeter, at Inchon, at Chosin Reservoir, at Heartbreak Ridge; significant figures like Syngman Rhee, Kim Il Sung, Ridgway, MacArthur, and Truman; controversies like MacArthur's dismissal, the difficulties of P.O.W. exchanges, and charges of brainwashing and germ warfare; as well as penetrating analyses of the performance of the American soldier, and the war's effect on the U.S. military and our national psyche. As such, Conflict stands as an unsurpassed, vivid contribution to history.

NORTH KOREA -- DECEMBER 1950 This is the incredible saga of the famed First Marine Division and its savage fighting withdrawl from the Chosin Reservoir to the North Korean port of Hungnam. Battling bitterly cold winds and temperatures that dropped to -25 Fahrenheit, the beleaguered Leathernecks blasted their way through roadblocks, ambushes, and wave after horrifying wave of Chinese Communist army attacks. Robert Leckie brings to life all aspects of the epic struggle and the men who wrote one of the greatest chapters in Marine Corps history with their frozen blood.

OUR COPY HAS BEEN WELL USED AND WELL READ. SCUFFING, EDGE WEAR, AND SOME CURLING AT EDGE OF COVERS. SOME DINGS AND DISCOLORATION ON BOARDS.. BINDING HAS SPLIT INSIDE FRONT COVER, BUT ALL PAGES REMAIN TIGHTLY BOUND. CHIPPING ON A FEW PAGES AS WELL AS AGE RELATED TANNING & SOME DISCOLORATION. NO MARKING OR WRITING NOTED WITHIN BOOK. GREAT READING COPY!

Good overview of the war from the end of WWI and it's causes. Robert Leckie was in the Pacific during WWII. His book reads almost like a novel.

WITHDRAWN FORMER LIBRARY BOOK WITH USUAL STAMPS & MARKING. EDGEWEAR, SCUFFING, CHAFING & DINGS ON COVERS & SPINE. PAGES GENERALLY CLEAN AND ALL ARE INTACT.

Traces the history of football in the United States from the first intercollegiate game in 1869 to the most current Super Bowl game.

A capsule history of pivotal battles during America's major wars, from the French and Indian War to the War in Korea, with emphasis on eleven important Quebec, Trenton, New Orleans, Mexico City, Chancellorsville, Appomattox, Santiago, Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Normandy, and Pusan-Inchon. Reprint.

From the rain forest of Guadal to the hell-hot coral of Peleiu, the first division, U.S. Marines were there. Here is their own story—as real as the mud and blood they slogged through and the unmarked graves where some of their bravest now rest.

paperbound

This warm, delightful story of Robert Leckie's childhood in Rutherford, New Jersey, tells of life with a distinctly likable family -- their pranks and problems, religion and revelries. There was Father ( called Foddy and sometimes :the Pope"), Mother, five sisters , assorted unemployed uncles, and Robert himself. Father held his position with the skill of an Old School Head of the House. "Lord, what a family!" he would say, when Mother learned to drive by complete intimidation of the Mayor of Park Avenue ( the local cop), or when Bojangles, the spaniel who thought he was people, chewed gum or could barely hold his liquor. When the Pink Fairy, the housekeeper who dressed in pink dress,stockings, shoes, fingernails and hair, locked herself in her room each night with a spike and hammer, Foddy-- answering Mother's excuses-- said, "Euphemism, Marion, does not necessarily lead to optimism. The woman's a nut!"

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The relief party arrived at the frontier settlement of Schenectady too late. All they found were smoldering ruins and the hideously butchered corpses of men and women. The French and Indian raiders had left only one living being behind -- a squalling newborn child, who had come into the world amid the carnage of battle. Jed Gill was the name of this child of violence who grew up to be the kind of man that only an untamed new land could breed. In a wilderness America that was the prize in savage war between England and France, Jed fought his own war to settle the score of the past -- and to found a family that would carry his legacy of courage and daring into the American future....

"Leckie treats not the causes of our wars, nor the controversies that have always attended them, nor their results, so often equivocal, debatable, or flatly disappointing, but the manner in which they were fought, their leadership, their pages of glory and of shame."--Allan Nevins, Saturday Review.

Surveys the conditions and events in the Thirteen Colonies which led to the revolution, and traces the course of the war to the British surrender at the Battle of Yorktown

TIME OF TESTINGThe firestorm of the American Revolution swept over the colonies from the bloodstained fields of Lexington and Concord to the Carolina marshlands. For young hot-blooded Nathaniel Gill, it was a time to prove his manhood and courage in battle after battle.For elegant, sophisticated Dr. Benjamin Gill, it was a time of overwhelming, all-corrupting temptation in the arms of a beautiful Royalist wanton.For brilliant handsome Daniel Gill, it was a time to shape history as chief aide to General George Washington.For all this proud and passionate American clan, it was a time to choose sides and take risks...a time of liberty or death...

Discusses the causes, events, and aftermath of one of the strangest wars in the history of the United States.