Highlights - 11/9/10 - in honor of Veteran's Day

And if I perish : frontline U.S. Army nurses in World War II / Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee
More than 59,000 nurses volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, and more than 1,600 were decorated for meritorious service and bravery. These are their stories.

The Navajo code talkers / Doris A. Paul
During World War II, a platoon of Marines known as the Navajo Code Talkers devised a code based on their native language that the enemy was unable to decipher. Their code enabled Allied forces to prevail in the South Pacific. (Amazon.com; 11/08/10)

1776 / David McCullough
Tells the dramatic events of the year of the Declaration of Independence, the beginning of the war with Great Britain, the leadership of Gen. George Washington, and the bravery and ingenuity of civilians-turned-soldiers. One such man was Henry Knox (heard of Fort Knox?), a young bookseller with the audacity to attempt to move 120,000 pounds of artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston in the middle of winter. To move canons across the frozen Hudson River, Knox drilled holes in the ice to allow water to rise through and freeze over the top, thickening the ice to hold up under the heavy load. Did it work? Read the book and find out.

Operation Mincemeat : how a dead man and a bizarre plan fooled the Nazis and assured an Allied victory/ Ben Macintyre
[Where James Bond got his start!]
At its most visible, war is fought with weapons, leadership, courage and brute force. There is also a less visible conflict, a battle of deception, seduction and bad faith, ‘protected as Church put it, by “a bodyguard of lies.” (p.10)

"Operation Mincemeat" was the brainchild of Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, who would go on to write the James Bond novels. “The man lying in the dunes at Punta Umbria was a fraud. The lies he carried would fly from London to Madrid to Berlin, traveling from a freezing Scottish loch to the shores of Sicily, from fiction to reality, and from Room 13 of the Admiralty all the way to Hitler’s desk.”(p.10)

[The Librarian is currently reading this book, and there’s no way she’s giving it up till she’s finished. But she reads fast!]

An American Knight / Norman Fulkerson
The story of Col. John Ripley – decorated Marine and American hero.