Akron Public Library

""Not even the scariest of fairy tales could have prepared me for the monsters I would confront while just a boy of ten ... or for the hero, disguised as a monster himself, who would save my life." Leon Leyson loved playing on the Krakow streetcars with his friends and tagging along after his older brothers ... Then, suddenly, German soldiers were: In his country. In his city. In his home. Seemingly overnight, the life he knew vanished. The Third...

"Like big black umbrellas, they rain down on the fields across the way, and then disappear behind the black line of the hedges. Silent parachutes dotting the night sky." That is how one woman in Normandy in June of 1944 learned that the D-Day invasion was under way. Though they yearned for liberation, the French in Normandy nonetheless had to steel themselves for war, knowing that their homes and land and fellow citizens would have to bear the brunt...

The Bedford Boys is the astonishing true story of twenty-one young men who were killed during the first horrifying minutes of D-Day and the friends and families they left behind in the small town of Bedford. Twenty-one sons killed-no other town in America suffered a greater loss in one day. It is an unforgettable story of triumph, courage, and tragedy based on extensive interviews with survivors and relatives as well as diaries and letters. Alex Kershaw's...

Faced with failing health and financial ruin, the Civil War's greatest general and former president wrote his personal memoirs to secure his family's future - and won himself a unique place in American letters. Devoted almost entirely to his life as a soldier, Grant's Memoirs traces the trajectory of his extraordinary career - from West Point cadet to general-in-chief of all Union armies. For their directness and clarity, his writings on war are without...

This is the story of how an Iraqi, code name Johnny Walker, became guided the U.S. Navy SEALs through Iraq's most dangerous regions. Over the course of eight years, Johnny Walker unmasked countless terrorists and helped foil an untold number of plots against Americans and their allies.

"A gripping narrative by an Iran-born Kurdish journalist who joined the ranks of the Kurdish army as a sniper in the fight against ISIS. In 2002, at the age of nineteen, Azad, a young Iranian-Kurdish man, was conscripted into Iran's army and forced to fight against his own people. Refusing to go to war against his fellow Kurds, Azad deserted and smuggled himself to the United Kingdom, where he was granted asylum, became a citizen, and learned English....

This memoir recounts the harrowing experiences of a Jewish boy and his family who evaded the death camps of the Holocaust by spending four years disguised as Catholics.

These writings create an unforgettable portrait of life in wartime that continues to resonate with truth and humanity.

Examines the events and effects of the American Civil War.

"James Patterson and Matt Eversmann, #1 bestselling coauthors of Walk in My Combat Boots, powerfully present the medical frontline heroes who work to save our lives every day: E.R. Nurses. Around the clock, across the country, these highly skilled and compassionate men and women sacrifice and struggle for us and our families. You have never heard their true stories. Not like this. From big-city and small-town hospitals. From behind the scenes. From...