Books published by publisher Presidio Pr

On December 7, 1941, as the great battleships Arizona, Oklahoma, and Utah lie paralyzed and burning in the aftermath of the japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A crack team of U.S. Navy salvage divers headed by Edward C. Raymer are hurriedly flown to Oahu from the mainland. Their two-part orders are direct and straightforward: (1) rescue as many trapped sailors and Marines as possible, and (2) resurrect what remains of America's once mighty pacific fleet. Descent Into Darkness tells their story.

In the bleak and bitter cold of a copper mine in northern Japan, a Chief Petty Officer of the U.S. Navy was given an opportunity to write a prisoner-of-war card for his wife. He was allowed ten words—he used three: “I AM ALIVE!” This message, classic in its poignancy of suffering and despair captures only too well what it meant to be a prisoner of the Japanese Army.Now, acclaimed military historian Major Bruce Norton USMC (Ret.) brings to light a long-forgotten memoir by a marine captured at Corregidor in the spring of 1942 and interned for three devastating years by the Japanese. With unflinching prose, the words of Marine Sergeant Major Charles Jackson describe the fierce yet impossible battle for Corregidor, the surrender of thousands of his comrades, the long forced marches, and the lethal reality of the P.O.W. camps. Joining some of the most important eyewitness accounts of war, I AM ALIVE! is a testament to the men who fought and died for their country. Jackson’s unembellished account of what his fellow soldiers endured in the face of inhumanity pays tribute to the men who served America during the war—and shows why we would ultimately prevail.

“Eugene Sledge became more than a legend with his memoir, With The Old Breed. He became a chronicler, a historian, a storyteller who turns the extremes of the war in the Pacific—the terror, the camaraderie, the banal and the extraordinary—into terms we mortals can grasp.”—Tom HanksNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERIn The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles. Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War. Now E. B. Sledge’s acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns to thrill, edify, and inspire a new generation. An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war’s famous 1st Marine Division—3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where “the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.” By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic. Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater. Here is what saved, threatened, and changed his life. Here, too, is the story of how he learned to hate and kill—and came to love—his fellow man.“In all the literature on the Second World War, there is not a more honest, realistic or moving memoir than Eugene Sledge’s. This is the real deal, the real war: unvarnished, brutal, without a shred of sentimentality or false patriotism, a profound primer on what it actually was like to be in that war. It is a classic that will outlive all the armchair generals’ safe accounts of—not the ‘good war’—but the worst war ever.”—Ken Burns

Samuel Eliot Morison called Tang Fabulous. Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, commander of the submarine force in the Pacific during World War II, described her fifth patrol as "One of the great submarine cruises of all time." Richard O'Kane was Tang's skipper throughout her brief but gallant career, and Clear the Bridge is his account of the life of Tang and her crew. From the date of her departure on her first patrol in January 1944, to her tragic loss only nine months later, Tang averaged one enemy ship on the bottom every 11 days, a rare twice that of any other U.S. submarine. Despite a short career, Tang's sinkings ranked first among U.S. boats and made Richard O'Kane the leading submarine skipper of the war. Tang also developed new tactics in sub-air rescues, picking 22 navy fliers out of the water while under Japanese gunfire at Truk. For her combat accomplishments, Tang was awarded two Presidential Unit citations, one of only three ships in the U.S. Navy so honored (but Tang's cited all patrols). Follow tang from the moment of her launching to her last, fatal patrol and discover the innovative tactics and calculated daring that made her the hottest boat of the Pacific War. See through her skipper's eyes the taut drama of submarine warfare: the flooding torpedo room that sorely tests Tang's pressure hull, while an enemy destroyer poised overhead listens for the slightest sound. Tang running aground while stalking the enemy submerged in shallow Empire waters and still firing torpedoes with deadly accuracy; the night surface attack off Formosa, when Tang penetrates a convoy of Japanese ships and sinks five of them in 70 seconds, Clear the Bridge is a classic in the literature of the sea.

With hundreds of entries, as well as photographs, drawings, and a handy time line of events, Civil War, A to Z encompasses everything about this historic conflict . . . from Appomattox to Zouaves.This encyclopedic illustrated reference features facts both familiar and engagingly new, organized in an easy-to-follow alphabetical format. Ranging from the basic to the bizarre, from secession to spies to all kinds of swords, Civil War, A to Z creates a complete picture of the war from the first shot to final surrender. No Civil War enthusiast or student of history will want to be without this indispensable and entertaining guide to one of America’s most pivotal and endlessly fascinating events.