Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2020 - Occupation Books about the Military
- Sara M.
- Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Collection
Fulfill the "Read a Book About a Protagonist That Has Your Occupation" prompt by finding a book about somebody in your line of work. Of course we can't provide a list for every imaginable kind of job, so if you don't see anything close to what you do drop us a line and we'll try to find you one!
Of course there's no shortage of books about soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines - but just to get you started, we've provided this list of books about the military, past and present.
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2020 reading challenge. Find more lists here.
Band of Brothers
E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
Published in 2017
Thank You for Your Service
Published in 2013
"Finkel, a journalist, follows the soldiers who serve in the Iraq War as they struggle to reintegrate into American society"-- Provided by publisher.
Good-bye to All That
Published in 1990
"In this soldier's story, first published in 1929, poet Robert Graves traces the monumental loss of innocence that occurred as a result of World War I. Written after the war and as Graves was leaving England - he thought, forever - Good-bye to All That bids farewell not only to his birthplace. By the year of his departure, a way of life had ended, and England and the modern world would never be the same. Tracing Graves's upbringing through his entry into the war at age twenty-one as a patriotic captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, this dramatic, poignant, and often wry memoir depicts all the horrors and disillusionment of the Great War, from life in the trenches and the loss of dear friends to the absurdity of government bureaucracy."--BOOK JACKET.
The Heart and the Fist the Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL
Published in 2011
The author describes how, after working as a humanitarian around the world, he realized that he could do nothing to stop violence or prevent people from becoming refugees and soon joined the elite Navy SEALs, where he drew on his humanitarian training as he battled injustice.
The Savior Generals
How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost, from Ancient Greece to Iraq
Published in 2013
Traces the stories of Themistocles, Belisarius, William Tecumseh Sherman, Matthew Ridgway, and David Petraeus, evaluating their pivotal military roles and the controversies that marked their careers.
Where Men Win Glory
The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
Published in 2010
Irrepressible individualist and iconoclast Pat Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract in May 2002 to enlist in the United States Army. Deeply troubled by 9/11, he felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside in Afghanistan. Though obvious to most on the scene that a ranger in Tillman's own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the Army aggressively maneuvered to keep this information from Tillman's family and the American public for five weeks following his death, while President Bush repeatedly invoked Tillman's name to promote his administration's foreign policy. Biographer Krakauer draws on his journals and letters, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him, and extensive research in Afghanistan to render this driven, complex, and uncommonly compelling figure as well as the definitive account of the events and actions that led to his death.--From publisher description.
American Sniper
The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History
Published in 2013
Helmet for My Pillow
From Parris Island to the Pacific
Published in 2010
A soldier presents an account of his participation in World War II, from basic training to battles on Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu, reflecting on the horrors and sacrifices of war.
Lone Survivor
The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10
Published in 2007
The leader, and only survivor, of a team of U.S. Navy SEALs sent to northern Afghanistan to capture a well-known al Qaeda leader chronicles the events of the battle that killed his teammates and offers insight into the training of this elite group of warriors.
What It is Like to Go to War
Published in 2011
In his memoir, Marlantes relates his combat experiences in Vietnam and discusses the daily contradictions warriors face in the grind of war, where each battle requires them to take life or spare life. He also underscores the need for returning veterans to be counseled properly.
We Were Soldiers Once -and Young
Ia Drang, the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam
Published in 1992
The Things They Carried
A Work of Fiction
Published in 2009
This work depicts the heroic young men of Alpha Company as they carry the emotional weight of their lives to war in Vietnam in a patchwork account of a modern journey into the heart of darkness. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the girl who grieves while she dances), and love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have.
Horse Soldiers
The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan
Published in 2009
Documents the post-September 11 mission during which a small band of Special Forces soldiers captured the strategic Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif as part of an effort to defeat the Taliban, in a dramatic account that includes testimonies by Afghanistan citizens whose lives were changed by the war.