Central Kansas Library System

On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner,...

One of the last unheralded heroic stories of World War II: the U-boat assault off the American coast against the men of the U.S. Merchant Marine who were supplying the European war, and one community's monumental contribution to that effort. Mathews County, Virginia, is a remote outpost on the Chesapeake Bay with little to offer except unspoiled scenery—but it sent an unusually large concentration of sea captains to fight in World War II. The Mathews...

In the last days of World War II, a new and baffling weapon terrorized the United States Navy in the Pacific. To the sailors who learned to fear them, the body-crashing warriors of Japan were known as "suiciders"; among the Japanese, they were named for a divine wind that once saved the home islands from invasion: kamikaze.

Only days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt tapped Chester W. Nimitz to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. From the early years of the war to the surrender ceremony on Tokyo Bay four years later, Nimitz carried the expectations of a nation impatient for revenge-- and transformed the devastated Pacific fleet into the most powerful and commanding naval force in history. Symonds covers all the major campaigns, and captures...

"The Wilhelm Gustloff Story studies the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German passenger liner sunk in World War II's closing months while carrying thousands of refugees. Vivid text and images bring the ship to life, examining its construction, technology, crew, and passengers, as well as its place in history. Features include a glossary, references, websites, source notes, and an index. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards."--Amazon.com....

A thrilling true survival story that follows one of America's most beloved presidents, John F. Kennedy, as he fought to save his crew after a deadly shipwreck in the Pacific during World War II.

The true story of how Hitler's mightiest battleship was hunted, fought, and destroyed in the battle for the Atlantic.

"The final volume of the magisterial Pacific War Trilogy from acclaimed historian Ian W. Toll, "one of the great storytellers of war" (Evan Thomas). Twilight of the Gods is a riveting account of the harrowing last year of World War II in the Pacific, when the U.S. Navy won the largest naval battle in history; Douglas MacArthur made good his pledge to return to the Philippines; waves of kamikazes attacked the Allied fleets; the Japanese fought to the...

P. T. Deutermann's previous novels of the US Navy in World War II - Pacific Glory, Ghosts of Bungo Suido, and Sentinels of Fire - have been acclaimed by reviewers and readers for their powerful drama and authentic detail. In The Commodore, the Navy in 1942-1943 is fighting a losing battle against Japan for control of the Solomon Islands. Vice Admiral William "Bull" Halsey is tasked to change the course of the war. Halsey, a maverick, goes on the offensive...

"This ... history encompasses the heart of the Pacific War--the period between mid-1942 and mid-1944--when parallel Allied counteroffensives north and south of the equator washed over Japan's far-flung island empire like a 'conquering tide, ' concluding with Japan's irreversible strategic defeat in the Marianas. It was the largest, bloodiest, most costly, most technically innovative and logistically complicated amphibious war in history, and it fostered...