Central Kansas Library System

Daniel Rodriguez joined the army just weeks after graduating from high school. Almost immediately, he was deployed to Iraq and then to Afghanistan. While there, he made a promise to his best friend: "When I get out of this shithole, I'm going to play college football." Daniel made it out; his friend didn't. After returning home, Daniel was unemployed and stuck in the clutches of PTSD, but he remembered the promise he had made and resolved to make...

Blindness became Captain Scotty Smiley's journey of supreme testing. With his wife's love and the support of family and friends, Scotty's response became God's transforming moment. Since the moment he forced his way through nurses and cords to take a simple shower, he has climbed Mount Rainier, won an ESPY Award, surfed, skydived, become a father, earned an MBA from Duke, taught leadership at West Point, and won the MacArthur Leadership Award.

This is the story of a God who reshapes us into the people he wants us to be. On February 19, 2007, SSG Shilo Harris was patrolling an infamous southern Iraqi roadway when his Humvee was struck by an IED. Moments later, three members of his crew were dead and Shilo had sustained severe burns over 35 percent of his body. This is the story of the first human being to participate in extracellular stem cell regeneration to regrow lost body parts. This...

"In over a decade of working with veterans, Johnny Joey Jones has discovered the power of battle-forged friendships. Suffering a life-changing injury while deployed in Afghanistan, he faced a daunting recovery. But coming home would have been much harder without the support of his brothers and sisters in arms. In Unbroken Bonds of Battle, Joey tells the stories of those very warriors, who for years have supported and inspired him on the battlefield...

Describes how the author found redemption from a life of drugs, alcohol, fast cars, and women by taking a series of RV trips with his ailing, Vietnam veteran father and a chance encounter with his future wife.

"The New York Times bestselling author of Soldier Dogs returns with the incredible story of K-9 Marine hero Lucca, and the handlers who fought alongside her through two bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Top Dog, Maria Goodavage takes readers into the life of Lucca K458, a decorated and highly skilled military working dog. An extraordinary bond develops between Lucca and Marine Corps dog handlers Chris Willingham and Juan Rodriguez, in what would...

John Kerry tells the story of his remarkable American life--from son of a diplomat to decorated Vietnam veteran, five-term United States senator, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee and secretary of state. A Yale graduate, Kerry enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1966 and served in Vietnam. He returned home highly decorated but disillusioned, and testified powerfully before Congress as a young veteran opposed to the war. Kerry served as a prosecutor in...

"Mat Best may be the only man alive known for both crazy-intense military ops and crazy-funny YouTube videos. In Freedom On!, he uses the gallows humor and ribald sensibility that earned him over a million Facebook followers to tell his personal story of military service and the bumpy transition to civilian life and successful entrepreneurship. Beginning as a teenager in a military family dealing with 9/11, continuing through the intensity of four...

"In 1943, while the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals were winning pennants and meeting in that year's World Series, Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, and Johnny Said practiced on a skinned-out college field in the heart of North Carolina. They and other past and future stars formed one of the greatest baseball teams of all time. They were among a cadre of fighter-pilot cadets who wore the Cloudbuster Nine baseball jersey at an elite Navy training...

To date, nearly 20,000 American troops have been wounded in the war in Iraq. This film gives a face and a voice to these underrepresented soldiers and their families, told intimately through the Feldbusch family of Pennsylvania and their wounded son Jeremy. The result is an insightful view of how Jeremy and other 'wounded warriors" of the Iraq War are reconstructing their lives, with courage and determination to face a new, altered self. Home Front...