{"id":3605,"date":"2025-05-23T11:55:06","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T18:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/?p=3605"},"modified":"2025-05-23T11:55:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T18:55:06","slug":"memorial-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/2025\/memorial-day-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Memorial Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Memorial Day is Monday, May 26. The holiday has come to signal the start of summer, but it is of course a day with more solemn foundations. Originally called Decoration Day, and first observed on the last Monday in May, 1868, it is the day set aside in remembrance of all those who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. While we set about our holiday activities, fittingly celebrating the freedoms for which our family, friends, neighbors (and people we never knew personally) gave their lives to defend, take a quiet moment to honor the sacrifice.<\/p>\n

Some titles available from the Library, with Memorial Day in mind:<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Elliot Ackerman\u00a0<\/strong>2019<\/p>\n

From a decorated Marine war veteran and<\/span> National Book Award Finalist, an astonishing reckoning with the nature of combat and<\/span> the human cost of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and<\/span> Syria.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"3<\/a>The Ken Burns Collection<\/a>: The Civil War <\/strong><\/em>(1990)\u00a0 \/ The War <\/strong><\/em>(2007)\u00a0 \/The Vietnam War<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/em>(2017)<\/p>\n

[Hoopla BingePass]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ken Burns has produces excellent series for PBS since the nine-part\u00a0The Civil War<\/em> first introduced his distinctive documentary style to viewers 35 years ago. He has since produced series on World War II (2007) and the Vietnam War (2017), and these series are available in full along with other series (including\u00a0Country Music<\/em>,\u00a0Jazz<\/em>, and\u00a0The National Parks<\/em>) in Hoopla with your library card in special “BingePass” mode, where you have access for 7 days to any and all episodes of these series to choose from.<\/p>\n

\"Book:<\/a>Twenty-One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Jeff Gottesfeld\u00a0<\/strong>(2021)<\/p>\n

[Libby eBook-]<\/strong><\/p>\n

With every step, the Tomb Guards pay homage to America’s fallen. Discover their story, and that of the unknown soldiers they honor, through resonant words and illustrations.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman’s Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front<\/a> <\/strong><\/em>by Mary Jennings Hegar\u00a0<\/strong>(2017)<\/p>\n

On July 29, 2009, Air National Guard major Mary Jennings “MJ” Hegar was shot down while on a Medevac mission on her third tour in Afghanistan. Despite being wounded, she fought the enemy and saved the lives of her crew and their patients. But soon she would face a new battle: to give women who serve on the front lines the credit they deserve…<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/a>The Naked and the Dead <\/a><\/strong><\/em>by Norman Mailer\u00a0<\/strong> (Originally published in 1948)<\/p>\n

Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War,\u00a0The Naked<\/i>\u00a0and the Dead<\/i> received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.
\nWritten in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows an army platoon of foot soldiers who are fighting for the possession of the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948,\u00a0The Naked and the Dead<\/i>\u00a0is representative of the best in twentieth-century American writing.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Karl Marlantes\u00a0<\/strong>(2010)<\/p>\n

Matterhorn<\/em> tells the story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>The Things They Carried<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Tim O’Brien<\/strong><\/p>\n

Heroic young men carry the emotional weight of their lives to war in Vietnam in a patchwork account of a modern journey into the heart of darkness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of World War II <\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Chester Nez\u00a0<\/strong>(2011)<\/p>\n

His name wasn’t Chester Nez. That was the English name he was assigned in kindergarten. And in boarding school at Fort Defiance, he was punished for speaking his native language, as the teachers sought to rid him of his culture and traditions. But discrimination didn’t stop Chester from answering the call to defend his country after Pearl Harbor, for the Navajo have always been warriors, and his upbringing on a New Mexico reservation gave him the strength–both physical and mental–to excel as a marine. During World War II, the Japanese had managed to crack every code the United States used. But when the Marines turned to its Navajo recruits to develop and implement a secret military language, they created the only unbroken code in modern warfare–and helped assure victory for the United States over Japan in the South Pacific.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>The Yellow Birds<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em> by Kevin Powers\u00a0<\/strong>(2012)<\/p>\n

In the midst of a bloody battle in the Iraq War, two soldiers, bound together since basic training, do everything to protect each other from both outside enemies and the internal struggles that come from constant danger.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Eat the Apple: A Memoir<\/em><\/a> by Matt Young\u00a0<\/strong>(2018)<\/p>\n

Matt Young joined the Marine Corps at age eighteen. The teenage wasteland he fled followed him to the training bases charged with making him a Marine. Matt survived the training and then not one, not two, but three deployments to Iraq. Visceral, ironic, self-lacerating, and ultimately redemptive, Young’s story drops us unarmed into Marine Corps culture and lays bare the absurdism of 21st-century war, the manned-up vulnerability of those on the front lines, and the true, if often misguided, motivations that drove a young man to a life at war.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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