Memorial Day

image-tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier
Tomb of the Unknowns (“Unknown Soldier”) – U.S. by Tony Fischer used under CC License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode)

You probably know that Memorial Day was established to honor and remember the U.S. service members who lost their lives in war. Did you know that the holiday was first designated as “Decoration Day,” in 1868, and so named because it was a national day for us to honor the war dead by decorating graves with flowers?

While the library will be closed Monday, May 30th in honor of the Memorial Day holiday, you may want to try some of the selection of titles below; fiction, film, oral histories and a collection of poetry and comics;  there’s even a blues concert video if you’d like a musical interlude.

Above the Dreamless Dead: World War I in Poetry and Comics, edited by Chris Duffy

cover-imageAs the Great War dragged on and its catastrophic death toll mounted, a new artistic movement found its feet in the United Kingdom. The Trench Poets, as they came to be called, were soldier-poets dispatching their verse from the front lines. Known for its rejection of war as a romantic or noble enterprise, and its plainspoken condemnation of the senseless bloodshed of war, Trench Poetry soon became one of the most significant literary moments of its decade.
The marriage of poetry and comics is a deeply fruitful combination, as evidenced by this collection. In stark black and white, the words of the Trench Poets find dramatic expression and reinterpretation through the minds and pens of some of the greatest cartoonists working today.

 

Ashley’s War by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

In 2010, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command created Cultural Support Teams, a pilot program to put women on the battlefield alongside Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and other special operations teams on sensitive missions in Afghanistan. The idea was that women could access places and people that had remained out of reach, and could build relationships — woman to woman — in ways that male soldiers in a conservative, traditional country could not. Though officially banned from combat, female soldiers could be “attached” to different teams, and for the first time women throughout the Army, the National Guard, and the Reserves heard the call to join male soldiers on special ops missions. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon uses exhaustive firsthand reporting and experience with the complexities of war to tell the story of CST-2, a unit of women hand-picked from across the Army, and the remarkable hero at its heart: 1st Lt. Ashley White, who would become the first Cultural Support Team member killed in action and the first CST remembered on the Army Special Operations Memorial Wall of Honor alongside the Army Rangers with whom she served.

The Ghosts of Hero Street: How One Small Mexican-American Community Gave So Much in World War II and Korea by Carlos Harrison

cover-imageThey came from one street, but death found them in many places…in a distant jungle, a frozen forest, and trapped in the flaming wreckage of a bomber blown from the sky. One died going over a fence during the greatest paratrooper assault in history. Another fell in the biggest battle of World War II. Yet another, riddled with bullets in an audacious act of heroism during a decisive onslaught a world, and a war, away. All came from a single street in a railroad town called Silvis, Illinois, a tiny stretch of dirt barely a block-and-a-half long, with an unparalleled history. The twenty-two Mexican-American families who lived on that one street sent fifty-seven of their children to fight in World War II and Korea–more than any other place that size anywhere in the country. Eight of those children died. It’s a distinction recognized by the Department of Defense, and it earned that rutted, unpaved strip a distinguished name. Today it’s known as Hero Street. This is the story of those brave men and their families, how they fought both in battle and to be accepted in an American society that remained biased against them even after they returned home as heroes. Based on interviews with relatives, friends, and soldiers who served alongside the men, as wellas personal letters and photographs, The Ghosts of Hero Street is the compelling and inspiring account of a street of soldiers–and men–who would not be denied their dignity or their honor.

Howlin’ Wolf in Concert: produced and directed by Topper Carew

dvd-cover-imageIncluding the song “Decoration Day,” this DVD shows Howlin’ Wolf prowling on stage at the first Washington, D.C. Blues Festival in November 1970, supported by his top-notch band. Hear him moan his earth-shaking blues and watch his unforgettable stage antics and you’ll see why Sam Phillips — who also discovered Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis — called Howlin’ Wolf his greatest discovery.

This DVD is in the Glendale Brand Library collection; it is available to request with your PPL library card.

 

Memorial Day by Vince Flynn

cover-imageIt’s just seven days before Memorial Day, and the nation’s capital is buzzing with last-minute preparations for the unveiling of the new memorial honoring the men and women who fought in World War II. Despite the hopeful energy of the city, Mitch Rapp senses trouble. A spike in CIA intelligence has pointed to a major terrorist attack on the United States. Now it’s up to Rapp to pull out all the stops.

Rapp immediately leaves for Afghanistan, where he leads a special forces unit on a daring commando raid across the border into a remote Pakistani village. Their target: an al Qaeda stronghold. Within a subterranean room, Rapp and his team discover a treasure trove of maps, computers, files, and bills of lading for multiple freighters heading to U.S. ports – all pointing to plans for a catastrophic nuclear attack on Washington, D.C.
Information is quickly relayed back to CIA headquarters, and a nuclear emergency support team scrambles to the scene. In a few hours, the freighters have been located and disarmed and the danger has been averted. Or has it?

Despite all the backslapping and congratulations, Mitch Rapp can’t shake the feeling that the operation seemed just a bit too easy. Rapp follows his instincts on a quest to unearth the whole truth. What he finds is truly terrifying, and with Memorial Day closing fast, Rapp must find a way to prevent a disaster of unimaginable proportions.

The Roughest Riders: The Untold Story of the Black Soldiers in the Spanish-American War by Jerome Tuccille

cover-imageAmericans have long heard the story of Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. But often forgotten in the great swamp of history is that Roosevelt’s success was ensured by a dedicated corps of black soldiers—the so-called Buffalo Soldiers—who fought by Roosevelt’s side during his legendary campaign. Roosevelt admitted that the black troops actually spearheaded the charge, beating him to the top of Kettle Hill ahead of San Juan Hill, but later changed his story, claiming their perfor­mance was due to the superior white officers under whom the black troops served.

The Roughest Riders takes a closer look at common historical legend and balances the record. It is the inspiring story of the first African American soldiers to serve during the post-slavery era, first in the West and later in Cuba, when full equality, legally at least, was still a distant dream. They fought heroically and courageously, making Roosevelt’s campaign a great success that added to the future president’s legend as a great man of words and action. But most of all, they demonstrated their own military prowess, often in the face of incredible discrimination from their fellow soldiers and commanders, and rightfully deserve their own place in American history.

Taking Chance: produced by Lori Keith Douglas, directed by Ross Katz

dvd-cover-imageThe remarkable true story of one soldier’s death in battle, another soldier’s journey of discovery and a nation’s reverence and gratitude toward its war dead. After hearing of the heroic death of a young Marine in Iraq, veteran officer Lt. Colonel Michael Strobl … volunteers to escort the remains of Lance Corporal Chance Phelps back to his hometown in Wyoming. Now, on a trip across America’s heartland, Strobl will find himself on an unexpectedly emotional sojourn into the soul of a country mourning not only Phelps, but all of our country’s fallen heroes.

 

 

Thank You For Your Service by David Finkel

cover-imageFrom a MacArthur Fellow and the author of The Good Soldiers, a profound look at life after war No journalist has reckoned with the psychology of war as intimately as David Finkel. In The Good Soldiers, his bestselling account from the front lines of Baghdad, Finkel shadowed the men of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion as they carried out the infamous surge, a grueling fifteen-month tour that changed all of them forever. Now Finkel has followed many of those same men as they’ve returned home and struggled to reintegrate–both into their family lives and into American society at large. In the ironically named Thank You for Your Service, Finkel writes with tremendous compassion not just about the soldiers but about their wives and children. Where do soldiers belong after their homecoming? Is it possible, or even reasonable, to expect them to rejoin their communities as if nothing has happened? And in moments of hardship, who are soldiers expected to turn to if they feel alienated by the world they once lived in? These are the questions Finkel faces as he revisits the brave but shaken men of the 2-16. More than a work of journalism, Thank You for Your Service is an act of understanding–shocking but always riveting, unflinching but deeply humane, it takes us inside the heads of those who must live the rest of their lives with the chilling realities of war.

What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It: compiled by Trish Wood

cover-imageAn oral history of the war in Iraq draws on a series of in-depth, candid interviews with American soldiers who offer their personal recollections and experiences of the conflict, from the initial push to Baghdad and overthrow of Saddam Hussein to the internecine violence of the present day.

 

 

 

 

You Are Not Forgotten: The Story of a Lost WWII Pilot and a Twenty-First Century Soldier’s Mission to Bring Him Home by Bryan Bender

cover-imageAn epic account of loss and redemption follows the story of a Marina Corps pilot who was shot down in World War II and the J-PAC soldier who resolved to bring home his remains six decades later, offering insight into the differences between the two wars and the harrowing factors that challenged the recovery mission.