Cañon City Public Library

The Fighting Men Who Made America Great

Biography of one of the most controversial American generals.

The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a grueling debacle that has striking lessons for the 21st century. Parallels between the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are impossible to ignore. The Soviet Union sent some of its most elite troops to unfamiliar lands to fight a vaguely defined enemy, which eventually defeated their superior numbers with unconventional tactics. Although the Soviet leadership initially...

Offers an account of the battle during the spring of 1945 profiles the conflict that was marked by the death of America's highest-ranking officer killed during World War II, the hara-kiri deaths of two top-ranking Japanese commanders, and the deaths of more than 250,000 soldiers, sailors, and civilians.

In 1998, Andrew Carroll founded the Legacy Project with the goal of remembering Americans who have served this nation and preserving their letters for posterity. Since then, more than 50,000 war letters discovered in basements, attics, scrapbooks, and old trunks have poured in from around the country. The best of these letters are assembled in this extraordinary collection, offering unprecedented insight into the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Vietnam,...

In "Dirty Wars," Jeremy Scahill, author of the "New York Times" best-seller "Blackwater," takes us inside America's new covert wars. As he reveals, the foot soldiers in these battles operate daily across the globe and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture, or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies of America.

"Ten years in the research and writing, Presidents of War, is a fresh, magisterial, intimate look at a procession of American leaders as they took the nation into conflict and mobilized their country for victory. It brings us into the room as they make the most difficult decisions that face any President, at times sending hundreds of thousands of American men and women to their deaths. From James Madison and the War of 1812 to recent times, we see...

Throughout the 1800s, explorers braved brutal weather and hostile enemies, trekking through the towering mountains and fertile valleys on the ragged edge of civilization. These early pioneers built stockades, trading posts, military camps and miniature citadels that would shape the state of Colorado for generations to come. As the settlers struggled to survive desperate times, economic depressions and bloody wars, some of these historic outposts would...

"Most people think of snipers as shooters perched in urban hides, dealing out death unseen from a considerable distance. But this description barely scratches the surface. [The author explains that] special operations snipers are men with stacked skill sets who have the ability to turn the tide of battles, even when they aren't pulling the trigger ... These are the most experienced warriors on the battlefield, oftentimes the units' best assaulters...