A comprehensive history of America's highest award for military valor. The Medal of Honor chronicles the creation, evolution, and awarding of the Medal, from the battlefields of the Civil War to the jungles of Vietnam, through a wealth of illustrations and hundreds of authoritative, action-filled accounts of heroism in America's conflicts. This wonderfully detailed and beautifully designed history book puts the Medal and its recipients into the context of their times, with brief and accessible introductions explaining each war and conflict for which the Medal was awarded. It also includes photo essays, intriguing stories of the Medal's sometimes quirky personalities, effects on surviving recipients, and the Medal's preeminent place in the American story. Whether you're an avid reader on the history of the Medal of Honor or simply intrigued by its place in our history, you're certain to want to flip through the pages of The Medal of Honor again and again.

An updated edition of the New York Times bestseller, featuring 12 new recipients and a new foreword by Bradley Cooper Eight veterans from the war in Afghanistan have been awarded our nation’s highest honor for valor in combat since the publication of the third edition of Medal of Honor, including Edward C. Byers, Jr., the newest living recipient and a member of Navy SEAL Team Six, and Clint Romesha, author of the New York Times bestselling Red Platoon. And nearly 50 years after their service, four Vietnam veterans have also since received the recognition they so richly deserve. Now these men rightly take their place in the pages of this revised and updated edition. Included here are 156 Medal of Honor recipients, captured with a contemporary portrait by award-winning photographer Nick Del Calzo and profiled in moving text by National Book Award nominee Peter Collier. The men in the book fought in conflicts from World War II to Afghanistan, served in every branch of the armed services, and represent a cross section as diverse as America itself. This is their ultimate record.

The Medal of Honor may be America’s highest military decoration, but all Medals of Honor are not created equal. The medal has in fact consisted of several distinct decorations at various times and has involved a number of competing statutes and policies that rewarded different types of heroism. In this book, the first comprehensive look at the medal’s historical, legal, and policy underpinnings, Dwight S. Mears charts the complex evolution of these developments and differences over time. The Medal of Honor has had different qualification thresholds at different times, and indeed three separate versions—one for the army and two for the navy—existed contemporaneously between World Wars I and II. Mears traces these versions back to the medal’s inception during the Civil War and continues through the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—along the way describing representative medal actions for all major conflicts and services as well as legislative and policy changes contemporary to each period. He gives particular attention to retroactive army awards for the Civil War; World War I legislation that modernized and expanded the army’s statutory award authorization; the navy’s grappling with both a combat and noncombat Medal of Honor through much of the twentieth century; the Vietnam-era act that ended noncombat awards and largely standardized the Medal of Honor among all services; and the perceived decline of Medals of Honor awarded in the ongoing Global War on Terror. Mears also explores the tradition of awards via legislative bills of relief; extralegislative awards; administrative routes to awards through Boards of Correction of Military Records; restoration of awards previously revoked by the army in 1917; judicial review of military actions in federal court; and legislative actions intended to atone for historical discrimination against ethnic minorities. Unprecedented in scope and depth, his work is sure to be the definitive resource on America’s highest military honor.

Describes the author's childhood relocation from France to the U.S., where as a naturalized citizen he joined the military and served multiple tours in Afghanistan before he was wounded while protecting his patrol from a suicide bomber.

"Details and organizes information regarding the Civil War Medal of Honor and its recipients in accessible format, with a brief history of the Medal of Honor, traditional, alphabetical list of Medal recipients with information regarding their respective acts of heroism. Organizes recipients by a variety of criteria including branch of service, assignment, place, heroic act, birthplace, age"--Provided by publisher.

The remarkable story of the seven African American soldiers ultimately awarded the World War II Medal of Honor, and the 50-year campaign to deny them their recognition. In 1945, when Congress began reviewing the record of the most conspicuous acts of courage by American soldiers during World War II, they recommended awarding the Medal of Honor to 432 recipients. Despite the fact that more than one million African-Americans served, not a single black soldier received the Medal of Honor. The omission remained on the record for over four decades. But recent historical investigations have brought to light some of the extraordinary acts of valor performed by black soldiers during the war. Men like Vernon Baker, who single-handedly eliminated three enemy machineguns, an observation post, and a German dugout. Or Sergeant Reuben Rivers, who spearhead his tank unit's advance against fierce German resistance for three days despite being grievously wounded. Meanwhile Lieutenant Charles Thomas led his platoon to capture a strategically vital village on the Siegfried Line in 1944 despite losing half his men and suffering a number of wounds himself. Ultimately, in 1993 a US Army commission determined that seven men, including Baker, Rivers and Thomas, had been denied the Army's highest award simply due to racial discrimination. In 1997, more than 50 years after the war, President Clinton finally awarded the Medal of Honor to these seven heroes, sadly all but one of them posthumously. These are their stories.

In The Greatest Medal of Honor Stories Ever Told, editor Tom McCarthy has pulled together some of the finest writings about heroes awarded the highest military honor that capture readers imaginations. The one thing the heroes in this collection have in common—from the bloody battlefields of the Civil War through the lonely mountains of Afghanistan—is uncommon valor. Each of the men in these stories had the courage to calmly stare death in the face and move on—to do what they had to because that was their duty and the lives of others meant more to them than their own. Chosen from hundreds of accounts of singular devotion to duty, the stories in Medal of Honor stand out for their jaw-dropping tales of bravery. They are the best. No small feat.