"All the members of the Long Grey Line that stretches through the years from 1802 have the cadet gray uniform in common, but individual classes develop different personalities shaped by experiences and times through which they pass. Each Academy class is different from every other ... Much of what follows is derived from interviews with the men of '62. Their contributions are typical of those made by other West Point classes. Throughout, I'll use my own observations to provide perspectives on the times through which we passed"--Introduction

Bestselling author Joe Drape reveals the unique pressures and expectations that make a year of Army football so much more than just a tally of wins and losses. The football team at the U.S. Military Academy is not like other college football teams. At other schools, athletes are catered to and coddled at every turn. At West Point, they carry the same arduous load as their fellow cadets, shouldering an Ivy League–caliber education and year-round military training. After graduation they are not going to the NFL but to danger zones halfway around the world. These young men are not just football players, they are soldiers first. New York Times sportswriter Joe Drape takes us inside the world of Army football, as the Black Knights and their third-year coach, Rich Ellerson, seek to turn around a program that had recently fallen on hard times, with the goal to beat Navy and "sing last" at the Army-Navy game in December. The 2011 season would prove a true test of the players' mettle and perseverance. Drawing on his extensive and unfettered access to the players and the coaching staff, Drape introduces us to this special group of young men and their achievements on and off the field. Anchoring the narrative and the team are five key players: quarterback Trent Steelman, the most gifted athlete; linebacker Steve Erzinger, who once questioned his place at West Point but has become a true leader; Andrew Rodriguez, the son of a general and the top scholar-athlete; Max Jenkins, the backup quarterback and the second-in-command of the Corps of Cadets; and Larry Dixon, a talented first-year running back. Together with Coach Ellerson, his staff, and West Point's officers and instructors, they and their teammates embrace the demands made on them and learn crucial lessons that will resonate throughout their lives—and ours.

West Point is a geographical location that was of critical importance during the Revolutionary War, the site of our nations first military academy, and the commissioning source of thousands of Army, Army Air Corps, Air Force, and even some Navy and Marine Corps officers who have led our nations young men, and now women, in battle since the Academys founding on March 16, 1802 by President Thomas Jefferson. This volume contains a very selective military history of the United States that focuses on the Revolutionary War and the contributions of West Point graduates to subsequent wars, but with an emphasis on some of the lesser known persons and events of the past 250 years or so. It also touches upon many of the customs and traditions of the West Point experience. Many chapters include the stories of unsung or forgotten heroes and heroines. Men like John Stark, Daniel Morgan, Eleazer Derby Wood, Benjamin L.E. Bonneville, Oliver Otis Howard, Henry Ossian Flipper, Calvin Pearl Titus, Charles Young, Norman D. Cota, and Donald W. Holleder plus women like the Warner sisters, Laura Walker, and Emily Perez. One of the final chapters, however, deals within the kindest sense of the terma few rogues of West Point like Edgar Allan Poe, James McNeil Whistler, Hugh S. Johnson, and The Mole.

Kai Ting knows what it means to become an American and lose all that is Chinese. It happened to his father, a former officer in Chiang Kai-shek's army, who never came to terms with his new life in the United States. Now, as a West Point cadet in the 1960s, Kai has a golden chance both to retain his heritage and to become undeniably, gloriously American. But the Point has dangerous preconceptions about Asians, especially as the war in Vietnam escalates. Kai walks on a razor's edge...and falls into the dark pit of a cheating scandal. Suddenly, he must learn a new tribal behavior, a new etiquette. And his very survival depends on learning it fast....

"I see this book as the story my father never got to tell," John Toffey writes. And what a remarkable story it is that Lt. Col. Jack Toffey never got to tell. In this moving account of a young man's journey to know a father who went to war in 1942 and never came back, John Toffey weaves memory, history, and his father's vivid letters home into a fascinating tale of a family, a war, and the threads that connect them. John Toffey was nine when his father's National Guard outfit was mobilized. For two years Toffey, his mother, and his sister moved from post to post before his dad shipped out--to North Africa, fighting the Vichy French in Morocco, then the Germans in Tunisia, where he was wounded. In July 1943 he went back to war, leading an infantry battalion in the invasions of Sicily and southern Italy. In January 1944 he landed his battalion at Anzio and was wounded again. After a long, bitter stalemate, Toffey's regiment led Mark Clark's push on Rome. On June 3, 1944, Jack Toffey was killed in the hill town of Palestrina, one day before the Allies marched into Rome. In a brutal campaign, Jack Toffey had commanded a combat battalion longer than any other officer in the Mediterranean theater. Only in 1996, when his father's letters were discovered, did John Toffey begin to piece together what happened to his father. And he tells this contested story of Allied success and failure with drama, steely reserve, and balance, adding an invaluable perspective to the portrait of Jack Toffey created by Rick Atkinson in his bestselling Day of Battle. This book is also a lovingly crafted portrait of home front Ohio, and how a young boy, his sister, and his mother waited out their war, scanning newspapers and magazines for news of Dad and devouring letters full of easy humor and expressions of love for and pride in his family and dreams of a good life after the war.