As a boy, Mick Manning listened to his father?s hair-raising tales about life as an RAF airgunner during the Second World War. Now, years later, he has carefully recreated his father's stories, writing them down as if his dad was speaking the words. In collaboration with Brita, he has illustrated them too. It?s for Charlie?s grandchildren ? and for everyone. Find out what it was really like to: Put up with food rationing ? Undergo RAF Training? Take off in a bomber? Face enemy fighters? Survive the Battle of the Bulge

This memoir is a record of what Jensen calls the luckiest and greatest adventure of his life. In the midst of the fighting and with the knowledge that each day could be his last, this young Marine managed to find some humor in his situation and he believes that is what kept him alive. The story begins with Jensen as a young man in New York in the 1960s, who, following in his brother's footsteps, decides to join the Marines in hopes of finding himself. Early chapters discuss his experiences in boot camp and his combat training at Camp Lejeune. Subsequent chapters move directly to vivid descriptions of action on the battlefield, Jensen's time aboard the USS Valley Forge, days spent walking through rice paddies and the resulting foot infections he suffered. On the day he arrived home in New York, a cab driver at the airport charged Jensen double the fare to drive him home. He paid it and returned to a delighted family on March 6, 1970.

Night after night, they swallowed their fears and flew long distances through packs of enemy fighters to drop the bombs that could destroy Hitler and bring about the end of the war. Tens of thousands of young men never came back, blown up or bailing out from burning aircraft to drop helplessley into enemy hands. Yet history has condemned their brave and valiant actions, denouncing them for the destruction of German cities and civilians, rather than acknowledging them for the heroes that they are. For the first time John Nichol and Tony Rennell tell the story of the controversial last battles of Bomber Command through the eyes of the heroic men who fought them.

On his nineteenth birthday, James E. Brown tries to fake to his flight instructor that he has flown before. On his twenty-first birthday, Brown is on his way home after logging eighty-five missions in a P-47 fighter over Italy, France, and Germany.Brown's stories surrounding his training and combat experiences in World War II reveal brushes with death, continuous peril and, ultimately, a coming of age for a young man whose freshman year in college becomes instead a heroic engagement with one of the fiercest enemies his country has ever encountered.Ever dutiful to the mother who tells him to "write it down, Jamie," Brown notes his experiences in the journal she provides and adds detail later to deliver a firsthand account of life as a pilot in the final months of combat within the European Theater.Serving as Tail-End Charley - the last man out - in most of the missions he flew, Brown's job was to record results for the interrogation officers afterward. But Brown offers much more insight in this memoir. Follow his triumphs and travails with colleagues who become lifelong compatriots during an indelible period in American history.

An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers A Penguin Classic In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery of the American identity, accompanied by a distinguished French poodle named Charley; and riding in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck named Rocinante. His course took him through almost forty states: northward from Long Island to Maine; through the Midwest to Chicago; onward by way of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana (with which he fell in love), and Idaho to Seattle, south to San Francisco and his birthplace, Salinas; eastward through the Mojave, New Mexico, Arizona, to the vast hospitality of Texas, to New Orleans and a shocking drama of desegregation; finally, on the last leg, through Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to New York. Travels with Charley in Search of America is an intimate look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life—a self-portrait of a man who never wrote an explicit autobiography. Written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the South—which Steinbeck witnessed firsthand—Travels with Charley is a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Jay Parini. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

When 17-year-old Richard Moulton joined the Army Air Corps in 1943, he little dreamed of the yearlong, life-and-death drama he would endure. Shot down over Slovakia, he was imprisoned, released and finally hidden in a cave with six other Americans. Recaptured by the Germans, subjected to torture by the Gestapo, who claimed he was a Russian spy, he was finally liberated by General Patton’s 3rd Army. The story of Moulton’s return to Slovakia more than a half-century later is a touching tribute to the hospitality, kindness and courage of the many Slovakians who fed him and hid him from the Nazis, always at the risk of their own lives.

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