Adam Makos | |
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Born | 1981 (age 42–43) |
Education | |
Genre | Military history |
Notable works | A Higher Call (2012) Devotion (2015) Spearhead (2019) |
Website | |
Official website |
Adam Makos (born 1981) is an American author and military historian. His works include A Higher Call (2012), which recounts the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident, and Spearhead (2019), a detailed biography of World War II tank gunner Clarence Smoyer. Both books have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. The 2022 film, Devotion , is based on his 2015 book of the same title, which tells the true story of a friendship between two U.S. Navy pilots in the Korean War.
At the age of 15 years, while in high school, he started to write military history and was one of the founding members of Ghost Wings, a forerunner to Valor, a magazine depicting veterans' stories.
His other works include Voices of the Pacific (2013), based on a collection of oral histories of marines and seamen who served in the Pacific during the Second World War.
Adam Makos was brought up on the outskirts of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. [1] He completed his early education from Montoursville Area High School. [2] At the age of 15 years, while in high school, he started to write military history and was one of the founding members of Ghost Wings, a forerunner to Valor, a magazine depicting veterans' stories. [3] [4] He was a member of the school's French club and was signed up for a trip to Paris until opting to go to Walt Disney World with his family. [2] The club's flight to Paris was the fatal TWA Flight 800, which has been a major life changing event for him. [3] In 2003 he graduated from Lycoming College. [3] [5]
In 2012, after eight years of research, Makos published A Higher Call . [6] It recounts the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident. [7] The book was on the New York Times Best Seller list. [6] He subsequently wrote Voices of the Pacific (2013), based on a collection of oral histories of marines and seamen who served in the Pacific during the Second World War. [8]
The 2022 film, Devotion , is based on his 2015 book of the same title, which recounts the true story of a friendship between two U.S. Navy pilots in the Korean War. [9]
In 2019, he published a detailed biography of World War II tank gunner Clarence Smoyer, titled Spearhead. [10] [11] The book made the top five in the New York Times Best Seller list. [12]
Band of Brothers is a 2001 American war drama miniseries based on historian Stephen E. Ambrose's 1992 non-fiction book of the same name. It was created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who also served as executive producers, and who had collaborated on the 1998 World War II film Saving Private Ryan. Episodes first aired on HBO starting on September 9, 2001. Critically acclaimed, the series won the Emmy and Golden Globe awards for best miniseries.
St. Vith is a city and municipality of East Belgium located in the Walloon province of Liège. It was named after Saint Vitus. The majority language is German, as in the rest of the German Speaking Community of Belgium.
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The Siegfried Line, known in German as the Westwall, was a German defensive line built during the late 1930s. Started in 1936, opposite the French Maginot Line, it stretched more than 630 km (390 mi) from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands, along the western border of Nazi Germany, to the town of Weil am Rhein on the border with Switzerland. The line featured more than 18,000 bunkers, tunnels and tank traps.
George Joseph Stigler was an American economist. He was the 1982 laureate in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and is considered a key leader of the Chicago school of economics.
Jagdverband 44 was a German Luftwaffe special operations unit during World War II. It was formed during the last months of World War II to operate the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter.
Peter Anthony Dale Collier was an American writer and publisher. He was the founding publisher of conservative Encounter Books in California and held that position from 1998 until he resigned in 2005. The company moved from San Francisco to New York City, and Collier was replaced as publisher by Roger Kimball.
Thomas Jerome Hudner Jr. was a United States Navy officer and naval aviator. He rose to the rank of captain, and received the Medal of Honor for his actions in trying to save the life of his wingman, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War.
Richard L. Cevoli served as a United States Naval Aviator and carrier fighter pilot during World War II and the Korean War. Decorated for valor in both conflicts, Cevoli reached the rank of Commander before he was killed in a plane crash in 1955.
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Oberleutnant Ludwig Franz Stigler was a German fighter pilot and fighter ace in World War II.
Larry Alexander is an American journalist and military historian who has written a number of books about World War II, most notably about Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army. Easy Company was made famous principally by Stephen Ambrose's book and the Band of Brothers of that name.
The Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident occurred on 20 December 1943, when, after a successful bomb run on Bremen, 2nd Lt. Charles "Charlie" Brown's B-17F Flying Fortress Ye Olde Pub of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was severely damaged by German fighters. Luftwaffe pilot Franz Stigler had the opportunity to shoot down the crippled bomber but did not do so, and instead escorted it over and past German-occupied territory so as to protect it. After an extensive search by Brown, the two pilots met each other 50 years later and developed a friendship that lasted until Stigler's death in March 2008. Brown died only a few months later, in November of the same year.
The 105th Cavalry Regiment is a regiment in the United States Army National Guard.
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The Battle of Paderborn occurred during the Western Allied invasion of Germany. Most notably the commander of the 3rd Armored Division Major General Maurice Rose was killed in an ambush outside of Paderborn on March 30. He was the highest ranking US General to be killed in action on the Western Front of World War II.
Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II is a book about Clarence Smoyer, written by military history author Adam Makos, and published by Ballantine Books in 2019.
Devotion is a 2022 American biographical war film based on the 2015 book Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice by Adam Makos, which tells the comradeship between naval officers Jesse L. Brown and Tom Hudner during the Korean War. It is directed by J. D. Dillard and written by Jake Crane and Jonathan Stewart. The film stars Jonathan Majors as Brown and Glen Powell as Hudner, along with Christina Jackson, Daren Kagasoff, Joe Jonas, Nick Hargrove, Spencer Neville, and Thomas Sadoski in supporting roles.
A Higher Call is a 2012 non-fiction book by Adam Makos with Larry Alexander, published Berkley Books. It recounts the story of the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident of 1943, which took place in the skies of Germany during the Second World War. In it, Franz Stigler, a German Luftwaffe fighter ace flying a Messerschmitt Bf 109, guided a severely damaged American Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress out of German airspace after failing to persuade it to surrender, an act of chivalry.
The Love Hypothesis is a romance novel by Ali Hazelwood, published September 14, 2021 by Berkley Books. Originally published online in 2018 as Head Over Feet, a Star Wars fan fiction work about the "Reylo" ship between Rey and Kylo Ren, the novel follows a Ph.D. candidate and a professor at Stanford University who pretend to be in a relationship.