Bruce Henderson (author)

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Bruce Henderson is an American journalist and author of more than 30 nonfiction books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller, And the Sea Will Tell. His most recent New York Times bestseller is Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler. [1] Henderson's books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian and Czech. Henderson won the Tenth Annual Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize and a $50,000 award bestowed in recognition of "the best English language book published in 2022 in the field of American military history" for Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II (Knopf). [2] A member of the Authors Guild, Henderson has taught reporting and writing courses at USC School of Journalism and Stanford University.

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Born in Oakland, California, he served in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War, and later attended college on the G.I. Bill. He worked as an investigative reporter for several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner , and was an associate editor at New West and California magazines. His work has appeared in many other periodicals, such as Smithsonian Magazine ("Cook vs. Peary", April 2009), Esquire , and Playboy .

Other notable books

Henderson's 2018 New York Times bestseller Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler, [1] is the true story of the German-born Jews, dubbed the Ritchie Boys, who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s, came of age in America, and returned to Europe at enormous personal risk as members of the U.S. Army's Military Intelligence Service to play a key role in the Allied victory. Sons and Soldiers has been published in twelve foreign countries. USA Today called it "thrilling...a spellbinding account of extraordinary men at war". [3]

Henderson's national bestseller Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War [4] is the story of U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, who was shot down over Laos in January 1966 and escaped from a Pathet Lao POW camp six months later. Henderson and Dengler served together on the aircraft carrier USS Ranger (CVA-61) in 1965–66.

Henderson wrote Rescue at Los Baños: The Most Daring Prison Camp Raid of World War II, [5] a narrative nonfiction account of the February 23, 1945, Raid at Los Baños that freed more than 2,000 civilian prisoners of war – most of them American men, women and children, as well as other Allied nationalities – from an Imperial Japanese Army internment camp located 40 miles south of Manila. Rescue at Los Baños has received positive reviews from the trade and the media. Kirkus Reviews called it "riveting." [6]

His true crime book And the Sea Will Tell , a collaboration with Charles Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, was a #1 New York Times hardcover bestseller and highly rated CBS miniseries. [7] "The book succeeds on all counts", reported the Los Angeles Times on February 17, 1991. "The final pages are some of the most suspenseful in trial literature." [8] Henderson followed with another true crime title, Trace Evidence: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer.

Henderson's book True North: Peary, Cook, and The Race to the Pole examined the ongoing controversy as to which explorer reached the North Pole first: Robert Peary in 1909 or Frederick Cook in 1908. Publishers Weekly commented: "This adventure yarn delivers as both a cautionary tale and a fitting memorial to polar exploration." [9] Henderson's other Arctic title, Fatal North: Murder and Survival on the First North Pole Expedition, tells the story of the ill-fated Charles Francis Hall expedition to the North Pole.

Henderson co-authored Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality , the autobiography of African-American theoretical physicist Ronald Mallett, and Ring of Deceit: Inside the Biggest Sports and Bank Scandal in History, which chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of boxing promoter and convicted swindler Harold Smith.

Partial bibliography

Film adaptations

The four-hour CBS television miniseries adaptation of And the Sea Will Tell was filmed in Vancouver, B.C. and Tahiti, and starred Rachel Ward, Richard Crenna, and James Brolin. Ring of Deceit: Inside the Biggest Sports and Bank Scandal in History is currently under option for development as a film or limited series, as is True North: Peary, Cook and the Race to the Pole.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Pole</span> Northern point where the Earths axis of rotation intersects its surface

The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Magnetic North Pole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prisoner of war</span> Military term for a captive of the enemy

A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Peary</span> American Arctic explorer (1856–1920)

Robert Edwin Peary Sr. was an American explorer and officer in the United States Navy who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was long credited as being the discoverer of the geographic North Pole in April 1909, having led the first expedition to have claimed this achievement, although it is now considered unlikely that he actually reached the Pole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II</span> Nazi and Soviet WW II war crimes in Poland

Around six million Polish citizens are estimated to have perished during World War II. Most were civilians killed by the actions of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Lithuanian Security Police, as well as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its offshoots.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hiwi (volunteer)</span> Auxiliary volunteer corps used by Nazi Germany during World War II

Hiwi, the German abbreviation of the word Hilfswilliger or, in English, auxiliary volunteer, designated, during World War II, a member of different kinds of voluntary auxiliary forces made up of recruits indigenous to the territories of Eastern Europe occupied by Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler reluctantly agreed to allow recruitment of Soviet citizens in the Rear Areas during Operation Barbarossa. In a short period of time, many of them were moved to combat units.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederick Cook</span> American explorer (1865–1940)

Frederick Albert Cook was an American explorer, physician and ethnographer, who is most known for allegedly being the first to reach the North Pole on April 21, 1908. A competing claim was made a year later by Robert Peary, though both men's accounts have since been fiercely disputed; in December 1909, after reviewing Cook's limited records, a commission of the University of Copenhagen ruled his claim unproven. Nonetheless, in 1911, Cook published a memoir of the expedition in which he maintained the veracity of his assertions. In addition, he also claimed to have been the first person to reach the summit of Denali, the highest mountain in North America, a claim which has since been similarly discredited. Though he may not have achieved either Denali or the North Pole, his was the first and only expedition where a United States national discovered an Arctic island, Meighen Island.

<i>And the Sea Will Tell</i> Book by Vincent Bugliosi

And the Sea Will Tell is a true crime book by Vincent Bugliosi and Bruce Henderson. The nonfiction book recounts an apparent double murder on Palmyra Atoll although only one body was ever found; the subsequent arrest, trial, and conviction of Wesley G. "Buck Duane" Walker; and the acquittal of his girlfriend, Jennifer Jenkins, whom Bugliosi and Leonard Weinglass had defended. The book went to No. 1 on The New York Times hardcover bestseller list in March 1991 and is still in print as a trade paperback and ebook.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dieter Dengler</span> US Navy pilot and escaped POW (1938–2001)

Dieter Dengler was a German-born United States Navy aviator who was shot down over Laos and captured during the Vietnam War. After six months of imprisonment and torture, and 23 days on the run, he became only the second captured US airman to escape during the war. Of the seven prisoners of war who escaped together from the Pathet Lao prison camp in Laos, only he and Thai citizen Phisit Intharathat survived. After the war, he worked as a test pilot for private aircraft and as a commercial airline pilot.

War crimes of the <i>Wehrmacht</i> Violation of the laws of war by German forces in World War II

During World War II, the German Wehrmacht committed systematic war crimes, including massacres, mass rape, looting, the exploitation of forced labour, the murder of three million Soviet prisoners of war, and participated in the extermination of Jews. While the Nazi Party's own SS forces was the organization most responsible for the Holocaust, the regular armed forces of the Wehrmacht committed many war crimes of their own, particularly on the Eastern Front.

<i>Rescue Dawn</i> 2006 film by Werner Herzog

Rescue Dawn is a 2006 epic war drama film written and directed by Werner Herzog, based on the true story of Dieter Dengler, a German-American pilot who was shot down and captured by villagers sympathetic to the Pathet Lao during an American military campaign in the Vietnam War. Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies, and Toby Huss have prominent supporting roles in the film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raid on Los Baños</span> 1945 American-Filipino raid on a Japanese internment camp

The Raid on Los Baños in the Philippines, early Friday morning on 23 February 1945, was executed by a combined United States Army Airborne and Filipino guerrilla task force, resulting in the liberation of 2,147 Allied civilian and military internees from an agricultural school campus turned Japanese internment camp. The raid has been celebrated as one of the most successful rescue operations in modern military history. It was the second precisely-executed raid by combined U.S.-Filipino forces within a month, following on the heels of the Raid at Cabanatuan at Luzon on 30 January, in which 522 Allied military POWs had been rescued.

Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government of Nazi Germany based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, disability or sexual orientation. The institutionalized practice by the Nazis of singling out and persecuting people resulted in the Holocaust, which began with legalized social discrimination against specific groups, involuntary hospitalization, euthanasia, and forced sterilization of persons considered physically or mentally unfit for society. The vast majority of the Nazi regime's victims were Jews, Sinti-Roma peoples, and Slavs but victims also encompassed people identified as social outsiders in the Nazi worldview, such as homosexuals, and political enemies. Nazi persecution escalated during World War II and included: non-judicial incarceration, confiscation of property, forced labor, sexual slavery, death through overwork, human experimentation, undernourishment, and execution through a variety of methods. For specified groups like the Jews, genocide was the Nazis' primary goal.

The Ritchie Boys, part of the U.S. Military Intelligence Service (MIS) at the War Department, were an organization of soldiers in World War II with sizable numbers of German-Austrian recruits who were used primarily for interrogation of prisoners on the front lines and counter-intelligence in Europe. Trained at secret Camp Ritchie in Washington County, Maryland, many of the total 22,000 service men and women were German-speaking immigrants to the United States, often Jews, who fled Nazi persecution. In addition to interrogation and counter-intelligence they were also trained in psychological warfare in order to study and demoralize the enemy, and served as prosecutors and translators in the Nuremberg trials.

Annoatok or Anoritooq, located at 78°31′28.2″N72°24′10.8″W, was a small hunting station in Greenland on Smith Sound about 24 km (15 mi) north of Etah. It is now abandoned.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angels of Bataan</span> Group of U.S. Army and Navy combat nurses (1941–1945)

The Angels of Bataan were the members of the United States Army Nurse Corps and the United States Navy Nurse Corps who were stationed in the Philippines at the outset of the Pacific War and served during the Battle of the Philippines (1941–1942). When Bataan and Corregidor fell, 11 navy nurses, 66 army nurses, and 1 nurse-anesthetist were captured and imprisoned in and around Manila. They continued to serve as a nursing unit while prisoners of war. They were freed in February 1945.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura M. Cobb</span> Member of the US Navy Nurse Corps (1892–1981)

Laura Mae Cobb was a member of the United States Navy Nurse Corps who served during World War II. She received numerous decorations for her actions as a POW of the Japanese, during which she continued to serve as chief nurse for eleven other imprisoned Navy nurses—known as the "Twelve Anchors. She retired from the Nurse Corps as a lieutenant commander in 1947.

Orin Doughty Haugen was a colonel in the United States Army and commanding officer of the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sadaaki Konishi</span> Japanese officer, war criminal 1916–1949

Sadaaki Konishi was a lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War.

<i>No Time to Die</i> (1958 film) 1958 British film by Terence Young

No Time to Die is a 1958 British war film directed by Terence Young and starring Victor Mature, Leo Genn, Anthony Newley and Bonar Colleano. It is about an American sergeant in the British Army during the Second World War.

<i>Hero Found</i>

Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War is a 2010 non-fiction book by author Bruce Henderson. Hero Found is a biography of Vietnam War hero Dieter Dengler, a German-born United States Navy naval aviator who endured six months of imprisonment and torture before being rescued. Dengler survived 23 days in the jungle after escaping from a Pathet Lao prison camp.

References

  1. 1 2 "Overview - Bruce Henderson". BruceHendersonBooks.com. Archived from the original on October 20, 2020. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
  2. "Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize". www.gilderlehrman.org.
  3. "How German Jews joined the U.S. Army and helped beat the Nazis". USAToday.com. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
  4. "HarperCollins US". www.HarperCollins.com. Archived from the original on June 10, 2013. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
  5. "Overview - Bruce Henderson". BruceHendersonBooks.com. Archived from the original on May 21, 2015. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
  6. "RESCUE AT LOS BAOS by Bruce Henderson | Kirkus". www.kirkusreviews.com. Archived from the original on 2015-05-21.
  7. "And the Sea Will Tell". February 24, 1991. Retrieved November 17, 2017 via www.IMDb.com.
  8. Bugliosi, Vincent; Henderson, Bruce (December 22, 1991). And the Sea Will Tell. Ivy Books. ISBN   0804109176.
  9. Henderson, Bruce (February 17, 2006). True North: Peary, Cook, and the Race to the Pole. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN   0393327388.