Operation Torch was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa while allowing American armed forces the opportunity to engage in the fight against Nazi Germany on a limited scale. It was the first mass involvement of US troops in the European–North African Theatre, and saw the first major airborne assault carried out by the United States.
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was, and still is, the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.
Jeffrey M. "Jeff" Shaara is an American novelist and the son of Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Shaara.
Ballantine Books is a major American book publisher that is a subsidiary of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Ballantine was founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. Ballantine was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998 and remains part of that company.
The North African campaign of the Second World War took place in North Africa from 10 June 1940 to 13 May 1943. It included campaigns fought in the Libyan and Egyptian deserts and in Morocco and Algeria, as well as Tunisia.
Gods and Generals is a novel which serves as a prequel to Michael Shaara's 1974 Pulitzer Prize–winning work about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. Written by Jeffrey Shaara after his father Michael's death in 1988, the novel relates events from 1858 through 1863, during the American Civil War, ending just as the two armies march toward Gettysburg. Shaara also wrote The Last Full Measure, published in 2000, which follows the events presented in The Killer Angels.
The Last Full Measure is a novel by American author Jeffrey Shaara, published on May 2, 2000, by Ballantine Books. It is the sequel to The Killer Angels and Gods and Generals. Together, the three novels complete an American Civil War trilogy relating events from 1858 to 1865.
To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War (2004) is a historical novel written by Jeff Shaara about the experience of a number of combatants in World War I. The book became a national best seller and received praise from people such as General Tommy Franks.
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Normandy landings. A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August.
Joseph Robert Conroy was an author of alternate history novels.
The Rising Tide (2006) is the first novel of a continuing series by Jeff Shaara based on certain theaters of World War II. It was published on November 7, 2006.
Gods and Generals is a 2003 American epic war drama film written and directed by Ronald F. Maxwell. It is an adaptation of the 1996 novel of the same name by Jeffrey Shaara and prequel to Maxwell's 1993 film Gettysburg. Most of the film was personally financed by media mogul Ted Turner. The film follows the story of Stonewall Jackson from the beginning of the American Civil War to his death at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
Richard William Tregaskis was an American journalist and author whose best-known work is Guadalcanal Diary (1943), an account of just the first several weeks of the U.S. Marine Corps invasion of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands during World War II. This was actually a six-month-long campaign. Tregaskis served as a war correspondent during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
Thomas Davee Chamberlain was the Lieutenant Colonel of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War, the brother of Union general Joshua L. Chamberlain, the Colonel of the 20th Maine Infantry.
Rommel's asparagus were 4-to-5-metre logs which the Axis placed in the fields and meadows of Normandy to cause damage to the expected invasion of Allied military gliders and paratroopers. Also known in German as Holzpfähle, the wooden defenders were placed in early 1944 in coastal areas of France and the Netherlands against airlanding infantry. Rommelspargel took their name from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who ordered their design and usage; Rommel himself called the defensive concept Luftlandehindernis.
No Less Than Victory (2009) is the third novel of a trilogy by Jeff Shaara based on certain theaters of World War II. It was published on November 3, 2009.
The Final Storm (2011) is a historical novel by Jeff Shaara based on the Pacific Theater of World War II. It follows roughly chronologically after his European World War II trilogy ending with No Less Than Victory. It was published on May 17, 2011.
The Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction is an annual literary award awarded to the writer of a work of fiction related to the American Civil War. The award was started by Jeffrey ("Jeff") Shaara,, and named for his father, the writer of historical fiction Michael Shaara, (1928–1988), who won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for the 1974 novel of the American Civil War, The Killer Angels, about the Battle of Gettysburg, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and later made into the Ted Turner-produced movie in 1993, Gettysburg, by director Ronald Maxwell. The original novel and movie later became the inspiration for son Jeff's prequel Gods and Generals, (1996), and sequel The Last Full Measure, (1998), set of novels of which Gods and Generals was also made into a film in 2003 by Turner and Maxwell focusing on the earlier part of the war with Confederate General Thomas J. ("Stonewall") Jackson. The younger Shaara has also since written several other novels and series of historical fiction about the American Revolutionary War, Mexican–American War, World War I and World War II. He later returned to the theme of the Civil War with a set of works focusing on the western theatre of the war,.
Don Whitehead was an American journalist. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom. He won the 1950 George Polk Award for wire service reporting.
A Blaze of Glory is the first of a new 4-book series, set more in the "Western" theater of the Civil War. This first volume covers the Battle of Shiloh..
