For Dutton Caliber’s American War Heroes series, the dramatic tale of Marine Corps legend Chesty Puller, focusing on his combat service during the Pacific War.

Chesty Puller is an American legend. He began his career fighting guerrillas in Haiti and Nicaragua during the 1920s and 1930s before displaying astonishing battlefield bravery in the Pacific during World War II. From Henderson Field to Peleliu, his courage under fire and unbreakable devotion to his men inspired not just those under his own command but marines everywhere. As the war marched on, one bloody battle after another, Chesty became the most decorated marine in U.S. history. Now, acclaimed World War II historian John Wukovits tells the story of Chesty Puller’s heroism in the Pacific War.

This new addition to Wesley Clark’s Great Generals Series features the principal architect of the Allied invasion of Europe during World War II and his relevance today.

World War II expert John Wukovits explores Dwight D. Eisenhower’s contributions to American warfare. American general and thirty-fourth president of the United States, Eisenhower led the assault on the French coast at Normandy and held together the Allied units through the European campaign that followed.

The book reveals Eisenhower’s advocacy in the pre-war years of the tank, his friendships with George Patton and Fox Conner, his service in the Philippines with Douglas MacArthur, and his culminating role as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe. Wukovits skillfully demonstrates how Eisenhower’s evolution as a commander, his military doctrine, and his diplomatic skills are of extreme importance in understanding modern warfare.

John Wukovits tells of the most dramatic naval battle of the Pacific War and the incredible sacrifice of the USS Samuel B. Roberts.

On October 25, 1944, the Samuel B. Roberts, along with the other twelve vessels comprising its unit, stood between Japan’s largest battleship force ever sent to sea and MacArthur’s transports inside Leyte Gulf. Faced with the surprise appearance of more than twenty Japanese battleships, cruisers, and destroyers–including the Yamato, at 70,000 tons the most potent battlewagon in the world–the 1,200-ton Samuel B. Roberts turned immediately to action with six other ships. Captain Copeland marked the occasion with one of the most poignant addresses ever given to men on the edge of battle: “Men,” he said over the intercom, “we are about to go into a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected.”

The ship churned straight at the enemy in a near-suicidal attempt to deflect the more potent foe, allow the small aircraft carriers to escape, and buy time for MacArthur’s forces. Of 563 destroyers constructed during WWII, the Samuel B. Roberts was the only one sunk, going down with guns blazing in a duel reminiscent of the Spartans at Thermopylae or Davy Crockett’s Alamo defenders. The men who survived faced a horrifying three-day nightmare in the sea, where they battled a lack of food and water, scorching sun and numbing nighttime cold, and nature’s most feared adversary–sharks.

The battle would go down as history’s greatest sea clash, the Battle of Samar–the dramatic climax of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

On the morning of April 16, 1945, the crewmen of the USS Laffey saw what seemed to be the entire Japanese air force assembled directly above. They were about to become the targets of the largest single-ship kamikaze attack of World War II.
By the time the unprecedented assault was finished, thirty-two sailors were dead and more than seventy wounded. Although she lay shrouded in smoke and fire for hours, the Laffey somehow survived. The gutted American warship limped from Okinawa’s shore for home, where the ship and crew would be celebrated as heroes.
Using personal interviews with survivors, the memoirs of crew members, and their wartime correspondence, John Wukovits breathes life into the story of this forgotten historic event.

The forgotten story of American war hero Eddie Rickenbacker’s crash landing in the Pacific during World War II, and his incredible twenty-three-day crusade to keep his crew alive

In the darkest days of World War II, an unlikely civilian was sent to deliver a letter from Washington to General MacArthur in New Guinea. Eddie Rickenbacker was a genuine icon, a pioneer of aviation, the greatest fighter pilot of the First World War, recipient of the Medal of Honor, who’d retired to become a renowned race car driver. Now in his fifties, one of the most admired men in America, Rickenbacker was again serving his nation, riding high above the Pacific as a passenger aboard a B-17.
 
But soon the plane was forced to crash-land on the ocean surface, leaving its eight occupants adrift in tiny rubber life rafts, hundreds of miles from the nearest speck of land. Lacking fresh water and with precious little food, the men faced days of unrelenting sun, followed by nights shivering in the cold, fighting pangs of hunger, exhaustion, and thirst, all the while circled by sharks. Each prayed to see a friendly vessel on the horizon, and dreaded the arrival of a Japanese warship. Meanwhile, as the US Navy scoured the South Pacific, American radio and newspapers back home parsed every detail of Rickenbacker’s disappearance, and an adoring public awaited news of his fate.

Using survivors’ accounts and contemporary records, award-winning author John Wukovits brings to life a gripping story of survival, leadership, and faith in a time of crisis.

The riveting true account of the Battle of Tarawa, an epic World War II clash in which the U.S. Marines fought the Japanese nearly to the last man.

In November 1943, the men of the 2d Marine Division were instructed to clear out Japanese resistance on the Pacific island of Betio, a speck at the end of the Tarawa Atoll. When the Marines landed, the Japanese poured out of their underground bunkers—and launched one of the most brutal and bloody battles of World War II. 

For three straight days, attackers and defenders fought over every square inch of sand in a battle with no defined frontlines, and where there was no possibility of retreat—because there was nowhere to retreat to. It was a struggle that would leave both sides stunned and exhausted, and prove both the fighting mettle of the Americans and the fanatical devotion of the Japanese.

Drawn from new sources, including participants’ letters and diaries and exclusive firsthand interviews with survivors, One Square Mile of Hell is the true story of a battle between two determined foes, neither of whom would ever look at the other in the same way again.

In Soldiers of a Different Cloth, New York Times bestselling author and military historian John Wukovits tells the inspiring story of thirty-five chaplains and missionaries who, while garnering little acclaim, performed extraordinary feats of courage and persistence during World War II. Ranging in age from twenty-two to fifty-three, these University of Notre Dame priests and nuns were counselor, friend, parent, and older sibling to the young soldiers they served. These chaplains experienced the horrors of the Death March in the Philippines and the filthy holds of the infamous Hell Ships. They dangled from a parachute while descending toward German fire at Normandy and shivered in Belgium’s frigid snows during the Battle of the Bulge. They languished in German and Japanese prison camps, and stood speechless at Dachau.

Based on a vast collection of letters, papers, records, and photographs in the archives of the University of Notre Dame, as well as other contemporary sources, Wukovits brings to life these nearly forgotten heroes who served wherever duty sent them and wherever the war dictated. Wukovits intertwines their stories on the battlefronts with their memories of Notre Dame. In their letters to their superior in South Bend, Indiana, they often asked about the campus, the Grotto, and the football team. Their love for Notre Dame helped buttress them during their wartime tribulations, and their return to campus was akin to a warm homecoming. Soldiers of a Different Cloth will fascinate and engage all listeners interested in the history of World War II and alumni, friends, and fans of the Fighting Irish.

When Admiral William Halsey selected Destroyer Squadron 21 to lead his victorious ships into Tokyo Bay to accept the Japanese surrender, it was the most battle-hardened US naval squadron of the war.

But it was not the squadron of ships that had accumulated such an inspiring resume; it was the people serving aboard them. Sailors, not metallic superstructures and hulls, had won the battles and become the stuff of legend. Men like Commander Donald MacDonald, skipper of the USS O’Bannon, who became the most decorated naval officer of the Pacific war; Lieutenant Hugh Barr Miller, who survived his ship’s sinking and waged a one-man battle against the enemy while stranded on a Japanese-occupied island; and Doctor Dow “Doc” Ransom, the beloved physician of the USS La Vallette, who combined a mixture of humor and medical expertise to treat his patients at sea, epitomize the sacrifices made by all the men and women of World War II.

Through diaries, personal interviews with survivors, and letters written to and by the crews during the war, preeminent historian of the Pacific theater John Wukovits brings to life the human story of the squadron and its men, who bested the Japanese in the Pacific and helped take the war to Tokyo.