Stackpole Books

06/07/2023

War in Europe began with the first human migrants. Rival bands fought for thousands of years before the Greeks and Romans began writing about their military history, first as legend—for instance, the hero Achilles battling the Trojans—and then as fact. War developed from sticks and stones to bronze, iron, and steel, including armor and edged weapons. Then came gunpowder, guns, and cannons, which eventually replaced edged weapons. Finally, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, technology exploded: railroads, steamships, telegraphs, machine guns, automobiles, airplanes, and tanks enabled European states to muster, equip, arm, transport, and command more men than ever before, with more firepower than ever before. In the past seventy-five years, atomic weapons changed the military landscape of Europe—as have the internet and cyber warfare.

In Land of War, a colorful new telling of European warfare—and indeed European history through the continent’s all too numerous wars and conflicts—William Nester describes millennia of armed conflict. He covers the “greatest hits” of military history both ancient and current: Thermopylae, the Peloponnesian War, the wars of the Roman Empire across the continent, the Battle of Hastings, the Crusades, Agincourt, Waterloo, Napoleon and Wellington, the Somme, the Spanish Civil War, Stalingrad and Normandy, Churchill, Hi**er, and Stalin, Bosnia, and up through Putin’s attempts to redraw the map of Europe. Nester highlights how warfare has been deeply entwined with European statesmanship and undergirds modern institutions such as NATO and the European Union. Europe’s sense of itself is bound up in its military history.
Land of War is an epic odyssey from Europe’s mythic origins through its latest violent conflicts.

Land of War: A History of European Warfare from Achilles to Putin by William Nestor is available NOW, find it wherever books are sold!

06/01/2023

We experience, learn about, and enjoy nature throughout our lifetimes in woods close to home. In the spirit of Walden, author Kevin Patrick spent a year connecting with White's Woods, a 500-acre tract in an Allegheny forest adjacent to his home in Indiana, Pennsylvania. He captured in prose and photographs the four seasons of this near-woods paradise, weaving natural history with human experience to create a geography of place to stand for all similar near-woods places.

Near Woods: A Year in an Allegheny Forest by Kevin Patrick is available now, find it wherever books are sold!

05/24/2023

Daryln Brewer Hoffstot has observed the fields and forests of her Western Pennsylvania farm for thirty-five years. This collection of twenty-seven essays explores birds, mammals, bees, fungi, trees, and other aspects of the natural world. She is a keen observer who delights in sharing what she sees as well as what she learns from naturalists. Her discoveries have strengthened her commitment to protecting the plants and animals that surround us.

Daryln is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Pittsburgh Quarterly. Her essay in the New York Times, “On a Pennsylvania Farm, Nature Is Not Just Carrying On,” won a Notable Mention in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021.

A Farm Life: Observations from Fields and Forests is available NOW, find it wherever books are sold!

05/24/2023

https://www.indianagazette.com/news/local-author-professor-releases-book-on-whites-woods/article_4d81acd6-745f-5d74-8f57-335dfc805206.html?fbclid=IwAR2lprKXmrC_iWgrfZpXeTRnvzdKNrctEvU6V8fUFavvy9QVWQhxmU36Rbs

If you missed it, be sure to check out this great article on Near Woods: A Year in an Allegheny Forest by Kevin Patrick!

“I walked into White’s Woods and found what Henry David Thoreau discovered at Walden. The natural splendor and solitude attributed to famous faraway forests could also be found in the

05/10/2023

The air route, known by pilots as "the Hump," was a treacherous one. The Allies lost nearly 600 aircraft over the course of the three-and-a-half-year airlift. One 24-hour period however was particularly deadly.

04/28/2023

Guess what? Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of Independent Bookstore Day!

Celebrate by supporting your local bookstore! You can participate by:
-Sharing your local bookstore's content
-Showing off your book stash
-Joining a book club
-Attending an event
-Buying a book!

Check out indiebound.org to find your local bookstore!

04/05/2023

Unique among Union army corps, the Ninth fought in both the Eastern and Western theaters of the Civil War. The corps’ veterans called their service a “geography class,” and others have called the Ninth “a wandering corps” because it covered more ground than any corps in the Union armies. With the same attention to detail that he gave to the First Corps in First for the Union, Darin Wipperman vividly reconstructs life—and death—in the Ninth Corps, with Burnside's Boys.

The roots of the Ninth Corps lay in the early 1862 coastal expeditions in the Carolinas under Ambrose Burnside. After this successful campaign—a master class in Civil War amphibious warfare that turned Burnside into a star—Burnside’s units coalesced into a corps, part of which reinforced Pope’s Army of Virginia at Second Bull Run during the summer of 1862. The Ninth fought with the Army of the Potomac in the Maryland campaign in September 1862, first at the Battle of South Mountain and then, in its most famous action, at Antietam, where it suffered 25 percent casualties attempting to seize what became known as Burnside’s Bridge. Three months later, the corps was lightly engaged at the Battle of Fredericksburg, during which Burnside commanded the entire Army of the Potomac.

After the disaster of Fredericksburg, the Ninth—again under Burnside—spent much of 1863 in the West with the Army of the Ohio, performing occupation duty in Kentucky and then in Grant’s campaign to take Vicksburg, Mississippi. It fought in Tennessee and helped take Knoxville before returning East, a shell of itself thanks largely to disease. Reorganized, the Ninth joined Grant’s Overland Campaign in Virginia, fighting—with horrifying losses—at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. It joined the siege of Petersburg, including the infamous Battle of the Crater in July 1864, and remained at Petersburg through the end of the war, where it participated in the assault that broke the siege in April 1865, forcing Lee’s army into retreat, and final defeat, at Appomattox.

From the Carolinas to Maryland, from Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee to Virginia, the Ninth Corps sacrificed for the Union—and burnished its place in the annals of the American Civil War.

Burnside's Boys: The Union's Ninth Corps and the Civil War in the East by Darrin Wipperman is available NOW, find it wherever books are sold!

03/29/2023

Now in paperback!

In this riveting book, Steven Zaloga describes how American foot soldiers faced down Hi**er’s elite armored spearhead—the Hi**er Youth Panzer Division—in the snowy Ardennes forest during one of World War II’s biggest battles, the Battle of the Bulge.

The Hi**er Youth division was assigned one of the most important missions of Hi**er’s Ardennes offensive: the capture of the main highway to the primary objective of Antwerp, the seizure of which Hi**er believed would end the war. Had the Germans taken the Belgian port, it would have cut off the Americans from the British and perhaps led to a second, more devastating Dunkirk.

In Zaloga’s careful reconstruction, a succession of American infantry units—the 99th Division, the 2nd Division, and the 1st Division (the famous Big Red One)—fought a series of battles that denied Hi**er the best roads to Antwerp and doomed his offensive. American GIs—some of them seeing combat for the very first time—had stymied Hi**er’s panzers and grand plans.

Available now in hardback AND paperback, find it wherever books are sold!

03/23/2023

It’s one of the last overlooked parts of American military history: the significant role African Americans played in the wars of America. Their story is more than just the 54th Massachusetts in the Civil War, more than just a tank battalion in World War II: African Americans contributed to every war in American history. In Unsung Patriots, Gene Bétit tells this important story with verve and gusto, as well as respect. By their brave deeds, African Americans have secured a place in American military history, and Bétit makes sure they receive their due.

In the colonial wars, the Revolution, and the War of 1812, African Americans served as seamen, gunners, and marine sharpshooters in the Navy and served as 15 percent of the Continental Army. During the Civil War, blacks constituted nearly 200,000 soldiers of the Union Army and served in some of the war’s most celebrated regiments and toughest battles, and their service inspired the farthest-reaching of the Union’s emancipation policies.

In the decades after the Civil War, Black soldiers formed an important part of the U.S. Army, fighting as Buffalo Soldiers in the Indian Wars of the 1870s, up through the Spanish-American War. In World War I, the segregated 92nd and 93rd Divisions fought hard and received the Croix de Guerre from France. In World War II, more than 1 million Blacks served the United States—and more than 100,000 were assigned to combat duty, not only in the Black Panther tank battalion and the Tuskegee Airmen, but in other combat units and units that kept the American war effort supplied.

In the years since World War II, Truman integrated the military during the Korean War, but the African-American soldiers remain a class apart—during Korea, during Vietnam, and beyond.

This is a story with importance not only for military history, but for all of American history. And Gene Bétit does it careful, exciting justice.

Unsung Patriots: African Americans in America's Wars is available NOW, find it wherever books are sold!

03/15/2023

PT boats loom large in the popular imagination of World War II. In March 1942, a PT boat evacuated Gen. Douglas MacArthur, his family, and top staff from the Philippines, which inspired the war movie They Were Expendable, directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne. John F. Kennedy became a war hero while commanding PT-109, which collided with a Japanese destroyer and was sunk in August 1943. But the story of PT boats has never been told in the depth and detail that their exemplary service deserves. Naval historian C. J. Skamarakas uses one Pacific PT boat squadron to tell the story of PT boats in action in World War II.

Eighty feet long, PT boats were designed to launch torpedoes against enemy ships five and ten times their own size. But defects in the torpedoes and the boats’ speed and maneuverability ultimately shifted the boats’ mission to patrolling and breaking up Japanese shipping and reinforcements. In the waters of the Southwest Pacific as part of MacArthur’s offensives in New Guinea and the Philippines, Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 25 completed these missions and also executed other operations for which they weren’t specifically trained, including inserting commandos behind enemy lines, air-sea rescue, raids on enemy positions, reconnaissance of potential sites for amphibious landings, coordination of air strikes in support of ground forces, meetings with guerrilla leaders, recovery of prisoners of war, diversionary activities, and psychological operations. Today we would call many of their missions “special ops.” The Japanese called PT boats “mosquitoes” and “devil boats.”

The Devil Boats: A U.S. Navy PT Squadron in World War II by C.J. Skamarakas recounts the unique contributions of one motor torpedo boat squadron and through it tells the story of PT boats in the Pacific War. With drama and excitement, as well as careful attention to detail, the book fills a void in the history of the U.S. Navy in World War II.

The Devil Boats is available now, find it wherever books are sold!

03/13/2023

The rough-and-tumble life of Special Forces vet and Sixties pop star Barry Sadler.

The top Billboard Hot 100 single of 1966 wasn’t The Rolling Stones' “Paint It Black” or the Beatles' “Yellow Submarine”--it was “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” a hyper-patriotic tribute to the men of the Special Forces by Vietnam veteran, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler.

But Sadler’s clean-cut, all-American image hid a darker side, a Hunter Thompson-esque life of booze, girls, and guns. Unable to score another hit song, he wrote a string of popular pulp fiction paperbacks that made “Rambo look like a stroll through Disneyland.” He killed a lover’s ex-boyfriend in Tennessee. Settling in Central America, Sadler ran guns, allegedly trained guerrillas, provided medical care to residents, and caroused at his villa. In 1988 he was shot in the head in Guatemala and died a year later.

This life-and-times biography of an American pop culture phenomenon recounts the sensational details of Sadler’s life vividly but soberly, setting his meteoric rise and tragic fall against the big picture of American society and culture during and after the Vietnam War.

The paperback edition of Ballad of the Green Beret by Marc Leepson is available now wherever books are sold!

03/01/2023

In an account of unusual power, Luftwaffe ace Johannes Steinhoff recounts the final days of the German air force on Sicily in June and July 1943. Facing crushing odds—including a commander, Hermann Göring, who treated his pilots with contempt—Steinhoff and his fellow Messerschmitt 109 pilots took to the skies day after day to meet waves of dreaded Flying Fortresses and swarms of Allied fighters. A captivating narrative and a piercing analysis based on the author’s personal World War diary, this book is a classic of aerial combat. A concluding chapter assesses the war's lessons for air forces.

Messerschmitts Over Sicily: A German Fighter Commander in World War II is available now, find it wherever books are sold.

02/13/2023

We've loved working with you as well! The whole team here is excited for Burnside's Boys, can't wait for everyone to read it!

Burnside's Boys: The Union's Ninth Corps and the Civil War in the East will be published by Stackpole Books on April 1. I've really enjoyed working with the publisher to release two infantry corps histories. They do a great job. I will soon start posting to a page about the new book, while also still posting First Corps pictures and stories here. 'sboys

11/14/2022

New Book Arrival - George Washington's Revenge: How General Washington Turned Defeat into the Strategy That Won the Revolution By Arthur S. Lefkowitz - Save $5 ($34.95 cover price, now $29.95, sale price will show at checkout) Plus Free Shipping

Please Click Here to Order George Washington's Revenge: https://fortplainmuseum.square.site/product/george-washington-s-revenge-how-general-washington-turned-defeat-into-the-strategy-that-won-the-revolution/1071?cp=true&sa=false&sbp=false&q=false&category_id=4

Thank you for supporting the Fort Plain Museum & Historical Park, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. All book sale proceeds go to historic preservation, artifact acquisition, exhibit building and educational programming.

About the Book:
In late August 1776, a badly defeated Continental Army retreated from Long Island to Manhattan. By the end of September, George Washington’s inexperienced army had been forced out of New York into New Jersey and, by the end of the year, into Pennsylvania. During this dark night of the American Revolution—“the times that try men’s souls”—Washington began developing the strategy that would win the war. In this illuminating account, Arthur Lefkowitz reveals how George Washington turned defeat into victory.

During his retreat across New Jersey, Washington reconceived the war: keep the army mobile, target small parts of the British Army, rely on surprise and deception, form guerrilla units, and avoid large-scale battles. This new strategy first bore fruit in the crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night 1776 and the attack on the British at Trenton and Princeton. From there, Washington took up winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey, and moved into the mountains, an ideal position from which to check British movements toward Philadelphia or north up the Hudson. The British tried and failed several times to coax Washington into a decisive battle. Stymied, the British were forced to attack Philadelphia by sea, and they would not be able to seize Philadelphia in time to support the British invasion of upstate New York which ended in defeat at Saratoga.

Lefkowitz relies on a lifetime of deep research on the Revolutionary War and close knowledge of New Jersey to tell this exciting, important story whose impact rippled throughout the rest of the war.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Stackpole Books (November 15, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0811770419
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0811770415
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.74 pounds

Journal of the American Revolution
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Stackpole Books

11/09/2022

Operation Torch occurred from November 8-16th, 1942, making this the time to read up on your WWII history!

These titles are available wherever books are sold.

The Ranger Force: Darby's Rangers in World War II by Robert W. Black

First Blood in North Africa: Operation Torch and the U.S. Campaign in Africa in WWII by Dr. Jon Diamond

Armored Strike Force: The Photo History of the American 70th Tank Battalion in World War II by Charles C. Roberts Jr.

10/24/2022

Jeffrey H. Ryan, author of This Land Was Saved for You and Me: How Gifford Pinchot, Frederick Law Olmsted, and a Band of Foresters Rescued America's Public Lands, is joined on the Voices of the Wilderness podcast by USFWS Historian Mark Madison!

They discuss writing, conservation, history, and how not to get lost on the trail.

Check it out at https://voicesofthewilderness.com/

10/19/2022

Last month, author Jeffrey Ryan gave an insightful talk on his new book This Land Was Saved for You and Me at the 2022 Milford Readers and Writers Festival. In attendance was award-winning New Yorker illustrator Bob Eckstein, who so kindly shared this fantastic watercolor capturing the moment. Thanks, Bob, and congrats to Jeff on his recent book!

And if you missed this event, don't fret! Jeff will be giving a virtual talk as part of the National Conservation Training Center Lecture Series TOMORROW at 1:00p.m.: https://livestream.com/nctc/events/10641169

09/28/2022

The “American century” began with the Spanish-American War. In that conflict’s aftermath, the United States claimed the Philippines in its bid for world power. Before the ink on the treaty with Spain had dried, the war in the Philippines turned into a violent rebellion. After two years of fighting, U.S. forces launched an audacious mission to capture Philippine president and rebel commander-in-chief Emilio Aguinaldo. Using an elaborate ruse, U.S. Army legend Frederick “Fighting Fred” Funston orchestrated Aguinaldo’s seizure in 1901. Capturing Aguinaldo is the story of Funston, his gambit to catch Emilio Aguinaldo, and the United States’ conflicted rise to power in the early twentieth century.

The United States’ war with Spain in 1898 had been quick and, for the Americans in the Philippines, virtually bloodless. But by early 1899, Filipino nationalists, who had been fighting the Spaniards for three years and expected Spain’s defeat to produce their independence, were fighting a new imperial power: the United States. The Filipinos eventually abandoned conventional warfare, switching to guerilla tactics in an ongoing conflict rife with atrocities on both sides. By March 1901, the United States was looking for a bold strike against the nationalists. Brigadier General Frederick Funston, who had already earned a Medal of Honor, and four other officers posing as prisoners were escorted by loyal Filipino soldiers impersonating rebels. After a ninety-mile forced march, the fake insurgents were welcomed into the enemy’s headquarters where, after a brief firefight, they captured President Aguinaldo. At long last, the rebellion neared collapse.

More than a swashbuckling tale, Capturing Aguinaldo: The Daring Raid to Seize the Philippine President at the Dawn of the American Century by Dwight Sullivan is a character study of Frederick Funston and Emilio Aguinaldo and a look at the United States’ rise to global power as it unfolded at ground level. It tells the thrilling but nearly forgotten story of this daring operation and its polarizing aftermath, highlighting themes of U.S. history that have reverberated for more than a century, through World War II to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Coming this November 2022, available wherever books are sold!

09/21/2022

From the War for Independence to the War on Terror, American military intelligence has often failed, costing needless casualties and squandering money and materiel as well as prestige – and all too often it has failed to learn from its mistakes. Senseless Secrets covers more than 200 years of intelligence breakdowns in every American war, including not only how intelligence has been wrong, but also how good intel has failed to make it to battlefield commanders, how spies and traitors have infiltrated the military intelligence community, and more.

Here are stories of Benedict Arnold’s turn in the Revolution, George McClellan’s reliance on the Pinkertons’ inflated estimates of enemy strengths in the Civil War, Custer’s flawed intelligence prior to the Little Bighorn, the controversy over Pearl Harbor, the surprise German attack that started the Battle of the Bulge, the failure to convey useful intelligence to small-unit commanders in Vietnam, overestimates of Iraqi strength during Operation Desert Storm, the bad intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s supposed nuclear arsenal in 2002-03, and the chaos surrounding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Senseless Secrets is a military history of the United States through its intelligence operations. It should be required reading inside the U.S. military and beyond.

Coming this November 2022, available wherever books are sold.

09/14/2022

Bloody fighting between rival tribes and clans has existed since the dawn of Homo sapiens, but war as we knew it began to take the more organized forms we recognize today in the ancient Near East, starting in the vital region near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (modern Iraq) and ultimately extending west to the Mediterranean Sea through what became the Holy Land of the Bible, a region eventually contested by Egypt, the Roman Empire, and others, and extending north and east into the mountains of Persia (modern Iran). In this informed and accessible history, Arthur Cotterell tells the story of how the story of the development of civilization is also the story of the development of organized warfare

This story begins around 4,000 to 3,000 BC with the Sumerians, one of the first dominant civilizations of fertile Mesopotamia, and their wars with their neighbors. The Sumerians eventually gave way to the Babylonians, whose period of dominance saw rudimentary “great power” rivalries begin to form with the likes of Egypt and the Hittites and the Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC). This period resolved with the fall of Babylon and the rise of other powers, ultimately the Persian Empire of Cyrus and Darius, one of the great ancient dynasties, which battled the Greeks directly (as chronicled in Herodotus) and indirectly as rival Persian factions battled each other (e.g., as chronicled in Xenophon’s account of the storied Ten Thousand).

In the period that followed, the Near East was dominated by Alexander the Great, whose legendary campaigns conquered Persia and ventured east into modern India. This era saw the refinement of the Greek hoplite tactics that remained standard for many hundreds of years. After Alexander the Great, and the rise of the Seleucids and Parthians where Persians once reigned, the Roman Empire began to exert its power in the region, especially at its colonies in Judea and Syria.

Spanning some 4,000 years and drawing anecdotes and quotations from ancient sources, Where War Began by Arthur Cotterell is a lively narrative of the origins of war in a region that is still afflicted by war and that still shapes global politics.

Coming this October 2022, available wherever books are sold!

09/08/2022

Available now in paperback from Stackpole Books, the Armored duology from Steven Zaloga.

The classic Armored Attack 1944 includes all varieties of American armor in Europe from D-Day, to Normandy, to southern France, the Siegfried Line, the push to the Rhine, and finally, the Battle of the Bulge. Shermans, Hellcats, and many more American and German tanks are covered in nearly 1200 photos along with Zaloga’s expert captions. Perfect for modelers and World War II enthusiasts.

Armored Victory 1945 is the second in Zaloga’s classic two-volume photo history of American armor in Europe is now available in paperback. Covering the Battle of the Bulge, the Rhine crossings, and the final battles inside Germany, the book is beautifully illustrated with more than 1200 photos of American tanks and armored vehicles as well as many German tanks.

Find them wherever books are sold!

#1944 #1945

09/01/2022

Amazing!

Amy Rupertus Peacock and Don Brown, authors of Old Breed General, recently had their book signing and talk at the Reagan Library!

The event was a great success, and we're happy to see so many people enjoyed the talk.

Old Breed General is available now wherever books are sold!


The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute
Amy Rupertus Peacock

08/25/2022

Available now from Stackpole Books, two fi****ms classics—Now in paperback!

Wi******er's 30-30, Model 94: The Rifle America Loves by Sam Fadala
The Wi******er Model 94 and its revolutionary 30-30 cartridge changed the world of shooting forever. Sam Fadala is here to tell you the whole story, tracing the development of the most popular hunting rifle ever designed, discussing sights, ammunition, and cleaning procedures, as well as telling you how to hunt large and small game.

The Fi****ms Dictionary
R. A. Steindler was researching a book about guns when he realized that many gun terms were used differently by various writers and sometimes included conflicting definitions, errors, and misconceptions. To fill an obvious need for one consistent authority on the language of guns, he created this comprehensive classic reference. Going beyond the simple definition, the book explains each term fully and puts it into context with any related terms, and the definitions are supplemented with 200 photographs, illustrations, and charts to help clarify technical details.

****ms

08/17/2022

Available now from Stackpole Books, dive deep into the history of Panzer tanks in WWII!

Hold the Westwall is the dramatic story of Panzer Brigade 105, one of Germany's experimental independent armored brigades, and its formation, deployment (including its defense of the Siegfried Line), and ultimate destruction. Relying heavily on primary documents and interviews, it also presents American accounts of what it was like to fight the brigade. Now in paperback, it was the first book in English on Germany’s failed experiment with independent armored brigades in World War II.

The sequel to Panzer Aces, Panzer Aces II relates the combat careers of six more German Panzer officers. Extensively researched, these gripping accounts follow the men and their tanks across three continents into some of World War II’s bloodiest engagements.

08/10/2022

The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm are known to children around the world: Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and many other familiar stories that have been translated and published in many editions through the years. Stackpole published a hardcover edition in 1937 (list price $2.75!), and the flap copy on that early edition describes it as "fuller in text than any available edition and more beautifully illustrated with 94 black-and-white illustrations and 8 full-page color plates by Fritz Kredel."

This paperback edition, reproduced with Kredel’s charming illustrations in black-and-white, brings these timeless tales to a new generation.

Available now, wherever books are sold!