Goodbye, Darkness

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Don Malarkey with Bob Welch

Sgt. Don Malarkey takes us not only into the battles fought from Normandy to Germany, but into the heart and mind of a soldier who beat the odds to become an elite paratrooper, and lost his best friend during the nightmarish engagement at Bastogne. Drafted in 1942, Malarkey became one of the one-in-six soldiers who earned their Eagle wings. He went to England in 1943 to provide cover on the ground for the largest amphibious military attack in history: Operation Overlord. In the darkness of D-day morning, Malarkey parachuted into France and within days was awarded a Bronze Star for his heroism in battle. He fought for twenty-three days in Normandy, nearly eighty in Holland, thirty-nine in Bastogne, and nearly thirty more in and near Haugenau, France, and the Ruhr pocket in Germany. This is his epic story of how an adventurous kid from Oregon became a leader of men.--From publisher description.

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Jim McGarrah

"Jim McGarrah's The End of An Era is an insightful, heartbreaking and, at times, hilarious account of his struggles as a veteran in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. In his extraordinary wounding, healing blues song, this combat veteran sings for family, for lovers, for friends, and, always, in each line, for the soldiers gone in another era and the ones now dying in our own."--Amazon

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Darrell Dawsey

The statistics about young Black men are familiar: Homicide is their number one killer, one fourth are in jail, on parole, or on probation, and their rates of unemployment, teen fatherhood, educational dropout - and death - exceed those of any other demographic group. Moreover, in the public mind, even those who don't bear out the grim statistics have come to embody society's worst pathologies. Yet, when given the opportunity to speak for themselves, they speak of feeling as fearful as they are feared, as threatened as they are threatening. Living to Tell About It is the first book to look beyond statistics and perceptions to the real lives and experiences of most young Black men in America today. Over the course of a year, journalist Darrell Dawsey traveled across the country, listening to a mosaic of young men talk about their childhoods, relationships with parents and women, sexuality, self-respect, spirituality, ambitions, the race that binds them, and the diversity of class, education and geography that distinguishes them. Interweaving interview material with powerful reflections of his own background as a single-parent child of urban America and a young father, Dawsey portrays the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of young Black men in a society in which they have been the targets of disenfranchisement, neglect, racism, and hostility. The result is a compelling portrait of a generation facing the manifold challenges and dilemmas of Black manhood - and living to tell about it.

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Joe McGinniss

"In The Last Brother, Joe McGinniss brings to startling and disturbing life the childhood, the brief triumph, and the long downward slide of the last Kennedy brother ... and exposes, as never before, the chilling reality behind the glittering facade of America's First Dysfunctional Family, as well as the terrible cost of Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy's dark ambitions for his children - even the last and least of them." "His book focuses in particular on the extraordinary sixties, a decade that began in glory for the family with Jack's ascension to the presidency, and ended - after the murders of Jack and Bobby, the tragedy at Chappaquidick, and their father's death - with Teddy, the last brother, standing alone in the rubble of Camelot." "While The Last Brother is both shocking and newsworthy, Teddy Kennedy emerges as a curiously tragic figure, the victim of his own family, forever "the fat, awkward little boy" who was ignored by his siblings, his father and his mother, then propelled, unwilling and unprepared, into the public limelight." "Searing, yet strangely moving and even sympathetic, The Last Brother presents a detailed, tragic portrait of a man at war with himself, doomed to live in the giant shadow of his brothers, trapped in the glorious but hollow Kennedy myth, longing - but unable - to escape."--Jacket.