Book List

The following books are recommended as educational reading by your Association. They are all available through Amazon and favorite book stores. Kindle and digital editions may also be purchased at lower prices.

A Marine Named Mitch: Medal of Honor WW II

Author: Col. Mitchell Paige

An honest story written entirely by one extraordinary Marine, Mitch Paige, who received the Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal, 26 October 1942, fighting against overwhelming odds and immersed in a horrific surrounding.

Price $10 – $12   Found on Amazon here

With The Old Breed: At Peleliu And Okinawa

Author: E.B. Sledge

An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war’s famous 1st Marine Division – 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where “the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.” By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear, but no longer with panic.

Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, “With the Old Breed” captures with utter simplicity and searing honest experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater. Here is what saved, threatened, and changed his life. Here, too, is the story of how he learned to hate and kill, and came to love his fellow man.

Price $2.50 – $205  Found on Amazon here

One Magnificent Bastard: BGen William Weise, USMC (Ret)

Author: Mark Huffman

Bill Weise didn’t plan on a career in the United States Marine Corps. He planned to become a lawyer, but life has a funny way of taking you to places you never expect, serving up experiences that change your life and your outlook forever.

From his early life in a working class neighborhood in South Philadelphia during the Great Depression to battlefields in Vietnam to the halls of the Pentagon, Bill Weise was guided by core values he gained from his parents, his faith, and his community. Those values he brought to the Marine Corps, as well as a creative mind and a sense of daring that made him a great leader in both war and peace.

Throughout his life Bill Weise has been presented with challenges. Some were economic, some were military and some were deeply personal. How he met and overcame these challenges provides a true measure of him as a man.

Price $11 – $16  Found on Amazon here

Noble Warrior: The Story of MGen James E. Livingston, USMC (Ret), Medal of Honor

Author: James E. Livingston & Colin D. Heaton

Major General James E. Livingston received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role as an infantry company commander at Dai Do, Vietnam, during a three-day grinding battle of attrition in which the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, numbering only 800 men, victoriously battled 10,000 or more NVA. His remarkable life and career is recounted in a book that has it all: exciting first-person eyewitness accounts of the historic battle; the history of the development of tactics and strategies used in today’s war on terror; and, a compelling story of leadership in action and individual courage in combat.

Price $14 – $28  Found on Amazon here

Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965

Author: Mark Moyar

This thoroughly researched and richly informative history of the Vietnam War examines first the war’s central characters and countries in the years leading up to 1954. Moyar contends that South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, who has been incessantly depicted as an obtuse, tyrannical reactionary by some historians, was in reality a very wise and effective leader. Moyar states that supporting the November 1963 coup was the worst American mistake of the war, that President Kennedy had no plans to abandon his South Vietnamese allies after the 1964 election, and that President Johnson’s lack of forcefulness in Vietnam in late 1964 and early 1965 squandered America’s deterrent power and led to a decision in Hanoi to invade South Vietnam with large North Vietnamese army units. Moyar notes that historians have argued that an American ground-troop presence in Laos would not have stopped most of the infiltration, but much new evidence contradicts this contention. Where the U.S. committed major errors, he writes, was in formulating strategies for defending South Vietnam.

Price $8 – $42  Found on Amazon here

No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah

Author: Bing West

Based on months spent with the battalions in Fallujah and hundreds of interviews at every level: senior policymakers, negotiators, generals, soldiers and Marines on the front lines. “No True Glory” is a testament to the bravery of the American soldier and a cautionary tale about the complex–and often costly–interconnected roles of policy, politics, and battle in the twenty first century

Price $2.50 – $205  Found on Amazon here

Echo in Ramadi: The Firsthand Story of US Marines in Iraq’s Deadliest City

Author:  Scott A Huesing

From the winter of 2006 through the spring of 2007, two-hundred-fifty Marines from Echo Company, Second Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment fought daily in the dangerous, dense city streets of Ramadi, Iraq during the Multi-National Forces Surge ordered by President George W. Bush. The Marines’ mission: to kill or capture anti-Iraqi forces. Their experience: like being in Hell.

Price $15 – $20  Found on Amazon here

The Magnificent Bastards: The Joint Army-Marine Defense of Dong Ha, 1968

Author: Keith Nolan

On April 29, 1968, the North Vietnamese Army is spotted less than four miles from the U.S. Marines’ Dong Ha Combat Base. Intense fighting develops in nearby Dai Do as the 2d Battalion, 4th Marines, known as “the Magnificent Bastards,” struggles to eject NVA forces from this strategic position.

Price $3 – $12  Found on Amazon here

Rage Company: A Marine’s Baptism By Fire

Author:  Thomas P. Daly

One Marine’s gripping story of the bloody battles, the Surge, and the Awakening of Sunni tribes that changed the tide in Iraq’s Anbar province.  Filled with on-the-ground details and insights on military operations and strategy, Rage Companycements the accurate history of the unlikely alliance that redirected the Iraq War and set the course for operations in the future.

Price  $10 – $20  Found on Amazon here

The Long Journey Home: The Untold Stories of Forgotten Soldiers

Author:  Craig Heath Blackman

The Long Journey Home is the story of how a diverse group of post-millennial students rediscovered their local history and truly understand the cost of war. The book is factually based on researching Marines and Sailors from 2/4 during the mid to late 1960’s, many of whom we knew. They went beyond the learning objectives and developed relationships with the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, and friends of twenty-five fallen soldiers. Black and white, single and married, these soldiers were farm boys, construction workers, mechanics, bus boys, college students, and business managers who deployed to the jungles of Southeast Asia never to return. Like other teenagers of their time, these solders enjoyed hunting, fishing, singing, surfing, baseball, ham radios, and riding motorcycles. The Long Journey Home is the story of tears, sadness, patriotism and sacrifice, heroism and comradery. The high school students who engaged in this project will never be the same. Interacting with the Gold Star families forever sculpted them emotionally and intellectually. May we always remember that sacrifice without remembrance is meaningless!

Price  $11  Found on Amazon here

Time in the Barrel: A Marine’s Account of the Battle for Con Thien

Author:  James P. Coan

This book is a Marine’s account of the Battle for Con Thien, Vietnam. For eight months, James P. Coan’s five tank platoon was assigned to Con Thien while attached to various Marine infantry battalions, among them the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. A novice second lieutenant at the time, the author kept a diary recording the thoughts, fears and frustrations that accompanied his life on “The Hill.” “Time in the Barrel: A Marine’s Account of the Battle for Con Thien” offers a gripping first hand account of the daily nightmare that was Con Thien in 1967.

Price  $20 – $35  Found on Amazon here

Vietnam: The Memoir of a Sandlot Soldier

Author:  W. Thomas Burns

This book is a Marine’s glimpse into the experiences of a generation of young Americans who served our country during the Vietnam War. Conflict and wars have been a major part of our human experience since man first walked the earth. If one were to spend a few hours in the history section of any library, it wouldn’t take long to come to the conclusion that conflicts and wars are a part of who we are! Man’s inhumanity to man. The author’s purpose for sharing his experiences is to remind the people of our Nation what it was like to hunt and be hunted. His hope is that he has done his part well enough that the reader can get a feel for what it was like to have fought in the Vietnam War.

Price  $10 – $15  Found on Amazon here