Between The Lines

Living with Honor: A Memoir Hardcover – December 4, 2012

Staff Sergeant Salvatore, “Sal,” Giunta was the first living person to receive the Medal of Honor—the highest honor presented by the U.S. military—since the conclusion of the Vietnam War. In Living with Honor, this hero who maintains he is “just a soldier” tells us the story of the fateful day in Afghanistan that led to his receiving the unique honor. With candor, insight, and humility, Giunta not only recounts the harrowing events leading up to when he and his company fell under siege, but also illustrates the empowering, invaluable lessons he learned.

As a seventeen-year-old teen working at Subway, Giunta was like any other kid trying to figure out which step to take next with his life after graduating from high school. When Giunta walked into the local Army recruiting center in his hometown, he just wanted a free T-shirt. But when he walked out, his curiosity had been piqued and he enlisted in the Army.

Deployed to Afghanistan, Giunta soon learned from the more seasoned soldiers how “different” this war was compared to others that America had fought. Stationed with the 173rd Airborne Brigade near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the Korengal Valley— also known as the “Valley of Death”—Giunta and his company were ambushed by Taliban insurgents. Giunta went into action after seeing that his squad leader had fallen. Exposing himself to blistering enemy fire, Giunta charged toward his squad leader and administered first aid while he covered him with his own body. Though Giunta was struck by the relentless barrage of bullets, he engaged the enemy and then attempted to reach additional wounded soldiers. When he realized that yet another soldier was separated from his unit, he advanced forward. Discovering two rebels carrying away a U.S. soldier, Giunta killed one insurgent and wounded the other, and immediately provided aid to the injured soldier. More than just a remarkable memoir by a remarkable person, Living with Honor is a powerful testament to the human spirit and all that one can achieve when faced with seemingly impossible obstacles

Unraveling the Myth of Sgt. Alvin York: The Other Sixteen

On October 8, 1918, seventeen soldiers from the 82nd Division, American Expeditionary Force, led by acting Sgt. Bernard Early, flanked a German machine gun nest that had inundated their unit with withering fire. In this sneak attack, they successfully surprised and captured more than 80 German soldiers before an unseen machine gun suddenly opened fire and killed six men.

Acting Cpl. Alvin York, a member of the patrol, received the credit for taking control of the squad and single-handedly killing 20 Germans, capturing 132 prisoners, and eliminating 35 machine guns, all before leading the men back to Allied lines. For this act of bravery, York not only received the Medal of Honor and was promoted to sergeant, but he also rose to fame and glory. The 1941 movie Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper, solidified York as a legend and one of the most well-known military figures in American history.

In Unraveling the Myth of Sgt. Alvin York, historian James P. Gregory Jr. tells the story of the other sixteen soldiers who took part in the battle, capture, and return before fading into relative obscurity in the shadow of Sergeant York. As the tale reached mythological proportions, the other survivors began to speak out, seeking recognition for their parts in the engagement, only to be stymied by improper investigations, cover-ups, and media misrepresentations. Here, Gregory recovers the story of these other men and the part they played alongside York while revealing the process of mythmaking in twentieth-century America.

Soldier Parrott: The Incredible Story of America’s First Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient

Soldier Parrot brings a new level of research and personal grit to Civil War history with this riveting account of how Jacob Parrott, an 18-year-old, illiterate orphan from Ohio became the first soldier to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Parrott, a private in the Union Army, volunteered in 1862 for a secret mission behind Confederate lines to steal a train, tear up railroad tracks, burn bridges, and cut telegraph lines. The mission failed. Parrott and his companions were captured. Several were hung as spies and Parrott spent nearly two years in a Confederate prison.

Parrott was only eighteen-years old when he volunteered for the secret mission. He had never been farther than ten miles from his home in Fairfield County.

Soldier Parrott is literally the stuff of history–a fast-paced, extremely well-told tale of espionage, capture, trial, and escape. Half the team was executed; the half that escaped received the newly established Medal of Honor.

You Are Worth It: Building a Life Worth Fighting For

On November 21, 2010, U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Kyle Carpenter was posted atop a building in violent Helmand Province, Afghanistan, when an enemy grenade skittered toward Kyle and fellow Marine Nick Eufrazio. Without hesitation, Kyle chose a path of selfless heroism that few can imagine. He jumped on the grenade, saving Nick but sacrificing his own body.

Kyle Carpenter’s heart flatlined three times while being evacuated off the battlefield in Afghanistan. Yet his spirit was unbroken. Severely wounded from head to toe, Kyle lost his right eye as well as most of his jaw. It would take dozens of surgeries and almost three years in and out of the hospital to reconstruct his body. From there, he began the process of rebuilding his life. What he has accomplished in the last nine years is extraordinary: he’s come back a stronger, better, wiser person.

In 2014, Kyle was awarded the nation’s highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his “singular act of courage” on that rooftop in Afghanistan, an action which had been reviewed exhaustively by the military. Kyle became the youngest living recipient of the award–and only the second living Marine so honored since Vietnam.

Kyle’s remarkable memoir reveals a central truth that will inspire every reader: Life is worth everything we’ve got. It is the story of how one man became a so-called hero who willingly laid down his life for his brother-in-arms—and equally, it is a story of rebirth, of how Kyle battled back from the gravest challenge to forge a life of joyful purpose.

You Are Worth It is a memoir about the war in Afghanistan and Kyle’s heroics, and it is also a manual for living. Organized around the credos that have guided Kyle’s life (from “Don’t Hide Your Scars” to “Call Your Mom”), the book encourages us to become our best selves in the time we’ve been given on earth. Above all, it’s about finding purpose, regardless of the hurdles that may block our way. Moving and unforgettable, You Are Worth It is an astonishing memoir from one of our most extraordinary young leaders.

Immortal Valor

The remarkable story of the seven African American soldiers ultimately awarded the World War II Medal of Honor, and the 50-year campaign to deny them their recognition.

In 1945, when Congress began reviewing the record of the most conspicuous acts of courage by American soldiers during World War II, they recommended awarding the Medal of Honor to 432 recipients. Despite the fact that more than one million African-Americans served, not a single Black soldier received the Medal of Honor. The omission remained on the record for over four decades.

But recent historical investigations have brought to light some of the extraordinary acts of valor performed by black soldiers during the war. Men like Vernon Baker, who single-handedly eliminated three enemy machineguns, an observation post, and a German dugout. Or Sergeant Reuben Rivers, who spearhead his tank unit’s advance against fierce German resistance for three days despite being grievously wounded. Meanwhile Lieutenant Charles Thomas led his platoon to capture a strategically vital village on the Siegfried Line in 1944 despite losing half his men and suffering a number of wounds himself.

Ultimately, in 1993 a US Army commission determined that seven men, including Baker, Rivers and Thomas, had been denied the Army’s highest award simply due to racial discrimination. In 1997, more than 50 years after the war, President Clinton finally awarded the Medal of Honor to these seven heroes, sadly all but one of them posthumously.

These are their stories.

Devotion

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • From America’s “forgotten war” in Korea comes an unforgettable tale of courage by the author of A Higher Call.

“In the spirit of Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat comes Devotion.”—Associated Press • “Aerial drama at its best—fast, powerful, and moving.”—Erik Larson

Devotion tells the inspirational story of the U.S. Navy’s most famous aviation duo, Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, and the Marines they fought to defend. A white New Englander from the country-club scene, Tom passed up Harvard to fly fighters for his country. An African American sharecropper’s son from Mississippi, Jesse became the navy’s first Black carrier pilot, defending a nation that wouldn’t even serve him in a bar.

While much of America remained divided by segregation, Jesse and Tom joined forces as wingmen in Fighter Squadron 32. Adam Makos takes us into the cockpit as these bold young aviators cut their teeth at the world’s most dangerous job—landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier—a line of work that Jesse’s young wife, Daisy, struggles to accept.

Deployed to the Mediterranean, Tom and Jesse meet the Fleet Marines, boys like PFC “Red” Parkinson, a farm kid from the Catskills. In between war games in the sun, the young men revel on the Riviera, partying with millionaires and even befriending the Hollywood starlet Elizabeth Taylor. Then comes the conflict that no one expected: the Korean War.

Devotion takes us soaring overhead with Tom and Jesse, and into the foxholes with Red and the Marines as they battle a North Korean invasion. As the fury of the fighting escalates and the Marines are cornered at the Chosin Reservoir, Tom and Jesse fly, guns blazing, to try and save them. When one of the duo is shot down behind enemy lines and pinned in his burning plane, the other faces an unthinkable choice: watch his friend die or attempt history’s most audacious one-man rescue mission.

A tug-at-the-heartstrings tale of bravery and selflessness, Devotion asks: How far would you go to save a friend?

You Don’t Lose ‘Til You Quit Trying: Lessons on Adversity and Victory from a Vietnam Veteran and Medal of Honor Recipient

The inspiring true life story of Vietnam veteran, Medal of Honor recipient and veteran’s advocate Sammy Lee Davis.

On November 18th, 1967, Private First Class Davis’s artillery unit was hit by a massive enemy offensive. At twenty-one years old, he resolved to face the onslaught and prepared to die. Soon he would have a perforated kidney, crushed ribs, a broken vertebra, his flesh ripped by beehive darts, a bullet in his thigh, and burns all over his body.

Ignoring his injuries, he manned a two-ton Howitzer by himself, crossed a canal under heavy fire to rescue three wounded American soldiers, and kept fighting until the enemy retreated. His heroism that day earned him a Congressional Medal of Honor—the ceremony footage of which ended up being used in the movie Forrest Gump.

You Don’t Lose ’Til You Quit Trying chronicles how his childhood in the American Heartland prepared him for the worst night of his life—and how that night set off a lifetime battling against debilitating injuries, the effects of Agent Orange and an America that was turning on its veterans.

Silver Linings: My Life Before and After Challenger 7

Twenty-five years after the very public tragedy of the space shuttle Challenger, June Scobee Rodgers has written her private story—her winding path through childhood poverty, homelessness, and family dysfunction to her teenage marriage and twenty-six years of love and life with Dick Scobee. This is the story, too, of that heartbreaking day in January 1986 when Commander Scobee and his six crewmates “slipped the surly bonds of Earth.” That day, June’s life took a new direction that ultimately led to the creation of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education and to new love and new life with Don Rodgers. Her story of faith and triumph over adversity will inspire readers of every age.