Book Reviews

Title: WWII: A Legacy of Letters
Author: Clint Frederick
Genre: Non-Fiction, History
Reviewer: Bill McDonald

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0977849309

Clinton Frederick returned to his grandparents' house in 2002. In the attic, just as he'd remembered, were Japanese swords, parachutes, and other memorabilia from WWII. In a trunk stuck back under the rafters, Clinton made a discovery that would change his life forever. Inside were more than hundred letters written by his father, Captain George Frederick.

This correspondence, most of which Capt. Frederick had written to his mother, chronicled from a most personal standpoint some of the major events that shaped the world. The letters also allowed Clinton Frederick, for the first time in his life, to know what his father was really like.

WWII - A Legacy of Letters, is a true story of love and war. In it, Frederick artfully weaves together his father's letters with historical information about some of the most important military campaigns of the war. History is too often simply a dry recitation of dates, events, and people. Frederick's book puts a very human face on the events surrounding the Pacific Theatre of World War II. Readers will find the author's discoveries about his father to be extraordinarily moving.

Title: When Grandma's False Teeth Fly
Author: Mary Lee
Genre: Children Under 12
Reviewer: Jim Greenwald

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1617779741

Katie is not a little girl anymore--she is six years old! But some mean girls at school still tease her about her chipped baby tooth. Katies seeks advice from her grandma, who will tell her a hilarious story that encourages her to use humor instead of anger or sadness to solve her problems. Join Katie and Grandma for a touching, funny, and inspiring story about...

Title: GALAHAD
Author: Michael F. Dilley
Genre: Non-Fiction History
Reviewer: Jim Greenwald

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1435758498

This book is a brief history of an American regimental sized unit (known popularly as "Merrill's Marauders") that fought in Burma during 1944 and, later, as part of Mars Task Force, as the 475th Infnatry Regiment. The book covers the organization, training, and most important missions of GALAHAD until it was redesignated at the 475th. It includes organization charts, sketch maps, photographs, examples of insignia, and a bibliography.

Title: Pass in Review - DUTY
Author: Brian Utermahlen
Genre: Non-Fiction History
Reviewer: Carmen Stenholm
ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 146115975X

PASS IN REVIEW is a trilogy about men and women totally involved in the love-hate relationship of military service to country. This is a saga of a 20th Century military family … three generations and their contemporaries – some famous, some not, but all of them intensely American. Pass in Review – DUTY is the story of Dave Nolan – part man, part legend – who leaves a small river town in Pennsylvania to chase his destiny in the Army as a professional soldier. To him the Army is more than just a career, it is the essence of who he is – his very life. From the Plain of West Point, high above the Hudson, to the trenches of WWI France and the wearying decades between the two world wars of the 20th century, he devotes himself wholly and tirelessly to his country and the Army, even when they do not reciprocate. And woven throughout this saga is the historically accurate story of Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, and others who graduated f
rom West Point and interact with the fictional Nolan, all of whom forged the victories on battlefields around the world, across a century. They along with Nolan, his friends, family and others – like the legendary “Wild Bill” Donovan, Dave Nolan’s mentor in war and during the peace – make and mold their Army, their country, their Alma Mater and their world.

Title: Defining Moments: True Story of War, Family Conflict & Reonciliation, A
Author: Robert Dustman
ISBN: 146341692X
Genre: Non-Fiction Memoir
Reviewer: Hodge Wood

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 146341692X

"Defining Moments" is the compelling true life story of one American soldier's adventures in the South Pacific during World War II. It is is a captivating tale of war behind the front lines as revealed through the more than 300 letters this young G.I. from rural Ohio wrote to his family between the years 1940-45. This memoir, written by the soldier's eldest son, captures in vivid detail Bill Dustman's transformation from boyhood to manhood. The book presents in candid detail the "defining moments" which shaped this young man's life once he departed the bucolic, but cloistered environment of his rural hometown to experience an unfamiliar and uncaring world over which he had little control.