Kirjahaku

From the earliest days of his 34-year military career, Victor 'Brute' Krulak displayed a facility for applying creative ways of fighting to the Marine Corps. He went on daring spy missions during the Second Sino-Japanese War, pioneered the use of amphibious vehicles and masterminded the invasion of Okinawa. In Vietnam, his Marines were more successful than the Army and many think that Vietnam might have been different had all US forces employed Krulak's ideas. And yet it can be argued that all of his wartime accomplishments pale in comparison to what he did after World War II: he single-handedly stopped the U.S. government from abolishing the Marine Corps. Now the biographer Robert Coram presents us with a remarkably rounded and deeply intimate portrait of the legendary marine who receives much of the credit for America's victory in the Pacific, the successful D-Day landing and ultimately America's triumph in World War II. Coram gained unprecedented access to the man behind the military myth - and besides revealing the full extent of his achievements, reveals his deepest secret-one that he feared could have destroyed his career.

A detailed portrait of American fighter pilot John Boyd examines his distinguished military career during the Korean War and his postwar efforts as a military theorist who took on the entrenched Pentagon bureaucracy to transform the art of modern warfare and the American military with his revolution

A larger-than-life fighter pilot and genius of aviation, engineering and military strategy, Boyd dared to challenge the intractable military bureaucracy and its outmoded practices. The single-minded determination developed in his youth carried him on to renown for his skill as a fighter pilot, for his passion as an instructor, his legendary appetite and lack of respect for his superiors. But this was just the start as he went on to transform the way military planes were designed, fighting the air force's entrenched ideas every step of the way. Boyd's breakthrough designs were crucial to the creation of the F-15 and 16, and he dedicated years to an innovative theory of conflict that eventually made him the most influential military theoretician since Sun Tzu. A magnet for bright young men dissatisfied with the impractically old-fashioned methods of the military, his circle of "acolytes" extended his influence through their headline-grabbing Reform Movement. By the time of Boyd's death his name had reached the furthest corners of the military establishment. Coram paints a colourful portrait of this extremely unconventional man who locked horns with the most conventional of bureaucracies - and won.

Few writers have traveled such a long and rock-strewn road on the way to success as has Robert Coram. His persistence is an object lesson for anyone who wants to write.In his early life, he failed at everything he did. He flunked out of college, served time in a military stockade, and was fired from numerous jobs. But all he wanted from life was to become a reporter at the Atlanta Journal. He returned to college and was hired by the paper while only a sophomore. During his six years at the paper he became a senior investigative reporter.He was fired and began a freelance career that saw him published in many national magazines. His articles about drug smuggling caught the attention of an editor at the Atlanta Constitution and he became one of the few reporters ever fired by the Atlanta papers who was invited to return. During the two years he spent at the Constitution, he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize both years. Then he was fired.He covered the war in Biafra and taught for twelve years at Emory. He wrote five novels, all rejected by editors. He persisted and eventually published seven novels, seven works of non-fiction, and a memoir. Four of the non-fiction works are acclaimed military biographies. This book is infused with his pile-driver determination, his love of old-time newspapering, and his reverence for the written word.