Ballad of the Green Beret

Ballad of the Green Beret
Author: Marc Leepson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2017-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0811765687

The rough-and-tumble life of Special Forces vet and Sixties pop star Barry Sadler The top Billboard Hot 100 single of 1966 wasn’t “Paint It Black” or “Yellow Submarine”--it was “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” a hyper-patriotic tribute to the men of the Special Forces by Vietnam vet Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. But Sadler’s clean-cut, all-American image hid a darker side, a Hunter Thompson-esque life of booze, girls, and guns. Unable to score another hit song, he wrote articles for Soldier of Fortune and pulp novels that made “Rambo look like a stroll through Disneyland.” He killed a lover’s ex-boyfriend in Tennessee. Settling in Central America, Sadler ran guns, allegedly trained guerrillas, provided medical care to residents, and caroused at his villa. In 1988 he was shot in the head by a robber on the streets of Guatemala and died a year later. This life-and-times biography of an American character recounts the sensational details of Sadler’s life vividly but soberly, setting his meteoric rise and tragic fall against the big picture of American society and culture during and after the Vietnam War.

What So Proudly We Hailed

What So Proudly We Hailed
Author: Marc Leepson
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2014-06-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137464313

What So Proudly We Hailed is the first full-length biography of Francis Scott Key in more than 75 years. In this fascinating look at early America, historian Marc Leepson explores the life and legacy of Francis Scott Key. Standing alongside Betsy Ross, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, and John Hancock in history, Key made his mark as an American icon by one single and unforgettable act, writing "The Star-Spangled Banner." Among other things, Leepson reveals: • How the young Washington lawyer found himself in Baltimore Harbor on the night of September 13-14, 2014 • The mysterious circumstances surrounding how the poem he wrote, first titled "The Defense of Ft. M'Henry," morphed into the National Anthem • Key's role in forming the American Colonization Society, and his decades-long fervent support for that controversial endeavor that sent free blacks to Africa • His adamant opposition to slave trafficking and his willingness to represent slaves and freed men and women for free in Washington's courts • Key's role as a confidant of President Andrew Jackson and his work in Jackson's "kitchen cabinet" • Key's controversial actions as U.S. Attorney during the first race riot in Washington, D.C., in 1835. Publishing to coincide with the 200th anniversary of "The Star Spangled Banner" in 2014, What So Proudly We Hailed reveals unexplored details of the life of an American patriot whose legacy has been largely unknown until now.

Casca

Casca
Author: Barry Sadler
Publisher: Ace Books
Total Pages: 246
Release: 1982
Genre: Mercenary troops
ISBN: 9780441217724

French Connection

French Connection
Author: Robin Moore
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2023-12-05
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1493082396

With a new introduction by the author. The true, absorbing and sometimes frightening documentary of the world's most successful narcotics investigation, The French Connection is one of the most fascinating crime accounts of our time. When New York City detectives Eddie "Popeye" Egan and his partner Sonny Grosso routinely tail Pasquale "Patsy" Fuca, after observing some wild spending at the Copacabana, they quickly realize that they are on to something really big. Patsy is not only the nephew of a mob boss on the lam but also a key negotiator in an impending delivery of narcotics from abroad. His incongruous connections are with several distinguished Frenchmen, including Jean Jehan, the director of the world's largest heroin network, and Jacques Angelvin, a star of French television. For many suspense-filled months, through opulent Manhattan nightclubs, dark tenements in Brooklyn and the Bronx, tree-lined streets of the genteel Upper East Side, and in Paris, Marseilles, and Palermo, the duel is on -- the prize 112 pounds of pure heroin, worth ninety million on the streets. Over three hundred investigators from local, state, federal, and international agencies are ultimately involved in the hours of weary surveillance, the skilled intuition, the luck -- both good and bad -- and the danger.

Colt Terry, Green Beret

Colt Terry, Green Beret
Author: Charles D. Patton
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2005
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1603446060

Through one man's career, "Colt Terry, Green Beret" portrays the birth and development of America's most elite fighting unit. The 10th Special Forces Group was the first of the Green Beret units.

The Sixties Unplugged

The Sixties Unplugged
Author: Gerard J. DeGroot
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 523
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674034635

ÒIf you remember the Sixties,Ó quipped Robin Williams, Òyou werenÕt there.Ó That was, of course, an oblique reference to the mind-bending drugs that clouded perceptionÑyet time has proven an equally effective hallucinogen. This book revisits the Sixties we forgot or somehow failed to witness. In a kaleidoscopic global tour of the decade, Gerard DeGroot reminds us that the ÒBallad of the Green BeretÓ outsold ÒGive Peace a Chance,Ó that the Students for a Democratic Society were outnumbered by Young Americans for Freedom, that revolution was always a pipe dream, and that the Sixties belong to Reagan and de Gaulle more than to Kennedy and Dubcek. The Sixties Unplugged shows how opportunity was squandered, and why nostalgia for the decade has obscured sordidness and futility. DeGroot returns us to a time in which idealism, tolerance, and creativity gave way to cynicism, chauvinism, and materialism. He presents the Sixties as a drama acted out on stages around the world, a theater of the absurd in which ChinaÕs Cultural Revolution proved to be the worst atrocity of the twentieth century, the Six-Day War a disaster for every nation in the Middle East, and a million slaughtered Indonesians martyrs to greed. The Sixties Unplugged restores to an era the prevalent disorder and inconvenient truths that longing, wistfulness, and distance have obscured. In an impressionistic journey through a tumultuous decade, DeGroot offers an object lesson in the distortions nostalgia can create as it strives to impose order on memory and value on mayhem.

Seppuku

Seppuku
Author: Barry Sadler
Publisher:
Total Pages: 224
Release: 1988-02-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780812588453

Colonel Green sends Rossen and Tommy to end a deadly hijacking in West Germany

The World's Worst Records: Volume One

The World's Worst Records: Volume One
Author: Darryl W Bullock
Publisher: Bristol Green Publishing
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2015-02-04
Genre: Music
ISBN: 148262446X

An affectionate look at some of the worst recordings ever made, The World’s Worst Records tells the extraordinary but true stories behind some of the most appalling audio crimes ever committed. Extensively researched, and featuring music by major stars, ‘outsider’ artists and almost forgotten singers and songwriters, read about how Elvis Presley came to record a rock ‘n’ roll version of the nursery rhyme Old Macdonald; discover the truth behind actor Peter Wyngarde’s one attempt at pop immortality; meet the beautifully bonkers Florence Foster Jenkins – possibly the most deluded singer in history; fi nd out which Paul McCartney record is most hated world over. Puzzle over why 60’s flower-power icon Donovan would record a song about the toilet habits of astronauts.

Across the Fence

Across the Fence
Author: John Stryker Meyer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2011-02-15
Genre: Vietnam War, 1961-1975
ISBN: 9780983256700

QUOTE: "As the commander of SOG, I can say that "Across The Fence" accurately reflects why the secret war was hazardous for our troops and so deadly for the enemy. Major General John K. Singlaub (U.S. Army Ret.) ----------------------------------------- Far beyond the battlefields of Vietnam, across the fence in Laos and Cambodia, America fought a deadly secret war. Known only as SOG, the Special Forces men of the Studies and Operations Group didn't play by the rules. They used every trick in the book to defeat the communist forces and if those didn't work they made up new ones. SOG operators tapped into phone wires, ambushed enemy units and gathered some of the most important intelligence of the war. All of this came at a staggering price in terms of casualties. At one point the casualty rate exceeded one hundred percent. So, what kept these extraordinary men running missions that were sure to get them wounded or killed? Why did they return to Vietnam for a second tour of duty with SOG? The answers to those questions are in this book.