Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley

Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

THE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE IMMORTAL PHOTOGRAPH THAT HAS COME TO SYMBOLIZE THE COURAGE AND INDOMITABLE WILL OF AMERICA

In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima--and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag.

Now the son of one of the flagraisers has written a powerful account of six very different young men who came together in a moment that will live forever.

To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of Easy Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island--an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what happened after the victory. The men in the photo--three were killed during the battle--were proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only James Bradley's father truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn't come back.

Few books ever have captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well as Flags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.

Powers, Ron: -

Ron Powers, an Emmy Award winner and the first television critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, has studied and written about Mark Twain for many years. He is the author of numerous books, including Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain, and the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller Flags of Our Fathers. He lives in Middlebury, Vermont.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780553111330
ISBN 10	0553111337
Title	Flags of Our Fathers
Author	James Bradley
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc
Year published	2000-05-02
Number of pages	400
Prizes	Winner of Christopher Awards (Books for Adults) 2001, Winner of Alex Awards 2001
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.