Robert Leckie

The inspiration behind the HBO series THE PACIFIC Here is one of the most riveting first-person accounts to ever come out of World War 2. Robert Leckie was 21 when he enlisted in the US Marine Corps in January 1942. In Helmet for My Pillow we follow his journey, from boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina, all the way to the raging battles in the Pacific, where some of the war's fiercest fighting took place. Recounting his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal, New Britain and Peleliu, Leckie spares no detail of the horrors and sacrifice of war, painting an unsentimental portrait of how real warriors are made, fight, and all too often die in the defence of their country. From the live-for-today rowdiness of Marines on leave to the terrors of jungle warfare against an enemy determined to fight to the last man, Leckie describes what it's really like when victory can only be measured inch by bloody inch. Unparalleled in its immediacy and accuracy, Helmet for My Pillow tells the gripping true story of an ordinary soldier fighting in extraordinary conditions. This is a book that brings you as close to the mud, the blood, and the experience of war as it is safe to come. 'Helmet for My Pillow is a grand and epic prose poem. Robert Leckie's theme is the purely human experience of war in the Pacific, written in the graceful imagery of a human being who - somehow - survived' Tom Hanks

Helmet for My Pillow

A soldier presents an account of his participation in World War II, from basic training to battles on Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu, reflecting on the horrors and sacrifices of war.

From Parris Island to the Pacific

To be a Marine is to subscribe to the idea that nothing in war is impossible—including the writing of books. Now, after years have passed and the jungle has reclaimed the scenes, comes this engaging story of a young man's personal adventures with the vast and ultimately overwhelming forces that defeated him. This is an old story, but it is told in a fresh and lovely voice. Robert Leckie writes with charm, with personal humility, with humor, with a rare gift for capturing all that is human in the most inhuman of man's activities. He makes no bones about it—the war is what happened to him. The point of view is not the grand strategy of victory, but the immediate tactic of personal survival. By turns a boot, a machine gunner on Guadalcanal, a liberty hound in Australia, an intelligence scout on Peleliu—briefly a self-styled "brig rat" subsisting on bread and water and finally a casualty—Private Leckie fought the enlisted man's battle. "Helmet for My Pillow" is the sort of book a man might write for his children, saying, in effect: "This is the way I remember it. The time I killed three Japs while on patrol. The day I went AWOL. The way it is for a man to die. And these are the men I knew—Captain Dreadnought, Lieutenant Commando, Pvt. Chuckler, Major Major-Share, Filthy Fred—some of them heroes, some cowards, some living, some dead but all inexorably part of my life." For Mr. Leckie writes of his companions as though they might be characters in a morality play—as, indeed, they were. Like most Marines, he both loved and hated the Corps—loved it for the arrogance with which it relegated to itself the tough assignments; hated it for the sacrificial demands that were made on the individual soldier. There is no sentimentalism here, no gratuitous brutality; in the end, of course, it is a success story, for the irony of war is that injustice is not incompatible with victory. And how do you know when you've won? Mr. Leckie's answer deserves quoting: "An officer's mess is one of the surest barometers of military success. So long as the officers continue to pig it with the men, there is danger of defeat. But once the officer's mess appears—raised almost on the bodies of the foe, contrived of sticks or pieces of canvas or perhaps only an imaginary line like a taboo—once this appears, and caste is restored, we know that victory is ours." —THE NEW YORK TIMES

This political and military history of World War II traces the global conflict from its origins in the 1920s and 1930s to Japan's final surrender in 1945.

The Saga of World War II

Delivered from Evil

Discusses the causes of the Korean conflict, America's intervention, and the struggle of the United Nations to bring peace to Korea

The War in Korea, 1950-1953

From Robert Leckie, the World War II veteran and New York Times bestselling author of Helmet for My Pillow, whose experiences were featured in the HBO miniseries The Pacific, comes this vivid narrative of the astonishing six-month campaign for Guadalcanal. From the Japanese soldiers’ carefully calculated—and ultimately foiled—attempt to build a series of impregnable island forts on the ground to the tireless efforts of the Americans who struggled against a tenacious adversary and the temperature and terrain of the island itself, Robert Leckie captures the loneliness, the agony, and the heat of twenty-four-hour-a-day fighting on Guadalcanal. Combatants from both sides are brought to life: General Archer Vandegrift, who first assembled an amphibious strike force; Isoroku Yamamoto, the naval general whose innovative strategy was tested; the island-born Allied scout Jacob Vouza, who survived hideous torture to uncover the enemy’s plans; and Saburo Sakai, the ace flier who shot down American planes with astonishing ease. Propelling the Allies to eventual victory, Guadalcanal was truly the turning point of the war. Challenge for the Pacific is an unparalleled, authoritative account of this great fight that forever changed our world.

Guadalcanal: The Turning Point of the War

Challenge for the Pacific

The Wars of America is a dramatic and compelling narrative history by an outstanding military historian of America's armed conflicts and the political, cultural and economic factors behind them since the earliest explorers and settlers arrived on this continent. First published in 1968, It was revised and updated in 1981 to include the Vietnam War. It has now been updated to include all the events of the last ten years in Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, and the victory over Iraq in the Persian Gulf by United Nations forces under the command of General Norman Schwarzkopf. A final chapter analyzes the self-destruction of the European communist world in the summer and fall of 1991, including the collapse of the hard-line Soviet government and the upheavals in Yugoslavia, and speculates on the meaning of these developments on America's future. Leckie not only stresses those personal aspects of war that make it the most intense and contradictory of our experiences. In the new chapters he shows how, while operating in a quintessentially American tradition, our military and political leaders applied the tragic lessons learned in the war in Southeast Asia against North Vietnam by changing from a conscripted to a volunteer army, thus leading the way to better training methods, higher morale, and far better performance on the battlefield. Combining dramatic narrative with sound reference material, The Wars of America is essential for anyone who wishes to understand America at war.

The Wars of America

Spans seven tumultuous decades of pre-Revolutionary American history, from the discovery and exploration period through the War of the Grand Alliance, 1688-1697; War of the Spanish Succession, 1701-1714; War of the Austrian Succession, 1740-1748, to the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763 (French and Indian War).

The Saga of the French and Indian Wars

A Few Acres of Snow

"Leckie is a gifted writer with the ability to explain complicatedmilitary matters in layperson's terms, while sustaining the dramainvolved in a life-and-death struggle. His portraits of the keyplayers in that struggle . . . are seamlessly interwoven with hisexciting narrative." -Booklist"As always, [Leckie] describes themaneuvers, battles, and results in telling detail with a cinematicstyle, and his portraits . . . are first-rate."-The Dallas MorningNews"Leckie's accounts of battles, important individuals, and therole of Native Americans bring to life the distant drama of theFrench and Indian Wars."-The Daily Reflector With his celebrated sense of drama and eye for colorful detail,acclaimed military historian Robert Leckie charts the long, savageconflict between England and France in their quest for supremacy inpre-Revolutionary America. Packed with sharply etched profiles ofall the major players-including George Washington, Samuel deChamplain, William Pitt, Edward Braddock, Count Frontenac, JamesWolfe, Thomas Gage, and the nobly vanquished Marquis deMontcalm-this panoramic history chronicles the four great colonialwars: the War of the Grand Alliance (King William's War), the Warof the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's War), the War of theAustrian Succession (King George's War), and the decisive Frenchand Indian War (the Seven Years' War). Leckie not only providesperspective on exactly how the New World came to be such a fiercelycontested prize in Western Civilization, but also shows us exactlywhy we speak English today instead of French-and reminds us howeasily things might have gone the other way.

"A Few Acres of Snow"

"Leckie treats not the causes of our wars, nor the controversies that have always attended them, nor their results, so often equivocal, debatable, or flatly disappointing, but the manner in which they were fought, their leadership, their pages of glory and of shame".--Allan Nevins, Saturday Review.

A New and Updated Edition: Volume One: From 1600 to 1900

the last battle of World War II

Okinawa

The Battle for Iwo Jima

The Best Selling account of Combat in the Pacific.

From the World War II veteran and "New York Times"-bestselling author of "Helmet for My Pillow," whose experiences were featured in the HBO miniseries "The Pacific," comes this vivid narrative of the astonishing six-month campaign for Guadalcanal.

Guadalcanal: the Turning Point of the War

Penguin delivers you to the front lines of The Pacific Theater with the real-life stories behind the HBO miniseries. Former Marine and Pacific War veteran Robert Leckie tells the story of the invasion of Okinawa, the closing battle of World War II. Leckie is a skilled military historian, mixing battle strategy and analysis with portraits of the men who fought on both sides to give the reader a complete account of the invasion. Lasting 83 days and surpassing D-Day in both troops and material used, the Battle of Okinawa was a decisive victory for the Allies, and a huge blow to Japan. In this stirring and readable account, Leckie provides a complete picture of the battle and its context in the larger war.

The Last Battle of World War II

A lively narrative history of the Revolutionary War covers the conflict from its root causes and initial battles to the British surrender at Yorktown. By the author of Delivered from Evil. National ad/promo.

The Saga of the American Revolution

George Washington's War

A retelling of the April Fool's day invasion of Japan in 1945 by a U.S. Marine veteran offers a perspective of the eighty-three-day battle from American and Japanese viewpoints and includes portraits of Japanese generals who committed hara-kiri. 35,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo.

Las memorias de Robert Leckie constituyen uno de los más apasionantes relatos de un testigo directo de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. En enero de 1942, poco después del ataque japonés a Pearl Harbor, se alistó en el cuerpo de marines de los Estados Unidos. Aquí se narra su odisea, desde el durísimo y apresurado entrenamiento en Carolina del Sur hasta las feroces batallas de la campaña del Pacífico. Sin escatimar detalle de las atrocidades y sacrificios de la guerra, retrata en toda la crudeza de qué madera están hechos los verdaderos soldados, cómo luchan y a menudo mueren en defensa de su país. Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg y Gary Goetzman, creadores de la magistral serie Hermanos de sangre, han adoptado material de esta obra para la exitosa miniserie épica de HBO The Pacific, en la que James Badge Dale interpreta a Robert Leckie.

Robert Leckie

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