While I am hardly a Civil War expert, or even close to being one, I found Bruce Levine's The Fall of the House of Dixie a very original and different take on the Civil War and that critical period in United States history. Levine does not concentrate on battles, or much on politics, but more on the effect of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation on the psychology and social fabric of the South.

Levine uses the voices of the people who lived it. Through dedicated research of their diaries and letters, Levine unearths what and how the people felt, both slaves and slaveholders, during this time when slaves had no voice. The book's title comes from the diary of Katherine Stone, a Louisiana plantation owner and holder of more than 150 slaves, who made the Stone family life one of "luxurious ease." While Stone was keeping her diary, she was reading Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, and the irony of that correlation to what was going on in the South made for this terrific title. It is through hers and similar perspectives that we witness the dissolution of the South as a way of life and a state of mind.

The portrait of President Lincoln is fascinating. The man is hardly depicted as a saint, but more as a shrewd politician who would do anything to hold the Union together -- and some of those options he considered may shock you -- until he runs out of options and the Union bursts at its seams. Lincoln then does whatever he must to reunite the States once more, and we witness the results of those actions for himself and for his re-United States.

In a time that "celebrates" the anniversary of The Civil War, there are dozens of titles about this bloody conflict, but I think The Fall of the House of Dixie may stand alone for its originality and heart.

Dakota Meyer is a Marine, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, and a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. The Medal of Honor is the highest award of valor in action against an enemy force. There are very few living recipients. Into the Fire is Dakota Meyer's account (along with military historian, Bing West) of how he achieved that citation.

Into the Fire takes no prisoners. Meyer is out to set the record straight about what happened to his team in the battle for Ganjigal, "a battle that resulted in the largest loss of American advisors, the highest number of distinguished awards for valor and the most controversial investigations for derelictions of duty in the entire Afghanistan war." The combat is intense, intimate, deadly, and detailed. From Bing West's note: "Most acts of bravery occur at a single point in time; Dakota rushed toward death, not once, not twice, but five times." Meyer chose to do this in an attempt to save his team and those fighting with them, and he was forced to do this due to the lack of available support from American and Afghani forces. "The senior officer in the Joyce TOC (Tactical Operation Center) later said, 'Without knowledge of the exact whereabouts of friendly forces, I did not feel it was worth the risk to clear the fires. That coupled with a lack of SA (Situational Awareness) in regards to the disposition of civilians in the area.' For the record, I believe this is total bullshit," Meyer writes.

Meyer was twenty-one years old when he was placed in this position, and unlike No Easy Day, the book about the SEAL team mission to kill Osama bin Laden, Meyer did not seek this mission out but found himself in a situation and circumstance beyond his wildest expectations. And, ultimately, Meyer feels he failed as it was his job to save his team, or die trying. Dakota Meyer is a Marine. This book will open eyes, raise eyebrows and, maybe, change minds. But, ultimately, Into the Fire is the story of what one individual is capable of achieving and the cost of such brave actions. I'm not sure I've ever read anything like it.

Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato seems to be a bit of everything -- war reportage, Western, adventure, psychological thriller, picaresque, fantasy, and magical realism -- all rolled into one book. So, how can this be? What can support all these genres? The answer: a plea for a reprieve, an impossible wish, in the form of one soldier's mystical dream of escape.

Like many young soldiers in Vietnam, Paul Berlin is afraid. During his first six months in the country, he witnesses tragedy upon tragedy: Billy Boy Watkins is literally scared to death; Pederson is accidentally killed in the paddies; Buff is shot in the face searching a tunnel and Bernie Lynn is shot retrieving him; Lieutenant Sidney Martin, in another tunnel, is blown up by his own men. Still, what most haunts Paul Berlin is not necessarily death, but rather his questionable courage, his "knowing he will not fight well." So he copes however he can. He counts things, catalogs details, remembers camping with his father and dancing with Louise Wiertsma. But his best asset in coping is none other than his own imagination and its muse -- Cacciato.

Cacciato is a nondescript, somewhat oblivious soldier. When he deserts the squad to walk 8,600 miles to Paris, his squad chases him over mountains and jungle, before abandoning the mission, and turning back to the war. But later, having reached a post on the shore of the China Sea, Paul Berlin asks himself a simple question: What if they hadn't turned back? What would have happened? And so we're led on a fantastic journey, an altered, imagined world, where the squad refuses to turn back without Cacciato, where they continue the chase -- through Laos, Burma, and Afghanistan; through Iran, where they're arrested and almost executed; through Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia, Germany. And the farther they chase Cacciato, the clearer it becomes: They, too, are abandoning the war. They become civilians; they stop marching and start walking; Paul Berlin even finds love. When the squad finally reaches Paris, the mission appears all but dead. They try to balance soldierly duties with newfound freedom, only to discover that to gain, and maintain, true freedom, they must soldier again -- they must capture Cacciato.

Like Paul Berlin's mind, Going After Cacciato is mixed up (though appropriately so). It jumps in time and place and story; weaves and binds together reality and imagination; leaves you with a collage of the war and its characters. Its structure is underscored by the rough, yet lyrical, prose of Tim O'Brien.

Published in 1978, Going After Cacciato won the National Book Award, cementing Tim O'Brien's place as the literary voice of the Vietnam War. This was validated in 1990 with the publication of his best-known book, The Things They Carried, and later by In the Lake of the Woods.

"The first thing you should know about me is that I'm crazy." In The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows, Brian Castner heartbreakingly shares anything but your typical war story. Castner takes us on a personal journey through not one, but two wars -- one in Iraq, and the other within himself -- brilliantly intertwining the two in a way so explosively raw.

Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East as an officer of the U.S. Air Force, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq. Castner delves into the day-to-day experiences of an EDO at war: the dangerous investigations of the aftermath of car bombs, the unbearable heat, and the house-to-house search for bomb makers. But his greatest challenge would come on the once familiar soil of his own home. These passages of Castner's terror and fear both in Iraq and at home left me holding my breath.

Flashing back and forth between the two locales, Castner describes the horrific events that took place during his tours of duty, and the uninvited panic he refers to as "the Crazy" during his transition to returning home. We receive a rare glimpse into the mind of a soldier suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the mind of a person dealing with unwanted memories and severe anxiety.

Castner's story snuck up on me in a way that was surprising. He talks about how he enjoyed his job in the military, found meaning in the work he was doing, and embraced the camaraderie of those in his unit. He admits that "despite being surrounded by the gory horrors of war and facing near-death experiences, I somehow never considered what life would be like once I went on the final call to dismantle a roadside bomb." When Castner goes from disrupting roadside improvised explosive devices, to giving his children cereal before they leave for school in the morning, he finds both tasks equally challenging. Riddled with wounds and loss not visible to the naked eye, he reveals a different kind of post-war aftershock. Castner found himself questioning his significance in his family, as his relationship with his wife and children deteriorates, and shares these thoughts freely. Castner's ability to speak openly about a subject that isn't talked about enough is not only inspiring; it's also so very honorable.

The Long Walk is immensely personal, deeply moving, and at times will leave you stunned. This is a story that won't leave you. The eye-opening, touching revelations make this book a must-read, especially during this fragile time.

Listen to Brian Castner talk about his experiences and his memoir here.

Seventy years after Pearl Harbor, most of the heroic and tragic stories of World War II have begun to dissipate into the faded past of a Ken Burns documentary. And this is just wrong on so many levels. But Laura Hillenbrand, author of the beloved Seabiscuit, has returned with Unbroken, an amazing true story about an authentic American hero, that is by turns tragic, inspiring, thoughtful, and informative.

Long before John McCain's travails in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison camp, Louie Zamperini went from being a runner in the 1936 Olympics to Japanese POW camp inmate to, ultimately, rebuilding a life at home. Today, we understand that people who undergo trauma can suffer for years after the events that harmed them. But Zamperini, who spent a month and a half (!) in the shark-infested waters of the Pacific before he was captured and delivered to a brutal prisoner camp, came from a different generation.

Hillenbrand tells Zamperini's story with humor and grace, as improbable as that may sound. She is a born storyteller, and she makes him human; we come to see him as the funny, sharp prankster that he was. She is unflinching in her descriptions of the truly desperate conditions of his imprisonment, but only to show us what influenced the person he became. Zamperini, who is still alive at ninety-three, went on to be a leader in civilian life and a model for reconciliation. In the course of telling his story, Hillenbrand has created a true modern classic about the nature of perseverance and humanity, in the category of works such as Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Unbroken is a book about history and war, of course, but -- like all great writing -- it transcends mere categories and shows us who we are.

Here is a gripping story with a timeless message. You may find that it gives you renewed appreciation for the sacrifices of our veterans, and of all veterans. You may appreciate the understanding we glean of what it means to be a hero after the confetti has been swept up and the paraders have gone home. No matter what, though, you will be awed by Hillenbrand's ability to tell a story with clarity, purpose, and love.

So, you may ask yourself, why would I want to read a book about a U-boat, especially one that is filled with a bunch of dead Nazis? What if I told you that the boat was found only sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey and while the crew had been Nazi, they were really just boys? Sent on a blind suicide mission, these barely young men were under the direction of a demented leadership hell-bent on fighting a lost war until the last soldiers and sailors had fallen. Not enough? Well, in Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson we are taken on a thrilling expedition to uncover answers and discover the fate of this doomed vessel and its crew.

It is 1991 and we meet two men, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, weekend deep-wreck divers. Chatterton and Kohler are rivals at first, who learn about and later find a wreck 230 feet below the surface of the sea, half buried in silt and sediment, where “they could do little more than dive at shadows.” Initially, no one knows what the wreck is, and what fortune it may, or may not, hold. Over the next few years, many divers try to solve the mystery of this wreck, but its secrets are buried with the dead. That is until Chatterton and Kohler team up, with their fascinating and mutual obsession, to prove what they believe is the identity of this boat and its crew. Their exploration goes beyond the dive to Europe, to museums, and the surviving families of Nazi U-boat sailors and officers, eventually leading back to diving into the wreck to ultimately complete their mission.

So, it’s history, but it is also adventure, and Kurson gives us some of the best narrative nonfiction in the category. Shadow Divers is Into Thin Air in the deep sea. It brings the reader down to dive into the shadows of these sunken ships where the depth and duration can bring on a nitrogen narcosis that “banged like an industrial press inside the brain, tunneling peripheral vision and lighting the panic fuse to trick the mind into a certain death.” There were times I would come up from a passage gasping for breath; I found myself checking the time as if I were the one drawing on the oxygen tank. My heart pounded at the prospects of not making it back to the surface alive. And then, I, too, celebrated along with Chatterton and Kohler when they proved their theory and survived to tell Kurson their harrowing, interesting tale.

So, why should one dip into Shadow Divers? Because there is a treasure to be found there, that’s why.

If the story of Operation Mincement wasn’t real, someone would have dreamed it up — and then been laughed at for its improbability. And yet it was one of the most rewarding — and thrilling — espionage stories of World War II, leading to the successful Allied invasions of Sicily and then continental Italy in 1943.

Buried in a list of fifty-one suggested deception strategies (it was number twenty-eight) drafted by Ian Fleming (the author who later created James Bond) in 1939, it was developed three years later by wartime intelligence officers Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and Ewen Montagu of the British Navy. Nicknamed “Operation Mincemeat,” the plot consisted of dropping a corpse — prepared to look like the casualty of a military plane crash — with false “secret” papers off the coast of Spain, in hopes that local authorities sympathetic to the Germans would pass on the misleading intelligence. Cholmondeley, Montagu, and their unit worked for months to bring all the details together: a fresh cadaver with no family, a plausible cover story communicated through faked personal documents (bills, letters, ticket stubs), persuasive misinformation about planned invasions in Sardinia and Greece. The plan succeeded, convincing German intelligence to redirect troops away from Sicily, leaving the city open to a major invasion, just over three months after the body was dropped. It was a piece of meticulous elegance in the midst of war; as Ben Macintyre writes, “Operation Mincement was pure make-believe … that changed the course of history.”

A columnist for the Times of London, Macintyre (Agent Zigzag) does justice to this unlikely true story in Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory. While a thoroughly researched piece of military history, the book reads like a classic espionage thriller. Crackling, darkly comic, and entertaining, Operation Mincement honors the “corkscrew” imagination of agents who, as he says, wage a “battle fought in the mind, from behind a desk, and from beyond the grave.”