* http://www.randomhouse.com/features/jamesbradley/about_book.html
Flags of Our Fathers
James Bradley with Ron Powers
History | Bantam | Trade Paperback
October 2001 | $12.95 | 0-553-38029-X
The #1 National Bestseller!
In this unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history, James Bradley has captured the glory, the triumph, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Here is 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 flag raisers has written a powerful account of six very different 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 his 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 have ever 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.
* http://www.randomhouse.com/features/jamesbradley/about_author.html
About the author
JAMES BRADLEY is the fourth child of flagraiser John "Doc" Bradley. Raised in Wisconsin, Bradley studied at the University of Notre Dame, Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan and graduated with a degree in East Asian History from the University of Wisconsin. Bradley has vast experience writing and producing corporate films and corporate meetings; he has traveled the world, living and working in more than 40 countries for nearly a decade. Bradley has run companies in the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. He has jumped out of airplanes at 15,000 feet, has scuba-dove in deep waters worldwide, trekked to Mount Everest's base camp and walked among lions in Africa. He is an avid reader of history, enjoys discovering exotic cuisine, cliff diving, golfing and snow skiing.
Bradley has recently established a foundation in support of American and Japanese student exchange programs to offer young people the chance to experience each other's cultures.
He remains a professional motivational speaker and is working on his second book, TALES ON THE ROAD TO TOKYO. He divides his time between homes in New York's Westchester County, and Jamaica.
RON POWERS is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He is the author of White Town Drowsing and Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain. He lives in Vermont.
BITE ME, WATCHTOWER!!!
