Against All Odds: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II
BY Alex Kershaw
Join us for a special book club event with New York Times best-selling author Alex Kershaw, who will join us for a lively discussion of his recent work: Against All Odds: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II.
Against All Odds tells the story four men, all in the same unit, who earned medal after medal for battlefield heroism as the Allies raced to defeat Hitler. Maurice “Footsie” Britt, a former professional football player, became the first American to receive every award for valor in a single war. Michael Daly was a West Point dropout who risked his neck over and over to keep his men alive. Keith Ware would one day become the first and only draftee in history to attain the rank of general. In WWII, Ware owed his life to the finest soldier he ever commanded, a baby-faced Texan named Audie Murphy. In the campaign to liberate Europe, each would gain the ultimate accolade, the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Tapping into personal interviews and a wealth of primary source material, Alex Kershaw has delivered his most gripping account yet of American courage, spanning more than 600 days of increasingly merciless combat, from the deserts of North Africa to the dark heart of Nazi Germany. Once the guns fell silent, these four exceptional warriors would discover just how heavy the Medal of Honor could be—and how great the expectations associated with it. Having survived against all odds, who among them would finally find peace?
Join us each month to discuss a pre-selected book presenting a foreign policy topic. First Wednesday of each month (12pm).
We are proud to partner with the Loudoun County Public Library who makes available multiple copies of this book for checkout at the Rust Library.