Code Name: Johnny Walker by Johnny Walker and Jim DeFelice

Code Name: Johnny Walker by Johnny Walker and Jim DeFelice
304 pages / 10 hrs, 30 mins

"In this illuminating and informative memoir, an Iraqi translator who risked his life working with...the Navy SEALs tells his remarkable and inspiring story, offering a refreshing new perspective on the Iraq War.l

"As the insurgency in Iraq intensified following the American invasion, U.S. Navy SEALs were called upon to root terrorists from their lairs. Unsure of the local neighborhoods and unable to speak the local languages, they came to rely on one man to guide them and watch their backs. He was a 'terp'--an interpreter--with a job so dangerous they couldn't even use his real name.

"They named him Johnny Walker. They soon called him brother. Over the course of eight years, the Iraqi native traveled around the country with nearly every SEAL and special operations unit deployed there. He went on thousands of missions, saved dozens of SEAL and other American lives, and risked his own daily. Helped to the U.S. by the SEALs he protected, Johnny Walker's life is so remarkable that his tale reads like fiction. But every word of it is true."  --from the publisher

Great book! If you are the least bit interested in the subject matter, you will enjoy it. Johnny Walker is a good storyteller and has left quite a legacy. A true, modern-day hero with solid values. I recommend listening to the book because the reader is terrific. This one gets four out of five stars from me.

Halsey's Typhoon by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

Halsey's Typhoon by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin
322 pages / 10 hrs, 38 mins

"December 1944, the Pacific Theater. General Douglas MacArthur has vowed to return to the Philippines. He will need the help of Admiral William "Bull" Halsey's Pacific Fleet. But at the height of the invasion, Halsey's ships are blindsided by a typhoon of unprecedented strength and scope. Battleships are tossed like toys, fighter planes are blown off carriers, destroyers are capsized, and hundreds of sailors are swept into the rolling, shark-infested sea.

"Only now, thanks to documents that have been declassified after 60 years and scores of firsthand accounts from survivors, can the story finally be told. Informed by years of rigorous research and narrated with the immediacy of an action movie, Halsey's Typhoon is an enthralling true tale of courage and survival against impossible odds and one of the finest untold World War II sagas of our time."  --from the publisher

Wow, what an incredible experience that must have been.  There were 790 seamen lost in the typhoon or from exposure to the elements as they waited to be rescued.  President Gerald Ford and Senator John McCain's grandfather were two of the survivors.  The story is well written and mostly understandable for people unfamiliar to wartime jargon, like me.  Wikipedia has a decent article on the event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Cobra .  I give this one four out of five stars.