About my new book on the Vietnam War, A Filthy Way to Die

Read over 60 first-hand accounts by participants in the Vietnam War involving Marines, Aviators, Brown Water Navy sailors, Swift Boat operators, assassins, clandestine operations, and much more.....

When the Class of 1965 first entered the Naval Academy in the summer of 1961, few could locate Vietnam on a map. Four years later, many found themselves suddenly iinvolved in deadly combat on the other side of the world in a war directed from Washington with no clear path to victory. Nine members of this class gave their lives as part of the over 58,000 Americans who died. The Vietnamese suffered even greater losses; estimates are that over three million died, including many civilians who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was truly "a filthy way to die."

Marines in battle near the DMZ

Marines exiting a Huey helicopter near the DMZ

Brown Water Navy operations in the Mekong Delta

Diana Pipinos (hand on chin) with her family

My book on The Great Depression, They Never Through Anything

So many wonderful memories, and lessons, from Americans who survived the challenging years of the 1930's

Contains memories by 22 Americans, each from different parts of the U.S. including Dust Bowl survivors; Anabaptists in northen Indiana; a 9-year daughter of Greek immigrants who was placed in a sanitarium due to tuberculosis, but later became a highly successful restauranteur and friend of movie stars; a barnstorming aviator in Seattle, nursing students from poverty-stricken regions of Kentucky; a Black man who tolied in a turpentine forest in southern Georgia, a socialite whose famous grandfather took her on a steamship to Panama where he had literally built the canal...and many more incredible stories....

The Country School Teacher

Mary Jeannette Roberts with her pupils in one-room schoolhouse , Stronghurst, IL, 1930

Survivors of the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake at a Red Cross camp

Diana Pipinos (hand on chin) with her family