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Scott Baron served for two years as
an enlisted man in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. Following his military service, he graduated
from Cal State, Northridge with a degree in Constitutional Law and worked for ten years in law enforcement before beginning
a teaching career at the Evergreen Criminal Justice Center. He continued his teaching career at both the
community college and grade school level. Scott Barron is the author of They Also Served: Military Biographies
of Uncommon Americans and The Military Hall of Fame: Famous Americans Who Served in the Armed Forces. Scott
Barron is also the co-author of Women at War: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Conflicts; The Navy Cross: Extraordinary
Heroism in Iraq, Afghanistan and Other Conflicts; Soldiers Lost at Sea: A Chronicle of Troopship Disasters in Wartime; Silver
Star: Navy and Marine Corps Gallantry in Iraq, Afghanistan and Other Conflicts; and, International Stars at War.
According to the book description
of Women at War: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Conflicts, “Today, women in all U.S. military
services are involved in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They serve as pilots and crewmen of assault helicopters, bombers,
fighters, and transport planes, and are frequently engaged in firefights with enemy insurgents while guarding convoys, traveling
in hostile territory. They perform pat down searches of Arab women at checkpoints, carry out military police duties, and serve
aboard Navy and U.S. Coast Guard ships at sea. Like their male counterparts, they carry out their missions with determination
and great courage. The advent of the insurgency war, which has no rear or front lines, has made the debate regarding women
in combat irrelevant. In such a war zone anyone can be killed or injured at any moment. The stories of these courageous women are told here by James E. Wise and Scott
Baron, who use a format similar to the one employed with such success in the book Stars in Blue. The profiles of some thirty
women and their photographs are included. To record their stories, the authors conducted numerous personal interviews, and utilized numerous oral history interviews
conducted by staff at The Women’s Memorial, located in Arlington, Virginia. In every case Wise and Baron were struck
by the women’s extraordinary display of dedication to their mission and to the soldiers and sailors with whom they served.
Because the service of women in the military has been under reported to date, most of the women profiled here will be unknown
to readers and reveal another dimension to the service of women in the desert and the vital role they play in the armed forces.
While the book’s focus is on today’s women in combat, it also reaches back to Vietnam, Korea, and World War II
to offer selected stories of inspiring women who served at the "cusp of the spear" as they fought and died for their
country.”
According to the book description
of Soldiers Lost at Sea: A Chronicle of Troopship Disasters in Wartime, “Heroism, tragedy,
devotion to duty, and scandal are just a few of the ingredients that make up this dramatic first-time account of troopship
losses in wartime. International in scope, it offers a compilation of stories about historic troopship disasters caused by
torpedoes, aerial attacks, mines, surface fire, foul weather, friendly fire, and poor planning by military decision makers.
Some are well known, like the explosion of the steamship Sultana on the Mississippi while transporting 2,000 Union soldiers
home from Confederate prisons. Others, like the June 1945 sinking of the Japanese cruiser Ashigara by a British submarine
that resulted in the loss of 800 Japanese soldiers, are little known. An extraordinary few far surpass the authors' criteria
for selection of disasters with high troop loss and the involvement of heroic acts. Among the most memorable is the 1851 sinking
of the British frigate Birkenhead with some 600 soldiers and their wives and children aboard. Lacking sufficient lifeboats,
the men stood steady in their ranks on deck as the ship went down. Board of Inquiry hearings, action reports, survivor debriefings, and personal correspondence collected
from archives in Germany, Italy, Russia, Australia, Britain, and the United States tell the story of some fifty vessels that
went down. Many of these disasters, the authors explain, were kept secret for decades. An introductory chapter provides an
overview of troop losses at sea beginning with the age of galley warfare, but the majority of the book focuses on losses of
World War II Allied and Axis ships followed by incidents from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”
According to the book description
of International Stars at War, “The last in a popular series on movie stars in the military,
this handsome book provides readers with a guide to film actors of many nations who served in various branches of their own
military forces. Because they appeared in Hollywood movies, many of these figures will be familiar to Americans. A few even won Oscars. Others worked closer
to home but are still readily recognizable. Most of them date their service to World War II, and the preponderance is British.
Among the more than sixty stars featured are the British actors Richard Attenborough, Richard Burton, Michael Caine, Royal
Navy gunner Sean Connery, Alex Guinness, Rex Harrison, Anthony Hopkins (who spent a year with the Royal Artillery during the
Cold War), Ray Milland, Roger Moore (a first lieutenant with the British Army in occupied West Germany after World War II),
David Niven, Michael Rennie, and Peter Ustinov. Those from Canada include Lorne Greene, Raymond Massey, and Walter Pidgeon.
The Frenchmen include Maurice Chevalier and Charles Boyer. Also featured are Laurence Harvey of South Africa, Peter Finch
of Australia, Oskar Werner of Germany, Toshiro Mifune of Japan, and Audrey Hepburn, who as a child was a courier for World
War II resistance fighters in Holland. While the book focuses on the stars' military experiences, it also provides information about
their earlier lives and screen careers after their service. Like the other books in the series, it will have wide appeal.”
According to the book description of
The Military Hall of Fame: Famous Americans Who Served in the Armed Forces, “Did you know
that Alan Alda, Hawkeye of M*A*S*H, was an Army gunnery officer in the Korean War? Or that gourmet cook Julia Child served
with the OSS-the predecessor of the CIA-in World War II? Or that Yankee Hall of Famer Yogi Berra participated in the D-Day
landing at Normandy? These, and hundreds more fascinating facts make The Military Hall of Fame a fun-filled book that makes
history come alive in an unexpected way.”
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