Featured Author of the Month: November 2024
John Lanza '67
From One War to Another | Bright Spot Books | BUY NOW
Celebrate Veteran's Day on November 11th!
Summary:
The seed for this book was planted in 2011 when the author gave a talk at a veterans' home on his first book―Shot Down Over Italy―about a B-25 crew. One of the veterans, John Cooney, sought him out to tell him that he too went down in a plane over Italy during World War II, but with a B-24 crew. Over the next three years, they kept in touch and when John passed away in 2014 someone in his family called the author his biographer.
While this book began with war stories about John, the crew he served with, and other crews of their bomb group, it grew to encompass much more when the author learned that John's father served in World War I. His father served with the medical support forces which cared for casualties of war while John served with the fighting air forces many of whom became casualties of war.
The book analyzes two world wars-how they were started, mobilized, fought, supported, ended, and more. It explains the role of the United States in both wars with a focus on its medical support in World War I, which cared for the sick and wounded, and its airpower in World War II, which bombed factories that made weapons, oil fields that fueled them, facilities that stored them, and the transportation networks that brought them to the battlefront.
About John Lanza '67:
John Lanza grew up in Revere, Massachusetts. After graduating from Bates College in 1967, he was a banker in New York City for almost forty years, retiring from JPMorgan Chase in 2006. He has an MBA from Baruch College and taught undergraduate and graduate courses on payments systems for over twenty-five years.
John has five grown children and eight grandchildren, and lives with his wife, Diana, in Caldwell, New Jersey. He is an avid reader and has always been involved with team sports as a player, coach, booster, writer, and photographer. He was once a Red Sox prospect and later a Yankee bird dog scout, at which time his father accused him of treason.
He has spent his retirement years reading, researching, and writing about veteran airmen and the history around them. He spent the first four years of his retirement writing Shot Down Over Italy after falling upon a story about a crew that included his uncle. In giving a talk on the book at a veterans’ home, he met another veteran airman, John Cooney, who sparked his interest in spending another ten years researching and writing From One War To Another.
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