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News & Events

Band of Sisters Tests “Book Chat” on Oct. 15

Posted: 8/19/2025

The USNA66 Ladies are conducting a book chat for those ’66 “Band of Sisters” who enjoy reading or listing to books. Details:

  • Brief discussion on books. “Pilot Test” – let’s see how the conversation goes!
  • 2 books selected from USNA66 Ladies July 2025 book list – both address World War II but from very different perspectives.
  • You are encouraged to read or listen to EITHER book – OR BOTH – but it is not required.
    • Strangers in Time by David Baldacci: set in London in 1944, it is a character-driven tale of three disparate souls whose paths unexpectedly intertwine during the last year of the Second World War.
      • Per author Jodi Picoult, “Baldacci’s foray into historical fiction is a meticulously precise account of what it was like to live through the Blitz in London—a visceral reminder that war not only levels social classes but creates the most unlikely and indefatigable bonds between unlikely souls.”
    • Annapolis Goes to War: The Naval Academy Class of 1940 and Its Trial by Fire in World War II by Craig Symonds*. In WWII, the Naval Academy Class of 1940 (the “Forties”) lost 76 graduates. Seven of them were aboard the Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941. The book begins with wide-eyed students converging on the banks of Maryland’s Severn River and describes the Academy experience that our husbands went through 22 years later. After graduation, the Forties were posted to nearly everything the Navy could offer, from big battleships and aircraft carriers to cramped submarines, on land with the Marines and in the air aboard fighters, dive bombers and helium blimps. And then Pearl Harbor happened… A great summary of the book by the Wall Street Journal is HERE.
      • As wives of USNA grads you will be able to appreciate a lot of the references to the Academy.
      • “Craig Symonds…skillfully weaves a tale both grand and human, of promising young men coming of age against a backdrop of darkening global portents, who find themselves unexpectedly fighting the largest, most crucial war in history. Captivating.” — Jonathan Parshall, Author of Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
      • *Symonds is a professor of naval history at USNA.

NOTE: The book chat will be conducted during the last half of our regularly scheduled ladies zoom on October 15. We will send you a few questions to review one month before the Book Chat. The questions are intended to tease out some of the more interesting threads of connection and impact that you may wish to share. 

RELATED NEWS: Navy logbook that recounted Pearl Harbor recovered after 84 years. Click HERE for article.


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