Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heroes

A world famous basketball player writing about the history of World War II may seem incongruous. But there is an order to these things; Abdul-Jabbar's high school mentor, Leonard Smith, was in the 761st Battalion, the first all-black tank battalion to see combat in World War II. Together, Abdul-Jabbar and Smith interviewed the unit's seventy survivors and gleaned from them the story of this amazing band of brothers. The 761st operated under conditions of institutional racism that were as seve…