Ben Downing

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Ben is Currently Reading

Ben Downing is currently reading

Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America

by Scott Ellsworth

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Oct 22, 2026 07:00AM

Ben Downing is currently reading

The Phantom: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazis Could Not Kill

by Bob Drury

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— Oct 21, 2026 08:31PM

Oct 19, 2026 09:19PM

Ben’s Notes & Highlights

Book cover for Voices of the Pacific, Expanded Edition

Voices of the Pacific, Expanded Edition by Adam Makos

1 highlight

Sure, the horrors never leave you. But I can say until my dying day that I fought with the United States Marine Corps.

Gates of Fire

by Steven Pressfield

13 highlights

“Reservists and citizen-soldiers stand ready, in every free nation, to stand to the colors and die in holocaust, the big war. Reservists and citizen-soldiers remain utterly reluctant to stand and die in anything less. . . . The man who will go where his colors go, without asking, who will fight a phantom foe in jungle and mountain range, without counting, and who will suffer and die in the midst of incredible hardship, without complaint, is still what he has always been, from Imperial Rome to sceptered Britain to democratic America. He is the stuff of which legions are made.”
― Max Boot, The Savage Wars Of Peace: Small Wars And The Rise Of American Power

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