Author Book Talk and Signing - Jim Turner

Historian and author Jim Turner is returning to Sun City West to speak about his book Navajo Code Talker Manual. The book talk and signing is on March 26, 2025, at 3 p.m. in Summit Hall A of the Palm Ridge Rec Center (13800 W Deer Valley Dr.). Doors will open at 2:15 p.m. for residents with a valid Rec Card and their guests and at 2:30 p.m. for the general public. 

Arizona Historical Society’s beloved historian, Jim Turner, has worked with more than seventy local history museums. He co-authored the 4th-grade textbook The Arizona Story, and his pictorial history, Arizona: Celebration of the Grand Canyon State, was a 2012 Southwest Books of the Year selection. Turner moved to Tucson in 1951, earned an MA in U.S. history in 1999, and has been teaching Arizona history for 47 years. His numerous books include: The Mighty Colorado from the Glaciers to the Gulf (2016), Four Corners USA: Wonders of the American Southwest (2018), and Arizona: A History of the Grand Canyon State (2021).

Navajo Code Talker Manual

From Navajo men in service to their country came an extraordinary weapon in the Pacific Arena of World War II. Twenty-nine Navajo Marines were recruited to adapt their language into a code so secret and difficult that the Germans and Japanese could never break it. The code grew, and so did the numbers of Code Talkers, forever altering the course of the war and American history.

This unique, interactive book includes a brief history of the Navajo Code Talkers, a lesson on learning and using the code, and a four-page foldout of the original Code Talker dictionary.