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The Age of Invincible: The Ship that Defined the Modern Royal Navy
By Nick Childs. 2009
<p>A gripping account of one of the Royal Navy’s most significant modern warships.<p> <p>The HMS Invincible is a ship whose…
eventful life story, it is argued, embodies that of the Royal Navy itself during the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st. From her conception and design, through her various deployments (including the Falklands) and her evolving role and technical adaptation to meet changing strategic requirements, her fluctuating fortunes have been intertwined with those of the Royal Navy as a whole. Now, as a new breed of carriers is being commissioned to replace her, this thoroughly researched analysis of her career is the perfect platform from which to ask the important questions regarding the future role of the Royal Navy and Britain’s place in the world.<p>
Action at Badama Post: The Third Afghan War, 1919
By Paul Macro. 2019
A thrilling account of the rescue of RAF crewmen after their aircraft crashes in Afghanistan in 1919. This is the…
story of an unknown incident during the little-known Third Afghan War. An aircraft from the No. 20 Squadron RAF was lost while investigating gathering tribesman. The crew were rescued, and most of the aircraft was recovered by the Kurram Militia and the 22nd Battery Motor Machine Gun Service. It was an all-arms action—the lives of two airmen were saved at the cost of an Indian Militiaman and an unknown number of Afghan tribesmen. It also illustrates the experience of a virtually unknown group of soldiers, the 22nd Battery of the Motor Machine Gun Service. They had volunteered to serve as Motor Machine Gunners in France, had been through an intense, competitive, and sometimes costly selection process, and had now suddenly found themselves dispatched half way round the globe to the heat, dust, snows and monsoons of India and the North-West Frontier. This book examines the conflict’s background, the Kurram Militia, the history of the squadron and the lives of the key players. While this was not the only action the 22nd Battery of the Motor Machine Gun Service fought during the Third Afghan War, this one was recorded in the account of A/Sjt Ernest “Bill” Macro, who was in charge of the section of 22nd Battery dispatched to Badama Post in late July 1919. This is his story, and the stories of the other men for whom the climax of their experience in the Third Afghan War came during the action at Badama Post
Politics, Murder and Love in an Italian Family: The Amendolas in the Age of Totalitarianisms
By R.J.B. Bosworth. 2023
What did it mean to live with fascism, communism, and totalitarianism in modern Italy? And what should we learn from…
the experiences of a martyred liberal democrat father and his communist son? Through the prism of a single, exceptional family, the Amendolas, R.J.B. Bosworth reveals the heart of twentieth-century Italian politics. Giovanni and Giorgio Amendola, father and son, were both highly capable and dedicated Anti-Fascists. Each failed to make it to the top of the Italian political pyramid but nevertheless played a major part in Italy's history. Both also had rich but contrasting private lives. Each married a foreign and accomplished woman: Giovanni, a woman from a distinguished German-Russian intellectual family; Giorgio, a Parisian working class girl, who, to him, embodied Revolution. This vivid and engaging biographical study explores the highs and lows of a family that was at the centre of Italian politics over several generations. Tracing the complex relationship between Anti-Fascist politics and the private lives of individuals and of the family, Politics, Murder and Love in an Italian Family offers a profound portrait of a century of Italian life.
A Concise History of Serbia (Cambridge Concise Histories)
By Dejan Djokić. 2023
This accessible and engaging book covers the full span of Serbia's history, from the sixth-century Slav migrations up to the…
present day. It traces key developments surrounding the medieval and modern polities associated with Serbs, revealing a fascinating history of entanglements and communication between southeastern and wider Europe, sometimes with global implications. This is a history of Serb states, institutions, and societies, which also gives voice to individual experiences in an attempt to understand how the events described impacted the people who lived through them. Although no real continuity between the pre-modern and modern periods exists, Dejan Djokić draws out several common themes, including: migrations; the Serbs' relations with neighbouring empires and peoples; Serbia as a society formed in the imperial borderlands; and the polycentricity of Serbia. The volume also highlights the surprising vitality of Serb identity, and how it has survived in different incarnations over the centuries through reinvention.
The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution
By Benjamin L. Carp. 2023
Who set the mysterious fire that burned down much of New York City shortly after the British took the city…
during the Revolutionary War? New York City, the strategic center of the Revolutionary War, was the most important place in North America in 1776. That summer, an unruly rebel army under George Washington repeatedly threatened to burn the city rather than let the British take it. Shortly after the Crown’s forces took New York City, much of it mysteriously burned to the ground. This is the first book to fully explore the Great Fire of 1776 and why its origins remained a mystery even after the British investigated it in 1776 and 1783. Uncovering stories of espionage, terror, and radicalism, Benjamin L. Carp paints a vivid picture of the chaos, passions, and unresolved tragedies that define a historical moment we usually associate with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.&rdquo
How did the creation of an overseas empire change politics in England itself? After 1660, English governments aimed to convert…
scattered overseas dominions into a coordinated territorial power base. Stuart monarchs encouraged schemes for expansion in America, Africa, and Asia, tightened control over existing territories, and endorsed systems of slave labor to boost colonial prosperity. But English power was precarious, and colonial designs were subject to regular defeats and failed experimentation. Recovering from recent Civil Wars at home, England itself was shaken by unrest and upheaval through the later seventeenth century. Colonial policies emerged from a kingdom riven with inner tensions, which it exported to enclaves overseas. Gabriel Glickman reinstates the colonies within the domestic history of Restoration England. He shows how the pursuit of empire raised moral and ideological controversies that divided political opinion and unsettled many received ideas of English national identity. Overseas ambitions disrupted bonds in Europe and cast new questions about English relations with Scotland and Ireland. Vigorous debates were provoked by contact with non-Christian peoples and by changes brought to cultural tastes and consumer habits at home. England was becoming an imperial nation before it had acquired a secure territorial empire. The pressures of colonization exerted a decisive influence over the wars, revolutions, and party conflicts that destabilized the later Stuart kingdom.
I Was A German: An Autobiography of Ernst Toller
By Ernst Toller. 2023
This is the fascinating autobiography of Ernst Toller. Ernst Toller (1893 - 1939) was a German left-wing playwright, best known…
for his expressionist plays. He also famously served for six days in 1919 as the President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, later being imprisoned for his actions. This volume is highly recommended for those with an interest in twentieth-century European history. Contents include: "Childhood", "A Student in France", "War", "At the Front", "An Attempt to Forget Revolt", "Strike", "The Military Prison", "The Lunatic Asylum", "Revolution", "The Bavarian Soviet Republic", etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive.-Print ed.
Insight and Personality Adjustment: A Study of Psychological Effects of War
By Therese Benedek. 2023
Sudden changes in the social scene, upheavals such as are wrought by economic depression, by revolutions and by wars, lay…
bare for our observation the interaction between the individual and society; they expose sharply the individual and his relationship to his primary social unit: the family. The war, with the shocklike interruption of the usual tempo of living, wrote a new, clearly defined chapter in the life of the individual as well as of the nation. And the family bears the brunt of the upheaval. Sociologists as well as psychiatrists look upon the family with concern. Will the family—this proven institution of many tasks—be able to carry on and continue to conserve our cultural inheritance, conveying it to a new, rebellious generation? Will it be able, at the same time, to keep step with the progress which our complex society impatiently forces upon its traditions?Impressed by the impact of the war upon the population, the psychiatrist had endless opportunities to study and interpret its effects upon human relationships. For the war exposed the images, illusions, expectations and disappointments which each of us harbors as indelible impressions of living together. Thus conflicts which already might have receded into inactivity during the routine of peacetime living were stirred into consciousness and demanded attention.
Outside the Walls
By Gladys Slaughter Savary. 2023
Gladys Becker Slaughter, Madame Savary (2 Jun 1893-14 Sep 1985), was an American woman of Manila who labored long and…
hard to help the starving, neglected, abused, and threatened "internees" at Santo Tomas Internment Camp, supplying them with food every day and performing various other services, such as laundry, communication and monetary assistance, to help ease their hardship. At the same time, she also worked hard to help her servants and friends outside of Santo Tomas survive the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and the 1945 Battle of Manila. Gladys was not incarcerated by the Japanese because, being married to a Frenchman, she was regarded as a citizen of France which by that time had a puppet government aligned with Japan's ally Germany. Gladys also sent help to a POW camp. Several of her activities could have resulted in torture and execution had she been caught. She maintained a diary throughout the Japanese occupation, and made this the basis of her book Outside the Walls.Living in Pasay, Gladys escaped – barely and unknowingly at the time – the massive, systematic massacre of non-Japanese men, women, and children conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy 31st Special Base Force (marines), as well as deaths caused by U.S. artillery during the Battle of Manila, especially in Ermita and Malate, just next to Pasay. The estimated toll is around 100,000 killed. Even Germans and French were not spared.-Wiki
Engineers in Battle
By Paul Williams Thompson, E. Reybold. 2023
MODERN war, in placing a premium on mobility, has placed a premium on the Engineer. For it is the task…
of the Engineer to keep the routes of advance clear of obstacles which might impede the progress of the modern engines of war. This purely offensive role of the Engineer is in addition to all his conventional duties such as effecting demolitions and maintaining routes of communication.But, even in his conventional dudes, the Engineer now proceeds with new equipment, new techniques, and new doctrines. It is literally true that one who knows only the Engineer unit of World War I would scarcely recognize the corresponding unit today.As America learns to know its new Army better and better, these facts will become self-evident. Meanwhile, for living examples of the modern conception of the Engineer in battle, one can do no better than go to the records of the actual engagements in Europe.Colonel Thompson’s book takes us to the European battlefields, and throws the spotlight on the actions of combat Engineers:…including Warsaw, Bzura, the Upper Rhine, the Maginot Line and others. He also looks at mine-laying operations and pontooneering on the Loire and Seine.
Submarine: The Autobiography of Simon Lake
By Simon Lake. 2023
PERHAPS no man in the past century has had as much to do with the shape of history as Simon…
Lake. That statement is intended as a query rather than as a statement of fact. It may be debatable, but it is also defendable.He is responsible for the modern submarine.The World War pivoted on him. Not on the Kaiser or Lloyd George or Hindenburg or Wilson or Ludendorff. He had nothing to do with the provocations or the settlements. He was an engineer almost unknown except on the coast of New Jersey and in a few capitals of Europe. His sympathies were not warmly engaged for either of the parties to the conflict. Not until the United States entered the war was he greatly stirred.Yet the pitch-pine boat he stitched and screwed and nailed together as a boy rattled a mighty empire. Great Britain’s crown as Queen of the Seas almost slipped off her imperial head. If she had gone down, France must have gone with her. The consequences of such a collapse are now incalculable. Today’s world may have been no worse than it is, but it must have been almost insanely different.
USAF Strategic Air Warfare: An Interview With Generals Curtis E Lemay, Leon W Johnson, David a Burchinal and Jack J Catton
By Richard H. Kohn, United States Air Force Office of Air Force History. 2023
“Military history helps provide a realistic perspective on warfare. Through the study of past events, we gain insight into the…
capabilities of armed forces and, most importantly, a sound knowledge of the policies, strategies, tactics, doctrine, leadership, and weapons that have produced success in battle. Each of us, in broadening our knowledge of air power’s past, helps to maintain the most effective Air Force possible, now and in the future.”-Foreword.Early in June 1984 some thirty-five of the retired four-star generals of the United States Air Force gathered in Washington, D.C., for the annual Senior Statesmen Conference. Each year since the early 1960s the Air Force has invited its retired four-star generals to Washington. From that group in 1984, the Office of Air Force History invited four general officers—Generals Curtis E. LeMay, Leon W. Johnson, David A. Burchinal, and Jack J. Catton—to participate in a group oral interview on the history of strategic air warfare. They accepted and on June 15, 1984, at Bolling Air Force Base, the four discussed for nearly three hours the development and evolution of strategic air warfare. Because the session ended without time for a discussion of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War, the four conferred again, this time by telephone, to discuss these and other issues not considered earlier. This interview was the third in a series begun by the Office of Air Force History with the “senior statesmen,” the first in 1982 covering air superiority in World War II and Korea, the second in 1983 discussing the type of aerial interdiction used in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
Unofficial History
By Field-Marshal Sir William Slim. 2023
Like most members of the professional military freemasonry, Field Marshal Sir William Slim came to admire “all the soldiers of…
different races who have fought with me and most of those who have fought against me.” Among the most likable of his enemies were the Wazirs of India’s Northwest Frontier. In 1920, Slim took part in a retaliatory raid on an obscure village. It was an unusually easy victory over the canny Wazirs, whom the British took by surprise and escaped from with scant loss. Afterwards, in the casual frontier way, the British sent a message to the Wazirs, expressing surprise at the enemy’s unusually poor shooting. The Wazirs replied in courtly fashion that their rifles were Short Magazine Lee-Enfields captured in previous fights with the British, and that they had failed to sight the guns to accord with a new stock of ammunition. Now, having calculated the adjustment, they would be delighted to demonstrate their bull’s-eye accuracy any time the British wanted. “One cannot help feeling,” Slim says, “that the fellows who wrote that ought to be on our side.” Slim genuinely enjoyed his virtually blood-free skirmishes with such foes as the Turks, the Wazirs and the Italians in 1940 Ethiopia.“An attempt to depict the lives of ordinary men in and out of combat. The accounts are written with style, wit and exceptional humanity.”—Tom Hall-Print ed.
Heusinger of the Fourth Reich
By Charles R. Allen. 2023
“Within a year after Potsdam, this mighty Agreement was given its funeral by the then Secretary of State, Mr. James…
Byrnes, in his Stuttgart speech. Mr. Churchill, with President Truman at his side, adumbrated the ultimate reversal of our German policy in his Fulton speech which formally started the Cold War. A speech by Herbert Hoover to a small group of Germans whom I had assembled in Stuttgart in January 1947 was also significant: he told them that the U.S. expected their support in the coming struggle with “the atheistic barbarians of the East.”Looking back on this reversal of policy, it seems to me that the Power Elite’s major problem was to propagandize our people to accept German remilitarization in the defense of “freedom.” Heusinger of the Fourth Reich brilliantly traces step-by-step, with a scholarly documentation which cannot for a moment be challenged, how the American Power Elite has helped this criminal conspiracy, the German General Staff, to return to power with the largest, most powerful military machine in Europe today: the aggressive, Nazi-oriented and Nazi-commanded West German military establishment.Through this book, the author, Charles R. Allen, Jr., a gifted young political analyst, completely demolishes the official United States myth that the General Staff was something separate and different from Hitler’s murderous Reich; that it was a non-political, purely professional group innocently carrying out its sworn duty to serve the German people and der Führer because the General Staff’s oath was taken “under God.” What blasphemy!”-Introduction
The Sun Was Darkened
By Alice Franklin Bryant. 2023
A fascinating account of imprisonment in a WWII Japanese internment camp in the Philippines, despite the privations and indignities heaped…
upon her she forged a post-war career as a peace activist.“Alice Franklin Bryant grew up in a small Missouri town a hundred miles south of St. Louis. Later she moved to St. Louis itself and then Colorado Springs. But it was in Seattle that she finally made her home. She went to the University of Washington there and after her graduation, her wanderlust took her to Canton, China, where she taught English and American children for a year. This gave Mrs. Bryant an opportunity to study Cantonese at which she grew very proficient. She taught in Hawaii and the Philippines and it was in the latter place that she met and married William Cheney Bryant who had been Provincial Governor of Luzon and Mindanao but who, at the time of his marriage to the author, was managing a coconut plantation on Negros. Here they were caught when the Japanese struck. And it was Mrs. Bryant’s experiences on Negros that brought about the writing of this book.”-Introduction
Beyond The Call of Duty
By Franklin M. Reck. 2023
THE Medal of Honor is the highest decoration for bravery in battle awarded by the United States. It is frequently…
called the Congressional Medal of Honor, though the word “Congressional” doesn’t properly belong in the title.All citations for the Medal of Honor contain some variant of the following words:“For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity involving risk of life above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy.”This book tells the stories of those first sixteen, plus two Army Air Force officers who won their decorations in a ground action during an infantry attack. Two of the winners in this book are Cavalry—jeep-mounted cavalry operating with the infantry during the Sicilian campaign.These men received the Medal of Honor, first of all, because their most intimate comrades thought they deserved it. A recommendation for a Medal of Honor begins on the field of action, with fellow soldiers who saw or shared in the exploit.
Managing Northern Europe's Forests: Histories from the Age of Improvement to the Age of Ecology (Environment in History: International Perspectives #12)
By K. Jan Oosthoek, Richard Hölzl. 2018
Northern Europe was, by many accounts, the birthplace of much of modern forestry practice, and for hundreds of years the…
region’s woodlands have played an outsize role in international relations, economic growth, and the development of national identity. Across eleven chapters, the contributors to this volume survey the histories of state forestry policy in Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, and Great Britain from the early modern period to the present. Each explores the complex interrelationships of state-building, resource management, knowledge transfer, and trade over a period characterized by ongoing modernization and evolving environmental awareness.
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
By Patrick Radden Keefe. 2019
<P><P>From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland…
and its devastating repercussions <P><P>In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. <P><P>In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes. Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. <P><P>The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. <P><P>From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish. <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791 (Reacting to the Past #0)
By Mark C. Carnes, Gary Kates, Jennifer Popiel. 2021

Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued
By Peter Sís. 2021
A Finalist for the 2022 Jane Addams Children's Book Award An NPR Best Book of 2021 A New York Times…
Best Children's Book of 2021 A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 A Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book of 2021 A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book of 2021 In December 1938, a young Englishman canceled a ski vacation and went instead to Prague to help the hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Nazis who were crowded into the city. Setting up a makeshift headquarters in his hotel room, Nicholas Winton took names and photographs from parents desperate to get their children out of danger. He raised money, found foster families in England, arranged travel and visas, and, when necessary, bribed officials and forged documents. In the frantic spring and summer of 1939, as the Nazi shadow fell over Europe, he organized the transportation of almost 700 children to safety. Then, when the war began and no more children could be rescued, he put away his records and told no one. It was only fifty years later that a chance discovery and a famous television appearance brought Winton’s actions to light. Peter Sís weaves Winton’s experiences and the story of one of the children he saved, Vera Gissing. Nicky & Vera is a tale of decency, action, and courage told in luminous, poetic images by an internationally renowned artist.