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Beginning beneath the walls of Troy and culminating in 1930sEurope, a magisterial exploration of the nature of heroism inWestern civilization. In this riveting and insightful cultural history, LucyHughes-Hallett brings to life eight exceptional men from historyand myth to explore our timeless need for heroes. As she re-createsthese extraordinary lives, Hughes-Hallett illuminates theattractions and dangers of hero worship. This is a fascinating bookabout dictatorship and democracy, seduction and mass hysteria,politics and culture, and the tensions between being good and beinggreat.
Experimentation with armored cars by the American militarygoes back to 1898. Today, the armored car is once again back infavor as the Marine Corps and U.S. Army look for economicalsolutions for the third-world battlefields of today andtomorrow.
During World War Two, 131 German cities and towns weretargeted by Allied bombs, a good number almost entirely flattened.Six hundred thousand German civilians died—a figure twice that ofall American war casualties. Seven and a half million Germans wereleft homeless. Given the astonishing scope of the devastation, W.G. Sebald asks, why does the subject occupy so little space inGermany’s cultural memory? On the Natural History of Destructionprobes deeply into this ominous silence.
It is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A derangedactor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre,escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he methis fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteriathat followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of thosewere executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classicelements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even morefascinating. Now, in American Brutus, Michael W. Kauffman, one of the foremostLincoln assassination authorities, takes familiar history to adeeper level, offering an unprecedented, authoritative account ofthe Lincoln murder conspiracy. Working from a staggering array ofarchival sources and new research, Kauffman sheds new light on thebackground and motives of John Wilkes Booth, the mechanics of hisplot to topple the Union government, and the trials and fates ofthe conspirators. Piece by piece, Kauffman explains and corrects commonmisperceptions and analy
Containing over 120 combat photographs- including shots of theflag-raising by other photographers-quotes from survivors,newspapers and magazines, battle reports and Medal of Honorcitations, here is a grunt's eye view of the bloodiest battle inU.S. Marine Corps history. It also recounts "the photograph's"enduring legacy in popular culture, and reveals the fates of theflag raisers- men who became a fixture in their country'shistory.
John Keegan, whose many books, including classic histories ofthe two world wars, have confirmed him as the premier miltaryhistorian of our time, here presents a masterly look at the valueand limitations of intelligence in the conduct of war. Intelligence gathering is an immensely complicated and vulnerableendeavor. And it often fails. Until the invention of the telegraphand radio, information often traveled no faster than a horse couldride, yet intelligence helped defeat Napoleon. In the twentiethcentury, photo analysts didn’t recognize Germany’s V-2 rockets forwhat they were; on the other hand, intelligence helped lead tovictory over the Japanese at Midway. In Intelligence inWar , John Keegan illustrates that only when paired withforce has military intelligence been an effective tool, as it mayone day be in besting al-Qaeda.
Ireland in the mid-1800s was primarily a population ofpeasants, forced to live on a single, moderately nutritious crop:potatoes. Suddenly, in 1846, an unknown and uncontrollable diseaseturned the potato crop to inedible slime, and all Ireland wasthreatened. Index.
A source of endless fascination and speculation, the subjectof countless biographies, novels, and films, Elizabeth I is nowconsidered from a thrilling new angle by the brilliant younghistorian Tracy Borman. So often viewed in her relationships withmen, the Virgin Queen is portrayed here as the product of women—themother she lost so tragically, the female subjects who worshippedher, and the peers and intimates who loved, raised, challenged, andsometimes opposed her. In vivid detail, Borman presents Elizabeth’s bewitching mother,Anne Boleyn, eager to nurture her new child, only to see her takenaway and her own life destroyed by damning allegations—which taughtElizabeth never to mix politics and love. Kat Astley, the governesswho attended and taught Elizabeth for almost thirty years, inviteddisaster by encouraging her charge into a dangerous liaison afterHenry VIII’s death. Mary Tudor—“Bloody Mary”—envied her youngersister’s popularity and threatened to destroy her altogether. Andanimosity dr
Cyrla's neighbors have begun to whisper. Her cousin, Anneke,is pregnant and has passed the rigorous exams for admission to theLebensborn, a maternity home for girls carrying German babies. ButAnneke's soldier has disappeared, and Lebensborn babies are onlyever released to their fathers' custody--or taken away.And then inthe space of an afternoon, life falls apart. A note is left underthe mat. Someone knows that Cyrla, sent for safekeeping with herDutch relatives, is Jewish. She must choose between certaindiscovery in her cousin's home and taking Anneke's place in theLebensborn--Cyrla and Anneke are nearly identical. If she takesrefuge in the enemy's lair, can Cyrla escape before they discovershe is not who she claims? Mining a lost piece of history, SaraYoung takes us deep into the lives of women living in the worst oftimes. Part love story and part elegy for the terrible choices wemust often make to survive, "My Enemy's Cradle "keens for what welose in war and sings for the hope we sometimes find.
The 2003 Iraq war remains among the most mysterious armedconflicts of modernity. In The Iraq War, John Keegan offers a sharpand lucid appraisal of the military campaign, explaining just howthe coalition forces defeated an Iraqi army twice its size andaddressing such questions as whether Saddam Hussein ever possessedweapons of mass destruction and how it is possible to fight a warthat is not, by any conventional measure, a war at all. Drawing on exclusive interviews with Donald Rumsfeld and GeneralTommy Franks, Keegan retraces the steps that led to the showdown inIraq, from the highlights of Hussein’s murderous rule to thediplomatic crossfire that preceded the invasion. His account of thecombat in the desert is unparalleled in its grasp of strategy andtactics. The result is an urgently needed and up-to-date book thatadds immeasurably to our understanding of those twenty-one days ofwar and their long, uncertain aftermath.
In this unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famousmoment in American military history, James Bradley has captured theglory, the triumph, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six menwho raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind theimmortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage andindomitable will of America. In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at IwoJima—and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortarfire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled tothe island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscapeof hell itself, they raised a flag. Now the son of one of the flagraisers has written a powerfulaccount of six very different young men who came together in amoment that will live forever. To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or thewar. But after his death at age seventy, his family discoveredclosed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers ,James Bradley draws on those documents
