Specific wars and military campaigns Books
Thomas Nelson Publishers Ghosts and Haunts of the Civil War: Authentic Accounts of the Strange and Unexplained
£12.34
Gallaudet University Press,U.S. Fighting in the Shadows: The Untold Story of Deaf
Book SynopsisThis visually rich volume presents Harry G. Lang's groundbreaking study of deaf people's experiences in the Civil War. Based on meticulous archival research, Fighting in the Shadows reveals the stories of both ordinary and extraordinary deaf soldiers and civilians who lived during this transformative period in American history. Lang documents the participation of deaf soldiers in the war, whose personal tests of fortitude and perseverance have not been previously explored. There were also many deaf people in noncombat roles whose stories have not yet been told clerks and cooks, nurses and spies, tradespeople supporting the armies, farmers supplying food to soldiers, and landowners who assisted (or resisted) troops during battles. Deaf writers, diarists, and artists documented the war. Even deaf children contributed actively to the war efforts. Lang pieces together hundreds of stories, accompanied by numerous historical images, to reveal a powerful new perspective on the Civil War. These soldiers and civilians were not "disabled" by their deafness. On the contrary, despite the marginalization and paternalism they experienced in society, they were able to apply their skills and knowledge to support the causes in which they ardently believed. Fighting in the Shadows is a story of how deaf civilians and soldiers put aside personal concerns about deafness, in spite of the discrimination they faced daily, in order to pursue a cause larger than themselves. Yet their stories have remained in the shadows, leaving most Americans, hearing and deaf, largely unaware of the deaf people who made significant contributions to the events that changed the course of our nation's history. This book provides new insights into Deaf history as well as into mainstream interpretations of the Civil War.
£28.50
Pelican Publishing Co Civil War in Texas and New Mexico Territory
Book SynopsisMany heroic actions were taken by Hispanic soldiers who have not gotten much recognition for their efforts.
£12.59
Pelican Publishing Co Clark's Regiments: An Extended Index
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£30.74
Barricade Books Inc Pickett's Charge: The Untold Story
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£16.96
University of South Carolina Press The Southern Strategy: Britain's Conquest of
Book SynopsisThis book presents a reexamination of major Southern battles and tactics in the war for independence. A finalist for the 2005 Distinguished Writing Award of the Army Historical Foundation and the 2005 Thomas Fleming Book Award of the American Revolution Round Table of Philadelphia, ""The Southern Strategy"" shifts the traditional vantage point of the American Revolution from the Northern colonies to the South in this study of the critical period from 1775 to the spring of 1780. David K. Wilson suggests that the paradox of the British defeat in 1781 - after Crown armies had crushed all organized resistance in South Carolina and Georgia - makes sense only if one understands the fundamental flaws in what modern historians label Britain's 'Southern Strategy.'In his assessment, he closely examines battles and skirmishes to construct a comprehensive military history of the Revolution in the South through May 1780. A cartographer and student of battlefield geography, Wilson includes detailed, original battle maps and orders of battle for each engagement. Appraising the strategy and tactics of the most significant conflicts, he tests the thesis that the British could raise the manpower they needed to win in the South by tapping a vast reservoir of Southern Loyalists and finds their policy flawed in both conception and execution.Trade ReviewWilson's survey of operations is grounded in an impressive mass of data, which allows him not only to question the fine detail of previous accounts but also to challenge broader interpretations of the war itself.... His book displays deep local knowledge, a strength apparent in his own excellent maps. - Journal of Southern History
£19.76
University of South Carolina Press Faith, Valor And Devotion
Book SynopsisBrilliant and devout, William Porcher DuBose (1836-1918) considered himself a man of thought rather than of action. During the Civil War, he discovered that he was both, distinguishing himself as an able and courageous Confederate officer in the Holcombe Legion and later as a dedicated chaplain in Kershaw's Brigade. Published for the first time, these previously unknown letters of DuBose chronicle his Civil War actions with these two celebrated South Carolina units and make an important contribution to the literature and history of the war. They also advance our understanding of DuBose's burgeoning religious ideals as a Civil War combatant who would later become one of the foremost theologians of the Episcopal Church and a distinguished professor at the University of the South. A native of Winnsboro, South Carolina, DuBose was studying to enter the Episcopal priesthood when the war began. After struggling with the question of secular and spiritual obligations, he decided to join in the defense of the Confederacy and began a long and varied career as a soldier. After service in the lowcountry during the first year of the war, he was thrust into the thick of combat in Virginia, where he was wounded twice and taken as a prisoner of war. After being exchanged and returned to duty in 1862, DuBose was wounded again at the battle of Kinston in North Carolina, and a year later influential friends arranged for his appointment as chaplain in Kershaw's Brigade. He continued to share in the hazards of combat with the men to whom he ministered as they fought in the battles of Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and Cedar Creek in 1864. Adroitly edited by W. Eric Emerson and Karen Stokes, the more than 150 letters collected here prove DuBose to be a man of uncompromising duty to his faith, fellows, and the Confederate cause. He references his interactions with prominent figures of the day, including General Nathan ""Shanks"" Evans, John L. Girardeau, John Johnson, Colonel Peter F. Stevens, General Joseph B. Kershaw, Louisa Cheves McCord, and General John Bratton. Also included here are DuBose's wartime courtship letters to his fiancée and later wife, Anne Peronneau DuBose. Collectively these extraordinary documents illustrate the workings of a mind and heart devoted to his religion and dedicated to service in the Confederate ranks.
£40.46
University of South Carolina Press Into the Crater: The Mine Attack at Petersburg
Book SynopsisThe battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864, was the defining event in the 292-day campaign around Petersburg, Virginia, in the Civil War and one of the most famous engagements in American military history. Although the bloody combat of that ""horrid pit"" has been recently revisited as the centerpiece of the novel and film versions of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, the battle has yet to receive a definitive historical study. Distinguished Civil War historian Earl J. Hess fills that gap in the literature of the Civil War with Into the Crater. The Crater was central in Ulysses S. Grant's third offensive at Petersburg and required digging of a five-hundred-foot mine shaft under enemy lines and detonating of four tons of gunpowder to destroy a Confederate battery emplacement. The resulting infantry attack through the breach in Robert E. Lee's line failed terribly, costing Grant nearly four thousand troops, among them many black soldiers fighting in their first battle. The outnumbered defenders of the breach saved Confederate Petersburg and inspired their comrades with renewed hope in the lengthening campaign to possess this important rail center. In this narrative account of the Crater and its aftermath, Hess identifies the most reliable evidence to be found in hundreds of published and unpublished eyewitness accounts, official reports, and historic photographs. Archaeological studies and field research on the ground itself, now preserved within the Petersburg National Battlefield, complement the archival and published sources. Hess re-creates the battle in lively prose saturated with the sights and sounds of combat at the Crater in moment-by-moment descriptions that bring modern readers into the chaos of close range combat. Hess discusses field fortifications as well as the leadership of Union generals Grant, George Meade, and Ambrose Burnside, and of Confederate generals Lee, P. G. T. Beauregard, and A. P. Hill. He also chronicles the atrocities committed against captured black soldiers, both in the heat of battle and afterward, and the efforts of some Confederate officers to halt this vicious conduct. With fresh insights, adroit research in all manner of sources, and previously unpublished photographs and field maps, Hess takes readers into the Crater once more so that we might better understand the magnitude of this historical event, which Grant deemed ""the saddest affair I have witnessed in the War.
£35.06
University of Tennessee Press Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of
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£36.71
Clear Light Publishers Santa Fe Tales and More
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£15.29
University of North Texas Press,U.S. Life and Death in the Central Highlands: An
Book SynopsisIn 1968 James T. Gillam was a poorly focused college student at Ohio University who was dismissed and then drafted into the Army. Unlike most African-Americans who entered the Army then, he became a Sergeant and an instructor at the Fort McClellan Alabama School of Infantry. In September 1968 he joined the First Battalion, 22nd Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam. Within a month he transformed from an uncertain sergeant—who tried to avoid combat—to an aggressive soldier, killing his first enemy and planning and executing successful ambushes in the jungle. Gillam was a regular point man and occasional tunnel rat who fought below ground, an arena that few people knew about until after the war ended. By January 1970 he had earned a Combat Infantry Badge and been promoted to Staff Sergeant. Then Washington’s politics and military strategy took his battalion to the border of Cambodia. Search-and-destroy missions became longer and deadlier. From January to May his unit hunted and killed the enemy in a series of intense firefights, some of them in close combat. In those months Gillam was shot twice and struck by shrapnel twice. He became a savage, strangling a soldier in hand-to-hand combat inside a lightless tunnel. As his mid-summer date to return home approached, Gillam became fiercely determined to come home alive. The ultimate test of that determination came during the Cambodian invasion. On his last night in Cambodia, the enemy got inside the wire of the firebase, and the killing became close range and brutal. Gillam left the Army in June 1970, and within two weeks of his last encounter with death, he was once again a college student and destined to become a university professor. The nightmares and guilt about killing are gone, and so is the callous on his soul. Life and Death in the Central Highlands is a gripping, personal account of one soldier’s war in the Vietnam War.
£23.76
University of North Texas Press,U.S. The Seventh Star of the Confederacy: Texas during
Book SynopsisPresents research on how Texans experienced Civil war. This book takes you from the battlefront to the home front, ranging from inside the walls of a Confederate prison to inside the homes of women and children left to fend for themselves while their husbands and fathers were away on distant battlefields.
£16.11
University of North Texas Press,U.S. Beyond the Quagmire: New Interpretations of the
Book SynopsisIn Beyond the Quagmire, thirteen scholars from across disciplines provide a series of provocative, important, and timely essays on the politics, combatants, and memory of the Vietnam War. The essays pose new questions, offer new answers, and establish important lines of debate regarding social, political, military, and memory studies. Part 1 contains four chapters by scholars who explore the politics of war in the Vietnam era. In Part 2, five contributors offer chapters on Vietnam combatants with analyses of race, gender, environment, and Chinese intervention. Part 3 provides four innovative and timely essays on Vietnam in history and memory.Trade ReviewThis will be a valuable and significant addition to the historiography of the war."" - James Willbanks, author of Abandoning Vietnam and The Tet Offensive
£25.46
University of North Texas Press,U.S. Phantom in the Sky: A Marine's Back Seat View of
Book SynopsisPhantom in the Sky is the story of a Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the back seat of the supersonic Phantom jet during the Vietnam War—a unique, tactical perspective of the ""guy in back,"" or GIB, absent from other published aviation accounts. During the time of Terry L. Thorsen's service from 1966 to 1970, the RIO played an integral part in enemy aircraft interception and ordnance delivery. In Navy and Marine F-4 Phantom jets, the RIO was a second pair of eyes for the pilot, in charge of communications and navigation, and great to have during emergencies. Thorsen endured the tough Platoon Leaders Course at Quantico and barely earned a commission. He underwent aviation and intercept training while suffering airsickness issues—and still earned his wings. Thorsen joined the oldest and most decorated squadron in the Marine Corps, the VMFA-232 Red Devils in southern California, as it prepared for deployment to Vietnam. In combat, Thorsen felt angst when he saw the sky darken around him from anti-aircraft artillery explosions high above the Ho Chi Minh Trail. On his first close air support mission in support of ground troops (the majority of his Marine aviation missions), he witnessed tracers whiz by his canopy. On one harrowing sortie, he and his pilot purposely became the target to save an Army unit battling an enemy just a hundred feet away. On secret missions with secret weapons, they dove at anti-aircraft artillery muzzle flashes and flew as a low as fifty feet off the deck during close air support sorties, ""scraping"" the napalm off their plane. For one mission a friend survived a crash landing, but a training instructor vanished without a trace.
£27.96
University of North Texas Press,U.S. War in the Villages: The U.S. Marine Corps
Book SynopsisMuch of the history written about the Vietnam War overlooks the U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons. These CAPs lived in the Vietnamese villages, with the difficult and dangerous mission of defending the villages from both the National Liberation Front guerrillas and the soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army. The CAPs also worked to improve living conditions by helping the people with projects, such as building schools, bridges, and irrigation systems for their fields. In War in the Villages, Ted Easterling examines how well the CAPs performed as a counterinsurgency method, how the Marines adjusted to life in the Vietnamese villages, and how they worked to accomplish their mission. The CAPs generally performed their counterinsurgency role well, but they were hampered by factors beyond their control. Most important was the conflict between the Army and the Marine Corps over an appropriate strategy for the Vietnam War, along with weakness of the government of the Republic of South Vietnam and the strategic and the tactical ability of the North Vietnamese Army.War in the Villages helps to explain how and why this potential was realized and squandered. Marines who served in the CAPs served honorably in difficult circumstances. Most of these Marines believed they were helping the people of South Vietnam, and they served superbly. The failure to end the war more favorably was no fault of theirs.
£23.96
Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers Inc New York Times: Disunion: Modern Historians
Book SynopsisA major new collection of modern commentary? from scholars, historians, and Civil War buffs?on the significant events of the Civil War, culled from The New York Times' popular Disunion on-line journal Since its debut on November 6, 2010, Disunion, The New York Times' acclaimed journal about the Civil War, has published hundreds of original articles and won multiple awards, including 'Best History Website' from the New Media Institute and the History News Network. Following the chronology of the secession crisis and the Civil War, the contributors to Disunion, who include modern scholars, journalists, historians, and Civil War buffs, offer ongoing daily commentary and assessment of the Civil War as it unfolded.Now, for the first time, this fascinating and historically significant commentary has been gathered together and organized in one volume. In The New York Times: Disunion, historian Ted Widmer, has selected more than 100 articles that cover events beginning with Lincoln's presidential victory through the Emancipation Proclamation. Topics include everything from Walt Whitman's wartime diary to the bloody guerrilla campaigns in Missouri and Kansas. Esteemed contributors include William Freehling, Adam Goodheart, and Edward Ayers, among others.The book also compiles new essays that have not been published on the Disunion site by contributors and well-known historians such as David Blight, Gary Gallagher, and Drew Gilpin Faust. Topics include the perspective of African-American slaves and freed men on the war, the secession crisis in the Upper South, the war in the West (that is, past the Appalachians), the war in Texas, the international context, and Civil War?era cartography. Portraits, contemporary etchings, and detailed maps round out the book.
£19.80
Medieval Institute Publications The Cistercian Monastery of Zaraka, Greece
Book SynopsisDuring the Frankish Crusader period, Cistercian monks built and developed the monastery of Zaraka in Greece for approximately forty years and were followed first by squatters, then by a seventeenth-century cemetery. The goal of this study has been to identify where the monks came from, how they lived, and why they left so suddenly.Trade ReviewThe strength of this volume rests in the clear presentation of material that strengthens the reader's understanding of this Cistercian abbey and its community. Careful attention to the later phases of the site's habitation--absent from the book's title--also provides vital information about this region in the late and post-Byzantine periods, re-populating the Stymphalos Valley with those whose stories have, until now, been lost. --Sharon E. J. Gerste, University of California-Los AngelesTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements by Sheila Campbell Foreword by Hector Williams Introduction to the Site by Sheila Campbell Historical and Ecclesiastical Context by Kathryn Salzer Architecture of the Church by Anthony Masinton Architectural Sculpture by Sheila Campbell Reconstructing the Abbey Library of Zaraka by Diane Reilly Pottery by Camilla Mackay Coins by Julian Baker Glass by Susan Young Animal Remains by Debbie Ruscillo Medieval Villages in the Peloponnese by Kostantinos Kourelis Human Remains by Sandra Garvie-Lok Conclusions and Areas for further Research by Sheila Campbell
£78.00
Burford Books Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battleground
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£16.11
Universal Publishers The Last Prison: The Untold Story of Camp Groce CSA
£18.95
WW Norton & Co Something Abides: Discovering the Civil War in
Book SynopsisToday, throughout Vermont, it is possible to identify hundreds and hundreds of Civil War–related sites. Throughout Vermont are soldier homes, halls where war meetings encouraged enlistments, churches where soldier funerals were held and abolitionists spoke, monuments to those who served, hospital sites, and homes where women gathered to make items for the soldiers. The Vermont State House is a virtual Civil War museum. A building survives in Woodstock where the war was administered. Cemeteries hold the gravestones of many of the 34,000 who fought. A field even exists where in 1803 a Quaker preacher heard a voice from above fortell a bloody war over slavery. With the help of this book, Civil War sites can be located as in no other state, taking the reader through the beautiful Vermont landscape of hill farms and small towns that looks more like the Civil War era than that of any other state.
£16.99
WW Norton & Co Echoes of the Civil War: Capturing Battlefields
Book SynopsisIn 2011, Michael Falco set out to document the American Civil War's 150th anniversary by photographing reenactments of more than 20 major battles—from the First Manassas, Antietam, and Chancellorsville to Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Appomattox. But rather than shooting these historic re-creations in high-definition, Falco opted for a different, older medium: a pinhole camera. This antebellum photographic technology, shot from an on-the-ground perspective, captures these battlefields in a way that feels more “real” and fully realized than even the famous daguerrotypes made during the war itself. In Falco's transporting photographs, the smoke-filled battle reenactments become blurred and dreamlike, echoing the sentiments found in the actual letters and journals of soldiers who fought and died there. Throughout, historical photographs from the period offer context to the modern-day re-creations, showing just how much—or how little—has changed on this hallowed ground. One hundred and fifty years after the last soldier fell, Echoes of the Civil War provides beautiful and compelling evidence of a Civil War landscape that is, literally and metaphorically, still with us.Trade Review" A Civil War enthusiast since his childhood, photographer Michael Falco set out on a four-year, battlefield-to-battlefield odyssey coinciding with the war’s 150th anniversary. The result is the wonderfully haunting Echoes of the Civil War: Capturing Battlefields through a Pinhole Camera (Countryman Press, $35, 288 pages, ISBN 9781581573800). “Soldiers’ journals and memoirs describe the battlefields as dream-like,” Falco writes, “and that is how they appear through the patient eye of the pinhole camera.” While exploring major battle sites from Bull Run to Appomattox, Falco became not just a chronicler but a re-enactor himself, dressing in period clothing as he set up his primitive wooden box camera, using modern film but no lens, viewfinder or shutter. Along with these evocative photos, Falco interweaves past and present through his narrative as he “tumbled down the rabbit hole of Civil War history.” Echoes of the Civil War will hold great appeal for history and photography buffs alike. " -- Bookpage
£26.00
Turner Publishing Company Brink of Destruction: A Quotable History of the
Book SynopsisBrink of Destruction"": A Quotable History of the Civil War, edited by Randall Bedwell, is a no-holds-barred look at the American Civil War through 450 quotations by the people who fought in it. Period photographs aid in conveying the character of the war to present-day readers and capturing the moods and emotions of the times.""Trade Review"Were the thing to be done over again, I would do as I then did. Disappointments have not changed my convictions." - Jefferson Davis, in this postwar memoirs"
£9.49
Cumberland House Publishing,US Strange Battles of the Civil War
Book Synopsis
£14.99
Turner Publishing Company War Is All Hell: A Collection of Civil War Facts
Book SynopsisWar Is All Hell is a no-holds-barred look at the American Civil War through the words of the people who endured it. Filled with more than 470 quotations from persons directly involved in the war and arranged with dozens of illustrations to convey the character of the war to present-day readers, it captures the thoughts and emotions of the times in a way that no ordinary history can do. Here in their own words are the thoughts, emotions, and curses of a nation at war with itself. Drawing on the well-known leaders such as Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Davis, and Longstreet, it also contains a rich sampling of the common soldiers' observations and insights of the war. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction, highlighting significant events and describing the progress of the war. Both the eastern and western theaters are covered, with particular attention being paid to the great battlefield confrontations. The result is a surprisingly thorough coverage of the war's events and those who wore the blue and the gray.
£9.99
Turner Publishing Company The Rebel and the Rose: James A. Semple, Julia
Book SynopsisIn April 1865 the Civil War was over for most Americans, including the more than 600,000 soldiers, North and South, who died from wounds or disease. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and much of his administration had fled Richmond, accompanied by an escort of cavalry, various hangers-on, and all that was left of the treasury. With the Davis party was a navy paymaster, James S. Semple. In Washington, Georgia, a small town untouched by the war, he was entrusted with $86,000 in gold coin and bullion (about $1 million in today's money) and disappeared into the night. The treasure was secured in the false bottom of a carriage. The Rebel and the Rose"" reveals for the first time what happened to the Confederate gold, until now a mystery.""
£12.59
Turner Publishing Company Webb Garrison's Civil War Dictionary: An
Book SynopsisMore than 2,500 Entries and 330 Illustrations Based on the author's more than thirty years of research and study of original Civil War sources, Webb Garrison's Civil War Dictionary is an authoritative guide to the words and phrases (including nicknames and slang) commonly used during the conflict. Where appropriate, helpful, examples, anecdotes, and illustrations are included to clarify the meanings of some of the terms. What did it mean "to cross the bar"? What was a soldier's "big ticket"? What did it mean "to see the elephant" or "to go South"? Who were the so-called ninety-day men and hundred-day men? What was a soldier supposed to do when his commander shouted, "Let her go, Gallagher!"? How did a person "pay tribute to Neptune"? What was a "picket pin"? Could you make a passable meal out of "possum beer" and "secession bread"? How did a person "vibrate the lines," and why would anyone want to? The American language has changed dramatically in more than 140 years since the conflict. As the meanings of many words and phrases of that time have become obscure or lost, links with the vibrant language of the Civil War era have dissolved, and much of that which had meaning to our forefathers no longer retains the same meaning to us. Thus, this valuable reference work reconnects historians and students of the war with the words, equipment, and organization of the three and a half million soldiers who fought in the conflict.
£12.34
Digital Scanning The Peninsular - McClellan's Campaign of 1862
£11.83
Digital Scanning,US Antietam - Naional Battlefield Site
£10.78
Counterpoint Defeat: Losing Iraq and the Future of the Middle
Book SynopsisAs the dreadful reality of the coalition's defeat in Iraq begins to sink in, one question dominates Washington and London: Why? In this controversial new book, Jonathan Steele provides a stark and arresting answer: Bush and Blair were defeated from the day they decided to occupy the country. Steele describes the centuries of humiliation that have scarred the Iraqi national psyche, creating a powerful and deeply felt nationalism and spreading cultural landmines along the road to winning Baghdad. Steele shows for the first time how the invasion and occupation were perceived by ordinary Iraqis, whose feelings and experiences were completely ignored by Western policymakers. The result of such arrogance, Steele demonstrates, was a failure that will forever resonate with such dark chapters of American and British history as the Vietnam War and the Suez Canal crisis. Blending vivid reportage, informed analysis, and sweeping historical narrative, Defeat is the definitive post-mortem on this pivotal catastrophe.
£12.34
Monthly Review Press,U.S. The American War in Vietnam: Crime or
Book SynopsisIn 2012, President Obama announced that the United States would spend the next thirteen years - through November 11, 2025 - commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War, and the American soldiers, "more than 58,000 patriots," who died in Vietnam. The fact that at least 2.1 million Vietnamese - soldiers, parents, grandparents, children - also died in that war will be largely unknown and entirely uncommemorated. And U.S. history barely stops to record the millions of Vietnamese who lived on after being displaced, tortured, maimed, raped, or born with birth defects, the result of devastating chemicals wreaked on the land by the U.S. military. The reason for this appalling disconnect of consciousness lies in an unremitting public relations campaign waged by top American politicians, military leaders, business people, and scholars who have spent the last sixty years justifying the U.S. presence in Vietnam. It is a campaign of patriotic conceit superbly chronicled by John Marciano in The American War in Vietnam: Crime or Commemoration?A devastating follow-up to Marciano's 1979 classic Teaching the Vietnam War (written with William L. Griffen), Marciano's book seeks not to commemorate the Vietnam War, but to stop the ongoing U.S. war on actual history. Marciano reveals the grandiose flag-waving that stems from the "Noble Cause principle," the notion that America is "chosen by God" to bring democracy to the world. Marciano writes of the Noble Cause being invoked unsparingly by presidents - from Jimmy Carter, in his observation that, regarding Vietnam, "the destruction was mutual," to Barack Obama, who continues the flow of romantic media propaganda: "The United States of America ...will remain the greatest force for freedom the world has ever known."The result is critical writing and teaching at its best. This book will find a home in classrooms where teachers seek to do more than repeat the trite glorifications of U.S. empire. It will provide students everywhere with insights that can prepare them to change the world.Trade Review"For many years, I've been using John Marciano and William Griffen's venerable 1979 Teaching the Vietnam War in my high school course called The U.S. & Vietnam. Now Marciano has written a newer history of the war that provides analysis and perspective on how the war ought to be remembered - and how it is being misremembered and misused. I am eager to add it to my curriculum!" -W. D. Ehrhart Ph.D., Editor, Carrying the Darkness: the Poetry of the Vietnam War, author, Vietnam-Perkasie: A Combat Marine Memoir// "Marciano provides a deft overview of the American War in Vietnam with all its deceits and horrors while demonstrating how the true history has been sanitized and distorted in class-room history texts, thus depriving younger generations a proper historical and political consciousness, making them unable often to see through the flood of propaganda used to sell more recent military interventions." -Jeremy Kuzmarov, J.P. Walker assistant professor of history, University of Tulsa and author of The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs
£19.04
Monthly Review Press,U.S. Dissenting POWs: From Vietnam’s Hoa Lo Prison to
Book SynopsisEven if you don't know much about the war in Vietnam, you've probably heard of "The Hanoi Hilton," or Hoa Lo Prison, where captured U.S. soldiers were held. What they did there and whether they were treated well or badly by the Vietnamese became lasting controversies. As military personnel returned from captivity in 1973, Americans became riveted by POW coming home stories. What had gone on behind these prison walls? Along with legends of lionized heroes who endured torture rather than reveal sensitive military information, there were news leaks suggesting that others had denounced the war in return for favorable treatment. What wasn't acknowledged, however, is that U.S. troop opposition to the war was vast and reached well into Hoa Loa Prison. Half a century after the fact, Dissenting POWs emerges to recover this history, and to discover what drove the factionalism in Hoa Lo. Looking into the underlying factional divide between prowar “hardliners” and antiwar “dissidents” among the POWs, authors Wilber and Lembcke delve into the postwar American culture that created the myths of the HeroPOW and the dissidents blamed for the loss of the war. What they found was surprising: It wasn’t simply that some POWs were for the war and others against it, nor was it an officers versus enlisted men standoff. Rather, it was the class backgrounds of the captives and their precaptive experience that drew the lines. After the war, the hardcore hero holdouts—like John McCain—moved on to careers in politics and business, while the dissidents faded from view as the antiwar movement, that might otherwise have championed them, disbanded. Today, Dissenting POWs is a necessary myth buster, disabusing us of the revisionism that has replaced actual GI resistance with images of suffering POWs – ennobled victims that serve to suppress the fundamental questions of America’s drift to endless war.Trade Review“Dissident POWs who opposed the Vietnam war have been all but forgotten. Tom Wilber and Jerry Lembcke's fine history will restore them to their proper place in the history of antiwar activism.” —Maurice Isserman, coauthor, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s
£19.00
Monthly Review Press,U.S. Dissenting POWs:: From Vietnam’s Hoa Lo Prison to
Book SynopsisEven if you don't know much about the war in Vietnam, you've probably heard of "The Hanoi Hilton," or Hoa Lo Prison, where captured U.S. soldiers were held. What they did there and whether they were treated well or badly by the Vietnamese became lasting controversies. As military personnel returned from captivity in 1973, Americans became riveted by POW cominghome stories. What had gone on behind these prison walls? Along with legends of lionized heroes who endured torture rather than reveal sensitive military information, there were news leaks suggesting that others had denounced the war in return for favorable treatment. What wasn't acknowledged, however, is that U.S. troop opposition to the war was vast and reached well into Hoa Loa Prison. Half a century after the fact, Dissenting POWs emerges to recover this history, and to discover what drove the factionalism in Hoa Lo. Looking into the underlying factional divide between prowar “hardliners” and antiwar “dissidents” among the POWs, authors Wilber and Lembcke delve into the postwar American culture that created the myths of the HeroPOW and the dissidents blamed for the loss of the war. What they found was surprising: It wasn’t simply that some POWs were for the war and others against it, nor was it an officersversusenlistedmen standoff. Rather, it was the class backgrounds of the captives and their precaptive experience that drew the lines. After the war, the hardcore heroholdouts—like John McCain—moved on to careers in politics and business, while the dissidents faded from view as the antiwar movement, that might otherwise have championed them, disbanded. Today, Dissenting POWs is a necessary mythbuster, disabusing us of the revisionism that has replaced actual GI resistance with images of suffering POWs – ennobled victims that serve to suppress the fundamental questions of America’s drift to endless war.Trade Review“Dissident POWs who opposed the Vietnam war have been all but forgotten. Tom Wilber and Jerry Lembcke's fine history will restore them to their proper place in the history of antiwar activism.” —Maurice Isserman, coauthor, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s
£60.00
Frog Ltd War Lessons: How I Fought to Be a Hero and
Book SynopsisMilitary memoirs abound, but few prove to be trustworthy accounts free of spin, bravura, or military glitter. John Merson’s War Lessons takes a rare reflective approach to this pressing issue of our time. In vivid, unadorned prose, he interweaves his own experiences in war with thoughtful assessments of how to prevent it. He highlights the daily experience of combat from the perspective of both the foot soldier and the villager in whose home the war is being fought. When he leaves Vietnam, Merson begins an odyssey that brings him back eight times. The book limns this process as a poignant personal voyage and the author struggles to understand why young people are drawn to war, how it changes those who fight it, why its destructive effects persist on both sides, how former enemies reconcile, and how soldiers wanted to be treated and remembered by the citizens who send them to war. War Lessons also offers hope, suggesting strategies for young people to help the world reclaim its humanity through healing actions such as participating in UN peacekeeping programs, working to prosecute war crimes, and protecting refugees.
£13.49
Texas A & M University Press The Only War We Had: A Platoon Leaders Journal
Book SynopsisIn my year in Vietnam, I walked the booby-trapped rice paddies of the Delta, searching for the elusive Viet Cong, and later macheted my way through the triple-canopy jungle, fighting the North Vietnamese Regulars...I sweated, thirsted, hunted, killed. Somewhere in all my experiences, I overlapped the situations of nearly every infantryman and many others who served. Michael Lee Lanning's journal of his first tour of duty in Vietnam provides an unvarnished daily account of life in the field - the blood, fear, camaraderie, and tedium of combat and maneuver. Fleshed out with narrative and detail years later, the pages of this memorable book, first published in 1987, show an eager young recruit growing before the reader's eyes into a proud but bloodied combat veteran. Subsequent volumes in his ""Vietnam Trilogy"" will detail Lanning's tour as a company commander and his postwar investigation into the mind of the enemy. Through his eyes, readers see the reality of a war that did not always receive glory but was, in his words, ""the only war we had.
£16.96
Heritage Books History of the 14th Georgia Infantry Regiment
£14.50
PublicAffairs,U.S. The Cat From Hue: A Vietnam War Story
Book SynopsisJohn Laurence covered the Vietnam war for CBS News from 1965 to 1970 and was judged by his colleagues to be the best television reporter of the war. His documentary about a squad of U.S. troops, "The World of Charlie Company," received every major award for broadcast journalism. Despite the professional acclaim, however, the traumatic stories Laurence covered became a personal burden that he carried long after the war was over. In this evocative, unflinching memoir, laced with humour, anger, love, and the unforgettable story of Méo, the Vietnamese cat, Laurence recalls coming of age during the war years as a journalist and as a man. Along the way, he clarifies the murky history of the war and the role that journalists played in altering its course. The Cat from Hué has earned passionate acclaim from many of the most renowned journalists and writers about the war, as well as from military officers and war veterans, book reviewers, and readers. Now available in trade paperback with a new epilogue, this book will stand with Michael Herr's Dispatches , Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War , and Neil Sheehan's A Bright, Shining Lie as one of the best books ever written about Vietnam-and about war generally.
£29.27
Smithsonian Books Smithsonian Civil War: Inside the National
Book SynopsisSmithsonian Civil War is a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book featuring 150 entries in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. From among tens of thousands of Civil War objects in the Smithsonian''s collections, curators handpicked 550 items and wrote a unique narrative that begins before the war through the Reconstruction period. The perfect gift book for fathers and history lovers, Smithsonian Civil War combines one-of-a-kind, famous, and previously unseen relics from the war in a truly unique narrative.Smithsonian Civil War takes the reader inside the great collection of Americana housed at twelve national museums and archives and brings historical gems to light. From the National Portrait Gallery come rare early photographs of Stonewall Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant; from the National Museum of American History, secret messages that remained hidden inside Lincoln''s gold watch for nearly 150 years; from the National Air and Space Museum, futuristic Civil War-era aircraft designs. Thousands of items were evaluated before those of greatest value and significance were selected for inclusion here. Artfully arranged in 150 entries, they offer a unique, panoramic view of the Civil War.
£34.20
Smithsonian Books When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot Over North
Book Synopsis
£12.59
Smithsonian Books The American Revolution: A World War
Book SynopsisA lavishly illustrated essay collection that looks through a global lens at the American Revolution and re-positions it as the real 1st world war “Every American should read this marvelous book.” —Douglas Brinkley, author of Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America From acts of resistance like the Boston Tea Party to the shot heard 'round the world, the American Revolutionary War stands as a symbol of freedom and democracy the world over for many people. But contrary to popular opinion, this was not just a simple battle for independence in which the American colonists waged a David versus Goliath fight to overthrow their British rulers.In over a dozen incisive pieces from leading historians, the American struggle for liberty and independence re-emerges instead as a part of larger skirmishes between Britain and Europe’s global superpowers—Spain, France, and the Dutch Republic. Amid these ongoing conflicts, Britain's focus was often pulled away from the war in America as it fought to preserve its more lucrative colonial interests in the Caribbean and India. With fascinating sidebars throughout and over 110 full-color images featuring military portraiture, historical documents, plus campaign and territorial maps, this fuller picture of one of the first global struggles for power offers a completely new understanding of the American Revolution.
£23.40
Pelican Publishing Co Civil War and the Indian Wars
Book SynopsisA chronicling of the Indian wars fought between 1861 and 1865. While many know of the major events of the Civil War, few realize there were also Indian wars fought during that period of strife. This account covers those conflicts, from a prewar incident that sparked an Apache war in Arizona to the Navajo war in New Mexico, the Sioux uprising in Minnesota, and the struggle of the Plains Indians in Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. Divided by chapters into the five years of the Civil War, this book reveals how the war impacted everyone in America, including Indians on the frontier.
£12.59
Pelican Publishing Co Civil War in the Ozarks: Revised Edition
Book Synopsis
£14.44
The New York Review of Books, Inc Defeat: Napoleon's Russian Campaign
Book SynopsisIn the summer of 1812 Napoleon gathered his fearsome Grande Armée, more than half a million strong, on the banks of the Niemen River. He was about to undertake the most daring of all his many campaigns: the invasion of Russia. Meeting only sporadic opposition and defeating it easily along the way, the huge army moved forward, advancing ineluctably on Moscow through the long hot days of summer. On September 14, Napoleon entered the Russian capital, fully anticipating the Czar’s surrender. Instead he encountered an eerily deserted city—and silence. The French army sacked the city, and by October, with Moscow in ruins and his supply lines overextended, and with the Russian winter upon him, Napoleon had no choice but to turn back. One of the greatest military debacles of all time had only just begun. In this famous memoir, Philippe-Paul de Ségur, a young aide-de-camp to Napoleon, tells the story of the unfolding disaster with the keen eye of a crack reporter and an astute grasp of human character. His book, a fundamental inspiration for Tolstoy’s War and Peace, is a masterpiece of military history that teaches an all-too-timely lesson about imperial hubris and its risks.
£18.90
Prometheus Books The American Revolution: A Grand Mistake
Book SynopsisIn this iconoclastic assessment of America's War of Independence, political scientist Leland G Stauber presents a fundamental reinterpretation of the birth and the subsequent development of the United States. He challenges head-on the prevailing American national saga, arguing that our independence from Britain was premature and that the experience of Canada has in many ways been preferable. Avoiding polemic, Stauber in a calmly analytic tone lays out both the positive and negative consequences of the American Revolution. While recognising the seminal historic importance of the Declaration of Independence, the American rejection of titled nobility and monarchy, and universal white, male suffrage, as well as the advantages of early economic independence, Stauber points out four major disadvantages resulting from the American Revolution: The most obvious of these is the dilemma of slavery, which was left unaddressed by our war with Britain and set the stage for the American Civil War. Slavery had already been outlawed in several major parts of the British Empire in 1833; Stauber also contends that a 'legislative union' along the lines of the British North America Act of 1867, which created the Dominion of Canada, is a superior method of national unification to the purely voluntary federation of the United States; The American system of government, based on checks and balances, is often cumbersome in dealing with contemporary challenges, which are often not so difficult for parliamentary governments; The underlying American mind-set regarding the role of government contains a deep-seated suspicion of a strong central government, which dates back to our war against British tyranny. Stauber argues that this reluctance to use the central government to tackle major social problems cripples the United States from building a more decent society. This challenging historical and political analysis of long-established American presumptions about our history and government will be of interest to students and scholars of political science and American history, as well as all open-minded citizens.Table of ContentsIntroduction - The Issues Posed; The British Orbit: From Empire to Commonwealth; The American Exit from the British Orbit; Legacies of the American Revolution: Impetus to Change; Legacies of the American Revolution: Conservative Consequences; A Program for Future Democratic Revolution in the United States; Index.
£16.99
Naval Institute Press Fallujah Awakens: Marines, Sheiks, and the Battle
Book SynopsisFallujah, the cradle of an insurgency that plunged Iraq into years of chaos and bloodshed, conjures up images of the brutal house-to-house fighting that occurred during the 2004 U.S. invasion of the iconic city. The violence peaked again two years later when American Marines and Iraqi government forces struggled with a reinvigorated insurgency and the prospect of premature withdrawal by U.S. forces. One of the few books to recount events from both American and Iraqi perspectives, Fallujah Awakens tells the story of the remarkable turnaround that began to take place in 2006–2007. Journalist Bill Ardolino explains how local tribal leaders and U.S. Marines forged a surprising alliance that helped secure the famous battleground. Based on more than 120 interviews with Iraqis and Americans, he explores how a company of Reservists, led by a medical equipment sales manager from Michigan, succeeded where previous efforts had stalled. Circumstance combined with smart leadership enabled Marines to build relationships with members of a Sunni tribe—once written off as dangerous and intractable—who pushed al Qaeda and other insurgents from their notoriously rebellious area. Accidental killings, intertribal rivalries, insurgents, and intrigue all conspired to undo the tenuous alliance forged on Fallujah’s peninsula. But the partnership was cemented after a Marine commander’s risky decision to welcome nearly 100 injured civilians onto a secure American facility after a ruthless chemical attack by al Qaeda. Ardolino’s exhaustive documentation will prove valuable to military students, analysts, and historians and will help policy makers better understand what is and is not possible in counterinsurgency. Photographs and maps further enhance the reader’s understanding of the struggle for Fallujah, from tribal dynamics to the geography of firefights.Trade Review…A compelling account… an eminently readable book that describes tactical action clearly. The discussion of firefights are accompanied by simple map diagrams which help to explain the action in terms that are uncomplicated but not condescending to military readers…Fallujah Awakens is well worth the time of the small wars student looking to hone his craft, Iraq veterans still coming to terms with the totality of that conflict, and any other student of military history."-- Marine Corps Gazette "Arguably the book's most important contribution is the wealth of material telling the Iraqi side of the story. It provides a powerful counterpoint and, in some cases, mirror image of the Marine experience there. Ardolino cogently explains with rare and remarkable clarity intimate details of Iraqi tribal dynamics, a Gordian knot reality of contradictions and complexity so confusing to outsiders that Western writers often glossed over it with the oversimplified and unhelpful label 'tribal politics.' … A must-read reference about how to conduct a successful counterinsurgency operation."-- Defense Media Network "…Superb book…A fine writer…One of the better books on Marine COIN published to date. It's the book to read to understand how to work with the locals and having them 'choose us.'"-- Leatherneck "…A well reported, fast paced narrative of how Major Dan Whisnant's US Marine Infantry Company and Sheikh Aifan Sadoun Aifan al-Issawi, who called himself "Dark", teamed up to fight Al Qaeda in what would become the Third Battle of Fallujah.Using a non-fiction narrative style similar to Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down, Ardolino has crafted a gripping, page-turning adventure that is also a serious historical and military study of a slice of the Iraq War in 2006-2007."-- Outsidethewire.com "Headlines trumpeted the 2004 Battle of Fallujah, when Marines defeated Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda fighters in brutal urban battle, but few reports noted that rebels soon returned and resumed their attacks. An embedded reporter at the time, Ardolino (associate editor of the Long War Journal) delivers a brilliant, detailed description of events in 2007, when Marines, tribal leaders, and local Iraqis worked together to again eject the insurgents--hopefully, this time, permanently. The author is wise to remind readers that al-Qaeda was never terribly popular in Iraq; it espoused a form of Islam considered violent and unfamiliar, 'even by conservative Fallujan standards,' and its success required vicious retaliation against uncooperative Iraqis. Even so, many refused to help the radical group, opting instead to side with American forces for a variety of personal and political reasons. Ardolino describes one Marine battalion near Fallujah that achieved remarkable success by enlisting the aid of an ambitious young sheikh nicknamed 'Dark.' Combining eye-witness accounts of political frustrations, the dangers of the 'irrepressible and deadly creativity' of insurgents, and sympathetic portraits of the locals, Ardolino's is an outstanding account of the winding down of a resoundingly unpopular war."--Publishers Weekly "Starred" review "Bill Ardolino goes beyond where others have left off after the first and second battles to subdue the 'City of Mosques' and examines the crucial role played by Fallujah in the fight against al Qaeda. His vivid account fills a gap in our understanding of the counterinsurgency strategy that turned the tide against al Qaeda terrorists. In this engrossing book, Ardolino demonstrates that personalities mattered, not just abstract principles of war. His volume is essential reading for students of COIN and the Iraq War." -- Thomas H. Henriksen, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution and the U.S. Joint Special Operations University "The accounts of events--usefully shaped by research and interviews with Iraqi and American individuals--illuminates the work of the Marines and grants readers a window into the incredibly delicate decisions made by the involved parties. Much like the work of T.E Lawrence and other authors who spent considerable time operating in a foreign country and seeking to develop alliances--and whose works proved informative decades after their publication--Fallujah Awakens may serve the same purpose as an extended case study displaying the nuances of applying counterinsurgency or, more broadly, the requirement for considered policies in post-conflict zones with complicated social and political undercurrents."-- Australian Defence Force Journal(online) "Bill Ardolino masterfully crafts a narrative that illustrates the challenges faced by U.S. Marines during one of the most dangerous battles in the Iraq War. Fallujah Awakens captures their struggle to be both warriors, and sometimes social workers, while combating a cagey and elusive enemy. Their strategy in Fallujah--both its successes and failures--will be studied by military leaders and war history enthusiasts for generations to come." --Carmen Gentile, conflict correspondent for USA Today "A powerful account of courageous decisions and bold actions made by Americans and Iraqis alike in Anbar's darkest city at the most uncertain and critical time in the entire campaign. His writing took me back to the nervous emotions experienced even only while driving through the city's infamous 'cloverleaf' en route to engage al Qaeda in the deeper province. The author takes you on patrol throughout the most dangerous peninsula and artfully weaves in Iraq's tribal complexities, cultural nuances, and our own political theater in a way that I have never before encountered. This should be required reading for anyone tasked with fighting, or studying, a war of counterinsurgency--or any reader interested in a tale of war hard fought, told incredibly well."--Capt. Alexander S. Martin, USMCR, USNA Class of 2004, is an infantry officer who has served as a platoon commander in infantry, recon and force recon units; Founder and CEO of Arbroath Capital
£16.76
Naval Institute Press Fire from the Sky: Seawolf Gunships in the Mekong
Book SynopsisFire from the Sky is the first complete history of the most decorated Navy squadron of the Vietnam War. Richard C. Knott tells the dramatic history of the HAL-3 Seawolves, the U.S. Navy's first and only helicopter gunship squadron of the Vietnam War. The squadron was established "in country" to support the fast, pugnacious river patrol boats of the brown water navy. Flying combat-worn Hueys borrowed from the Army, the mission of the Seawolves quickly expanded to include rapid response air support to any friendly force in the Delta needing immediate assistance. The Seawolves inserted SEALs deep into enemy territory, and extracted them, often despite savage enemy opposition. They rescued friendly combatants from almost certain capture or death, and evacuated the wounded when Medevac helicopters were not available.
£23.16
Naval Institute Press Sabres over MiG Alley: The F-86 and the Battle
Book SynopsisThis is the story of the first jet versus jet war, the largest in number of victories and losses, and one of the few military bright spots in the Korean War. It tells how an outnumbered force of F-86 Sabres, limited by range and restricted by the rules of engagement, decisively defeated its foe. Kenneth Werrell uses previously untapped sources and interviews with sixty former F-86 pilots to explore new aspects of the subject and shed light on controversies previously neglected.
£22.91
Africa World Press Visions Of Nationhood: Prelude to Nigerian Civil
Book SynopsisA refreshingly bold and informed analysis of the developments that led to the Nigerian Civil War.
£31.96
Encounter Books,USA The Surge: A Military History
Book SynopsisUnderstanding the role of combat in the Iraq war is essential for both the American people and the U.S. military. Recognizing the objectives of both sides and the plans developed to attain those objectives provides the context for understanding the war. The Surge is an effort to provide such a framework to help understand not only where we have been, but also what happens as we move forward.
£18.99
