A companion volume to the highly successful Field Guide to the Battlefields of South Africa, this features the pivotal sieges that characterised the Cape Frontier, Anglo-Zulu, Basotho and Anglo-Boer wars in one volume.

Accounts of 17 sieges over the last two centuries explore in detail the historical context in which they occurred, the day-to-day military actions that sustained the investments and the conditions both soldiers and civilians faced while defending their territory against a hostile force. The siege descriptions are animated by maps and a variety of information boxes and human-interest stories, gleaned from diaries, letters and eye-witness accounts, while longer features focus on the practical aspects of siege warfare, such as artillery, medicine, food, and the psychological effects of besiegement. The book also provides practical information for visitors who wish to explore these historical sites.

A fascinating read that will appeal to anyone interested in the volatile history of the country – armchair historians and travellers alike.

Op 3 Oktober 1987 het Charlie-eskadron – die ystervuis van 61 Gemeganiseerde Bataljongroep – die kritieke geveg tussen die Suid-Afrikaanse Weermag en die Angolese magte op die Lombarivier in die suide van Angola gelei. Dié boek plaas die leser in die midde van die jong dienspligtiges wat na die Grensoorlog weggevoer is om hierdie geveg te gaan voer.

Langs die Lomba het hulle te staan gekom teen ’n Angolese mag met ’n getalsoorwig en beter wapentuig. Boonop was die terrein so dig bebos dat hul sig en beweging aansienlik ingeperk is. Die SAW se taktiese doktrine het duidelik gestel dat tenks teen tenks aangewend moes word. Tog moes die dienspligtiges die Angolese tenks aanvat in pantservoertuie met minder kragtige kanonne en dun pantser wat nie veel meer as gewone geweervuur kon afweer nie. Steeds is 47 Brigade van die Angolese magte amper uitgewis tydens die geveg aan die Lomba.

Scholtz se beskrywing van hierdie David-teen-Goliath-geveg neem die leser na die hart van die aksie. Danksy onderhoude met veterane en dagboekinskrywings dra hierdie eerlike, intense hervertelling die volle drama van die geveg oor. Dit is ook ’n diep menslike verhaal oor hoe individue reageer in die aangesig van die dood en hoe die oorlog hulle nooit uit sy kloue gelaat het nie, selfs nadat hulle teruggekeer het.

It is September 1987. The Angolan Army – with the support of Cuban troops and Soviet advisors – has built up a massive force on the Lomba River near Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola. Their goal? To capture Jamba, the headquarters of the rebel group Unita, supported by the South African Defence Force (SADF) in the so-called Border War.

In the battles that followed, and shortly thereafter centred around the small town of Cuito Cuanavale, 3 000 SADF soldiers and 8 000 Unita fighters were up against a much bigger Angolan and Cuban force of over 50 000 men.

Thousands of soldiers died in the vicious fighting that is described in vivid detail in this book. Bridgland pieced together this account through scores of interviews with SADF men who were on the front line. This dramatic retelling takes the reader to the heart of the action.

The international bestselling author returns with an exploration of one of the grandest obsessions of the twentieth century.

In the years before the Second World War, in a sleepy air force base in central Alabama, a small group of renegade pilots put forth a radical idea. What if we made bombing so accurate that wars could be fought entirely from the air? What if we could make the brutal clashes between armies on the ground a thing of the past? This book tells the story of what happened when that dream was put to the test.

The Bomber Mafia follows the stories of a reclusive Dutch genius and his homemade computer, Winston Churchill's forbidding best friend, a team of pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard, a brilliant pilot who sang vaudeville tunes to his crew, and the bomber commander, Curtis Emerson LeMay, who would order the bloodiest attack of the Second World War.

In this tale of innovation and obsession, Gladwell asks: what happens when technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war? And what is the price of progress?

From the secret SAS archives, and acclaimed author Ben Macintyre: the first ever authorized history of the SAS.

In the summer of 1941, at the height of the war in the Western Desert, a bored and eccentric young officer, David Stirling, came up with a plan that was radical and entirely against the rules: a small undercover unit that would inflict chaos and mayhem behind enemy lines. Despite intense opposition, Winston Churchill personally gave Stirling permission to recruit the toughest, brightest and most ruthless soldiers he could find. So began the most celebrated and mysterious military organisation in the world: the SAS. Now, 75 years later, the SAS has finally decided to tell its astonishing story. It has opened its secret archives for the first time, granting historian Ben Macintyre full access to a treasure trove of unseen reports, memos, diaries, letters, maps and photographs, as well as free rein to interview surviving Originals and those who knew them.

The result is an exhilarating tale of fearlessness and heroism, recklessness and tragedy; of extraordinary men who were willing to take monumental risks. It is a story about the meaning of courage.

The remarkable story of a woman's journey out of Auschwitz to find her family, told to her son for the very first time.

As a reporter, Jacques Peretti has spent his life investigating important stories. But there was one story, heard in scattered fragments throughout his childhood, that he never thought to investigate. The story of how his mother survived Auschwitz.

In the few last months of the War, thirteen-year-old Alina Peretti, along with her mother and sister, was one of thirteen thousand non-Jewish Poles sent to Auschwitz, in the wake of the Warsaw Uprising. Her experiences there, which she rarely discussed, cast a shadow over the rest of her life.

Now ninety, Alina has been diagnosed with dementia. Together, mother and son begin a race against time to record her memories and preserve her family's story. For the first time, Alina recalls her experiences as a child during the Second World War, the horrors that she witnessed in Auschwitz and the miraculous story of how she survived a firing squad.

Along the way, Jacques learns long-hidden secrets about his mother's family; his mysterious grandfather who lived a double-life, his grandmother who read tarot cards in a Soviet labour camp, and his aunt and uncles, whose fate he never knew. He also gains an understanding of his mother through retracing her past, learning more about the woman who would never let him call her 'Mum'.

Tonele en rolspelers uit die Anglo-Boereoorlog kry nuwe lewe in hierdie unieke versameling foto’s wat lewensgetrou ingekleur is. Dit bring vars perspektief op een van die belangrikste historiese gebeurtenisse in die Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedenis.

In die Anglo-Boereoorlog of Suid-Afrikaanse Oorlog het die twee Boererepublieke van Transvaal en die Oranje-Vrystaat teen die Britse Ryk te staan gekom. Hierdie verwoestende oorlog sou vir dekades lank nog ’n uitwerking hê op die Suid-Afrikaanse politieke, ekonomiese en sosiale landskap.

Lesers sal talle ikoniese foto’s in Die AngloBoereoorlog in kleur raaksien, maar ook verskeie wat nog nooit tevore gepubliseer is nie. Honderde boeke het die afgelope 120 jaar oor die oorlog verskyn, maar dit is die eerste een in volkleur.

If a mere seven more MPs had voted with Prime Minister JBM Hertzog in favour of neutrality, South Africa’s history would have been quite different.

Parliament’s narrow decision to go to war in 1939 led to a seismic upheaval throughout the 1940s: black people streamed in their thousands from rural areas to the cities in search of jobs; volunteers of all races answered the call to go ‘up north’ to fight; and opponents of the Smuts government actively hindered the war effort by attacking soldiers and committing acts of sabotage. World War Two upended South Africa’s politics, ruining attempts to forge white unity and galvanising opposition to segregation among African, Indian and coloured communities. It also sparked debates among nationalists, socialists, liberals and communists such as the country had never previously experienced.

As Richard Steyn recounts so compellingly in 7 Votes, the war’s unforeseen consequence was the boost it gave to nationalism, both Afrikaner and African, that went on to transform the country in the second half of the 20th century. The book brings to life an extraordinary cast of characters, including wartime leader Jan Smuts, DF Malan and his National Party colleagues, African nationalists from Anton Lembede and AB Xuma to Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela, the influential Indian activists Yusuf Dadoo and Monty Naicker, and many others.

Die boek gee 'n voelvlugoorsig van die vier Suid-Afrikaanse kolonies gedurende die Eduardiaanse tydperk van 1902–1910. Die tydperk word deur Karel Schoeman beskou as die “hoogtepunt van die hele Imperiale gedagte” wat uiteindelik met die uitbreek van die Eerste Wereldoorlog sou eindig. Die klem val egter nie op die politieke besluite en ontwikkelinge nie, maar op die persoonlikhede van leiers- en ander figure, die omstandighede in die vier kolonies met hulle stede en dorpe, belangrike sosiale gebeurtenisse, die aanloop tot unifikasie in 1910 en die uitwerking van die belangrike naturelle grond-wet van 1913 op die lewenswyse van swart mense direk na Uniewording. Kort maar insiggewende tiperings word gegee van persoonlikhede so uiteenlopend soos oudpresident Steyn, Lord Milner, die dramaturg Stephen Black, die bendeleier Robert Foster, die avontuurlustige Mrs Edith Maturin en die deelsaaier Kas Maine. Ruim aanhalings uit verskillende bronne verlewendig die bespreking van alledaagse omstandighede op verskillende plekke in wat later die Unie van Suid-Afrika sou wees, soos die sketse van Jacob Lub oor die lewenswyse in Johannesburg, die setlaar Leonard Flemming se boeke oor sy eensame bestaan op 'n afgelee Vrystaatse plaas, en die talle verwysings na riksjas in die reisbeskrywings van besoekers aan Durban. Besonder boeiend is ook die hoofstukke oor die rol van Joodse smouse en handelaars in onder andere die volstruisveerbedryf en die toestande in die inrigting vir melaatses op Robbeneiland. Talle anekdotes en klein kameebeskrywings maak van Imperiale somer 'n besonder interessante leeservaring. Die boek word toegelig met ruim fotoseksies wat 'n visuele beeld van die era gee.

Now a major motion picture directed by Clint Eastwood.

From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. His fellow American warriors, whom he protected with deadly precision from rooftops and stealth positions during the Iraq War, called him "The Legend"; meanwhile, the enemy feared him so much they named him al-Shaitan ("the devil") and placed a bounty on his head.

Kyle, who was tragically killed in 2013, writes honestly about the pain of war—including the deaths of two close SEAL teammates—and in moving first-person passages throughout, his wife, Taya, speaks openly about the strains of war on their family, as well as on Chris. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle's masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time.

Includes new material by Taya Kyle about the making of the American Sniper film.

Historian Karen Horn painstakingly tracked down a number of former POWs in which their interviews reveal rich narratives of hardship, endurance, humour, longing and self-discovery. Instead of fighting, these men adapted to another war, one which was fought on the inside of many prison camps.

In their interviews, all the POWs expressed surprise at being asked to share their experiences of almost 70 years earlier.They returned home in 1945 to a country which soon afterwards tried its utmost to promote national amnesia with regard to the country’s participation in the war.

With great insight and empathy, Karen Horn shines a light on a neglected corner of South African history. Karen Horn is a lecturer at Stellenbosch University.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Southern Africa was a jumble of British colonies, Boer republics and African chiefdoms, a troublesome region of little interest to the outside world. Into this frontier world came the Reitz family, Afrikaner gentry from the Cape, who settled in Bloemfontein and played a key role in the building of the Orange Free State.

Frank Reitz, successively chief justice and modernising president of the young republic, went on to serve as State Secretary of the Transvaal Republic. In 1899, he stood shoulder to shoulder with President Paul Kruger to resist Britain’s war of conquest in Southern Africa. At the heart of this tale is the extraordinary life of Deneys Reitz, third son of Frank Reitz and Bianca Thesen. The young Reitz’s account of his adventures in the field during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), published as Commando, became a classic of irregular warfare. After a period of exile in Madagascar, he went on become one of South Africa’s most distinguished lawyers, statesmen and soldiers. Martin Meredith interweaves Reitz’s experiences, taken from his unpublished notebooks, with the wider story of Britain’s brutal suppression of Boer resistance.

Concise and readable, Afrikaner Odyssey is a wide-ranging portrait of an aristocratic Afrikaner family whose achievements run like fine thread through these turbulent times, and whose presence is still marked on the South African landscape.

What was it like to fly a MiG or Mirage in combat over Angola? Most books on the Angolan Bush War, especially those in English, present the South African perspective of events. Now a former MiG-23 Squadron Commander of the Cuban Air Force has collaborated with an ex-SAAF pilot to paint a remarkable new picture of the aerial conflict over Angola in the 1980s.

In The MiG Diaries the recollections of Lt-Col Eduardo González Sarría are blended by Lionel Reid with those of air combatants from the Angolan, Cuban and South African air forces. Many are being published for the first time.

Using their own aviation knowledge and experience of the conflict, Sarría and Reid combine the accounts of these diverse combatants – former comrades and foe – to provide original insights into, and a more holistic description of, what happened in the skies over Angola. The results, often quite different to what the opposing sides had believed, reveal a surprising, and more complete, picture of events.

The wonderful sketching pencil of Sean Thackwray, himself a former fighter pilot, helps to bring this unique story to life, along with select images, including many not seen in print in South Africa.

A startling, gripping portrait of what it was like to be alive in Britain during the blitz, and what it was like to be around Churchill.

On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, the Nazis would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons and destroying two million homes.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson gives a new and brilliantly cinematic account of how Britain’s most iconic leader set about unifying the nation at its most vulnerable moment, and teaching ‘the art of being fearless.’

Drawing on once-secret intelligence reports and diaries, #1 bestselling author Larson takes readers from the shelled streets of London to Churchill’s own chambers, giving a vivid vision of true leadership, when – in the face of unrelenting horror – a leader of eloquence, strategic brilliance and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

Tense Future falls into two parts. The first develops a critical account of total war discourse and addresses the resistant potential of acts, including acts of writing, before a future that looks barred or predetermined by war. Part two shifts the focus to long interwar narratives that pit both their scale and their formal turbulence against total war's portrait of the social totality, producing both ripostes and alternatives to that portrait in the practice of literary encyclopedism. The book's introduction grounds both parts in the claim that industrialized warfare, particularly the aerial bombing of cities, intensifies an under-examined form of collective traumatization: a pretraumatic syndrome in which the anticipation of future-conditional violence induces psychic wounds. Situating this claim in relation to other scholarship on "critical futurities," Saint-Amour discusses its ramifications for trauma studies, historical narratives generally, and the historiography of the interwar period in particular. The introduction ends with an account of the weak theory of modernism now structuring the field of modernist studies, and of weak theory's special suitability for opposing total war, that strongest of strong theories.

Here is a brisk, accessible, and vivid introduction to arguably the most important event in the history of the United States--the American Revolution. Between 1760 and 1800, the American people cast off British rule to create a new nation and a radically new form of government based on the idea that people have the right to govern themselves. In this lively account, Robert Allison provides a cohesive synthesis of the military, diplomatic, political, social, and intellectual aspects of the Revolution, paying special attention to the Revolution's causes and consequences. The book recreates the tumultuous events of the 1760s and 1770s that led to revolution, such as the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, as well as the role the Sons of Liberty played in turning resistance into full-scale revolt. Allison explains how and why Americans changed their ideas of government and society so profoundly in these years and how the War for Independence was fought and won. He highlights the major battles and commanders on both sides--with a particular focus on George Washington and the extraordinary strategies he developed to defeat Britain's superior forces--as well as the impact of French military support on the American cause. In the final chapter, Allison explores the aftermath of the American Revolution: how the newly independent states created governments based on the principles for which they had fought, and how those principles challenged their own institutions, such as slavery, in the new republic. He considers as well the Revolution's legacy, the many ways its essential ideals influenced other struggles against oppressive power or colonial systems in France, Latin America, and Asia. Sharply written and highly readable, The American Revolution offers the perfect introduction to this seminal event in American history.

Mere decades after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the promise of European democracy seems to be out of joint. What has become of the once-shared memory of victory over fascism? Historical revisionism and nationalist propaganda in the post-Yugoslav context have tried to eradicate the legacy of partisan and socialist struggles, while Yugonostalgia commodifies the partisan/socialist past. It is against these dominant 'archives' that this book launches the partisan counter-archive, highlighting the symbolic power of artistic works that echo and envision partisan legacy and rupture. It comprises a body of works that emerged either during the people's liberation struggle or in later socialist periods, tracing a counter-archival surplus and revolutionary remainder that invents alternative protocols of remembrance and commemoration. The book covers rich (counter-)archival material - from partisan poems, graphic works and photography, to monuments and films - and ends by describing the recent revisionist un-doing of the partisan past. It contributes to the Yugoslav politico-aesthetical "history of the oppressed" as an alternative journey to the partisan past that retrieves revolutionary resources from the past for the present.

Eva Tichauer was born in Berlin at the end of the First World War into a socialist Jewish family. After a happy childhood in a well-off intellectual milieu, the destiny of her family was turned upside-down by the rise of Hitler in 1933. They emigrated to Paris in July of that year, and life started to become difficult. Eva was in her second year of medical studies in 1939 when war was declared, with fatal consequences for her and her family: they sere forced to the Spanish frontier, then returned to Paris to a flat which had been searched by the Gestapo. Eva was then compelled to break off her studies due to a quota system being imposed on Jewish students.

The Second World War affected the lives and shaped the experience of millions of individuals in Germany--soldiers at the front, women, children and the elderly sheltering in cellars, slave laborers toiling in factories, and concentration-camp prisoners and POWs clearing rubble in the Reich's devastated cities.
Taking a "history from below" approach, the volume examines how the minds and behaviour of individuals were moulded by the Party as the Reich took the road to Total War. The ever-increasing numbers of German workers conscripted into the Wehrmacht were replaced with forced foreign workers and slave labourers and concentration camp prisoners. The interaction in everyday life between German civilian society and these coerced groups is explored, as is that society's relationship to the Holocaust.
From early 1943, the war on the home front was increasingly dominated by attack from the air. The role of the Party, administration, police, and courts in providing for the vast numbers of those rendered homeless, in bolstering civilian morale with "miracle revenge weapons" propaganda, and in maintaining order in a society in disintegration is reviewed in detail.
For society in uniform, the war in the east was one of ideology and annihilation, with intensified indoctrination of the troops after Stalingrad. The social profile of this army is analysed through study of a typical infantry division. The volume concludes with an account of the various forms of resistance to Hitler's regime, in society and the military, culminating in the failed attempt on his life in July 1944.

Although millions of Russians lived as serfs until the middle of the nineteenth century, little is known about their lives. Identifying and documenting the conditions of Russian serfs has proven difficult because the Russian state discouraged literacy among the serfs and censored public expressions of dissent. To date scholars have identified only twenty known Russian serf narratives. Four Russian Serf Narratives contains four of these accounts and is the first translated collection of autobiographies by serfs. Scholar and translator John MacKay brings to light for an English-language audience a diverse sampling of Russian serf narratives, ranging from an autobiographical poem to stories of adventure and escape. Autobiography (1785) recounts a highly educated serf s attempt to escape to Europe, where he hoped to study architecture. The long testimonial poem News About Russia (ca. 1849) laments the conditions under which the author and his fellow serfs lived. In The Story of My Life and Wanderings (1881) a serf tradesman tells of his attempt to simultaneously escape serfdom and captivity from Chechen mountaineers. The fragmentary Notes of a Serf Woman (1911) testifies to the harshness of peasant life with extraordinary acuity and descriptive power. These accounts offer readers a glimpse, from the point of view of the serfs themselves, into the realities of one of the largest systems of unfree labor in history. The volume also allows comparison with slave narratives produced in the United States and elsewhere, adding an important dimension to knowledge of the institution of slavery and the experience of enslavement in modern times."

Constructing the Holocaust examines the development of Holocaust historiography in the light of recent critical philosophy of history. It argues that the Holocaust provides both the occasion for, and the ultimate test of, new ways of giving meaning to the past. It also shows that examining our representations of the past is as important as archival research for understanding history.

The Vietnam War remains a topic of extraordinary interest, especially in light of the invasion of Iraq. In The Vietnam War, Mark Lawrence offers readers a superb short account of this key moment in U.S. as well as world history, based on the latest European and American research and on newly opened archives in China, Russia, and Vietnam. While focusing on the American involvement from 1965 to 1975, Lawrence offers an unprecedentedly complete picture of all sides of the war, drawing on now available communist records to capture the complicated brew of motivations that drove the other side. Moreover, the book reaches back well before American forces set foot in Vietnam, describing for instance how French colonialism sparked the 1945 Vietnamese revolution, and revealing how the Cold War concerns of the 1950s warped Washington's perception of Vietnam, leading the United States to back the French and eventually become involved on the ground itself. Of course, the heart of the book is the "American war," ranging from the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem to the impact of the Tet Offensive on the political situation in the US, Johnson's withdrawal from the 1968 presidential race, Nixon's expansion of the war into Cambodia and Laos, and the final peace agreement of 1973, which ended American military involvement. Finally, the book examines the aftermath of the war, from the momentous liberalization-"Doi Moi"-in Vietnam that began in 1986, to the enduring legacy of the war in American books, films, and political debate. A quick and reliable primer on an intensely relevant topic, this well researched and engaging volume offers an invaluable overview of the Vietnam War.