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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > War & defence operations > Battles & campaigns
Toe die Britse Imperiale Ryk in 1899-1902 sy volle militêre mag teen die Boererepublieke van Suider-Afrika in die veld gestoot het, het ‘n groot gedeelte van die res van die wêreld hulle morele ondersteuning aan die dapper burgerkrygers toegesê ... maar sedert die bitter uiteinde van daardie ongelyke stryd het geskiedskrywers die verhaal van die oorlog grotendeels uit ‘n Britse oogpunt benader.
Hierdie is ‘n geskiedenisboek wat anders is.
Oorlog-Beeld voer ‘n verbeeldingsprong uit om die krygswêreld van daardie stryders wat deur Nelson Mandela as die ‘eerste Afrika-vryheidsvegters van die 20ste eeu’ beskryf is, te laat herleef. Hier, in koerantformaat soos dit destyds kon gewees het, volg die verhaal van die ‘Engelse Oorlog’ wat deur Boere vertel word: deur die offisiere wat hulle burgers op die slagvelde by Magersfontein, Colenso en Spioenkop aanvoer; deur bittereinderburgers wat tot op die laaste volgehou het; deur verveelde burgers wat Mafeking, Ladysmith en Kimberley tevergeefs beleër het; deur vroue en kinders in die konsentrasiekampe; deur regeerders en krygsgevangenes in ballingskap asook verskeie ander deelnemers – alles toegelig uit ‘n magdom kontemporêre bronne en met ‘n menigte foto’s wat destyds geneem is.
Daar word nie net oor militêre konfrontasies berig nie, maar ook oor die kommandolewe, oor die ervaringe van krygsgevangenes in kampe oor die aardbol heen versprei, oor die aktiwiteite van die Boere-afgevaardigdes in die buiteland wat buitelandse inmenging aan Boerekant teweeg moes bring, oor die aktiwiteite van prominente individue, soos president Paul Kruger en Emily Hobhouse, en oor die treurige lot van vroue en kinders in die konsentrasiekampe.
From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western
Front, one thing was clear: mankind's military technology had
wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. The war's new weaponry,
from tanks to shrapnel, enabled slaughter on an industrial scale,
and given the nature of trench warfare, thousands of soldiers
sustained facial injuries. Medical advances meant that more
survived their wounds than ever before, yet disfigured soldiers did
not receive the hero's welcome they deserved. In The Facemaker,
award-winning historian Lindsey Fitzharris tells the astonishing
story of the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who
dedicated himself to restoring the faces - and the identities - of
a brutalized generation. Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New
Zealander, became interested in the nascent field of plastic
surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the front.
Returning to Britain, he established one of the world's first
hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction in Sidcup,
south-east England. There, Gillies assembled a unique group of
doctors, nurses and artists whose task was to recreate what had
been torn apart. At a time when losing a limb made a soldier a
hero, but losing a face made him a monster to a society largely
intolerant of disfigurement, Gillies restored not just the faces of
the wounded but also their spirits. Meticulously researched and
grippingly told, The Facemaker places Gillies's ingenious surgical
innovations alongside the poignant stories of soldiers whose lives
were wrecked and repaired. The result is a vivid account of how
medicine and art can merge, and of what courage and imagination can
accomplish in the presence of relentless horror.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND "NEW YORK TIMES" BESTSELLER In the
first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of
Europe in WW II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the
riveting story of the war in North Africa
The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is
a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and
miscalculation. In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy,
Rick Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand the
ultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the great
drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. That first
year of the Allied war was a pivotal point in American history, the
moment when the United States began to act like a great power.
Beginning with the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, An
Army at Dawn follows the American and British armies as they fight
the French in Morocco and Algeria, and then take on the Germans and
Italians in Tunisia. Battle by battle, an inexperienced and
sometimes poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting
force. Central to the tale are the extraordinary but fallible
commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower,
Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel.
Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and vivid insights,
Atkinson's narrative provides the definitive history of the war in
North Africa.
On 19 February 1942 the Japanese air force bombed Darwin. Whilst
this fact is well known, very few people know exactly what
happened. Timothy Hall was the first writer to be given acess to
all the official reports of the time and as a result he has been
able to reveal exactly what happened on that dreadful day - a day
which Sir Paul Hasluck (17th Governor-General of Australia) later
described as 'a day of national shame'. The sequence of events in
Darwin that day certainly did not reflect the military honour that
the War Cabinet wanted people to believe. On the contrary, for what
really happened was a combination of chaos, panic and, in many
cases, cowardice on an unprecented scale.
'Outstanding. Heartstopping. Brilliant. A story that scorches the
page, searing in its honesty and profoundly moving in its emotional
impact. The characters reach out to you and challenge your
preconceptions in this testament to a tragic chapter of history
that moved me to tears. It holds up a dark and shocking mirror to
our world, yet ultimately it is a triumphant tale of light within
darkness. This is an important, powerful novel that everyone should
read' KATE FURNIVALL SHE CAN'T HAVE A FUTURE UNTIL SHE HAS A PAST.
1944 LEO STERN arrives at the Nazi camp at Borek with his wife
Irena and his two daughters. The Sterns are spared from the gas
chamber when they witness a murder. But in a place that humanity
has deserted, Leo is forced to make unimaginable choices to try to
keep his family alive. 1961 For seventeen years, Hanna has been
unable to remember her identity and how she was separated from her
family at the end of the war, until the discovery of a letter among
her late uncle's possessions reveals her real name - HANNA STERN -
and leads her to Berlin in search of her lost past. Helped by
former lover Peter, Hanna begins to piece together the shocking
final days of Borek. But Hanna isn't the only one with an interest
in the camp, and lurking in the shadows is someone who would prefer
Hanna's history to remain silent. Based on in-depth research and
beautifully written, this a novel of memory and identity, and the
long shadow of war. 'Taking the reader from the atmospheric
Fenlands of Cambridgeshire to the ghost-filled forests of wartime
Poland and finally into Cold War-era Berlin, The Silent Child is a
thought-provoking and compelling novel about the long-lasting
aftershocks of war. This is great storytelling, full of mysteries
and twists, epic in its sweep, but precise and respectful in its
historical details. J. G. Kelly's vividly evoked scenes will stay
with me for a long time' CAROLINE SCOTT 'This book was such a
beautifully written book that will stay with me for a long time.
The storyline was emotive and heart wrenching and the characters
were well developed and have a special place in my heart. I didn't
want this book to end. Nothing I could say would do this book
justice, I cannot recommend this book enough' Reader review 'It's
beautifully written with a story that draws you in so quickly, it's
very well researched and heartbreakingly realistic. A book I wanted
and needed to finish. The sort of book everyone should read. The
most compelling book I've read this year' Reader review 'Utterly
impossible for me to put down. A heartbreaking story... I found I
had devoured the entire book in just one sitting... I have loved
this book so much, I wish I could give it five hundred stars. All I
can say is "WOW - read it. You won't be disappointed' Reader review
'I was engrossed in the story. The author has done tremendous
research about the war and did a good job of drawing the reader
into the story' Reader review
When Julia Child arrived in Paris in 1948, 'a six-foot-two-inch,
thirty-six-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian', she
barely spoke a word of French and didn't know the first thing about
cooking. As she fell in love with French culture - buying food at
local markets, sampling the local bistros, and taking classes at
the Cordon Bleu - her life began to change forever. We follow her
extraordinary transformation from kitchen ingenue to
internationally renowned (and internationally loved) expert in
French cuisine. Bursting with Child's adventurous and humorous
spirit, My Life in France captures post-war Paris with wonderful
vividness and charm.
A Times Political Book of the Year 2022 A powerful and revelatory
eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its
desperate endgame, and the war's echoing legacy. Elliot Ackerman
left the American military ten years ago, but his time in
Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and, later, as a CIA
paramilitary officer marked him indelibly. When the Taliban began
to close in on Kabul in August of 2021 and the Afghan regime began
its death spiral, he found himself pulled back into the conflict.
The official evacuation process was a bureaucratic failure that led
to a humanitarian catastrophe. Ackerman was drawn into an impromptu
effort to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and
American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds. These
were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to America's
longest war, but the success they achieved afforded a degree of
redemption: and, for Ackerman, a chance to reconcile his past with
his present. The Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that
brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week
at its bitter end. Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as
his lattice, Ackerman weaves in a personal history of the war's
long progress, beginning with the initial invasion in the months
after 9/11. It is a play in five acts with a tragic denouement. Any
reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the war's
trajectory will find a trenchant accounting here. And yet The Fifth
Act is not an exercise in finger-pointing: it brings readers into
close contact with a remarkable group of characters, who fought the
war with courage and dedication, in good faith and at great
personal cost. Understanding combatants' experiences and sacrifices
demands reservoirs of wisdom and the gifts of an extraordinary
storyteller. In Elliot Ackerman, this story has found that
author.The Fifth Act is a first draft of history that feels like a
timeless classic.
The world of the 2020s is one where instability, war and societal
breakup seem close. But, surely, we have learnt the lessons of the
past? Surely, peace will continue? Are you sure? Do you even know
what causes wars? Mike Martin argues that we don't understand what
causes violence and conflict, let alone how to go about solving
these problems. But there is a way to make sense of war and
society: linking the evolution of our brains with our history of
social development, 'Why We Fight' shows how political dynamics,
violence between individuals and, above all, war between groups are
all caused by deep-seated, unconscious urges to seek status and
belonging. Weaving together evolution, personal experiences of war,
and more than a decade of studying conflicts around the world, 'Why
We Fight' will change the way you think about society, about war,
and about yourself. It is a blueprint for the turbulent 2020s.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of NPR's "Books We Love" of 2021
Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
Winner of the Christopher Award "Masterly. An epic story of four
Japanese-American families and their sons who volunteered for
military service and displayed uncommon heroism... Propulsive and
gripping, in part because of Mr. Brown's ability to make us care
deeply about the fates of these individual soldiers...a
page-turner." - Wall Street Journal From the #1 New York Times
bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat, a gripping World War II
saga of patriotism and resistance, focusing on four Japanese
American men and their families, and the contributions and
sacrifices that they made for the sake of the nation. In the days
and months after Pearl Harbor, the lives of Japanese Americans
across the continent and Hawaii were changed forever. In this
unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of
Europe, Daniel James Brown portrays the journey of Rudy Tokiwa,
Fred Shiosaki, and Kats Miho, who volunteered for the 442nd
Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and
Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible. Brown also
tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were
forced to submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil. Woven
throughout is the chronicle of Gordon Hirabayashi, one of a cadre
of patriotic resisters who stood up against their government in
defense of their own rights. Whether fighting on battlefields or in
courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing
what Americans do best-striving, resisting, pushing back, rising
up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring.
The seminal event of the 20th century, the origins of the First
World War have always been difficult to establish and have aroused
deep controversy. Annika Mombauer tracks the impassioned debates as
they developed at critical points through the twentieth century.
The book focuses on the controversy itself, rather than the
specific events leading up to the war. Emotive and emotional from
the very beginning of the conflict, the debate and the passions
aroused in response to such issues as the 'war-guilt paragraph' of
the treaty of Versailles, are set in the context of the times in
which they were proposed. Similarly, the argument has been fuelled
by concerns over the sacrifices that were made and the casualities
that were suffered. Were they really justified?
Focuses on the military, political, diplomatic, and economic
aspects of the War or Revolution - allowing the reader to grasp the
complex web of interactions that occurred at different times
throughout the war. This is a key topic in American history and on
American history courses. Other books don't focus so clearly on the
military aspects, in totality from a practical viewpoint.
The most complete portrait ever drawn of the complex emotional connection between two of history’s towering leaders
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of “the Greatest Generation.” In Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one—a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together (113 days during the war) and exchanging nearly two thousand messages. Amid cocktails, cigarettes, and cigars, they met, often secretly, in places as far-flung as Washington, Hyde Park, Casablanca, and Teheran, talking to each other of war, politics, the burden of command, their health, their wives, and their children.
Born in the nineteenth century and molders of the twentieth and twenty-first, Roosevelt and Churchill had much in common. Sons of the elite, students of history, politicians of the first rank, they savored power. In their own time both men were underestimated, dismissed as arrogant, and faced skeptics and haters in their own nations—yet both magnificently rose to the central challenges of the twentieth century. Theirs was a kind of love story, with an emotional Churchill courting an elusive Roosevelt. The British prime minister, who rallied his nation in its darkest hour, standing alone against Adolf Hitler, was always somewhat insecure about his place in FDR’s affections—which was the way Roosevelt wanted it. A man of secrets, FDR liked to keep people off balance, including his wife, Eleanor, his White House aides—and Winston Churchill. Confronting tyranny and terror, Roosevelt and Churchill built a victorious alliance amid cataclysmic events and occasionally conflicting interests. Franklin and Winston is also the story of their marriages and their families, two clans caught up in the most sweeping global conflict in history.
Meacham’s new sources—including unpublished letters of FDR’s great secret love, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the papers of Pamela Churchill Harriman, and interviews with the few surviving people who were in FDR and Churchill’s joint company—shed fresh light on the characters of both men as he engagingly chronicles the hours in which they decided the course of the struggle. Hitler brought them together; later in the war, they drifted apart, but even in the autumn of their alliance, the pull of affection was always there. Charting the personal drama behind the discussions of strategy and statecraft, Meacham has written the definitive account of the most remarkable friendship of the modern age.
EUROPE, 1940. NAZI FORCES SWEEP ACROSS THE CONTINENT, WITH A
BRITISH INVASION LIKELY ONLY WEEKS AWAY. NEVER BEFORE HAS A
RESISTANCE MOVEMENT BEEN SO CRUCIAL TO THE WAR EFFORT. In this
definitive appraisal of Anglo-Norwegian cooperation in the Second
World War, Tony Insall reveals how some of the most striking
successes of the Norwegian resistance were the reports produced by
the heroic SIS agents living in the country's desolate wilderness.
Their coast-watching intelligence highlighted the movements of the
German fleet and led to counter-strikes which sank many enemy ships
- most notably the Tirpitz in November 1944. Using previously
unpublished archival material from London, Oslo and Moscow, Insall
explores how SIS and SOE worked effectively with their Norwegian
counterparts to produce some of the most remarkable achievements of
the Second World War.
'An Intimate War' tells the story of the last thirty-four years of
conflict in Helmand Province, Afghanistan as seen through the eyes
of the Helmandis. In the West, this period is often defined through
different lenses -- the Soviet intervention, the civil war, the
Taliban, and the post-2001 nation-building era. Yet, as experienced
by local inhabitants, the Helmand conflict is a perennial one,
involving the same individuals, families and groups, and driven by
the same arguments over land, water and power. This book -- based
on both military and research experience in Helmand and 150
interviews in Pashto -- offers a very different view of Helmand
from those in the media. It demonstrates how outsiders have most
often misunderstood the ongoing struggle in Helmand and how, in
doing so, they have exacerbated the conflict, perpetuated it and
made it more violent -- precisely the opposite of what was intended
when their interventions were launched. Mike Martin's oral history
of Helmand underscores the absolute imperative of understanding the
highly local, personal, and non-ideological nature of internal
conflict in much of the 'third' world.
Stephen Bungay' s magisterial history is acclaimed as the account
of the Battle of Britain. Unrivalled for its synthesis of all
previous historical accounts, for the quality of its strategic
analysis and its truly compulsive narrative, this is a book
ultimately distinguished by its conclusions - that it was the
British in the Battle who displayed all the virtues of efficiency,
organisation and even ruthlessness we habitually attribute to the
Germans, and they who fell short in their amateurism,
ill-preparedness, poor engineering and even in their old-fashioned
notions of gallantry. An engrossing read for the military scholar
and the general reader alike, this is a classic of military history
that looks beyond the mythology, to explore all the tragedy and
comedy; the brutality and compassion of war.
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