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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > War & defence operations > Battles & campaigns
Based on the latest scholarship by experts in the field, this work
provides an accessible guide to the Crusades fought for the
liberation and defense of the Holy Land-one of the most enduring
and consequential conflicts of the medieval world. The Crusades to
the Holy Land were one of the most important religious and social
movements to emerge over the course of the Middle Ages. The warfare
of the Crusades affected nearly all of Western Europe and involved
members of social groups from kings and knights down to serfs and
paupers. The memory of this epic long-ago conflict affects
relations between the Western and Islamic worlds in the present
day. The Crusades to the Holy Land: The Essential Reference Guide
provides almost 90 A-Z entries that detail the history of the
Crusades launched from Western Europe for the liberation or defense
of the Holy Land, covering the inception of the movement by Pope
Urban II in 1095 up to the early 14th century. This concise
single-volume work provides accessible articles and perspective
essays on the main Crusade expeditions as well as the important
crusaders, countries, places, and institutions involved. Each entry
is accompanied by references for further reading. Readers will
follow the career of Saladin from humble beginnings to becoming
ruler of Syria and Egypt and reconquering almost all of the Holy
Land from its Christian rulers; learn about the main sites and
characteristics of the castles that were crucial to the Christian
domination of the Holy Land; and understand the key aspects of
crusading, from motivation and recruitment to practicalities of
finance and transport. The reference guide also includes survey
articles that provide readers with an overview of the original
source materials written in Latin, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian,
and Syriac. Presents concise, accessible articles written by more
than 40 leading experts in the field that explain key concepts and
describe important institutions of the Crusades Covers all main
Crusades as well as the distinct countries and various
personalities involved Includes maps that make clear the course of
Crusades and main areas of campaigning in the Eastern Mediterranean
region Documents the Christian principalities established in the
course of the Crusades and the Muslim states that opposed them
The extraordinary story of Captain Llewellyn Wynne Jones' 1918
service in East Africa told through his personal military campaign
diary and photograph albums. Llewellyn's granddaughter, born some
36 years after his death, researches his military life and family
history to uncover the fascinating, courageous and ultimately
tragic story of his life. The book is beautifully illustrated with
original photographs from Llewellyn's campaign albums and from a
rich family photographic archive. It includes family artefacts,
letters, newspaper reports and interviews which combine to bring
this exceptional young man's few years to life once more 100 years
on.
Controlling Sex in Captivity is the first book to examine the
nature, extent and impact of the sexual activities of Axis
prisoners of war in the United States during the Second World War.
Historians have so far interpreted the interactions between captors
and captives in America as the beginning of the post-war friendship
between the United States, Germany and Italy. Matthias Reiss argues
that this paradigm is too simplistic. Widespread fraternisation
also led to sexual relationships which created significant negative
publicity, and some Axis POWs got caught up in the U.S. Army's new
campaign against homosexuals. By focusing on the fight against
fraternisation and same-sex activities, this study treads new
ground. It stresses that contact between captors and captives was
often loaded with conflict and influenced by perceptions of gender
and race. It highlights the transnational impact of fraternisation
and argues that the prisoners' sojourn in the United States also
influenced American society by fuelling a growing concern about
social disintegration and sexual deviancy, which eventually
triggered a conservative backlash after the war.
War in the East African bush
The First World War was inevitably a global conflict because the
rush by the principal powers of Europe to establish trading bases
and colonies, principally during the 19th century, guaranteed it
would be so. In Africa, German and British settlers were close
neighbours and at the outbreak of hostilities were ready for
immediate confrontation. National and imperial forces were
dispatched to augment local military operations. This book concerns
the struggle for East Africa. It was written, drawing on memory and
diary entries, by a British senior staff officer, a
brigadier-general, who was central to the organisation of the
British campaign and who has left posterity a concise, thorough and
detailed historical overview of it from the British perspective.
This book qualifies as a campaign history rather than a first hand
account and is recommended to readers seeking that perspective on
this interesting 'sideshow' theatre of the war.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each
title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our
hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their
spines and fabric head and tail bands.
Exiled Emissary is a biography of the colorful life of George H.
Earle, III - a Main Line Philadelphia millionaire, war hero awarded
the Navy Cross, Pennsylvania Governor, Ambassador to Austria and
Bulgaria, friend and supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, humanitarian,
playboy, and spy. Rich in Casablanca-style espionage and intrigue,
Farrell's deeply personal study presents FDR and his White House in
a new light, especially when they learned in 1943 that high-ranking
German officials approached Earle in Istanbul to convey their plot
to kidnap Hitler and seek an armistice. When FDR rejected their
offer, thereby prolonging World War II, his close relationship with
Earle became most inconvenient, resulting in Earle's exile to
American Samoa. Earle eventually returned to the United States,
renewing his warnings about communism to President Truman, who
underestimated the threat as a "bugaboo." Now, over four decades
following Earle's death, Farrell has uncovered newly declassified
records that give voice to his warnings about a threat we now know
should have never been dismissed.
While serving as a crew chief aboard a U.S. Air Force Rescue
helicopter, Airman First Class William A. Robinson was shot down
and captured in Ha Tinh Province, North Vietnam, on September 20,
1965. After a brief stint at the "Hanoi Hilton," Robinson endured
2,703 days in multiple North Vietnamese prison camps, including the
notorious Briarpatch and various compounds at Cu Loc, known by the
inmates as the Zoo. No enlisted man in American military history
has been held as a prisoner of war longer than Robinson. For seven
and a half years, he faced daily privations and endured the full
range of North Vietnam's torture program. In The Longest Rescue:
The Life and Legacy of Vietnam POW William A. Robinson, Glenn
Robins tells Robinson's story using an array of sources, including
declassified U.S. military documents, translated Vietnamese
documents, and interviews from the National Prisoner of War Museum.
Unlike many other POW accounts, this comprehensive biography
explores Robinson's life before and after his capture, particularly
his estranged relationship with his father, enabling a better
understanding of the difficult transition POWs face upon returning
home and the toll exacted on their families. Robins's powerful
narrative not only demonstrates how Robinson and his fellow
prisoners embodied the dedication and sacrifice of America's
enlisted men but also explores their place in history and memory.
The Vietnam War is one of the defining conflicts of the twentieth
century: not only did it divide American society at every level;
the conflict also represented a key shift in Asian anti-colonialism
and shaped the course of the Cold War. Despite its political and
social importance, popular memory of the war is dominated by myths
and stereotypes. In this incisive new text, John Dumbrell debunks
popular assumptions about the war and reassesses the key political,
military and historical controversies associated with one of the
most contentious and divisive wars of recent times. Drawing upon an
extensive range of newly accessible sources, Rethinking the Vietnam
War assesses all aspects of the conflict - ranging across domestic
electoral politics in the USA to the divided communist leadership
in Hanoi and grassroots antiwar movements around the world. The
book charts the full course of the war - from the origins of
American involvement, the growing internationalization of the
conflict and the swing year of 1968 to bitter twists in Sino-Soviet
rivalry and the eventual withdrawal of American forces. Situating
the conflict within an international context, John Dumbrell also
considers competing interpretations of the war and points the way
to the resolution of debates which have divided international
opinion for decades.
This landmark study of the most traumatic era in American history
won a Pulitzer Prize in 1918 for its concise, clear-minded survey
of the Civil War from political and economic perspectives. From
"the great factor in the destruction of slavery"-the election of
Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860-to the "twenty thousand men in
Wall Street" who sang to celebrate the war's end four years later,
Rhodes, a self-taught historian, lends a distinctive voice to his
retelling of the war. All students of the upheaval and disorder of
the period will appreciate this enduring and unusual perspective on
it.
With a New Introduction by Benjamin Ferencz, Chief Prosecutor for
the United States at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial Originally
published three years before the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 1973,
this important book was not a polemic, but a sober account of the
Vietnam conflict from the perspective of international law. Framed
in reference to the Nuremberg Trials that followed the Second World
War, it described problems the United States may have to face due
to its involvement in the Vietnam conflict. After presenting a
general history of war crimes and an account of the Nuremberg
Trials, Taylor turns his attention to Vietnam. Among other points,
he examined parallels between actions committed by American troops
during the then-recent My Lai Massacre of 1968 and Hitler's SS in
Nazi-occupied Europe. Commissioned for this edition, Ferencz's
introduction evaluates Taylor's study and its lessons for the
present and future. When this book was published in 1970, Telford
Taylor had concluded that U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam
was an American tragedy: "Somehow we failed ourselves to learn the
lessons we undertook to teach at Nuremberg." What were those
lessons? How acceptable were they? Which laws of war could
realistically be enforced on a raging battlefield against an
implacable foe? Forty years later, it is worth re-examining how it
came about that this powerful and humanitarian country could have
come to be seen by many as a giant "prone to shatter what we try to
save. -From the Introduction by Benjamin B. FerenczTelford Taylor
1908-1998] was chief counsel for the prosecution at the Nuremberg
Trials. Later Professor of Law at Columbia University, he was a
vigorous opponent of Senator Joseph McCarthy and an outspoken
critic of U.S. actions during the Vietnam War. His books include
Sword and Swastika: Generals and Nazis in the Third Reich (1952),
Grand Inquest: The Story of Congressional Investigations (1955) and
The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (1992).
Benjamin Ferencz, a member of Taylor's legal staff, was the Chief
Prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial.
He is the author of Defining International Aggression-The Search
for World Peace (1975), Adjunct Professor of International Law,
Pace University and founder of the Pace Peace Center.
Both the courage and the inhumanity displayed during wartime are
chronicled in these three diaries penned by Ray Parkin, who served
during World War II. Engaging narratives and pictures detail his
experience on the "HMAS Perth in the Sunda Strait battle with the
Japanese naval force that eventually sunk his ship. Also recounted
are Parkin's 15 months as a prisoner of war, during which he helped
construct the Burma-Siam railway. Details of his final 12 months of
captivity in a crowded tramp steamer reveal the endurance of
soldiers who survived submarine attacks and weathered a typhoon.
These stories provide a single man's perspective on the war but
also offer insight into the Japanese way of thinking and the
traumas of combat.
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