Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the latest chapter in a series of events that have their origins in World War One. The difficult existential questions that emerged before and during this conflict still remain unresolved. Contrary to the claim that wars are not supposed to happen in Europe or that we live in the era of the End of History, the experience of Ukraine highlights the salience of the spell of the past. The failure of the West to take its past seriously has left it confused and unprepared to deal with the current crisis. Unexpectedly fashionable claims about the irrelevance of borders and of nation states have been exposed as shallow myths. The author argues that the West's self-inflicted condition of historical amnesia has encouraged it to disregard the salience of geo-political realities. Suddenly the once fashionable claims that made up the virtues of globalisation appear threadbare. This problem, which was already evident during the global Covid pandemic has reached a crisis point in the battlefield of Ukraine. History has had its revenge on a culture that believes that what happened in the past no longer matters. The Road To Ukraine: How the West Lost Its Way argues that overcoming the state of historical amnesia is the precondition for the restoration of global solidarity.

The cup that cheers
The First World War was considered the pinnacle in the development of warfare following the dawn of the industrial age. For the first time conflict on a global stage was fought on land, on and under the sea and in the skies. This war of the machines swept away swathes of humanity by the use of ruthlessly efficient means of slaughter. Every human resource was needed because it could not be waged solely by male armies on the fields of battle. This meant that the role of women in western society would be changed forever. Women became the industrial workforce, agricultural workers and the custodians of transport and logistics. Thousands more, from nurses to drivers, mechanics to entertainers, volunteered to provide essential services to support the fighting men on the front line. Many new and established organisations willingly put all their resources into the war effort. To the troops of the allied armies these volunteers-both men and women-were little short of angels, providing for body and spirit under the most difficult circumstances and their contribution to the morale of the soldiers in action cannot be over estimated. The Y. M. C. A was at the forefront of these activities, providing everything from essentials to much appreciated little luxuries, from the opportunity for a bath and shave to that mainstay of English or American life, a good, hot and much needed 'cuppa' tea or coffee, accompanied by a kind smile or a supportive word. This special Leonaur edition contains three accounts of these remarkably brave volunteers on the Western Front. Theirs was essential but often dangerous work and many of them made the ultimate sacrifice. This fascinating book relates an often unsung aspect of the Great War, but one which will be of enormous interest to those who require a complete understanding of the conflict and are interested in the changing role of women in the early years of the 20th century.
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.

A fine author's view of the Great Somme Offensive
For many years there were few more highly regarded histories of the momentous Battle of the Somme, 1916, than that written by John Buchan, the renowned author of 'The Thirty Nine Steps, ' 'Greenmantle, ' 'Huntingtower' and many others. In both his fiction and non-fiction Buchan had the ability to craft a fine narrative in an easy going, economic style. Today Buchan is far less well-known for his non-fiction than for his fiction and that, perhaps, is inevitable. Nevertheless, he was responsible for a very substantial multi-volume history of the First World War which his consummate skill as a writer has ensured remains readable, often quoted and relevant. There were several versions of Buchan's 'Battle of the Somme' published during and soon after the First World War, sometimes in several volumes each dealing with different phases of the battle. This unique, never before in print, Leonaur Original, brings together all the text and all the illustrations and photographs from those various editions to create, what we believe to be the definitive version of the book. Fought over a period of nearly five months, between July and November of 1916, the Battle of the Somme became one of the defining battles, both of world history and the First World War. Over 1,000,000 men were killed or wounded in the course of the fighting which has made it, because of its inconclusive outcome, emblematic of the lives wasted during the war and of the implied incompetence of military commanders throughout the conflict.
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.

The war for colonial Africa
This very substantial book, written by the two South African official correspondents on the campaign, narrates the expedition in 1914-15 which led to the conquest of German South-West Africa (the region now known as Namibia). One author accompanied the Northern Army and the other, the Southern Army. During the 19th century the great powers of Europe raced to establish themselves in all corners of the globe for colonisation, trade and political influence. In the 'great scramble for Africa, ' the British and German empires had established themselves, by degrees, in the east and west of the continent. In the years before the outbreak of the First World War these colonies existed, more or less, in harmony but once hostilities erupted German and British settlers found themselves living in very close proximity to hostile forces. The British had the advantage of numbers since colonisation had long been a policy, though the Germans compensated for this measure with the abilities of their military commanders and the expertise and quality of their European and locally raised troops. (South Africa itself entered the fray, its forces led by commanders who a little over a decade earlier had led the Boer burghers in their attempts to form a nation independent of the British Empire.) This campaign of mobility was fought in the searing heat of a desert region and was often a 'tip and run affair' as mounted troops traversed huge tracts of inhospitable terrain. Those interested in the First World War often find it's 'side-show' theatres fascinating because they differed so completely from the war of stalemate and attrition on the Western Front. This is a very thorough and comprehensive book written by competent authors who experienced the campaign at first hand and were well qualified to record both their personal impressions and an informed overview of the events they witnessed. This edition of the text is liberally enhanced by the inclusion of many photographs taken on the campaign.
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.

This eye-opening study gives a nuanced, provocative account of how German soldiers in the Great War experienced and enacted masculinity. Drawing on an array of relevant narratives and media, it explores the ways that both heterosexual and homosexual soldiers expressed emotion, understood romantic ideals, and approached intimacy and sexuality.

Fountain-Pens - The Super-Pen for Our Super-Men Ladies! Learn To Drive! Your Country Needs Women Drivers! Do you drink German water? When Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, companies wasted no time in seizing the commercial opportunities presented by the conflict. There was no radio or television. The only way in which the British public could get war news was through newspapers and magazines, many of which recorded rising readerships. Advertising became a new science of sales, growing increasingly sophisticated both in visual terms and in its psychological approach. This collection of pictorial advertisements from the Great War reveals how advertisers were given the opportunity to create new markets for their products and how advertising reflected social change during the course of the conflict. It covers a wide range of products, including trench coats, motor-cycles, gramophones, cigarettes and invalid carriages, all bringing an insight into the preoccupations, aspirations and necessities of life between 1914 and 1918. Many advertisements were aimed at women, be it for guard-dogs to protect them while their husbands were away, or soap and skin cream for 'beauty on duty'. At the same time, men's tailoring evolved to suit new conditions. Aquascutum advertised 'Officers' Waterproof Trench Coats' and one officer, writing in the Times in December 1914, advised others to leave their swords behind but to take their Burberry coat. Sandwiched between the formality of the Victorian era and the hedonism of the 1920s, these charged images provide unexpected sources of historical information, affording an intimate glimpse into the emotional life of the nation during the First World War.

In central Brussels stands a statue of a young woman. Built in 1923, it is the first monument to a working-class woman in European history. Her name was Gabrielle Petit. History has forgotten Petit, an ambitious and patriotic Belgian, executed by firing squad in 1916 for her role as an intelligence agent for the British Army. After the First World War she was celebrated as an example of stern endeavour, but a hundred years later her memory has faded. In the first part of this historical biography Sophie De Schaepdrijver uses Petit's life to explore gender, class and heroism in the context of occupied Europe. Petit's experiences reveal the reality of civilian engagement under military occupation and the emergence of modern espionage. The second part of the book focuses on the legacy and cultural memory of Petit and the First World War. By analysing Petit's representation in ceremony, discourse and popular culture De Schaepdrijver expands our understanding of remembrance across the 20th century.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

In the search for the deeper causes of the 'War to end all wars' the reading public has been presented with countless titles by military, diplomatic and intellectual historians. Some of these have, however, been motivated by a desire to show how their authors would have preferred the past events to have been, so as to promote some present-day agenda. This is the fallacy of 'presentism'. John Moses was trained at the Universities of Munich and Erlangen by professors committed to the Rankean tradition of showing 'how it actually was', as far as humanly possible, based on diligent archival research and with the strictest objectivity and emotional detachment. Consequently, both Moses and Overlack have been at pains to identify the essential peculiarity of the Kaiser's Germany and have focused sharply on the question of how its war planning impinged on Australasia.