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Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > First World War
The war of the French volunteers
This book does not concern the Battle of Verdun in 1916--widely
considered to be the largest battle in world history, rather it
positions the action geographically for the reader. Written during
wartime this account concerns the personal experiences of a young
officer of the French infantry from the earliest days of the Great
War through a period of comparative fluidity of movement before the
stalemate of trench warfare. The fighting concerns the actions
about the Meuse and the Marne in the first year of the war from a
French perspective and concludes as the 'armies go to earth' in the
early part of 1915. Genevoix takes the reader into the heart of his
enthusiastic young group of comrades and soldiers on campaign to
provide valuable insights into the opening phases of the great
conflict the French infantry knew. Available in soft cover and hard
cover with dust jacket.
"Riveting . . . There is a wealth of new information here that adds
considerable texture and nuance to his story and helps to set
Russia apart from previous works."-The Wall Street Journal An epic
new account of the conflict that reshaped Eastern Europe and set
the stage for the rest of the twentieth century. Between 1917 and
1921 a devastating struggle took place in Russia following the
collapse of the Tsarist empire. The doomed White alliance of
moderate socialists and reactionary monarchists stood little chance
against Trotsky's Red Army and the single-minded Communist
dictatorship under Lenin. In the savage civil war that followed,
terror begat terror, which in turn led to ever greater cruelty with
man's inhumanity to man, woman and child. The struggle became a
world war by proxy as Churchill deployed weaponry and troops from
the British empire, while contingents from the United States,
France, Italy, Japan, Poland, and Czechoslovakia played rival
parts. Using the most up to date scholarship and archival research,
Antony Beevor assembles the complete picture in a gripping
narrative that conveys the conflict through the eyes of everyone
from the worker on the streets of Petrograd to the cavalry officer
on the battlefield and the doctor in an improvised hospital.
Invented during World War I to break the grim deadlock of the
Western Front trenches, tanks went on to revolutionize warfare.
From the lightning Blitzkrieg assaults of World War II, to the
great battles in the Middle Eastern desert, tanks have become one
of the key components of the 'combined arms' philosophy of the
modern battlefield. This pocket guide makes accessible to
'rivetheads' everywhere essential information to identify 40 of
history's most fearsome tanks, including Germany's Tiger, Russia's
T-34, America's Sherman and Panther, and France's FT-17. Each tank
is presented with a detailed drawing to aid recognition.
The Remembered Dead explores the ways poets of the First World War
- and later poets writing in the memory of that war - address the
difficult question of how to remember, and commemorate, those
killed in conflict. It looks closely at the way poets struggled to
meaningfully represent dying, death, and the trauma of witness,
while responding to the pressing need for commemoration. The
authors pay close attention to specific poems while maintaining a
strong awareness of literary and philosophical contexts. The poems
are discussed in relation to modernism and myth, other forms of
commemoration (such as photographs and memorials), and theories of
cultural memory. There is fresh analysis of canonical poets which,
at the same time, challenges the confines of the canon by
integrating discussion of lesser-known figures, including
non-combatants and poets of later decades. The final chapter
reaches beyond the war's centenary in a discussion of one
remarkable commemoration of Wilfred Owen.
This is the compelling story of West Belfast's involvement fighting
on the Western Front throughout the First World War. This is the
story of men from either side of West Belfast's sectarian divide
during the Great War. This dramatic book tells the story of the
volunteers of the 36th and 16th divisions who fought on the Somme
and side-by-side at Messines. Grayson also brings in forgotten West
Belfast men from throughout the armed forces, from the retreat at
Mons to the defeat of Germany and life post-war. In so doing, he
tells a new story which challenges popular perceptions of the war
and explains why remembrance remains so controversial in Belfast
today.
Why, despite the appalling conditions in the trenches of the
Western Front, was the British army almost untouched by major
mutiny during the First World War? Drawing upon an extensive range
of sources, including much previously unpublished archival
material, G. D. Sheffield seeks to answer this question by
examining a crucial but previously neglected factor in the
maintenance of the British army's morale in the First World War:
the relationship between the regimental officer and the ordinary
soldier.
Booth offers a complex portrait of the relation between British Great War culture and modernist writings. She notes that unlike civilians, modernist writers and combatants shared a concern with the divide between language and experience, and draws connections between the sensibility of the modernist writer and the soldier, particularly regarding efforts to describe dying and the dead. Her analysis extends to memorials, posters, and architecture of the Great War, though her emphasis is on literary works by Robert Graves, E.M. Forster, Vera Brittain, and others.
I cannot stop while there are lives to be saved
Edith Cavell
Nurse Edith Cavell was a British Nurse and humanitarian who became
famous during the First World War for not only nursing and saving
the lives of battle casualties with no regard for the nationality
of the combatants, but also for her work in assisting some 200
Allied soldiers to escape incarceration by the victorious German
Army in Belgium during the early stages of the conflict. This
middle aged nurse was discovered by the Germans, who considered her
actions treasonable, abetting the escape of troops who might return
to the battle front. Cavell was subsequently tried by court
marshal, sentenced to be executed and shot by firing squad in
October 1915, aged 50 years. The event was widely reported by the
world press and the effect on the public at large was electric
providing a propaganda triumph for the Allied cause and an equal
disaster for the German cause-although they considered their
actions fair and reasonable by the rules of war. Cavell's influence
on nursing in Belgium has been an enduring one. This book contains
two accounts brought together by Leonaur for interest and good
value. The first, The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell by William Thomson
Hill, provides an overview of the Cavell story whilst the second,
With Edith Cavell in Belgium by Jacqueline Van Til, was written by
a young nurse who worked closely with Cavell and who had inside
knowledge and personal experience of the dramatic events as they
unfolded. Available in softcover and hardcover with dust jacket.
More than 400 photographs detail the American military experience
in World War I on the ground, in the air, and at sea, from
recruitment to the Armistice. This is the premier visual history of
the United States in the Great War to be published during these
centennial years. * Features not only the infamous Doughboys and
Devil Dogs, but also flying aces, doctors and nurses, seamen, and
the German enemy * Color photos of weapons and equipment, uniforms,
insignia, medals, and posters * Richly informative text and
captions by an expert on World War I and battlefield
interpretation.
The Great War is still seen as a mostly European war. The Middle
Eastern theater is, at best, considered a sideshow written from the
western perspective. This book fills an important gap in the
literature by giving an insight through annotated translations from
five Ottoman memoirs, previously not available in English, of
actors who witnessed the last few years of Turkish presence in the
Arab lands. It provides the historical background to many of the
crises in the Middle East today, such as the Arab-Israeli
confrontation, the conflict-ridden emergence of Syria and Lebanon,
the struggle over the holy places of Islam in the Hejaz, and the
mutual prejudices of Arabs and Turks about each other.
This is a major new history of the British army during the Great
War written by three leading military historians. Ian Beckett,
Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly survey operations on the Western
Front and throughout the rest of the world as well as the army's
social history, pre-war and wartime planning and strategy, the
maintenance of discipline and morale and the lasting legacy of the
First World War on the army's development. They assess the
strengths and weaknesses of the army between 1914 and 1918,
engaging with key debates around the adequacy of British
generalship and whether or not there was a significant 'learning
curve' in terms of the development of operational art during the
course of the war. Their findings show how, despite limitations of
initiative and innovation amongst the high command, the British
army did succeed in developing the effective combined arms warfare
necessary for victory in 1918.
Over 185,000 British military servicemen were captured by the
Germans during the First World War and incarcerated as prisoners of
war (POWs). In this original investigation into their experiences
of captivity, Wilkinson uses official and private British source
material to explore how these servicemen were challenged by, and
responded to, their wartime fate. Examining the psychological
anguish associated with captivity, and physical trials, such as the
controlling camp spaces; harsh routines and regimes; the lack of
material necessities; and, for many, forced labour demands, he asks
if, how and with what effects British POWs were able to respond to
such challenges. The culmination of this research reveals a range
of coping strategies embracing resistance; leadership and
organisation; networks of support; and links with 'home worlds'.
British Prisoners of War in First World War Germany offers an
original insight into First World War captivity, the German POW
camps, and the mentalities and perceptions of the British
servicemen held within.
M. D. Allen's study deals with T. E. Lawrence's lifelong
interest in the medieval world, especially medieval literature, and
its considerable influence on his view of himself and of the Arabs
with whom he fought in an archaic theater of war, and hence his own
literary production.
The Medievalism of Lawrence of Arabia investigates the influence
Lawrence's interest in medieval life and literature had on his
attitudes toward life in general and--in content, theme, and
diction--on his masterpiece, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, in
particular. Allen begins with a brief biography of Lawrence--his
early interest in things medieval and his somewhat controversial BA
thesis on crusader castles. Allen then reveals the extent to which
Lawrence's ideas about honor, warfare, and chivalry in the Arab war
against the Turks were shaped by his reading in medieval writings
such as Malory's Morte d'Arthur. (Both, as he makes clear, were
warrior societies dominated by horses.) Lawrence's reading in the
nineteenth-century medievalism is also explored, as in Tennyson's
Idylls of the King, and Ruskin's writing on art, where the parallel
between Ruskin's ideas on ornament and Lawrence's ideas about the
dignity of war is demonstrated.
Allen then identifies the medieval and neomedieval texts of
Seven Pillars of Wisdom and shows why and to what effect Lawrence
borrowed from chivalric, neochivalric, and pseudochivalric works,
and sometimes transmogrified them, revealing Lawrence's greatest
inspiration to be an English translation of the Moallakat (which
is, so to speak, the Arabic Beowulf). Allen sheds new light on many
aspects of the influence of medievalism on Lawrence's thought and
writing.
From the Treaty of Versailles to the 2018 centenary and beyond, the
history of the First World War has been continually written and
rewritten, studied and contested, producing a rich historiography
shaped by the social and cultural circumstances of its creation.
Writing the Great War provides a groundbreaking survey of this vast
body of work, assembling contributions on a variety of national and
regional historiographies from some of the most prominent scholars
in the field. By analyzing perceptions of the war in contexts
ranging from Nazi Germany to India's struggle for independence,
this is an illuminating collective study of the complex interplay
of memory and history.
Using a broad variety of textual and visual sources, Latin America
and the First World War goes beyond traditional diplomatic history
and analyzes the global dimension of the history of the Great War.
Filling a significant gap in transnational histories of the war,
Stefan Rinke addresses political, social, and economic aspects as
well as the cultural impact of the war on Latin America and vice
versa. Rinke's meticulous research is based on sources from the
nineteen independent states of the entire subcontinent and promises
to be the most comprehensive examination to date of Latin America
before, during, and immediately after the war.
The First World War mangled faces, blew away limbs, and ruined
nerves. Ten million dead, twenty million severe casualties, and
eight million people with permanent disabilities--modern war
inflicted pain and suffering with unsparing, mechanical efficiency.
However, such horror was not the entire story. People also rebuilt
their lives, their communities, and their bodies. From the ashes of
war rose beauty, eroticism, and the promise of utopia.
Ana Carden-Coyne investigates the cultures of resilience and the
institutions of reconstruction in Britain, Australia, and the
United States. Immersed in efforts to heal the consequences of
violence and triumph over adversity, reconstruction inspired
politicians, professionals, and individuals to transform themselves
and their societies.
Bodies were not to remain locked away as tortured memories.
Instead, they became the subjects of outspoken debate, the objects
of rehabilitation, and commodities of desire in global industries.
Governments, physicians, beauty and body therapists, monument
designers and visual artists looked to classicism and modernism as
the tools for rebuilding civilization and its citizens. What better
response to loss of life, limb, and mind than a body reconstructed?
Empires, Soldiers, and Citizens 2/e offers a vivid range of
eyewitness perspectives - from female munitions workers to Indian
troops in France - which explore the social, cultural, and military
dimensions of World War I. This second edition includes added
material to reflect the very latest historical thinking. * Combines
documents and themes that have proven successful in the first
edition with new sources and topics that are currently at the
forefront of historical debate and research * Now features 59 new
documents which illustrate the imperial dimensions of the conflict
and broaden the coverage of 'war culture' and developments in
Eastern Europe * Documents have been included which pay particular
attention to the experiences and perspectives of ordinary people,
whose voices are often underrepresented in broad accounts * The
bibliography has been expanded and completely updated, complemented
by a new series of maps and illustrations
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