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Books > History > World history > From 1900
World War II saw the first generation of young men that had grown
up comfortable with modern industrial technology go into combat. As
kids, the GIs had built jalopies in their garage and poured over
glossy, full-color issues of Popular Mechanics; they had read Buck
Rogers in the Twenty Fifth Century comic books, listened to his
adventures on the radio, and watched him pilot rocket ships in the
Saturday morning serials at the Bijou. Tinkerers, problem-solvers,
risk-takers, and day-dreamers, they were curious and outspoken--a
generation well prepared to improvise, innovate, and adapt
technology on the battlefield. Since they were also a generation
which had unprecedented technology available to them, their ability
to innovate with technology proved an immeasurable edge on the
field of combat. This book tells their story through the experience
of the battle of Normandy, bringing together three disparate brands
of history: (1) military history; (2) the history of science and
technology; and (3) social, economic, cultural, and intellectual
history. All three historical narratives combine to tell the tale
of GI genius and the process by which GI ingenuity became an
enduring feature of the American citizen-soldier. GI Ingenuity is
in large part an old-fashioned combat history, with mayhem and mass
slaughter at center stage. It tells the story of death and
destruction on the killing fields of Normandy, as well as the
battlegrounds that provide the prologue and postscript to the
transformation of war that occurred in France in 1944. This story
of GI ingenuity, moreover, puts the battles in the context of the
immense social, economic, scientific, and technological changes
that accompanied theevolution of combat in the twentieth century.
GI Ingenuity illustrates the great transition of the American
genius in battle from an industrial-age army to a postmodern
military. And it does it by looking at the place where the
transition happened--on the battlefield.
A new edition of Primo Levi's classic memoir of the Holocaust, with
an introduction by David Baddiel, author of Jews Don't Count 'With
the moral stamina and intellectual pose of a twentieth-century
Titan, this slightly built, dutiful, unassuming chemist set out
systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to
think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid,
unpretentious prose... One of the greatest human testaments of the
era' Philip Roth 'Levi's voice is especially affecting, so clear,
firm and gentle, yet humane and apparently untouched by anger,
bitterness or self-pity... If This Is a Man is miraculous, finding
the human in every individual who traverses its pages' Philippe
Sands 'The death of Primo Levi robs Italy of one of its finest
writers... One of the few survivors of the Holocaust to speak of
his experiences with a gentle voice' Guardian '[What] gave it such
power... was the sheer, unmitigated truth of it; the sense of what
a book could achieve in terms of expanding one's own knowledge and
understanding at a single sitting... few writers have left such a
legacy... A necessary book' Independent
Second World War British Military Camouflage offers an original
approach to the cultures and geographies of military conflict,
through a study of the history of camouflage. Isla Forsyth narrates
the scientific biography of Dr Hugh Cott (1900-1987), eminent
zoologist and artist turned camoufleur, and entwines this with the
lives of other camouflage practitioners, to trace the sites of
camouflage's developments. Moving through the scientists'
fieldsite, the committee boardroom, the military training site and
the soldiers' battlefield, this book uncovers the history of this
ambiguous military invention, and subverts a long-dominant
narrative of camouflage as solely a protective technology. This
study demonstrates that, as camouflage transformed battlefields
into unsettling theatres of war, there were lasting consequences
not only for military technology and knowledge, but also for the
ethics of battle and the individuals enrolled in this process.
This book argues that Franklin D. Roosevelt's work-of which the New
Deal was a prime example-was rooted in a definitive political
ideology tied to the ideals of the Progressive movement and the
social gospel of the late 19th century. Roosevelt's New Deal
resulted in such dramatic changes within the United States that it
merits the label "revolutionary" and ranks with the work of
Washington and Lincoln in its influence on the American nation. The
New Deal was not simply the response to a severe economic crisis;
it was also an expression of FDR's well-developed political
ideology stemming from his religious ideas and his experience in
the Progressive movement of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Third American Revolution describes
the unfolding of his New Deal response to the crisis of the
Depression and chronicles the bitter conservative opposition that
resisted every step in the Roosevelt revolution. The author's
analysis of Roosevelt's political thought is supported by FDR's own
words contained in the key documents and various speeches of his
political career. This book also documents FDR's recognition of the
dangers to democracy from unresponsive government and identifies
his specific motivations to provide for the general welfare.
Provides a chronology of FDR's career Contains photographs of FDR
and New Deal moments as well as edited versions of FDR's documents
and speeches Includes a bibliography of works and documents cited
The battles in Russia played the decisive part in Hitler's defeat.
Gigantic, prolonged, and bloody, they contrasted with the general
nature of the fighting on other fronts. The Russians fought on
their own in "their" theater of war and with an indepedent
strategy. Stalinist Russia was a country radically different from
its liberal democratic allies. Hitler and the German high command,
for their part, conceived and carried out the Russian campaign as a
singular "war of annihilation." This riveting new book is a
penetrating, broad-ranging, yet concise overview of this vast
conflict. It investigates the Wehrmacht and the Red Army and the
command and production systems that organized and sustained them.
It considers a range of further themes concerning this most
political of wars. Benefiting from a post-Communist, post-Cold War
perspective, the book takes advantage of a wealth of new studies
and source material that have become available over the last
decade. Readers from history buffs to scholars will find something
new in this exciting new book.
This unique volume combines the book Tiger I In Combat with a
facsimile of the original German wartime crew manual for the Tiger
tank, the Tigerfibel. This overview draws on a wide variety of
primary source accounts of the Tiger I in action from both the
Allied and the German perspective. Rare photographs, technical
drawings and contemporary reports of the Tiger in combat help to
set aside the myths and bring the reality into focus. General Heinz
Guderian authorised the publication of the Tigerfibel from 1943
onwards. This highly unorthodox publication was full of risqu
drawings and humorous illustrations and was designed to convey
complex battlefield instructions in a simple and memorable manner.
The manual contains everything the reader could ever wish to know
concerning how the crews were instructed to handle the Tiger I
under combat conditions. The Tigerfibel contains detailed
instructions on aiming, firing, ammunition and close combat. There
are extensive sections on maintenance, driving, radio operation and
the essentials of commanding a Tiger I in combat. This book
contains the original German publication with a complete English
translation, new overview and introduction by Emmy Award winning
historian Bob Carruthers. Highly accessible, this book is essential
and rewarding reading for all readers interested in the history of
the Tiger I.
The main subjects of analysis in the present book are the stages of
initiation in the grand scheme of Theosophical evolution. These
initiatory steps are connected to an idea of evolutionary
self-development by means of a set of virtues that are relative to
the individual's position on the path of evolution. The central
thesis is that these stages were translated from the "Hindu"
tradition to the "Theosophical" tradition through multifaceted
"hybridization processes" in which several Indian members of the
Theosophical Society partook. Starting with Annie Besant's early
Theosophy, the stages of initiation are traced through Blavatsky's
work to Manilal Dvivedi and T. Subba Row, both Indian members of
the Theosophical Society, and then on to the Sanatana Dharma Text
Books. In 1898, the English Theosophist Annie Besant and the Indian
Theosophist Bhagavan Das together founded the Central Hindu
College, Benares, which became the nucleus around which the Benares
Hindu University was instituted in 1915. In this context the
Sanatana Dharma Text Books were published. Muhlematter shows that
the stages of initiation were the blueprint for Annie Besant's
pedagogy, which she implemented in the Central Hindu College in
Benares. In doing so, he succeeds in making intelligible how
"esoteric" knowledge was transferred to public institutions and how
a broader public could be reached as a result. The dissertation has
been awarded the ESSWE PhD Thesis prize 2022 by the European
Society for the Study of Western Esotericism.
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.
Coral Comes High is Captain George P. Hunt's account of what
happened to himself and his company during the initial stages of
the Peleliu invasion by the US Marines during World War 2. The
company sustains terrible casualties and is isolated in a seemingly
hopeless position for a nightmare forty-eight hours. Outnumbered
and outgunned by the enemy, they beat off all attacks and seize the
Point with a courage which is at the same time matter-of-fact and
almost superhuman.
Annexation and the Unhappy Valley: The Historical Anthropology of
Sindh's Colonization addresses the nineteenth century expansion and
consolidation of British colonial power in the Sindh region of
South Asia. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach and employs a
fine-grained, nuanced and situated reading of multiple agents and
their actions. It explores how the political and administrative
incorporation of territory (i.e., annexation) by East India Company
informs the conversion of intra-cultural distinctions into
socio-historical conflicts among the colonized and colonizers. The
book focuses on colonial direct rule, rather than the more commonly
studied indirect rule, of South Asia. It socio-culturally explores
how agents, perspectives and intentions vary-both within and across
regions-to impact the actions and structures of colonial
governance.
Modernizing Nature contributes to the debate regarding the origins,
institutionalization, and politics of the sciences and systems of
knowledge underlying colonial frameworks of environmental
management. It departs from the widely prevalent scholarly
perspective that colonial science can be understood predominantly
as a handmaiden of imperialism. Instead, it argues that the myriad
colonial sciences had ideological and interventionist traditions
distinct from each other and from the colonial bureaucracy and that
these tensions better explain environmental politics and policy
dilemmas in the post-colonial era. Professor Rajan argues that
tropical forestry in the nineteenth century consisted of at least
two distinct approaches towards nature, resource, and people; and
what won out in the end was the Continental European forestry
paradigm. Rajan also shows that science and scientists were
relatively marginal until the First World War. It was the acute
scientific and resource crisis felt during the War, along with the
rise of experts and expertise in Britain during that period and the
lobby-politics of an organized empire-wide scientific community,
that resulted in resource management regimes such as forestry
beginning to get serious state backing. Over time, considerable
differences in approach and outlook towards policy emerged between
different colonial scientific communities, such as foresters and
agriculturists. These different colonial sciences represented
different situated knowledges, with different visions of nature,
people, and empire, and in different configurations of power.
Finally, in a panoramic overview of post-colonial developments,
Rajan argues that the hegemony of these state-scientific regimes of
resource-management during the period 1950-1990 engendered not just
social revolt, as recent historical work has shown, but also
intellectual protest. Consequently, the discipline of forestry
became systematically re-conceptualized, with newapproaches to
sylviculture, economics, law, and crucially, with new visions of
modernity. This disciplinary change constitutes nothing short of a
cognitive revolution, one that has been brought about by a clearly
articulated political perspective on the orientation of the
discipline of forestry by its practitioners.
Armoured Cars in Eden. A president's son at war in the land that
became modern day Iraq. This is the story of a young American man
serving in a little documented force in an almost forgotten
campaign. More remarkably, he was from a background of military
tradition and adventure and the son of a former United States
president. His war was against the Turkish Ottoman Empire, his
service that of a volunteer in the British army, his familiar
locations Negef, Falujah, Baghdad - exotic place names once again
familiar to Americans at war. His is a story of parallels and
contrasts - of religious sensitivities, rivalries, civil unrest,
occupying armies and conflict along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers
almost a century ago. Roosevelt's experiences conclude in the
Argonne at the end of hostilities.
This oral history of the air war in Vietnam includes the stories of
more than thirty pilots who all had one thing in common-after
returning from Southeast Asia and separating from the service, they
were hired as pilots by Western Airlines. As the chapters begin,
Bruce Cowee tells his story and introduces us to each pilot. The
interesting theme is that all of these men served in Southeast Asia
and in most cases never knew each other until they came home and
went to work for Western Airlines. Each of the pilots featured in
this book is the real thing, and in an age of so many "Wannabees,"
it is reassuring to know that each of them was a pilot for Western
Airlines and someone who Bruce worked with or knew professionally.
The stories span a 9 year period, 1964 - 1973, and cover every
aspect of the Air War in Southeast Asia. These 33 men represent
only a small fraction of the Vietnam veterans hired as pilots by
Western Airlines, but this book pays tribute to all of them.
Following the defeat of the Greek Army in 1922 by nationalist
Turkish forces, the Convention of Lausanne in 1923 specified the
first compulsory exchange of populations ratified by an
international organization. The arrival in Greece of over 1.2
million refugees and their settlement proved to be a watershed with
far-reaching consequences for the country. Dr Kontogiorgi examines
the exchange of populations and the agricultural settlement in
Greek Macedonia of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Asia
Minor and the Pontus, Eastern Thrace, the Caucasus, and Bulgaria
during the inter-war period. She examines Greek state policy and
the role of the Refugee Settlement Commission which, under the
auspices of the League of Nations, carried out the refugee
resettlement project. Macedonia, a multilingual and ethnically
diverse society, experienced a transformation so dramatic that it
literally changed its character. Kontogiorgi charts that change and
attempts to provide the means of understanding it. The consequences
of the settlement of refugees for the ethnological composition of
the population, and its political, social, demographic, and
economic implications are treated in the light of new archival
material. Reality is separated from myth in examining the factors
involved in the process of integration of the newcomers and
assimilation of the inhabitants - both refugees and indigenous - of
the New Lands into the nation-state. Kontogiorgi examines the
impact of the agrarian reforms and land distribution and makes an
effort to convert the climate of the rural society of Macedonia
during the inter-war period. The antagonisms between Slavophone and
Vlach-speaking natives and refugee newcomers regarding the
reallocation of former Muslim properties had significant
ramifications for the political events in the region in the years
to come. Other recurring themes in the book include the
geographical distribution of the refugees, changing patterns of
settlement and toponyms, the organisation of health services in the
countryside, as well as the execution of irrigation and drainage
works in marshlands. Kontogiorgi also throws light upon and
analyses the puzzling mixture of achievement and failure which
characterizes the history of the region during this transitional
period. As the first successful refugee resettlement project of its
kind, the 'refugee experiment' in Macedonia could provide a
template for similar projects involving refugee movements in many
parts of the world today.
The first decade of the twentieth century was the Ottoman Empire's
'imperial twilight'. As the Empire fell away however, the
beginnings of a young, vibrant and radical Turkish nationalism took
root in Anatolia. The summer of 1908 saw a group known as the Young
Turks attempt to revitalise Turkey with a constitutional revolution
aimed at reducing the power of the Ottoman Sultan, Abdulhammid II-
who was seen to preside over the Ottoman Empire's decline. Drawing
on popular support for the efence of the Ottoman Empire's Balkan
territories in particular, the Young Turks promised to build a
nation from the people up, rather than from the top down. Here, Y.
Dogan Cetinkaya analyses the history of the Boycott Movement, a
series of nationwide public meetings and protests which enshrined
the Turkish democractic voice. He argues that the 1908 revolution
the Young Turks engendered was in fact a crucial link in the wave
of constitutional revolutions at the beginning of the twentieth
century- in Russia (1905), Iran (1906), Mexico (1910) and China
(1911) and as such should be studied in the context of the wider
rise of democratic nationalism across the world. The Young Turks
and the Boycott Movement is the first history to show how this
phenomenon laid the foundations for the modern Turkish state and
will be essential reading for students and scholars of the Ottoman
Empire and of the history of Modern Turkey.
This intriguing study examines the truth behind the myths and
misconceptions that defined the Roaring Twenties, as portrayed
through the popular literary works of the time. This one-stop
reference to the "Jazz Age"-the period that began after the First
World War and ended with the stock market crash of 1929-digs into
the cultural, historical, and literary contexts of the era. Author
Linda De Roche examines the writing of the time to look beyond the
common conceptions of the Roaring Twenties and instead reflect on
the era's complexities and contradictions, including how gender and
race influenced social mores. The book profiles key American
literature of the time, including F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great
Gatsby, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Sinclair Lewis's
Babbit, Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Nella Larsen's
Passing. Filled with essays that offer historical explorations of
each work as well as suggested learning activities, chapters also
feature study questions, primary source documents, and
chronologies. Support materials include activities, lesson plans,
discussion questions, topics for further research, and suggested
readings. Outlines key events and developments and provides context
for the historical period and work Aligns with Common Core
standards in English language arts and social studies Discusses
five major writers of the Jazz Age Provides numerous suggestions
for class activities and further individual exploration Supplies
educators with ready reference work that aligns with Common Core
Standards in English Language Arts (ELA) in Social Studies Gives
readers insight into how literature and other art forms reflect the
social conditions and are inspired by events of the time
Since the 1950s, China and India have been locked in a monumental
battle for geopolitical supremacy. Chinese interest in the ethnic
insurgencies in northeastern India, the still unresolved issue of
the McMahon Line, the border established by the British imperial
government, and competition for strategic access to the Indian
Ocean have given rise to tense gamesmanship, political intrigue,
and rivalry between the two Asian giants. Former Far Eastern
Economic Review correspondent Bertil Lintner has drawn from his
extensive personal interviews with insurgency leaders and civilians
in remote tribal areas in northeastern India, newly declassified
intelligence reports, and his many years of firsthand experience in
Asia to chronicle this ongoing struggle. His history of the "Great
Game East" is the first significant account of a regional conflict
which has led to open warfare on several occasions, most notably
the Sino-India border war of 1962, and will have a major impact on
global affairs in the decades ahead.
The gripping tale of a legendary, century-old murder spree *** A
silent, simmering killer terrorized New England in1911. As a
terrible heat wave killed more than 2,000 people, another silent
killer began her own murderous spree. That year a reporter for the
Hartford Courant noticed a sharp rise in the number of obituaries
for residents of a rooming house in Windsor, Connecticut, and began
to suspect who was responsible: Amy Archer-Gilligan, who'd opened
the Archer Home for Elderly People and Chronic Invalids four years
earlier. "Sister Amy" would be accused of murdering both of her
husbands and up to sixty-six of her patients with cocktails of
lemonade and arsenic; her story inspired the Broadway hit Arsenic
and Old Lace. The Devil's Rooming House is the first book about the
life, times, and crimes of America's most prolific female serial
killer. In telling this fascinating story, M. William Phelps also
paints a vivid portrait of early-twentieth-century New England.
War at sea-war in the air
This is an account of the early days, during the Great War, of the
service that became the Fleet Air Arm. It did not take long after
hostilities commenced for the Royal Navy to appreciate the
potential of an 'air force' both as an eye in the sky and as an
effective method of countering enemy surface vessels and most
especially German submarine activity. Endurance, speed and surprise
were the essential components of the sea-plane and flying boat war.
Appearing suddenly out of the sun, a surface cruising U-Boat had
little time to dive to safety before destruction rained down upon
it. This book contains may gripping incidents of U-Boat hunting in
the 'Spider Web', a great tract of the North Sea which was the Navy
flyer's patrol area and battlefield. This was a hard war fraught
with dangers from mechanical breakdowns, attacks from enemy
aircraft, lethal weather and anti-aircraft fire among its many
perils. A riveting account of the sea and early aviation warfare.
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