|
Books > History > World history > From 1900
For centuries, battleships provided overwhelming firepower at sea.
They were not only a major instrument of warfare, but a visible
emblem of a nation's power, wealth and pride. The rise of the
aircraft carrier following the Japanese aerial strike on Pearl
Harbor in 1941 highlighted the vulnerabilities of the battleship,
bringing about its demise as a dominant class of warship. This book
offers a detailed guide to the major types of battleships to fight
in the two World Wars. Explore HMS Dreadnought, the first of a
class of fast, big-gun battleships to be developed at the beginning
of the 20th century; see the great capital ships that exchanged
salvos at the battle of Jutland, including the German battlecruiser
Derfflinger, which sank the British battleship Queen Mary; find out
about the destruction of HMS Hood, which exploded after exchanging
fire with the Bismarck, which itself was sunk after a
trans-Atlantic chase by a combination of battery fire and
aircraft-launched torpedoes; and be amazed at the
'super-battleship' Yamato, which despite its size and firepower,
made minimal contribution to Japan's war effort and was sunk by air
attack during the defence of Okinawa. Illustrated with more than
120 vivid artworks and photographs, Technical Guide: Battleships of
World War I and World War II is an essential reference guide for
modellers and naval warfare enthusiasts.
It probably doesn't surprise anyone to learn that for each one
of us, a childhood does matter. It's a lesson the planners of
Britain's World War II evacuations should have kept in mind. Doreen
Drewry Lehr searches for her childhood, lost when she was sent away
from her mother before she was even five. She finds precious clues
in conversations with those who shared her wartime experiences on
the beautiful, isolated and harsh Yorkshire Moors. The second part
of the book surveys Britain's social policies that separated
children from home and parents
from the 17th century until 1967, when the last children left
Britain - the majority falsely labeled as "orphans."
Based on many unpublished sources, this book narrates the
individual parts played by over 1,500 of those who served with the
1/5th King's Own in the Great War. First seeing action in Flanders
in March 1915, they fought in almost all of the major campaigns on
the Western Front. Initially recruited from Lancaster, Morecambe,
Blackpool and Fleetwood, this battalion was very much a 'family'
unit with many of the men closely related and no less than seven
father-son relationships within the battalion. Though these
relationships helped strengthen the men in times of need, when
casualties were suffered they brought extra heartache to the
battlefield. Often, these tragic outcomes are related in the men's
own words. Using a combination of mainly unpublished sources, this
volume details the deeds of this gallant battalion. Wherever
possible, accurate coordinates have been given for the places men
served, fought and in many cases, were wounded or died. A series of
sketch maps detail the trench locations in which the battalion
fought. An appendix listing nearly 3,500 officers and men who
served with the 1/5th is included and is the most complete
battalion roll ever published.
The end of the Second World War led to the United States' emergence
as a global superpower. For war-ravaged Western Europe it marked
the beginning of decades of unprecedented cooperation and
prosperity that one historian has labeled "the long peace". Yet
half a world away, in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea and
Malaya-the fighting never really stopped, as these regions sought
to completely sever the yoke of imperialism and colonialism with
all-too-violent consequences. East and Southeast Asia quickly
became the most turbulent regions of the globe. Within weeks of the
famous surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri, civil war,
communal clashes and insurgency engulfed the continent, from
Southeast Asia to the Soviet border. By early 1947, full-scale wars
were raging in China, Indonesia and Vietnam, with growing guerrilla
conflicts in Korea and Malaya. Within a decade after the Japanese
surrender, almost all of the countries of South, East and Southeast
Asia that had formerly been conquests of the Japanese or colonies
of the European powers experienced wars and upheavals that resulted
in the deaths of at least 2.5 million combatants and millions of
civilians. With A Continent Erupts, acclaimed military historian
Ronald H. Spector draws on letters, diaries and international
archives to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive military
history and analysis of these little-known but decisive events. Far
from being simply offshoots of the Cold War, as they have often
been portrayed, these shockingly violent conflicts forever changed
the shape of Asia, and the world as we know it today.
Americans call the Second World War "the Good War." But before it
even began, America's ally Stalin had killed millions of his own
citizens-and kept killing them during and after the war. Before
Hitler was defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as
many other Europeans. At war's end, German and Soviet killing sites
fell behind the Iron Curtain, leaving the history of mass killing
in darkness. ? Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly
definitive, Bloodlands is a new kind of European history,
presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist
regimes as two aspects of a single story. With a new afterword
addressing the relevance of these events to the contemporary
decline of democracy, Bloodlands is required reading for anyone
seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history and its
meaning today.
If the United States couldn't catch up to the Soviets in space, how
could it compete with them on Earth? That was the question facing
John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cold War-a perilous time when
the Soviet Union built the wall in Berlin, tested nuclear bombs
more destructive than any in history, and beat the United States to
every major milestone in space. The race to the heavens seemed a
race for survival-and America was losing. On February 20, 1962,
when John Glenn blasted into orbit aboard Friendship 7, his mission
was not only to circle the planet; it was to calm the fears of the
free world and renew America's sense of self-belief. Mercury Rising
re-creates the tension and excitement of a flight that shifted the
momentum of the space race and put the United States on the path to
the moon. Drawing on new archival sources, personal interviews, and
previously unpublished notes by Glenn himself, Mercury Rising
reveals how the astronaut's heroics lifted the nation's hopes in
what Kennedy called the "hour of maximum danger."
Key title in the new Uniform Legends series. Up close and personal
accounts of pilots who were there, first written in the 1960's when
many of the surviving British and German airmen were in or entering
their middle years
Wonderful account of one of the top Battle of Britain fighter
pilots. Written by one of the foremost military aviation authors
who was an RAF Officer himself and personally knew Lacey.
|
|