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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > General
Drawing from more than 120 newspapers, published between 1968 and
1970, this study explores the emergence of an anti-militarist
subculture within the U.S. armed services. These activists took the
position that individual GIs could best challenge their
subordination by working in concert with like-minded servicemen
through GI movement organizations whose behaviors and activities
were then publicized in these underground newspapers. In examining
this movement, Lewes focuses on their treatment of power and
authority within the armed forces and how this mirrored the wider
and more inclusive relations of power and authority in the United
States. He argues that this opposition among servicemen was the
primary motivation for the United States to withdraw from Vietnam.
This first book length study of GI-published underground newspapers
sheds light on the utility of alternative media for movements of
social change, and provides information on how these movements are
shaped by the environments in which they emerge. Lewes asserts that
one cannot understand GI opposition as an extension of the civilian
antiwar movement. Instead, it was the product of an embedded
environment, whose inhabitants had been drafted or had enlisted to
avoid the draft. They came from cities and small towns whose
populations were often polarized between those who wholeheartedly
supported the war and those who became progressively more critical
of the need for Americans to be involved in Vietnam.
"It would have been inconceivable," wrote Henry Kissinger in his
best-selling book "Diplomacy, ""that the architects of NATO would
have seen as the end result of victory in the Cold War greater
diversity within the Alliance." In "Twilight of the West, "
Christopher Coker offers an interpretation of why the Western
Alliance is in serious trouble and why it may have entered the
twilight of its collective life.Divided into three parts, the book
first looks at the cultural forces that brought the Western powers
together in 1941 and prompted them to build an Atlantic Community.
Where the Alliance failed, however, was in taking hold where it
counted most--in the European imagination. The second part
addresses the present-day consciousness of both Europe and the
United States as they prepare for the twenty-first century. In the
final section, Coker examines two key questions: whether the West
can escape the undertow of violence that marks the end of the
millennium and whether the challenges from East Asia and the
Islamic world are of such magnitude that the West will have to
reinvent itself.Throughout, Coker draws on a wide-ranging
discussion of Western culture to understand the changes that are
taking place in the Western world. Particular emphasis is placed on
the changes in philosophy that helped shape the Alliance and its
view of the rest of the world.
Trinity: The Burrs versus Alexander Hamilton and the United States
of America will be the first book to draw on unreported documents
and genealogical information to reveal an unprecedented look into
the relationships of Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Trinity Church
Corporation and the Loyalists of Manhattan Island. Author Alan J.
Clark shows in new perspective the battles and intrigues leading
beyond the American Revolutionary War. With the melding of
genealogy and timeline analysis Clark examines some of the
intriguing ciphered letters of Aaron Burr to his daughter
Theodosia, and looks again at Burr's curious and complex war time
exploits to determine where his Loyalist tendencies actually began.
Clark further examines the land leases then traded prior, during,
and after the war as speculation, or possibly as rewards from the
English Crown for services performed in its favor in the colonies
primarily through the Corporation of Trinity Church. The economics
of early Manhattan and the Atlantic colonies were bolstered by the
complex and secular behavior of the Corporation of Trinity Church
acting as land bank for the Loyalists to the Throne of England.
Clark appears to fill in the gaps in many recently published tomes
by delving deeper into the actions of Burr and Hamilton, examining
their extensive familial connections and behaviors to arrive at a
complex web of intricacy bringing to life American History at its
most personal level. This book does not reiterate the well worn
paths of American History. Instead, it brings a crisp new approach
that makes sense of seemingly insignificant, disjointed and
inconsistent stories of the early history of our country.
When in Henry II of England married Eleanor of Aquitaine of France
in 1154 A.D., he became at once the reigning sovereign over a vast
stretch of land extending across all of England and half of
France—and yet, according to the feudal hierarchy of the times, a
vassal to the King of France. This situation, which placed French
and English borders in such a tenuous position, solidified the
precarious ground on which the Hundred Years War was to be fought
183 years later. This epic border conflict—which was
contemporaneous with the age of popular uprisings and the Bubonic
Plague, fought according to enduring notions of chivalry and the
budding pride of nationality, and which numbered among its
participants Richard II, the Black Prince of Wales, Henry IV, Henry
V, and Charles of Navarre—ultimately depended upon a peasant
woman, Joan of Arc, to reinforce the French ideal of a sacred
kingdom, swing the pendulum once more in the direction of the
French, and bring this perennial conflict to an end. When in 1154
A.D. Henry II of England married Eleanor of Aquitaine of France, he
became at once the reigning sovereign over a vast stretch of land
extending across all of England and half of France, and yet,
according to the feudal hierarchy of the times, a vassal to the
King of France. This situation, which placed French and English
borders in such a tenuous position, solidified the precarious
ground on which the Hundred Years War was to be fought 183 years
later. This epic border conflict—which was contemporaneous with
the age of popular uprisings and the Bubonic Plague, fought
according to enduring notions of chivalry and the budding pride of
nationality, and which numbered among its participants Richard II,
the Black Prince of Wales, Henry IV, Henry V, and Charles of
Navarre—ultimately depended upon a peasant woman, Joan of Arc, to
reinforce the French ideal of a sacred kingdom, swing the pendulum
once more in the direction of the French, and bring this perennial
conflict to an end. Topics of the theme essays have been selected
to show the diversity of this complex war, and include discussions
of: the origins of the war; the age of popular rebellion;
chivalry's effect on 14th and 15th century warfare; the religion of
the monarchy and the role of sacred kingship in the building of the
French monarchy; and Joan of Arc's understanding of the war. An
annotated timeline and a chronology of French and English Kings
provide readers with an easy-to-follow overview of the Hundred
Years War and the rulers who presided over it. Nineteen
biographical sketches of key French and English figures lend a
human aspect to historic names; and 14 annotated primary documents
breathe fresh life into the topic, and provide students and readers
with a new look at the period. The book concludes with an annotated
bibliography and index.
A Platoon Leader's Tour (The PL Book): This book is an
on-the-ground view of U.S. Army combat in Iraq sourced from
in-country interviews of this generation's Platoon Leaders from
2003-2008. The combat vignettes of former Platoon Leaders flow
along the arc of a "typical" 12-month tour in Iraq. The authors
selected stories that reflect the common challenges of young combat
leaders, including: -Taking Charge -Making First Contact with the
Enemy -Engaging the Local Populace -Interacting with Indigenous
Forces -Use of Force -Operating in a Complex/Chaotic Environment
-Facing Personnel Challenges -Making Moral/Ethical Decisions
-Leading in Battle -Dealing with Death -Sustaining the Will to
Fight -Leading Emotionally-Charged Soldiers -Adapting to
Unfamiliar/Non-Standard Missions The book was developed by the U.S.
Army's Center for Company-level Leaders at West Point in
conjunction with the U.S. Army Studies Program and U.S. Army
Research Institute. Interviews, writing, and editing of the stories
was conducted by Pete Kilner, Nate Allen, Nate Self, and Anthony
Lupo.
Chris Beck played high school football. He bought a motorcycle,
much to his mother's dismay, at age 17. He grew up to become a U.S.
Navy SEAL, serving our country for twenty years on thirteen
deployments, including seven combat deployments, and ultimately
earned a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. To everyone who saw him,
he was a hero. A warrior. A man. But underneath his burly beard,
Chris had a secret, one that had been buried deep inside his heart
since he was a little boy-one as hidden as the panty hose in the
back of his drawer. He was transgender, and the woman inside needed
to get out. This is the journey of a girl in a man's body and her
road to self-actualization as a woman amidst the PTSD of war,
family rejection and our society's strict gender rules and
perceptions. It is about a fight to be free inside one's own body,
a fight that requires the strength of a Warrior Princess. Kristin's
story of boy to woman explores the tangled emotions of the
transgender experience and opens up a new dialogue about being male
or female: Is gender merely between your legs or is it something
much bigger?
This is the story of a tragic confrontation between two national
movements contesting the same small piece of land, a clash that has
become one of the most intractable issues in modern times. From the
establishment of the first Zionist colonies in the 1880s, tensions
have run high between the indigenous Arab population of Palestine
and Jews who have sought to create an independent state on land
they consider their ancient home. Clashes, both internal and
external, have become increasingly violent. Since the first
full-scale Palestinian Revolt in 1936, relations have, except for a
few brief periods of peace, been characterized by continuous and
escalating degrees of bloodshed. Twelve major clashes can be
identified from that first three-year struggle to the current
Intifada al Aqsa. Here, 12 Israeli historians and writers present
reflections on the incidents, along with up-to-date analysis and
historical assessment. After a detailed introduction designed to
help readers place the conflicts into a historical context, experts
discuss events ranging from the first organized revolt to the
current conflagration. As a result of the initial weakness of the
Palestinians and the defeats they suffered at the hands of the
better-organized Israelis, the entire Arab world stepped into the
breach. Wars between May 1948 and October 1973 involved Arab
regular armies, but the Palestinian comeback began in 1965, as a
result of guerrilla insurgency. It gathered momentum with the
popular uprising of the first Intifada (1987-1990) and more so with
the start of the second and more lethal Intifada in 2000. The
situation is, these experts argue, not without hope of a
resolution, but an end to the violence isunlikely to come easily or
quickly.
Lieutenant Henry O. Flipper was a former slave who rose to become
the first African American graduate of West Point. While serving as
commissary officer at Fort Davis, Texas, in 1881, he was charged
with embezzlement and conduct unbecoming an officer and a
gentleman. A court-martial board acquitted Flipper of the
embezzlement charge but convicted him of conduct unbecoming. He was
then dismissed from the service of the United States. The Flipper
case became known as something of an American Dreyfus Affair,
emblematic of racism in the frontier army. Because of Flipper's
efforts to clear his name, many assumed that he had been railroaded
because he was black.In The Fall of a Black Army Officer, Charles
M. Robinson III challenges that assumption. In this complete
revision of his earlier work, The Court-Martial of Lieutenant Henry
Flipper, Robinson finds that Flipper was the author of his own
problems. The taint of racism on the Flipper affair became so
widely accepted that in 1999 President Bill Clinton issued a
posthumous pardon for Flipper. The Fall of a Black Army Officer
boldly moves the arguments regarding racism--in both Lt. Flipper's
case and the frontier army in general--beyond political
correctness. Solidly grounded in archival research, it is a
thorough and provocative reassessment of the Flipper affair, at
last revealing the truth.
The vicious urban battle for the insurgent-controlled city of
Fallujah in November 2004 was a turning point in the ongoing
counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq. It demonstrated the resolve of
the Iraqi government to fight terrorists domestically, using both
multinational and Iraqi forces, and its results included a
returning population willing to vote in national elections held in
January 2005. Ballard tells the story of the Fallujah campaign,
beginning with the horrific deaths of the American Blackwater
contractors in March 2004 and continuing through the battle, the
painstaking reconstruction of the city, and the precedent-setting
elections that followed. Based on first-person accounts,
interviews, and official documents, this book gives readers rare
insight into the significant actions and innovative techniques of
the year-long fight for the city. Opening with a historical
overview of the initial crisis in Fallujah and the similar
coalition battle in Najaf, the book includes a detailed account of
the planning and execution of the operation to retake the city.
Finally, it describes the political and military lessons proven in
Fallujah, including coalition force integration, information
operations, urban combat techniques, interagency coordination and
innovative reconstruction procedures. This is the story of real
combat in Iraq--told in a way every American should understand.
This book examines the complex and under-researched relationship
between recruitment experiences and reintegration outcomes for
child soldiers. It looks at time spent in the group, issues of
cohesion, identification, affiliation, membership and the post
demobilization experience of return, and resettlement.
Intellectual historians generally view the Enlightenment as a
pacifist or anti-war movement. Military historians typically
consider 18th century military thinkers as backward-looking and
inept. Speelman challenges the views of both groups through a
consideration of the writings of Henry Lloyd, a soldier and Welsh
"philosophe" who combined enlightened thought and military
experience to distill a distinct theory of war. Based on previously
unused or underutilized primary materials, this is the first
biography of this key enlightenment thinker who advanced the
general understanding of war as it existed in his day.
Lloyd wrote a multivolume history of the Seven Years' War from
which he derived the Principles of War; a treatise on economics
that prefigured the liberal theories of Adam Smith; a rhapsody on
the invasion and defense of Great Britain; and finally an anonymous
critique of the English constitution that he used to demand
political and electoral reform. Overall, he argued for the reform
of military institutions and practices through breaking from custom
and traditional norms. In his works, Lloyd examined warfare within
the larger context of secular philosophy and human society; and,
thus, he personified the link between the military society and the
Enlightenment that historians often ignore or discount.
Across the globe guilt has become a contentious issue in
discussions over historical accountability and reparation for past
injustices. Guilt has become political, and it assumes a highly
visible place in the public sphere and academic debate in fields
ranging from cultural memory, to transitional justice,
post-colonialism, Africana studies, and the study of populist
extremism. This volume argues that guilt is a productive force that
helps to balance unequal power dynamics between individuals and
groups. Moreover, guilt can also be an ambivalent force affecting
social cohesion, moral revolutions, political negotiation, artistic
creativity, legal innovation, and other forms of transformations.
With chapters bridging the social sciences, law, and humanities,
chapter authors examine the role and function of guilt in society
and present case studies from seven national contexts. The book
approaches guilt as a generative and enduring presence in societies
and cultures rather than as an oppressive and destructive burden
that necessitates quick release and liberation. It also considers
guilt as something that legitimates the future infliction of
violence. Finally, it examines the conditions under which guilt
promotes transformation, repair, and renewal of relationships.
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