"Brilliant, hardhitting description of modern war on the U.S. Army's premier training ground. A must-read tactical primer for today's warrior."--John C. "Doc" Bahnsen, Brigadier General, USA (Ret.) At the turn of the century a small, humorous book on tactics was published. The Defense of Duffer's Drift quickly became a bestseller and today is still widely read. The Defense of Hill 781 is a modem version of this classic--a tactical primer with ample funpoking, but with serious lessons to be learned. Lt. Col. A. Tack Always Finds himself in the California high desert, alone, disheveled, confused. A guide soon appears to inform him of his situation: He has died and is now in Purgatory (his humility in the Army was somewhat lacking) where he must atone for past sins. Purgatory is, aptly, the U.S. Army's National Training Center (NTC), and Lt. Col. Always may earn his way out by completing a successful mission. Through a series of six missions, the reader plans and fights with Lt. Col. Always, making the split-second decisions that determine victory or defeat, life or death. Through successive difficulties, some important lessons are burned into the commander's brain--lessons about tactics, about people, about what it takes to fight a winning battle. Like Duffer's Drift this book is a valuable resource for all military tacticians. For the armchair general, it is a fascinating look at how the members of a military unit work together in combat.

The M1 Abrams was the most radical departure in US tank design since World War II. Until the advent of the M1 in the early 1980s, the US Army had relied on the steady evolution of the M26 Pershing tank, through the M46, M47, M48 and M60. The M1 design came at a time when there were a host of important new tank technologies coming to fruition, in terms of structure and weaponry: these were integrated into it. This book details the design, development and operational use of one of the world's best main battle tanks.

As World War II entered its later stages and Germany was forced increasingly onto the defensive, the need for fast-moving mobile forces lessened and the Wehrmacht required better protected and more powerfully armed tanks. After debacles against the T-34, Hitler and the Panzerwaffe were determined not to be unprepared again. The result of this determination was the production of the heaviest and largest tank to see combat during World War II, the Tiger II or Konigstiger (Kingtiger). This title examines this formidable weapon, covering the problems and controversies surrounding its design and production as well as a detailed listing of every unit that was equipped with the Tiger II.

This analysis of one of America's greatest soldiers by one of Britain's foremost soldiers and military analysts of the twentieth century remains today one of the most incisive portraits of Grant's generalship ever written. It brilliantly refutes the notion that Grant relied only on brute force to achieve his victories, demonstrating instead the mastery of mobility, surprise, cool judgment, and strategic coordination that made Grant the premier Civil War general.--James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom A classic analysis of U.S. Grant, Fuller's work makes a strong case for the general as the pre-eminent soldier of his era. It is essential reading for students of Civil War military leadership.--Gary Gallagher, editor of Fighting for the Confederacy

Nephew to Sitting Bull, chief of the Sioux, Pte San Hunka (White Bull) was a famous warrior in his own right. He had been on the warpath against whites and other Indians for more than a decade when he fought the greatest battle of his life.
On the afternoon of June 25, 1876, five troops of the U. S. Seventh Cavalry under the command of George Armstrong Custer rode into the valley of the Little Big Horn River, confidently expecting to rout the Indian encampments there. Instead, the cavalry met the gathered strength of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, who did not run as expected but turned the battle toward the soldiers. White Bull charged again and again, fighting until the last soldier was dead. The battle was Custer's Last Stand, and White Bull was later referred to as the warrior who killed Custer.

In 1932 White Bull related his life story to Stanley Vestal, who corroborated the details, from other sources and prepared this biography. "All that I told him is straight and true," said White Bull. His story is a matchless account of the life of an Indian warrior.

When Philip II ascended the throne in 359 BC, Macedonia was in danger of being engulfed by wild barbarian tribes to the north and wily Greek cities to the south. Philip had to expand the power of the throne or be swallowed up: the creation of a powerful army was imperative. When his son, Alexander, inherited his kingdom at the age of 20, he also inherited an army which was truly unrivalled. The Macedonians were veterans of battle, well equipped and eager for conquest. Add to this Alexander's supreme gifts as military commander and it is little wonder they achieved so much.

'Two Leggings ...was one of the last Crow Warriors. From 1919 to 1923 he told his story of Crow life and wars to William Wildschut, an ethnologist with the Museum of the American Indian ...This is the poignant story of the end of traditional Crow life and attitudes, which Two Leggings saw ending with the last warfare rather than the death of the buffalo' - "Pacific Historian". 'This is the story of Two Leggings' desire for fame, his rise as a warrior, and his efforts to achieve a spiritual vision. He takes us along on buffalo hunts, war parties against the Piegans, and horse stealing raids against the Piegans and Sioux. His obsession to become a chief and famous warrior drove him to repeated forays against enemy tribes for scalps and horses. He relates the religious relationship between vision fasts, medicine bundles, and a war raid's outcome, sun dances in which performers pierced their breast muscles with wooden skewers, and wife stealing between rival warrior societies...It is a remarkable story' - "Chicago Tribune". 'This is a rare piece of Americana - a first-person account of the psychological, religious, and social life of a nineteenth century Indian. The dramatic recital is a real contribution to our native biography, history, and ethnology, and an important treatise in a fascinating but curiously neglected field' - "Baltimore Sun". 'A valuable addition to our knowledge of the life of the Plains Indian' - "New York Times". '"Two Leggings" lifts the curtain on a kind of life it is almost impossible to imagine anywhere in the United States during the second half of the last century. Mr. Nabokov has preserved a priceless document not only for ethnologists bur for plain readers as well...His narrative lays open, as by a surgeon's knife, the inner world of Indian religion and morality' - Mark Van Doren. Peter Nabokov is on the faculty of the Department of Anthropology and the American Indian Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of "Native American Architecture" (1988) and editor of "Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian and White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492-1992" (1991).

The Restoration of 1660 is often quoted as the birth date of our modern British Army. While this may be true as far as continuity of unit identity is concerned, the evidence of history shows that the creation of an efficient military machine, and its proving on the battlefield, predates the Restoration by 15 years. It was on the battlefields of the Civil War that the foundations of the British professional army were laid. Here, supported by a wide variety of photographs and eight full colour plates, Stuart Asquith details the history, organisation, weapons and equipment of the New Model Army.

Originally published in 1904, "Indian Fights and Fighters" regularly appears in bibliographies of significant works on the history of the American West. Embracing almost three decades of Plains history, it contains not only Brady's clear, fast-paced accounts of the Plains wars, but also a number of eyewitness accounts, most of which were written especially for him and which are almost impossible to find elsewhere. The Powder River Expedition, the tragedy at Fort Phil Kearny, the Wagon Box Fight, the defense of Beecher's Island, the Fetterman Massacre, the battles of Washita and Summit Springs, and the campaigns of Crook, Custer, and Miles against the Sioux all are fully treated. The introduction by James T. King sketches Brady's career and evaluates his sources.

The importance of regional cooperation is becoming more apparent as the world moves into the third decade of the 21st century. An Army of Influence is a thought-provoking analysis of the Australian Army's capacity to change, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region. Written by highly regarded historians, strategists and practitioners, this book examines the Australian Army's influence abroad and the lessons it has learnt from its engagement across the Asia-Pacific region. It also explores the challenges facing the Australian Army in the future and provides principles to guide operational, administrative and modernisation planning. Containing full-colour maps and images, An Army of Influence will be of interest to both the wider defence community and general readers. It underscores the importance of maintaining an ongoing presence in the region and engages with history to address the issues facing the Army both now and into the future.

This is a well-researched and authoritative account by a military historian, Maj Gen Syed Ali Hamid. It embraces the evolution of the Pakistan Armoured Corps, including its culture, organisation, doctrine, equipment, operational performance, overseas deployment, garrisons, personalities and a myriad of events that together portray what and why the corps is at this point in time. Beginning with the mechanization of the Indian cavalry in 1938, it spans nearly 95 years and chronicles the corps remarkable growth. It narrates how a redundant horse mounted force went through various stages of metamorphosis, surmounted the challenges of Independence and transformed from a small supporting arm into the mechanized spearhead of the Pakistan Army. Its richness lies in the portrayal the Muslim clans that form the rank and file of the Armoured Corps, as well as tracing the development of its officer corps from its genesis and onwards through the Second World War and leading onto post-Independence. This includes an assessment of many personalities who performed a leading role in the development of the corps. It also provides an interesting insight into the culture of the Pakistan Armoured Corps which is a unique blend of values and traditions inherited from its predecessor, with those of a post-Independence national army. This highly informative book compliments publications on the Pakistan Army by elaborating on the role and structure of one of its principal arms. Since it covers in some detail the Pakistan-India conflicts, it also compliments books published by the Indian authors by presenting a view from 'the other side of the hill.' To place the evolution and development of the armoured corps in context, the author has painstakingly researched and presented hitherto fragmented information on the Pakistan Army. Consequently the book also emerges as a work of value to an audience which is interested in how the Pakistan Army evolved and the milestones in its development. Having served in the Pakistan Army for 50 years, the author has a unique insight into the evolution of the corps and is linked with its past through his father Maj Gen Syed Shahid Hamid who was commissioned from Sandhurst into the cavalry of British India in 1933. Shahid was one of the pioneers of the Pakistan Army and the author of several books on political and military history of the sub-continent. The publication is liberally illustrated with a large number of photographs, many of them unpublished, which makes for very interesting reading. There is also a liberal use of maps to support the text. For a serious student of the military history of the Pakistan-India Subcontinent, this book is a major scholarly work with footnotes / endnotes, a bibliography of ten pages of primary and secondary references, and two large indexes.

Part 1. A historical background of the British conquest of India, from the Honourable East India Company to the Army of the Crown. World Wars One & Two. Part 2. Regimental histories, class composition and uniforms. Annexes : Ranks in the Indian Army - list of Governors General - list of Commanders in Chief - military personalities - wars and campaigns - Victoria Cross recipients - abbreviations - glossary - Native sovereigns - Some geographical sites - sketches of Indian soldiers - recommended reading.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY 2013 'Completely absorbing' Amanda Foreman 'Enthralling' Guardian 'The Three Musketeers! The Count of Monte Cristo! The stories of course are fiction. But here a prize-winning author shows us that the inspiration for the swashbuckling stories was, in fact, Dumas's own father, Alex - the son of a marquis and a black slave... He achieved a giddy ascent from private in the Dragoons to the rank of general; an outsider who had grown up among slaves, he was all for Liberty and Equality. Alex Dumas was the stuff of legend' Daily Mail So how did such this extraordinary man get erased by history? Why are there no statues of 'Monsieur Humanity' as his troops called him? The Black Count uncovers what happened and the role Napoleon played in Dumas's downfall. By walking the same ground as Dumas - from Haiti to the Pyramids, Paris to the prison cell at Taranto - Reiss, like the novelist before him, triumphantly resurrects this forgotten hero. 'Entrances from first to last. Dumas the novelist would be proud' Independent 'Brilliant' Glasgow Herald

The Russian T-72 Ural tank is the most widely-deployed main battle tank of the current generation. Used by the armies of the former Warsaw pact and Soviet Union, it has also been exported in large numbers to many of the states in the Middle East. This book reveals the previously secret history behind the tank. Steven J Zaloga examines the conditions under which the T-72 was designed and produced. Technical aspects of the weapon are also discussed, including its EDZ reactive armour which, when it first appeared in December 1984, gave NATO a nasty shock.

When Liddell Hart's Sherman was first published in 1929, it received encomiums such as these: "A masterly performance . . . one of the most thorougly dignified, one of the most distinguished biographies of the year."- Henry Steele Commager, New York Herald Tribune "It is not often that one comes upon a biography that is so well done as this book. Nearly every page bears evidence of the fact that it is the product of painstaking and exhaustive research, mature thought, and an expert understanding of the subject in hand . . ."- Saturday Review of Literature

The surprise Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979 shocked the international community. The two communist nations had seemed firm political and cultural allies, but the twenty-nine-day border war imposed heavy casualties, ruined urban and agricultural infrastructure, leveled three Vietnamese cities, and catalyzed a decadelong conflict. In this groundbreaking book, Xiaoming Zhang traces the roots of the conflict to the historic relationship between the peoples of China and Vietnam, the ongoing Sino-Soviet dispute, and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's desire to modernize his country. Deng's perceptions of the Soviet Union, combined with his plans for economic and military reform, shaped China's strategic vision. Drawing on newly declassified Chinese documents and memoirs by senior military and civilian figures, Zhang takes readers into the heart of Beijing's decision-making process and illustrates the war's importance for understanding the modern Chinese military, as well as China's role in the Asian-Pacific world today.

This book is the first full length political history of the Afghan Army, and as such is unparalleled in the range and depth of its analysis of this vitally important institution. Giustozzi locates the Army's development within the wider context of state- building in Afghanistan. His volume includes a brief survey of the period to 1953, but focuses mainly on subsequent developments, over the last four decades, as the officer corps began to be politicised and later factionalised, especially during the Russian-backed regime of the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which ruled the country from 1978 to 1992. Despite the stress on the politics of praetorianism, the volume describes the Afghan Army's performance on the battlefield in detail, highlighting the potential contradiction between military effectiveness and political loyalty to the ruling elite. The volume covers developments to the end of 2013 and is the result of extensive interviews conducted with both Afghan Army officers and their advisers and mentors.

The Mehdi Army militia was a towering force in Iraq during the early years of the post-Saddam era. As an aggressive opponent of foreign occupation and one of the principal antagonists in Iraq's brutal sectarian civil war, the militia was central to the violence that ravaged the country and a pivotal political actor. Growing rapidly in size and strength, and controlling entire districts of Baghdad and broad swathes of southern and central Iraq, the Mehdi Army seemed poised to become a Hezbollah-like 'state within a state' that would remain enormously powerful for years to come. Drawing from extensive field experience in one of Baghdad's most volatile militia-held districts, Krohley exposes how, and why, the militia suddenly and unexpectedly collapsed in the midst of the Americans' 'Surge' of forces during 2008. Building from an examination of the Mehdi Army's social and ideological roots, he presents a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood study of the militia's changing fortunes that offers unparalleled local detail and specificity. Krohley shows how the Mehdi Army's demise was ultimately a self-inflicted 'death' as opposed to a triumph of its foes.In so doing, he not only challenges prevailing orthodoxies of counterinsurgency doctrine and the mythology of the Surge, but also offers penetrating insights into the battered state of Iraqi society after decades of dictatorship, privation and war.

"What happens if we bet too heavily on unmanned systems, cyber warfare, and special operations in our defense? In today's U.S. defense policy debates, big land wars are out. Drones, cyber weapons, special forces, and space weapons are in. Accordingly, Pentagon budget cuts have honed in on the army and ground forces: this, after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, seems like an appealing idea. No one really wants American boots on the ground in bloody conflicts abroad. But it is not so easy to simply declare an end to messy land wars. A survey of the world's trouble spots suggests that land warfare has more of a future than many now seem to believe. In The Future of Land Warfare, Michael O'Hanlon offers an analysis of the future of the world's ground forces: Where are large-scale conflicts or other catastrophes most plausible? Which of these could be important enough to require the option of a U.S. military response? And which of these could in turn demand significant numbers of American ground forces in their resolution? O'Hanlon is not predicting or advocating big American roles in such operations-only cautioning against overconfidence that we can and will avoid them. O'Hanlon considers a number of illustrative scenarios in which large conventional forces may be necessary: discouraging Russia from even contemplating attacks against the Baltic states; discouraging China from considering an unfriendly future role on the Korean peninsula; handling an asymmetric threat in the South China Sea with the construction and protection of a number of bases in the Philippines and elsewhere; managing the aftermath of a major and complex humanitarian disaster superimposed on a security crisis-perhaps in South Asia; coping with a severe Ebola outbreak not in the small states of West Africa but in Nigeria, at the same time that country falls further into violence; addressing a further meltdown in security conditions in Central America. "

From the First Gulf War in Iraq to the ongoing war in Afganistan the British Army has undergone massive changes in everything from mission capabilities to equipment.
Fully illustrated and written by an insider, this engaging book traces the major transformations in British Army doctrine, organization, structures, units, uniforms and equipment, from the end of the Cold War in the 1990s up to today. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the British Army has undergone deep and widespread changes, including the creation of new units and capabilities, as well as cuts and amalgamations. It has digested these changes while simultaneously fighting in two major expeditionary wars (one of them ongoing) and in several lesser overseas deployments. While small by superpower standards, it continues to "punch above its weight," and is unquestionably the most experienced (indeed, virtually the only experienced) fighting force in Europe. It remains the only NATO ally which the USA can rely on to contribute significant combat forces for expeditionary campaigns.

As World War II in Europe reached its end, armour development and doctrine had experienced several years of massively accelerated change, especially within the crucible of the Eastern Front. The German Jagdpanther and Soviet SU-100, both turretless tank-destroyer designs based on a 'traditional' turret-tank chassis, were the culminating examples of how the progression of experience, resources and time constraints produced vehicles that were well suited for roles of defence and offence, respectively. The Jagdpanther represented a well-balanced solution and an excellent use of limited resources, while the SU-100 was a natural progression of the SU-85, where numbers produced compensated for rudimentary construction, poor crew comfort and limited optics.

This book gives a focused, military biography of Heinz Guderian, perhaps the most highly respected German tank commander of World War II. Guderian was a typical product of the Prussian military elite; the son of a general in the army, there was little doubt that he would follow in his father's footsteps.
Some consider Guderian to be the founding father of blitzkrieg warfare, and he certainly brought the whole concept to public attention and prominence, chiefly through the publication of his book "Achtung Panzer" in 1937. He commanded the XIX Motorized) Army Corps in the 1939 Polish campaign, and Panzergruppe Guderian during Operation Barbarossa. In March 1943 he became chief inspector of the Panzer forces, but even the great tank commander could achieve little more than to delay the inevitable defeat of Germany.

One of the weaknesses of airmobile forces has always been their vulnerability to enemy armor. Since the 1940s, there have been numerous schemes to field light tanks that could be deployed by parachute or other methods to reinforce paratroopers and other airmobile forces. This book tells the story of the US experience with airmobile tanks, starting with efforts in World War II, notably the M22 Locust airmobile tank. Although not used in combat by the US Army, it was used during Operation "Varsity" in 1945 by British airborne forces and ended up supporting US paratroopers during this mission on the Rhine river. The book then turns to post-war efforts such as the unique T-92 airborne tank, designed for paratroop drop.
The only airborne tank actually manufactured in significant numbers was the M551 Sheridan. The history of this tank provides the focal point of this book, highlighting the difficulties of combining heavy firepower in a chassis light enough for airborne delivery. The book examines its controversial combat debut in Vietnam, and its subsequent combat history in Panama and Operation "Desert Storm." It also rounds out the story by examining attempts to replace the Sheridan with other armored vehicles, such as the short-lived M8 MGS and Army LAV programs.