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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Military life & institutions > General
The U.S. military is one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world. How it spends its money, chooses tactics, and allocates its resources have enormous implications for national defense and the economy. "The Science of War" is the only comprehensive textbook on how to analyze and understand these and other essential problems in modern defense policy. Michael O'Hanlon provides undergraduate and graduate students with an accessible yet rigorous introduction to the subject. Drawing on a broad range of sources and his own considerable expertise as a defense analyst and teacher, he describes the analytic techniques the military uses in every crucial area of military science. O'Hanlon explains how the military budget works, how the military assesses and deploys new technology, develops strategy and fights wars, handles the logistics of stationing and moving troops and equipment around the world, and models and evaluates battlefield outcomes. His modeling techniques have been tested in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the methods he used to predict higher-than-anticipated troop fatalities in Iraq--controversial predictions that have since been vindicated. "The Science of War" is the definitive resource on warfare in the twenty-first century.Gives the best introduction to defense analysis available Covers defense budgeting Shows how to model and predict outcomes in war Explains military logistics, including overseas basing Examines key issues in military technology, including missile defense, space warfare, and nuclear-weapons testing Based on the author's graduate-level courses at Princeton, Columbia, and Georgetown universities
The brand NEW instalment in the bestselling Harpers Emporium series by Rosie Clarke. Can the Harpers Girls look forward to some happy times as a new dawn rises over London?Sally Harper is busy juggling running London's Oxford Street Store Harpers and looking after her beautiful new-born daughter, whilst husband Ben is overseas on another dangerous mission, this time to rescue a friend in need. Young Becky Stockbridge finds herself in a difficult situation which could bring shame to her and her family. Will Becky, with the help of her friends find her happy ever after and keep her secret? Marion Jackson is blessed with a son as she eagerly awaits the return of her husband Reggie. But all is not right when Reggie returns. Is Marion strong enough to save her family from yet another crisis? As the war clouds retreat and the victory bells ring, tears and joy mingle with those of sadness as the world counts the true toll of war and celebrates peace.
Epitaphs of the Great War Passchendaele is an edited collection of headstone inscriptions from the graves of those killed during the Third Battle of Ypres - Passchendaele. Limited by the Imperial War Graves Commission to sixty-six characters - far more restrictive than Twitter's 140-character rule - these inscriptions are masterpieces of compact emotion. But, as Sarah Wearne says, their enforced brevity means that many inscriptions rely on the reader being able to pick up on the references and allusions, or recognise the quotations - and many twenty-first-century readers don't. Consequently she has selected one hundred inscriptions from the battlefield cemeteries and by expanding the context - religious, literary or personal - she has been able to give full voice to the bereaved. This collection, the second in a short series, will be published to coincide with the centenary of the opening of the Passchendaele offensive on 31 July 1917. Together with Epitaphs of the Great War The Somme, published on 1 July 2016, these books cover the epitaphs of the ordinary and the famous, the privileged and the poor, the generals and the privates and, after a hundred years, give us an insight into what contemporaries believed they had been fighting for and how they viewed the loss of the men they had loved.
Making War at Fort Hood offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it. Kenneth MacLeish conducted a year of intensive fieldwork among soldiers and their families at and around the US Army's Fort Hood in central Texas. He shows how war's reach extends far beyond the battlefield into military communities where violence is as routine, boring, and normal as it is shocking and traumatic. Fort Hood is one of the largest military installations in the world, and many of the 55,000 personnel based there have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. MacLeish provides intimate portraits of Fort Hood's soldiers and those closest to them, drawing on numerous in-depth interviews and diverse ethnographic material. He explores the exceptional position that soldiers occupy in relation to violence--not only trained to fight and kill, but placed deliberately in harm's way and offered up to die. The death and destruction of war happen to soldiers on purpose. MacLeish interweaves gripping narrative with critical theory and anthropological analysis to vividly describe this unique condition of vulnerability. Along the way, he sheds new light on the dynamics of military family life, stereotypes of veterans, what it means for civilians to say "thank you" to soldiers, and other questions about the sometimes ordinary, sometimes agonizing labor of making war. Making War at Fort Hood is the first ethnography to examine the everyday lives of the soldiers, families, and communities who personally bear the burden of America's most recent wars.
Head-aches. Dizziness. Can't sleep. Bad dreams (never have been released). The rice jungle had some compensation to some of us who just don't seem to make a success of our return""- ROBERT, A RETURNED POW This landmark and compelling book follows the stories of 15,000 Australian prisoners of war from the moment they were released by the Japanese at the end of World War II. Their struggle to rehabilitate themselves and to win compensation and acknowledgement from their own country was just beginning. This moving book shows that 'the battle within' was both a personal and a national one.Prize-winning historian Christina Twomey finds that official policies and attitudes towards these men were equivocal and arbitrary for almost forty years. The image of a defeated and emaciated soldier held prisoner by people of a different race did not sit well with the mythology of Anzac. Drawing on the records of the Prisoner of War Trust Fund for the first time, this book presents the struggles of returned prisoners in their own words. It also shows that memories of captivity forged new connections with people of the Asia-Pacific region, as former POWs sought to reconcile with their captors and honour those who had helped them. A grateful nation ultimately lauded and commemorated POWs as worthy veterans from the 1980s, but the real story of the fight to get there has not been told until now.
In 1984, as an eighteen-year-old school leaver, the author was conscripted into a chaotic world of strict order, intense discipline and subtle brain washing, moulding him into a proud well trained 1SAI Ratel soldier. On the SWA/Namibian/Angolan border patrolling through the bush under heavy rainfall and extreme heat, the platoon formed unbreakable bonds of camaraderie. The sheer fear of lying in nightly ambush positions and burying massacred dead in Angola, added to the insanities of the border war. While stemming the flow of refugees from war torn Mozambique, three soldiers from Platoon 3 were captured and held as POW’s in Maputo in the notorious former Portuguese prison, Machava. Called up as a Citizen Force mechanised soldier in 1988, the author along with some of Platoon 3 joined an armoured battle group hurriedly formed to repel two Cuban armoured brigades threatening to invade SWA/Namibia east of Ruacana.
Gunter Horst Beetz was born in Berlin in 1926. Growing up as part of a typical family-his father was a banker, his mother a housewife-he joined the Hitler Youth-somewhat against his wishes-and after a short period manning anti-aircraft guns in Berlin he ultimately found himself in Normandy, fighting the Allies, where he was captured in July 1944. `A Soldier of the Reich: An Autobiography' documents one man's life in Nazi Germany. It examines what it was like to grow up alongside the rise of fascism, exploring the consequences it had on Beetz's life, including what this meant for his relationship with his Jewish girlfriend, Ruth. Beetz also relates his time as an unenthusiastic soldier fighting in Normandy, commenting on the ethics of war, his first sexual encounter with a French prostitute, and life in the sapper battalion with his and his comrades' bungling attempts at front-line soldiery. He was captured in July 1944 and then describes in illuminating detail the life of an ordinary prisoner of war in America. After two years in Pennsylvania he was transferred first for a short period in Belgium, and then to a PoW camp in Ely, England where remained until 1948. Including previously unpublished images from the author's personal collection, this first-hand account explores a perspective rarely acknowledged in discussions of the Second World War: that of an ordinary Wehrmacht soldier, detailing the beliefs and motivations that shaped him as a person.
Military Finances is essential reading for any soldier, veteran, or military family member concerned with their financial future. Members of the military often have a tough time handling their finances, whether it be while serving active duty or when returning to civilian life; and our uncertain economy and job market only magnify those issues. Many serving in the military are young, with little or no training in financial affairs, and face frequent deployments and relocations-all of which can wreak havoc on a person's finances. This book provides a one-stop guide to navigating the many financial questions facing today's military in all phases of service: *Active duty *Preparing for transition or retirement *And post-military lives and careers It covers general financial planning along with many specific aspects of money management vital to military members and their families, proving an indispensable and informative resource for those who fight to defend our freedoms every day, and have for generations.
'Charles Guthrie has been one of Britain's foremost soldiers as well as a terrific personality throughout his remarkable life. It is great that he is now telling his own story.' - Sir Max Hastings Field Marshal the Lord Guthrie commanded at every level in the British Army from platoon to army group, and was Britain's senior military commander at a time of great change. He oversaw the modernization of the armed forces following the Cold War years and led Britain's military involvement in operations in the Balkans and Sierra Leone. Charles Guthrie was commissioned into the British Army in 1959 at a time when Britain's influence was shrinking throughout the world, and Peace, War and Whitehall describes his operational experience with both the Welsh Guards and 22 SAS in Aden, Malaya, East Africa, Cyprus and Northern Ireland. As a senior officer he commanded the Welsh Guards during an operational tour of the Bandit Country of South Armagh at the height of the Troubles, before leading an armoured brigade in Germany in the midst of the Cold War, and eventually being appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine and Northern Army Group as the Cold War ended and the former Yugoslavia began to disintegrate into savage internecine warfare. Peace, War and Whitehall details Lord Guthrie's extraordinary career from a young platoon commander through to Chief of the Defence Staff.
Investigates the ground-breaking role American women played in commemorating those who served and sacrificed in World War I In Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials: How American Women Commemorated the Great War, 1917-1945 Allison S. Finkelstein argues that American women activists considered their own community service and veteran advocacy to be forms of commemoration just as significant and effective as other, more traditional forms of commemoration such as memorials. Finkelstein employs the term 'veteranism' to describe these women's overarching philosophy that supporting, aiding, and caring for those who serve needed to be a chief concern of American citizens, civic groups, and the government in the war's aftermath. However, these women did not express their views solely through their support for veterans of a military service narrowly defined as a group predominantly composed of men and just a few women. Rather, they defined anyone who served or sacrificed during the war, including women like themselves, as veterans. These women veteranists believed that memorialization projects that centered on the people who served and sacrificed was the most appropriate type of postwar commemoration. They passionately advocated for memorials that could help living veterans and the families of deceased service members at a time when postwar monument construction surged at home and abroad. Finkelstein argues that by rejecting or adapting traditional monuments or by embracing aspects of the living memorial building movement, female veteranists placed the plight of all veterans at the center of their commemoration efforts. Their projects included diverse acts of service and advocacy on behalf of people they considered veterans and their families as they pushed to infuse American memorial traditions with their philosophy. In doing so, these women pioneered a relatively new form of commemoration that impacted American practices of remembrance, encouraging Americans to rethink their approach and provided new definitions of what constitutes a memorial. In the process, they shifted the course of American practices, even though their memorialization methods did not achieve the widespread acceptance they had hoped it would. Meticulously researched, Forgotten Veterans, Invisible Memorials utilizes little-studied sources and reinterprets more familiar ones. In addition to the words and records of the women themselves, Finkelstein analyzes cultural landscapes and ephemeral projects to reconstruct the evidence of their influence. Readers will come away with a better understanding of how American women supported the military from outside its ranks before they could fully serve from within, principally through action-based methods of commemoration that remain all the more relevant today.
Ground-breaking, thrilling and revealing, The Reaper is the astonishing memoir of Special Operations Direct Action Sniper Nicholas Irving, the 3rd Ranger Battalion's deadliest sniper with 33 confirmed kills, though his remarkable career total, including probable, is unknown. In the bestselling tradition of American Sniper and Shooter, Irving shares the true story of his extraordinary career, including his deployment to Afghanistan in the summer of 2009, when he set another record, this time for enemy kills on a single deployment. His teammates and chain of command labelled him "The Reaper," and his actions on the battlefield became the stuff of legend, culminating in an extraordinary face-off against an enemy sniper known simply as The Chechnian. Irving's astonishing first-person account of his development into an expert assassin offers a fascinating and extremely rare View of special operations combat missions through the eyes of a Ranger sniper during the Global War on Terrorism. From the brotherhood and sacrifice of teammates in battle to the cold reality of taking a life to protect another, no other book dives so deep inside the life of a sniper on point.
Forced to contend with unprecedented levels of psychological trauma during World War II, the United States military began sponsoring a series of nontheatrical films designed to educate and even rehabilitate soldiers and civilians alike. Traumatic Imprints traces the development of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic approaches to wartime trauma by the United States military, along with links to formal and narrative developments in military and civilian filmmaking. Offering close readings of a series of films alongside analysis of period scholarship in psychiatry and bolstered by research in trauma theory and documentary studies, Noah Tsika argues that trauma was foundational in postwar American culture. Examining wartime and postwar debates about the use of cinema as a vehicle for studying, publicizing, and even what has been termed "working through" war trauma, this book is an original contribution to scholarship on the military-industrial complex.
U.S. military conflicts abroad have left nine million Americans dependent on the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for medical care. Their "wounds of war" are treated by the largest hospital system in the country-one that has come under fire from critics in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in the nation's media. In Wounds of War, Suzanne Gordon draws on five years of observational research to describe how the VHA does a better job than private sector institutions offering primary and geriatric care, mental health and home care services, and support for patients nearing the end of life. In the unusual culture of solidarity between patients and providers that the VHA has fostered, Gordon finds a working model for higher-quality health care and a much-needed alternative to the practice of for-profit medicine.
John Masters was a soldier before he became a novelist. Born in India, he was sent to England to complete his education before attending Sandhurst. It was there the rumour began about his ancestry, that (in the language of the time) he 'had a touch of the tarbrush'. This encounter with racist bigotry would be turned to good effect in his novel, "Bhowani Junction" (later filmed with Stewart Granger and Ava Gardner). At Sandhurst it just made him more determined to succeed. John Masters joined a Gurhka regiment on receiving his commission. Here, He depicts garrison life and campaigning on the North-West Frontier.
The desegregation of the American armed forces--one of the most sweeping changes in the military's history--is widely remembered as a straightforward, relatively effortless process and a shining example of the effectiveness of America's military command. "Foxholes and Color Lines" challenges this view, revealing both the intense political conflict at the time and the strenuous opposition to racial integration within all branches of the armed forces.
This book explores the international law framework governing the use of armed force in occupied territory through a rigorous analysis of the interplay between jus ad bellum, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law. Through an examination of state practice and opinio juris, treaty provisions and relevant international and domestic case law, this book offers the first comprehensive study on this topic. This book will be relevant to scholars, practitioners, legal advisors, and students across a range of sub-disciplines of international law, as well as in peace and conflict studies, international relations, and political science. This study will influence the way in which States use armed force in occupied territory, offering guidance and support in litigations before domestic and international courts and tribunals.
Sacrificial Limbs chronicles the everyday lives and political activism of disabled veterans of Turkey's Kurdish war, one of the most volatile conflicts in the Middle East. Through nuanced ethnographic portraits, Aciksoez examines how veterans' experiences of war and disability are closely linked to class, gender, and ultimately the embrace of ultranationalist right-wing politics. Bringing the reader into military hospitals, commemorations, political demonstrations, and veterans' everyday spaces of care, intimacy, and activism, Sacrificial Limbs provides a vivid analysis of the multiple and sometimes contradictory forces that fashion veterans' bodies, political subjectivities, and communities. It is essential reading for students and scholars interested in anthropology, masculinity, and disability.
The challenges facing military veterans who return to civilian life in the United States are persistent and well documented. But for all the political outcry and attempts to improve military members' readjustments, veterans of all service eras face formidable obstacles related to mental health, substance abuse, employment, and - most damningly - homelessness. Homelessness Among U.S. Veterans synthesizes the new glut of research on veteran homelessness - geographic trends, root causes, effective and ineffective interventions to mitigate it - in a format that provides a needed reference as this public health fight continues to be fought. Codifying the data and research from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) campaign to end veteran homelessness, psychologist Jack Tsai links disparate lines of research to produce an advanced and elegant resource on a defining social issue of our time.
Before his spectacular career as General of the Union forces, William Tecumseh Sherman experienced decades of failure and depression. Drifting between the Old South and new West, Sherman witnessed firsthand many of the critical events of early nineteenth-century America: the Mexican War, the gold rush, the banking panics, and the battles with the Plains Indians. It wasn't until his victory at Shiloh, in 1862, that Sherman assumed his legendary place in American history. After Shiloh, Sherman sacked Atlanta and proceeded to burn a trail of destruction that split the Confederacy and ended the war. His strategy forever changed the nature of warfare and earned him eternal infamy throughout the South. Sherman's Memoirs evoke the uncompromising and deeply complex general as well as the turbulent times that transformed America into a world power. This Penguin Classics edition includes a fascinating introduction and notes by Sherman biographer Michael Fellman.
In recent years, Civil War veterans have emerged from historical obscurity. Inspired by recent interest in memory studies and energised by the ongoing neorevisionist turn, a vibrant new literature has given the lie to the once-obligatory lament that the postbellum lives of Civil War soldiers were irretrievable. Despite this flood of historical scholarship, fundamental questions about the essential character of Civil War veteranhood remain unanswered. Moreover, because work on veterans has often proceeded from a preoccupation with cultural memory, the Civil War's ex-soldiers have typically been analysed as either symbols or producers of texts. In The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans, fifteen of the field's top scholars provide a more nuanced and intimate look at the lives and experiences of these former soldiers. Essays in this collection approach Civil War veterans from oblique angles, including theater, political, and disability history, as well as borderlands and memory studies. Contributors examine the lives of Union and Confederate veterans, African American veterans, former prisoners of war, amputees, and ex-guerrilla fighters. They also consider postwar political elections, veterans' business dealings, and even literary contests between onetime enemies and among former comrades.
Winner of the 2018 Best Book Award (Social Sciences) of the Southern Cone Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association. From 1973 to 1990 in Chile, approximately 370,000 young men mostly from impoverished backgrounds were conscripted to serve as soldiers in Augusto Pinochet's violent regime. Some were brutal enforcers, but many themselves endured physical and psychological abuse, survival and torture training, arbitrary punishments, political persecution, and forced labor. Leith Passmore examines the emergence, in the early twenty-first century, of a movement of ex-conscripts seeking reparations. The former soldiers challenged the politics of memory that had shaped Chile's truth and reconciliation efforts, demanding recognition of their own broken families, ill health and incapacity to work, and damaged sense of self. Relying on unpublished material, testimony, interviews, and field notes, Passmore locates these individuals' narratives of victimhood at the intersection of long-term histories of patriotism, masculinity, and cyclical poverty. These accounts reveal in detail how Pinochet's war against his own citizens as well as the "almost-wars" with neighboring Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina were also waged inside Chile's army barracks.
The very existence of everything in this world is from absolute nothing. You need darkness to feel the presence of light! As I sat down in the chaotic Mumbai suburbs trying to fathom limitless sea of human population around me, it made me realise that there is no limit to the limitlessness. For all who have spent even a little of their time in Mumbai would understand what the city teaches them.... to celebrate humanity. Humanity in all its manifestations; Good, bad, ugly, it doesn't matter. Born in these very bylanes of the `city limitless` was a child who decided to fly when people doubted his ability to walk!
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