In this companion to The Life of Johnny Reb, Bell Irvin Wiley explores the daily lives of the men in blue who fought to save the Union. With the help of many soldiers' letters and diaries, Wiley explains who these men were and why they fought, how they reacted to combat and the strain of prolonged conflict, and what they thought about the land and the people of Dixie. This fascinating social history reveals that while the Yanks and the Rebs fought for very different causes, the men on both sides were very much the same.

"This wonderfully interesting book is the finest memorial the Union soldier is ever likely to have.... Wiley] has written about the Northern troops with an admirable objectivity, with sympathy and understanding and profound respect for their fighting abilities. He has also written about them with fabulous learning and considerable pace and humor.

This epic story opens at the hour the Greatest Generation went to war on December 7, 1941, and follows four U.S. Navy ships and their crews in the Pacific until their day of reckoning three years later with a far different enemy: a deadly typhoon. In December 1944, while supporting General MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey neglected the Law of Storms, placing the mighty U.S. Third Fleet in harm's way. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly every living survivor and rescuer, as well as many families of lost sailors, transcripts and other records from naval courts of inquiry, ships' logs, personal letters, and diaries, Bruce Henderson finds some of the story's truest heroes exhibiting selflessness, courage, and even defiance.

In 1832, facing white expansion, the Sauk warrior Black Hawk attempted to forge a pan-Indian alliance to preserve the homelands of the confederated Sauk and Fox tribes on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. Patrick J. Jung here re-examines the causes, course, and consequences of the ensuing war with the United States, a conflict that decimated Black Hawk's band. Correcting mistakes that plagued previous histories, and drawing on recent ethnohistorical interpretations, Jung shows that the outcome can be understood only by discussing the complexity of intertribal rivalry, military ineptitude, and racial dynamics.

A remarkable and eccentric insight into the south east of England in the pre-war period.

Richard Wyndham's 'last look round' was a tour taken immediately before the Second World War in 1939 and was originally published in the following year as South-Eastern Survey.

Wyndham is a very agreeable companion as he travels in his self-confessed 'haphazard' way around the counties of Sussex, Kent and Surrey. Often eccentric but always good fun, he drives 'for the most part on side roads only, and through villages and lesser towns.' A selection of Wyndham's own black and white photographs taken on his expedition are included.

Sussex, Kent and Surrey 1939 is a wonderful insight into south east of England before the outbreak of the Second World War, which brought so much change to the country. Wyndham is a superb travel companion who completed the writing as he was called up for active service.

War is often described as an extension of politics by violent means. With contributions from twenty-eight eminent historians, Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of the Second World War examines the relationship between ideology and politics in the war's origins, dynamics and consequences. Part I examines the ideologies of the combatants and shows how the war can be understood as a struggle of words, ideas and values with the rival powers expressing divergent claims to justice and controlling news from the front in order to sustain moral and influence international opinion. Part II looks at politics from the perspective of pre-war and wartime diplomacy as well as examining the way in which neutrals were treated and behaved. The volume concludes by assessing the impact of states, politics and ideology on the fate of individuals as occupied and liberated peoples, collaborators and resistors, and as British and French colonial subjects.

France, 1940. The once glittering boulevards of Paris teem with spies, collaborators, and the Gestapo now that France has fallen to Hitler's Wermacht. For Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Consuelo de Saint-Exupery, and scores of other cultural elite who have been denounced as enemies of the Third Reich the fear of imminent arrest, deportation, and death defines their daily life. Their only salvation is the Villa Air-Bel, a chateau outside Marseille where a group of young people will go to extraordinary lengths to keep them alive.

A powerfully told, meticulously researched true story filled with suspense, drama, and intrigue, "Villa Air-Bel" delves into a fascinating albeit hidden saga in our recent history. It is a remarkable account of how a diverse intelligentsia--intense, brilliant, and utterly terrified--was able to survive one of the darkest chapters of the twentieth century.

Chinese leaders once tried to suppress memories of their nation's brutal experience during World War II. Now they celebrate the "victory"-a key foundation of China's rising nationalism. For most of its history, the People's Republic of China limited public discussion of the war against Japan. It was an experience of victimization-and one that saw Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek fighting for the same goals. But now, as China grows more powerful, the meaning of the war is changing. Rana Mitter argues that China's reassessment of the World War II years is central to its newfound confidence abroad and to mounting nationalism at home. China's Good War begins with the academics who shepherded the once-taboo subject into wider discourse. Encouraged by reforms under Deng Xiaoping, they researched the Guomindang war effort, collaboration with the Japanese, and China's role in forming the post-1945 global order. But interest in the war would not stay confined to scholarly journals. Today public sites of memory-including museums, movies and television shows, street art, popular writing, and social media-define the war as a founding myth for an ascendant China. Wartime China emerges as victor rather than victim. The shifting story has nurtured a number of new views. One rehabilitates Chiang Kai-shek's war efforts, minimizing the bloody conflicts between him and Mao and aiming to heal the wounds of the Cultural Revolution. Another narrative positions Beijing as creator and protector of the international order that emerged from the war-an order, China argues, under threat today largely from the United States. China's radical reassessment of its collective memory of the war has created a new foundation for a people destined to shape the world.

Since the end of World War II, there have been 181 insurgencies around the world. Today, there are over three dozen violent insurgencies, including in such high-profile countries as Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. These insurgencies have been led by a range of groups, from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, most warfare today occurs in the form of insurgencies. If we are to understand modern warfare, we need to understand insurgencies. While numerous books have been written on the subject of insurgencies, there is no book that brings together all of what we know into one accessible volume that policymakers can understand and use. Waging Insurgent Warfare is that book. Seth G. Jones, who has been deeply involved in the Afghanistan war over the last decade, aims to help policymakers, scholars, and general readers better understand how groups start, wage, and end insurgencies. He weaves together examples from today and from recent history into an analytic synthesis that focuses on several sets of questions. First, what factors contribute to the rise of an insurgency? Second, what are the key components involved in conducting an insurgency? As he explains, insurgent groups need to decide on a strategy, employ a range of tactics, select an organizational structure, secure outside aid from state and non-state actors, and conduct information campaigns. They then have to routinely re-assess these decisions over the course of an insurgency. Third, what factors contribute to the end of insurgencies? Finally, what do the answers to these questions mean for the conduct of counterinsurgency warfare? Waging Insurgent Warfare is not only a practical handbook for understanding insurgent warfare, but it also has implications for waging counterinsurgent warfare. Highly readable, empirically sophisticated, and historically informed, Waging Insurgent Warfare will become a standard work on the topic.

(Previously published as 'After the Flood') Former RAF Tornado Navigator and Gulf War veteran John Nichol sets out on a personal journey to discover what happened to 617 Squadron after the flood. RAF 617 Squadron's destruction of the dams at the heart of the Ruhr made them heroes and celebrities of their time. But this elite squadron was also called upon for a hundred more of the most secret and dangerous specialist precision attacks. As bestselling author John Nichol discovers, 617 would drop the largest bombs ever built on battleships, railway bridges, secret weapon establishments, rockets sites and U-boat construction pens. They were involved in attempts on the lives of enemy leaders, both Hitler and Mussolini, created a 'false fleet' on D-day which fooled the Germans, and knocked out a German super gun which would have rained 600 shells an hour on London. Of the 77 men who made it home from dams raid, only 45 survived to see the victory for which they fought - as 617's reputation called them into action again and again.

The History of Espionage recounts the fascinating story of spies and spying from the cloak-and-dagger machinations of the Ancient Greeks and Romans to the high-tech surveillance operations of the post-9/11, post-truth world. It is a tale of clandestine agents, military scouts, captured documents, dead-letter drops, intercepted mail, decoded telegrams, secret codes and ciphers, bugging devices, desperate plots and honey traps. Featuring case studies on the most fascinating spies and plots through history and illustrated with rare photographs throughout, The History of Espionage decodes the sinister world of surveillance like never before.

Few wartime cities in Virginia held more importance than Petersburg. Nonetheless, the city has, until now, lacked an adequate military history, let alone a history of the civilian home front. The noted Civil War historian A. Wilson Greene now provides an expertly researched, eloquently written study of the city that was second only to Richmond in size and strategic significance. Industrial, commercial, and extremely prosperous, Petersburg was also home to a large African American community, including the state's highest percentage of free blacks. On the eve of the Civil War, the city elected a conservative, pro-Union approach to the sectional crisis. Little more than a month before Virginia's secession did Petersburg finally express pro-Confederate sentiments, at which point the city threw itself wholeheartedly into the effort, with large numbers of both white and black men serving. Over the next four years, Petersburg's citizens watched their once-beautiful city become first a conduit for transient soldiers from the Deep South, then an armed camp, and finally the focus of one of the Civil War's most protracted and damaging campaigns. (The fall of Richmond and collapse of the Confederate war effort in Virginia followed close on Grant's ultimate success in Petersburg.) At war's end, Petersburg's antebellum prosperity evaporated under pressures from inflation, chronic shortages, and the extensive damage done by Union artillery shells. Greene's book tracks both Petersburg's civilian experience and the city's place in Confederate military strategy and administration. Employing scores of unpublished sources, the book weaves a uniquely personal story of thousands of citizens--free blacks, slaves and their holders, factory owners, merchants--all of whom shared a singular experience in Civil War Virginia.

The Limits of Peacekeeping highlights the Australian government's peacekeeping efforts in Africa and the Americas from 1992 to 2005. Changing world power structures and increased international cooperation saw a boom in Australia's peacekeeping operations between 1991 and 1995. The initial optimism of this period proved to be misplaced, as the limits of the United Nations and the international community to resolve deep-seated problems became clear. There were also limits on how many missions a middle-sized country like Australia could support. Restricted by the size of the armed forces and financial and geographic constraints, peacekeeping was always a secondary task to ensuring the defence of Australia. Faith in the effectiveness of peacekeeping reduced significantly, and the election of the Howard Coalition Government in 1996 confined peacekeeping missions to the near region from 1996-2001. This volume is an authoritative and compelling history of Australia's changing attitudes towards peacekeeping.

As the day for Lincoln's second inauguration drew near, Americans wondered what their sixteenth president would say about the Civil War. Would Lincoln guide the nation toward "Reconstruction"? What about the slaves? They had been emancipated, but what about the matter of suffrage? When Lincoln finally stood before his fellow countrymen on March 4, 1865, and had only 703 words to share, the American public was stunned. The President had not offered the North a victory speech, nor did he excoriate the South for the sin of slavery. Instead, he called the whole country guilty of the sin and pleaded for reconciliation and unity.

In this compelling account, noted historian Ronald C. White Jr. shows how Lincoln's speech was initially greeted with confusion and hostility by many in the Union; commended by the legions of African Americans in attendance, abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass among them; and ultimately appropriated by his assassin John Wilkes Booth forty-one days later.

Filled with all the facts and factors surrounding the Second Inaugural, "Lincoln's Greatest Speech" is both an important historical document and a thoughtful analysis of Lincoln's moral and rhetorical genius.

Fountain-Pens - The Super-Pen for Our Super-Men Ladies! Learn To Drive! Your Country Needs Women Drivers! Do you drink German water? When Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, companies wasted no time in seizing the commercial opportunities presented by the conflict. There was no radio or television. The only way in which the British public could get war news was through newspapers and magazines, many of which recorded rising readerships. Advertising became a new science of sales, growing increasingly sophisticated both in visual terms and in its psychological approach. This collection of pictorial advertisements from the Great War reveals how advertisers were given the opportunity to create new markets for their products and how advertising reflected social change during the course of the conflict. It covers a wide range of products, including trench coats, motor-cycles, gramophones, cigarettes and invalid carriages, all bringing an insight into the preoccupations, aspirations and necessities of life between 1914 and 1918. Many advertisements were aimed at women, be it for guard-dogs to protect them while their husbands were away, or soap and skin cream for 'beauty on duty'. At the same time, men's tailoring evolved to suit new conditions. Aquascutum advertised 'Officers' Waterproof Trench Coats' and one officer, writing in the Times in December 1914, advised others to leave their swords behind but to take their Burberry coat. Sandwiched between the formality of the Victorian era and the hedonism of the 1920s, these charged images provide unexpected sources of historical information, affording an intimate glimpse into the emotional life of the nation during the First World War.

Part of a new Holocaust remembrance series of important testimonies and memoirs from the unique collections of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre. This is the story of two brothers caught up in the Nazi persecution of the Jews. After being transferred to several detention camps throughout Europe, they were eventually transported to Auschwitz. Rescued by the Quakers, they endured stays in several orphanages and eventual separation, before making new lives in the US and Israel, which included for Frederick a role in America's space programme. Touching and gripping, this autobiography arises out of their need to tell their story to their grandchildren. With its interplay between the two brothers, this is one of the most interesting Holocaust narratives to appear in recent years.

During the night of 11 April 1945, eight Australian Z Special commandos landed on Japanese-held Muschu Island, off the coast of New Guinea. Their mission was to reconnoitre the island's defences and confirm the location of two concealed naval guns that commanded the approaches to Wewak Harbour.But the secret mission went horribly wrong. Unknown to them, their presence had been discovered within hours of their landing. With no means of escape, the island became a killing ground.Nine days later, on the New Guinea mainland, the only survivor staggered back through the Japanese lines to safety.This is the remarkable true story of that survivor.

A riveting, minute-by-minute account of the momentous event that changed our world forever

On a quiet Monday morning in August 1945, a five-ton bomb--dubbed Little Boy by its creators--was dropped from an American plane onto the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On that day, a firestorm of previously unimagined power was unleashed on a vibrant metropolis of 300,000 people, leaving one third of its population dead, its buildings and landmarks incinerated. It was the terrifying dawn of the Atomic Age, spawning decades of paranoia, mistrust, and a widespread and very real fear of the potential annihilation of the human race.

Author Stephen Walker brilliantly re-creates the three terrible weeks leading up to the wartime detonation of the atomic bomb--from the first successful test in the New Mexico desert to the cataclysm and its aftermath--presenting the story through the eyes of pilots, scientists, civilian victims, and world leaders who stood at the center of earth-shattering drama. It is a startling, moving, frightening, and remarkable portrait of an extraordinary event--a shockwave whose repercussions can be felt to this very day.

"The U.S. Army in the West, 1870-1880, "Douglas C. McChristian describes the development of army uniforms, equipment, and small arms during a pivotal decade of experimentation and against the backdrop of a highly influential military operation-the Indian campaigns in the West.

McChristian discusses the evolution of military clothing, equipment, and arms throughout the decade and fully describes each type of item and its modifications. Drawing much new information from the records of the Ordnance and Quartermaster departments, he also adds the human perspective with excerpts from previously unpublished 1875 field reports.

Lavishly illustrated with more than two hundred photographs gathered from public and private collections across the nation, this book is an invaluable reference for collectors, curators, and students of militaria and of the colorful frontier era.

With his third book, To the North Anna River, Gordon Rhea resumes his spectacular narrative of the initial campaign between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee in the spring of 1864. May 13 to 25, a phase oddly ignored by historians, was critical in the clash between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia. During those thirteen days -- an interlude bracketed by horrific battles that riveted the public's attention -- a game of guile and endurance between Grant and Lee escalated to a suspenseful draw on Virginia's North Anna River. Rhea skillfully sets the stage at dawn May 13 and from there lends every imaginable perspective -- from mental interiors to sweeping panoramas to scholarly retrospection -- on the ensuing hours.

From the bloodstained fields of the Mule Shoe to the North Anna River, with Meadow Bridge, Myers Hill, Harris Farm, Jericho Mills, Ox Ford, and Doswell Farm in between, grueling night marches, desperate attacks, and thundering cavalry charges became the norm for both Grant's and Lee's men. But the real story of May 13-25 lay in the two general's efforts to outfox each other, and Rhea charts their every step and misstep. Realizing that his bludgeoning tactics at the Bloody Angle were ineffective, Grant resorted to a fast-paced assault on Lee's vulnerable points. Lee, outnumbered two to one, abandoned the offensive and concentrated on anticipating Grant's maneuvers and shifting quickly enough to repel them. It was an amazingly equal match of wits that produced a gripping, high-stakes bout of warfare -- a test, ultimately, of improvisation for Lee and of perseverance for Grant.

From unprecedented research into more than 550 published and unpublishedsources, Rhea produces an exciting new take on this overlooked passage in the Civil War. He discovers a surprising similarity in military temperament between Lee and Grant, whom historians traditionally contrast. He also presents the first detailed recounting of Philip Sheridan's dramatic battle to save his cavalry corps in front of Richmond; the story of the novice New York and New England heavy artillerists drawn down from Washington; the specifics of Grant's forlorn attack of May 18 at Spotsylvania Court House; and the full picture of Lee's ingenious inverted V formation on the North Anna. The most accurate, not to mention enthralling, account to date of this next phase in Lee and Grant's opening match, To the North Anna River is a worthy sequel to Rhea's earlier acclaimed works.

The second volume in Gordon C. Rhea's peerless five-book series on the Civil War's 1864 Overland Campaign abounds with Rhea's signature detail, innovative analysis, and riveting prose. Here Rhea examines the maneuvers and battles from May 7, 1864, when Grant left the Wilderness, through May 12, when his attempt to break Lee's line by frontal assault reached a chilling climax at what is now called the Bloody Angle. Drawing exhaustively upon previously untapped materials, Rhea challenges conventional wisdom about this violent clash of titans to construct the ultimate account of Grant and Lee at Spotsylvania.

Today Italy is a land of beauty and prosperity but in 1944-45 it had become a place of nightmares, a land of violence, war, and destruction. James Holland's ground-breaking account expertly documents the German advance and a segment of Italian history that has been largely neglected. The war in Italy was the most destructive campaign in the west as the Allies and Germans fought a long, bitter and highly attritional conflict up the mountainous leg of Italy during the last twelve months of the Second World War. For front-line troops, casualties rates at Cassino and then along the notorious Gothic Line were as high as they had been along the Western Front in the First World War. There were further similarities too: blasted landscapes, rain and mud. For the men who fought there, Italy really was the hardest campaign. And while the Allies and Germans were slogging it out through the mountains, the Italians were fighting their own battles, one where Partisans and Fascists were pitted against each other in a bloody civil war. Around them, civilians tried to live through the carnage, terror and anarchy while, in the wake of the Allied advance, beleaguered and impoverished Italians were forced to pick their way through the ruins of their homes and country and often forced into making terrible and heart-rending decisions in order to survive. 'Italy's Sorrow' is the first account of the war in that most beautiful of countries to tell the story from all sides and to include the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike. Offering extensive new research, it weaves together the drama and tragedy of a terrible year of war with new perspectives and material on some of the most debated episodes to have emerged from the Second World War. It is a magnificent achievement by one of our finest young military historians.

For two and a half thousand years The Art of War has been the core text of military strategy and planning, providing leaders with enduring insights into tactics, psychology, discipline and the nature of power.

Favoured by countless great generals and military tacticians throughout history, over the last century the book has found a new lease of life, inspiring business leaders, politicians and sporting figures, and offering a profound understanding of such diverse topics as managing others and outwitting competitors.

Alma Classics Evergreens is a series of popular classics. All the titles in the series are provided with an extensive critical apparatus and extra reading material, including a section of photographs and notes. The texts are based on the most authoritative edition (or collated from the most authoritative editions or manuscripts) and edited using a fresh, intelligent editorial approach. With an emphasis on the production, editorial and typographical values of a book, Alma Classics aspires to revitalize the whole experience of reading the classics.

For decades it has been assumed that the Allied bombing of Dresden -- a cultured city famous for its china, chocolate, and fine watches -- was militarily unjustifiable, an act of retribution for Germany's ceaseless bombing of London and other parts of England.

Now, Frederick Taylor's groundbreaking research offers a completely new examination of the facts and reveals that Dresden was a highly militarized city actively involved in the production of military armaments and communications. Incorporating first-hand accounts, contemporaneous press material and memoirs, and never-before-seen government records, Taylor proves unequivocally the very real military threat Dresden posed -- and how a legacy of propaganda shrouded the truth for sixty years.