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Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Military history
A myth-shattering study of the first clash between the Zulu kingdom and European interlopers and its dramatic effects on Boer and Zulu alike.
By the 1830s, the Zulu kingdom was consolidating its power as the strongest African polity in the south-east, but was under growing pressure from British traders and hunters on the coast, and descendants of the early Dutch settlers at the Cape – the Boers. In 1837, the vanguard of the Boers' Great Trek migration reached the borders of Zulu territory, causing alarm. When the Boer leader Piet Retief and his followers were massacred in cold blood, war broke out. Although the initial Boer counter-attacks were defeated by the Zulus, in December 1838 a new Trekker offensive resulted in a nation-defining clash between Boer and Zulu at the battle of Blood River.
In this ground-breaking and carefully balanced new work, containing stunning artwork and detailed maps, Ian Knight explores what has long been a controversial and partisan topic in South African history, placing the Zulus more squarely in this part of their history. Among the topics covered are the 1836 Boer/Ndebele conflict, the imbalance in technique and weaponry, the reasons why the British settlers allied themselves with the Boer Trekkers, and why the war was a key turning point in the use of traditional Zulu military techniques. This work also reveals that a Boer victory at Blood River was by no means a foregone conclusion.
The six-month siege of Khe Sanh in 1968 was the largest, most
intense battle of the Vietnam War. For six thousand trapped U.S.
Marines, it was a nightmare; for President Johnson, an obsession.
For General Westmoreland, it was to be the final vindication of
technological weaponry; for General Giap, architect of the French
defeat at Dien Bien Phu, it was a spectacular ruse masking troops
moving south for the Tet offensive. With a new introduction by Mark
Bowden-best-selling author of Hu? 1968-Robert Pisor's immersive
narrative of the action at Khe Sanh is a timely reminder of the
human cost of war, and a visceral portrait of Vietnam's fiercest
and most epic close-quarters battle. Readers may find the politics
and the tactics of the Vietnam War, as they played out at Khe Sahn
fifty years ago, echoed in our nation's global incursions today.
Robert Pisor sets forth the history, the politics, the strategies,
and, above all, the desperate reality of the battle that became the
turning point of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
‘Brave, compassionate and inspiring – it left me in floods of tears’ Adam Kay, author of This Is Going to Hurt
For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993, to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out life-saving operations and field surgery in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital.
The conflicts he has worked in form a chronology of twenty-first-century combat: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Darfur, Congo, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Gaza and Syria. But he has also volunteered in areas blighted by natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal.
Driven both by compassion and passion, the desire to help others and the thrill of extreme personal danger, he is now widely acknowledged to be the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world. But as time went on, David Nott began to realize that flying into a catastrophe – whether war or natural disaster – was not enough. Doctors on the ground needed to learn how to treat the appalling injuries that war inflicts upon its victims. Since 2015, the foundation he set up with his wife, Elly, has disseminated the knowledge he has gained, training other doctors in the art of saving lives threatened by bombs and bullets.
War Doctor is his extraordinary story
In a gripping, moment-by-moment narrative based on a wealth of
recently declassified documents and in-depth interviews, Bob Drury
and Tom Clavin tell the remarkable drama that unfolded over the
final, heroic hours of the Vietnam War. This closing chapter of the
war would become the largest-scale evacuation ever carried out, as
improvised by a small unit of Marines, a vast fleet of helicopter
pilots flying nonstop missions beyond regulation, and a Marine
general who vowed to arrest any officer who ordered his choppers
grounded while his men were still on the ground.
Drury and Clavin focus on the story of the eleven young Marines who
were the last men to leave, rescued from the U.S. Embassy roof just
moments before capture, having voted to make an Alamo-like last
stand. As politicians in Washington struggled to put the best face
on disaster and the American ambassador refused to acknowledge that
the end had come, these courageous men held their ground and helped
save thousands of lives. Drury and Clavin deliver a taut and
stirring account of a turning point in American history that
unfolds with the heartstopping urgency of the best thrillers--a
riveting true story finally told, in full, by those who lived it.
Little integrates the latest research from younger and established
scholars to provide a new evaluation and 'biography' of Cromwell.
The book challenges received wisdom about Cromwell's rise to power,
his political and religious beliefs, his relationship with various
communities across the British Isles and his role as Lord
Protector.
WHEN THE MARINES decided to buy a helicopter-airplane hybrid
"tiltrotor" called the V-22 Osprey, they saw it as their dream
machine. The tiltrotor was the aviation equivalent of finding the
Northwest Passage: an aircraft able to take off, land, and hover
with the agility of a helicopter yet fly as fast and as far as an
airplane. Many predicted it would reshape civilian aviation. The
Marines saw it as key to their very survival.
By 2000, the Osprey was nine years late and billions over budget,
bedeviled by technological hurdles, business rivalries, and an epic
political battle over whether to build it at all. Opponents called
it one of the worst boondoggles in Pentagon history. The Marines
were eager to put it into service anyway. Then two crashes killed
twenty- three Marines. They still refused to abandon the Osprey,
even after the Corps' own proud reputation was tarnished by a
national scandal over accusations that a commander had ordered
subordinates to lie about the aircraft's problems.
Based on in-depth research and hundreds of interviews, "The Dream
Machine" recounts the Marines' quarter-century struggle to get the
Osprey into combat. Whittle takes the reader from the halls of the
Pentagon and Congress to the war zone of Iraq, from the engineer's
drafting table to the cockpits of the civilian and Marine pilots
who risked their lives flying the Osprey--and sometimes lost them.
He reveals the methods, motives, and obsessions of those who
designed, sold, bought, flew, and fought for the tiltrotor. These
stories, including never before published eyewitness accounts of
the crashes that made the Osprey notorious, not only chronicle an
extraordinary chapter in Marine Corps history, but also provide a
fascinating look at a machine that could still revolutionize air
travel.
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