Colonial wars have been a very active part of 19th and 20th century history and their importance has often been overlooked. Their study and analysis, in order to understand the contemporary world and current international relations, is as necessary as it is interesting. Examining Colonial Wars and Their Impact on Contemporary Military History approaches the phenomenon of colonial wars with the intention of understanding the most immediate past in order to analyze the contemporary and current scenarios with new tools. It contributes to the dissemination of content without neglecting the considerations of social sciences and history, with a compilation and analytical character. Covering topics such as black-market armaments, imperialism, and military history, this premier reference source is a dynamic resource for historians, anthropologists, sociologists, government officials, students and educators of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

‘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

Accounts of brutality fill the history of warfare. The behavior of any human being is, of course, a very complex phenomenon, whether in war or in peace. Historians in large part have described in detail the actions of military groups that have committed brutalities, but have not dealt with the factors that contributed to those actions. After examining the collective behavior of six military groups, representing different combat actions in different periods, some unexpected similarities became clear. While these groups were in very different situations and operated during different periods in history, there are similar factors that allowed the members of these groups to kill men, women and children in cold blood, and to commit acts of unspeakable brutality. After a close analysis of these military groups, five principle factors that had the greatest influence, either directly or indirectly, on these soldiers have been identified. Together, the factors supported each other and crystallized into a modus operandi that resulted in atrocities and bestial acts on civilians. This is the first book to identify the factors that lead to some of the most horrific cruelty in history, and to predict the actions of future groups given similar circumstances.

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.