The American North's commitment to preventing a southern secession rooted in slaveholding suggests a society united in its opposition to slavery and racial inequality. The reality, however, was far more complex and troubling. In his latest book, Paul Escott lays bare the contrast between progress on emancipation and the persistence of white supremacy in the Civil War North. Escott analyzes northern politics, as well as the racial attitudes revealed in the era's literature, to expose the nearly ubiquitous racism that flourished in all of American society and culture. Contradicting much recent scholarship, Escott argues that the North's Democratic Party was consciously and avowedly "the white man's party," as an extensive examination of Democratic newspapers, as well as congressional debates and other speeches by Democratic leaders, proves. The Republican Party, meanwhile, defended emancipation as a war measure but did little to attack racism or fight for equal rights. Most Republicans propagated a message that emancipation would not disturb northern race relations or the interests of northern white voters: freed slaves, it was felt, would either leave the nation or remain in the South as subordinate laborers. Escott's book uncovers the substantial and destructive racism that lay beyond the South's borders. Despite emancipation representing enormous progress, racism flourished in the North, and assumptions of white supremacy remained powerful and nearly ubiquitous throughout America.

No other special force in history has a mystique equal to that of ancient Rome's thoroughbred protection and counter-insurgency squadron--the renowned Praetorian Guard. Originally conceived as a personal army for the emperor, the Guard assumed a much greater role than simple bodyguard, taking over a wide range of powers in the city and operating for more than 300 years. Inseparable from the machinery of the Roman state, the Praetorians had the power to make or break individual emperors.In The Praetorian Guard, Sandra Bingham offers a comprehensive and timely history of this elite military unit, from its foundation by Augustus in 27 BCE to its disbandment by Constantine in 312 CE. Exploring the multifaceted nature of the Guard, she discusses and describes its arms and insignia, size and recruitment tactics, and command structure and individual duties, as well as Guard members' family and religious lives. Bingham provides readers with a unique view of how others in antiquity portrayed these special forces and includes detailed illustrations, maps, and plans to paint a clear picture of this politically mighty military institution.

Leonidas Polk is one of the most fascinating figures of the Civil War. Consecrated as a bishop of the Episcopal Church and commissioned as a general into the Confederate army, Polk's life in both spheres blended into a unique historical composite. Polk was a man with deep religious convictions but equally committed to the Confederate cause. He baptized soldiers on the eve of bloody battles, administered last rites and even presided over officers' weddings, all while leading his soldiers into battle. Historian Cheryl White examines the life of this soldier-saint and the legacy of a man who unquestionably brought the first viable and lively Protestant presence to Louisiana and yet represents the politics of one of the darkest periods in American history.

Deep in the jungles of Vietnam, Alpha Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry, the famed Blackhorse Regiment, was a specialized cavalry outfit equipped with tanks and armored assault vehicles. On the morning of March 26, 1970, they began hearing radio calls from an infantry unit four kilometres away that had stumbled into a hidden North Vietnamese Army stronghold. Outnumbered at least six to one, the ninety-man American company was quickly surrounded, pinned down, and fighting for its existence. Helicopters could not penetrate the dense jungle, and artillery and air support could not be targeted effectively. Captain John Poindexter, Alpha Troop's twenty-five-year-old commander, realized that his outfit was the only hope for the trapped company. It just might be possible that they could "bust" enough jungle by nightfall to reach them. With the courage and determination that makes legends out of ordinary men, they affected a daring rescue and fought a pitched battle - at considerable cost. Thirty years later, Poindexter was made aware that his award recommendations, and even the records of the battle, had somehow gone missing. Thus began a "battle" to ensure that his brave men's accomplishments would never be forgotten again. President Obama stepped to the podium on October 20, 2009, to award Alpha Troop with the Presidential Unit Citation: the highest combat award that can be given to a military unit.

A military operation unlike any other on American soil, Morgan's Raid was characterized by incredible speed, superhuman endurance and innovative tactics. One of the nation's most colorful leaders, Confederate general John Hunt Morgan, took his cavalry through enemy-occupied territory in three states in one of the longest offensives of the Civil War. The effort produced the only battles fought north of the Ohio River and reached farther north than any other regular Confederate force. With twenty-five maps and more than forty illustrations, Morgan's Raid historian David L. Mowery takes a new look at this unprecedented event in American history, one historians rank among the world's greatest land-based raids since Elizabethan times.

From the bestselling author of Fortress Malta this is the second book in the Mediterranean war trilogy. This book looks afresh at the conflict in Northern Africa, focusing for the first time on the involvement of the US and the way this early collaboration to defeat shaped the whole Anglo-American axis for the rest of the war in Europe. By June 1942, Britain had reached her lowest ebb. Her military command was in tatters, her armies beaten, and in the Middle East it seemed all might be lost. Her new ally, America, had only fledgling armed forces and was severely under-trained, yet it was this alliance of the weary combatant and naive newcomer, coming together for the first time in North Africa, that would eventually bring about the defeat of Nazi Germany. This crucial period - from defeat at Gazala through to the victories of Alamein and, ultimately, Tunisia - was a time of learning for the Allies. Yet by the end Britain and America had finally gained material and certain tactical advantages over Germany, particularly in air warfare. As this book shows, the development of a tactical air force - principles that are still used to this day - were founded over the skies of North Africa. When the Axis forces were finally driven from North Africa in May 1943, over 250,000 Axis troops were taken prisoner, more than had surrendered to the Russians at Stalingrad. It was a major victory and a crucial steppingstone to the future invasion of Italy and France. In this new reappraisal, James Holland interweaves the personal stories of the men - and women - who made up these polyglot Allied forces: British and American, Nepalese and Punjabi, South African and Australian, Maori and Zulu, from all ranks and all services. From the heat and dust of the Western Desert to the mud and mountains of Northern Tunisia, this book charts the extraordinary first days of an Alliance that has worked together ever since.

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At the height of World War I, in the winter of 1917--1918, one of the Progressive era's most successful muckracking journalists, Ray Stannard Baker (1870--1946), set out on a special mission to Europe on behalf of the Wilson administration. While posing as a foreign correspondent for the New Republic and the New York World, Baker assessed public opinion in Europe about the war and postwar settlement. American officials in the White House and State Department held Baker's wide-ranging, trenchant reports in high regard. After the war, Baker remained in government service as the president's press secretary at the Paris Peace Conference, where the Allied victors dictated the peace terms to the defeated Central Powers. Baker's position gave him an extraordinary vantage point from which to view history in the making. He kept a voluminous diary of his service to the president, beginning with his voyage to Europe and lasting through his time as press secretary. Unlike Baker's published books about Wilson, leavened by much reflection, his diary allows modern readers unfiltered impressions of key moments in history by a thoughtful inside observer.

Published here for the first time, this long-neglected source includes an introduction by John Maxwell Hamilton and Robert Mann that places Baker and his diary into historical context.

Since the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the challenges of sectarianism and militarism have weighed heavily on the women of Iraq. In this book, Zahra Ali foregrounds a wide-range of interviews with a variety of women involved in women's rights activism, showing how everyday life and intellectual life has developed since the US-led invasion. In addition to this, Ali offers detailed historical research of social, economic and political contexts since the formation of the Iraqi state in the 1920s. Through a transnational and postcolonial feminist approach, this book also considers the ways in which gender norms and practices, Iraqi feminist discourses, and activisms are shaped and developed through state politics, competing nationalisms, religious, tribal and sectarian dynamics, wars, and economic sanctions. The result is a vivid account of the everyday life in today's Iraq and an exceptional analysis of the future of Iraqi feminisms.

In 1918, the Royal Air Force became the first major independent air force in the world. Formed to serve a strategic need in the most intensive war that Britain had then fought, the RAF continued in the inter-war era to play a key role in the political and diplomatic world, and in defending the Empire. During the Second World War, the RAF was pivotal in defending Britain from invasion in the Battle of Britain, and then in leading the assault on the Axis powers, most notably through the contentious bomber offensive against Germany. In the post-war world, the RAF adapted and developed into a force to meet the needs of the United Kingdom during the Cold War, the retreat from Empire, and most recently in the move to coalition warfare against low intensity threats, all against a backdrop of diminishing resources and shifting priorities. This is the story of the RAF over the first century of its existence: how it has confronted the many challenges and threats it has faced - from the Luftwaffe in 1940, through the spectre of nuclear holocaust in the Cold War, to the fight against terrorism in the 21st century - and how it has contributed to the defence of the United Kingdom throughout that period.

Since the shocking news first broke in 1876 of the Seventh Cavalry's disastrous defeat at the Little Big Horn, fascination with the battle--and with Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer--has never ceased. Widespread interest in the subject has spawned a vast outpouring of literature, which only increases with time. This two-volume bibliography of Custer literature is the first to be published in some twenty-five years and the most complete ever assembled.
Drawing on years of research, Michael O'Keefe has compiled entries for roughly 3,000 books and 7,000 articles and pamphlets. Covering both nonfiction and fiction (but not juvenile literature), the bibliography focuses on events beginning with Custer's tenure at West Point during the 1850s and ending with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Included within this span are Custer's experiences in the Civil War and in Texas, the 1873 Yellowstone and 1874 Black Hills expeditions, the Great Sioux War of 1876-77, and the Seventh Cavalry's pursuit of the Nez Perces in 1877.
The literature on Custer, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and the Seventh Cavalry touches the entire American saga of exploration, conflict, and settlement in the West, including virtually all Plains Indian tribes, the frontier army, railroading, mining, and trading. Hence this bibliography will be a valuable resource for a broad audience of historians, librarians, collectors, and Custer enthusiasts.

The #1 testimony book that every Christian needs to read. As the Nazi madness swept across Europe, a quiet watchmaker's family in Holland risked everything for the sake of others, and for the love of Christ. Despite the danger and threat of discovery, the ten Boom family courageously offered shelter to persecuted Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Then a trap brought about the family's arrest. Could God's love shine through, even in Ravensbruck?

On September 10, 1813, the hot, still air that hung over Lake Erie was broken by the sounds of sharp conflict. Led by Oliver Hazard Perry, the American fleet met the British, and though they sustained heavy losses, Perry and his men achieved one of the most stunning victories in the War of 1812. Author Walter Rybka traces the Lake Erie Campaign from the struggle to build the fleet in Erie, Pennsylvania, during the dead of winter and the conflict between rival egos of Perry and his second in command, Jesse Duncan Elliott, through the exceptionally bloody battle that was the first U.S. victory in a fleet action. With the singular perspective of having sailed the reconstructed U.S. brig Niagara for over twenty years, Rybka brings the knowledge of a shipmaster to the story of the Lake Erie Campaign and the culminating Battle of Lake Erie.

What buried secret lies beneath the stones of one of England's greatest former churches and shrines, the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds? The search for the final resting place of King Edmund has led to this site, beneath which Francis Young argues the lost king's remains are waiting to be found. Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King explores the history of the martyred monarch of East Anglia and England's first patron saint, showing how he became a pivotal figure around whom Saxons, Danes and Normans all rallied. Young also examines Edmund's legacy in the centuries since his death at the hands of marauding Vikings in the 9th century. In doing so, this fascinating book points to the imminent rediscovery of the ruler who created England.

Marching with Sherman: Through Georgia and the Carolinas with the 154th New York presents an innovative and provocative study of the most notorious campaigns of the Civil War -- Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's devastating 1864 "March to the Sea" and the 1865 Carolinas Campaign. The book follows the 154th New York regiment through three states and chronicles 150 years, from the start of the campaigns to their impact today. Mark H. Dunkelman expands on the brief accounts of Sherman's marches found in regimental histories with an in-depth look at how one northern unit participated in the campaigns and how they remembered them decades later. Dunkelman also includes the often-overlooked perspective of southerners -- most of them women -- who encountered the soldiers of the 154th New York. In examining the postwar reminiscences of those staunch Confederate daughters, Dunkelman identifies the myths and legends that have flourished in the South for more than a century. Marching with Sherman concludes with Dunkelman's own trip along the 154th New York's route through Dixie -- echoing the accounts of previous travelers -- and examining the memories of the marches that linger today.

A Concise Account of All the Major Battles, Innovations, and Political Events of the First World War by an Important Military Analyst
Praise for the Original Edition: "With the lucidity and literary skill we have come to expect in his work, the author has written not only a concise history of the fighting on land and sea but a frank criticism of the 1914-18 military mind."--"New York Times"
"The best brief history of the war in both its political and military aspects. Well proportioned and well knit."--"Foreign Affairs "
"Liddell Hart's style is brilliant, and the whole narrative is fascinating even to one familiar with the whole dreadful story. Indeed, the sweep of the presentation may well be the envy of novelists."--"Nation"
An abridgement of the author's "History of the World War, 1914-1918," and first published in 1936, "World War I in Outline" is a compact but comprehensive history of the "war to end all wars." Divided into five parts representing each year of the war, Liddell Hart discusses the war on land, at sea, and in the air while skillfully incorporating the political events occurring at the same time. From his own experiences in the war and through studying the conflict in detail, the author developed and expressed his most important observation about military principles: direct attacks against an enemy firmly in position should not be attempted. He also put forth the notion that battles are more often decided by the commander's actions and not the armies themselves. A lively and engrossing read, "World War I in Outline" is an ideal overview in time for the centennial of one of the major wars in history.

Barbarians are back. These small, highly mobile, and stateless groups are no longer confined to the pages of history; they are a contemporary reality in groups such as the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIL. Return of the Barbarians re-examines the threat of violent non-state actors throughout history, revealing key lessons that are applicable today. From the Roman Empire and its barbarian challenge on the Danube and Rhine, Russia and the steppes to the nineteenth-century Comanches, Jakub J. Grygiel shows how these groups have presented peculiar, long-term problems that could rarely be solved with a finite war or clearly demarcated diplomacy. To succeed and survive, states were often forced to alter their own internal structure, giving greater power and responsibility to the communities most directly affected by the barbarian menace. Understanding the barbarian challenge, and strategies employed to confront it, offers new insights into the contemporary security threats facing the Western world.

The Age of Sail has long fascinated readers, writers, and the general public. Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Jack London et al. treated ships at sea as microcosms; Petri dishes in which larger themes of authority, conflict and order emerge. In this fascinating book, Pfaff and Hechter explore mutiny as a manifestation of collective action and contentious politics. The authors use narrative evidence and statistical analysis to trace the processes by which governance failed, social order decayed, and seamen mobilized. Their findings highlight the complexities of governance, showing that it was not mere deprivation, but how seamen interpreted that deprivation, which stoked the grievances that motivated rebellion. Using the Age of Sail as a lens to examine topics still relevant today - what motivates people to rebel against deprivation and poor governance - The Genesis of Rebellion: Governance, Grievance, and Mutiny in the Age of Sail helps us understand the emergence of populism and rejection of the establishment.

At the end of 1941, six weeks after the mass deportations of Jews from Nazi Germany had begun, Gestapo offices across the Reich received an urgent telex from Adolf Eichmann, decreeing that all war-wounded and decorated Jewish veterans of World War I be exempted from upcoming "evacuations." Why this was so, and how Jewish veterans at least initially were able to avoid the fate of ordinary Jews under the Nazis, is the subject of Comrades Betrayed. Michael Geheran deftly illuminates how the same values that compelled Jewish soldiers to demonstrate bravery in the front lines in World War I made it impossible for them to accept passively, let alone comprehend, persecution under Hitler. After all, they upheld the ideal of the German fighting man, embraced the fatherland, and cherished the bonds that had developed in military service. Through their diaries and private letters, as well as interviews with eyewitnesses and surviving family members and records from the police, Gestapo, and military, Michael Geheran presents a major challenge to the prevailing view that Jewish veterans were left isolated, neighborless, and having suffered a social death by 1938. Tracing the path from the trenches of the Great War to the extermination camps of the Third Reich, Geheran exposes a painful dichotomy: while many Jewish former combatants believed that Germany would never betray them, the Holocaust was nonetheless a horrific reality. In chronicling Jewish veterans' appeal to older, traditional notions of comradeship and national belonging, Comrades Betrayed forces reflection on how this group made use of scant opportunities to defy Nazi persecution and, for some, to evade becoming victims of the Final Solution.

The fascinating untold story of how Nazi architects and planners envisioned and began to build a model "Aryan" society in Norway during World War II Between 1940 and 1945, German occupiers transformed Norway into a vast construction zone. This remarkable building campaign, largely unknown today, was designed to extend the Greater German Reich beyond the Arctic Circle and turn the Scandinavian country into a racial utopia. From ideal new cities to a scenic superhighway stretching from Berlin to northern Norway, plans to remake the country into a model "Aryan" society fired the imaginations of Hitler, his architect Albert Speer, and other Nazi leaders. In Hitler's Northern Utopia, Despina Stratigakos provides the first major history of Nazi efforts to build a Nordic empire-one that they believed would improve their genetic stock and confirm their destiny as a new order of Vikings. Drawing on extraordinary unpublished diaries, photographs, and maps, as well as newspapers from the period, Hitler's Northern Utopia tells the story of a broad range of completed and unrealized architectural and infrastructure projects far beyond the well-known German military defenses built on Norway's Atlantic coast. These ventures included maternity centers, cultural and recreational facilities for German soldiers, and a plan to create quintessential National Socialist communities out of twenty-three towns damaged in the German invasion, an overhaul Norwegian architects were expected to lead. The most ambitious scheme-a German cultural capital and naval base-remained a closely guarded secret for fear of provoking Norwegian resistance. A gripping account of the rise of a Nazi landscape in occupied Norway, Hitler's Northern Utopia reveals a haunting vision of what might have been-a world colonized under the swastika.