A guide to the conflicts for the Union
This book has a curious pedigree. During the U.S. Grant administration, the Secretary of War instructed the Corps of Clerks to compile a thorough and complete catalogue of all the engagements of the late American Civil War-irrespective of their magnitude. The work was duly completed, published in small edition and a copy was presented by the Adjutant-General to the Secretary of War who, upon receiving it, promptly checked its pages for a minor incident in which he had been involved only to discover that it was notably absent It was from this rather embarrassing foundation that this book (oddly titled in its original edition 'When and Where We Met Each Other on Shore or Afloat' ) was conceived and, after much research, published. The task was a daunting one and the book occupied its author, Theodore D. Strickler, for over a decade as he examined official and other reliably authentic sources. Of course, all the well known battles are recorded here, but also included are the hundreds of minor affairs including scouting parties, skirmishes and raids. Strickler had the advantage of living witnesses to authenticate his findings and at the time of its original publication the book claimed to be the most complete compilation of its kind. The principal body of the text is in list form and the Leonaur edition has faithfully reproduced this in its original form for the sake of authenticity. All other text-which includes a piece on unit insignia-has been newly typeset. By virtue of its extreme thoroughness this book will be invaluable to all serious students of the American Civil War.
Every Leonaur title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the latest chapter in a series of events that have their origins in World War One. The difficult existential questions that emerged before and during this conflict still remain unresolved. Contrary to the claim that wars are not supposed to happen in Europe or that we live in the era of the End of History, the experience of Ukraine highlights the salience of the spell of the past. The failure of the West to take its past seriously has left it confused and unprepared to deal with the current crisis. Unexpectedly fashionable claims about the irrelevance of borders and of nation states have been exposed as shallow myths. The author argues that the West's self-inflicted condition of historical amnesia has encouraged it to disregard the salience of geo-political realities. Suddenly the once fashionable claims that made up the virtues of globalisation appear threadbare. This problem, which was already evident during the global Covid pandemic has reached a crisis point in the battlefield of Ukraine. History has had its revenge on a culture that believes that what happened in the past no longer matters. The Road To Ukraine: How the West Lost Its Way argues that overcoming the state of historical amnesia is the precondition for the restoration of global solidarity.

The true story of a woman's incredible journey into the heart of the Third Reich to find the man she loves. When the Gestapo seize 20-year-old Olga Czepf's fiance she is determined to find him and sets off on an extraordinary 2,000-mile search across Nazi-occupied Europe risking betrayal, arrest and death. As the Second World War heads towards its bloody climax, she refuses to give up - even when her mission leads her to the gates of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps...Now 88 and living in London, Olga tells with remarkable clarity of the courage and determination that drove her across war-torn Europe, to find the man she loved. The greatest untold true love story of World War Two.

The battlefield reputation of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, long recognized as a formidable warrior, has been shaped by one infamous wartime incident. At Fort Pillow in 1864, the attack by Confederate forces under Forrest's command left many of the Tennessee Unionists and black soldiers garrisoned there dead in a confrontation widely labeled as a "massacre." In "The River Was Dyed with Blood," best-selling Forrest biographer Brian Steel Wills argues that although atrocities did occur after the fall of the fort, Forrest did not order or intend a systematic execution of its defenders. Rather, the general's great failing was losing control of his troops.

A prewar slave trader and owner, Forrest was a controversial figure throughout his lifetime. Because the attack on Fort Pillow--which, as Forrest wrote, left the nearby waters "dyed with blood"--occurred in an election year, Republicans used him as a convenient Confederate scapegoat to marshal support for the war. After the war he also became closely associated with the spread of the Ku Klux Klan. Consequently, the man himself, and the truth about Fort Pillow, has remained buried beneath myths, legends, popular depictions, and disputes about the events themselves.

Wills sets what took place at Fort Pillow in the context of other wartime excesses from the American Revolution to World War II and Vietnam, as well as the cultural transformations brought on by the Civil War. Confederates viewed black Union soldiers as the embodiment of slave rebellion and reacted accordingly. Nevertheless, Wills concludes that the engagement was neither a massacre carried out deliberately by Forrest, as charged by a congressional committee, nor solely a northern fabrication meant to discredit him and the Confederate States of America, as pro-Southern apologists have suggested. The battle-scarred fighter with his homespun aphorisms was neither an infallible warrior nor a heartless butcher, but a product of his time and his heritage.

The cup that cheers
The First World War was considered the pinnacle in the development of warfare following the dawn of the industrial age. For the first time conflict on a global stage was fought on land, on and under the sea and in the skies. This war of the machines swept away swathes of humanity by the use of ruthlessly efficient means of slaughter. Every human resource was needed because it could not be waged solely by male armies on the fields of battle. This meant that the role of women in western society would be changed forever. Women became the industrial workforce, agricultural workers and the custodians of transport and logistics. Thousands more, from nurses to drivers, mechanics to entertainers, volunteered to provide essential services to support the fighting men on the front line. Many new and established organisations willingly put all their resources into the war effort. To the troops of the allied armies these volunteers-both men and women-were little short of angels, providing for body and spirit under the most difficult circumstances and their contribution to the morale of the soldiers in action cannot be over estimated. The Y. M. C. A was at the forefront of these activities, providing everything from essentials to much appreciated little luxuries, from the opportunity for a bath and shave to that mainstay of English or American life, a good, hot and much needed 'cuppa' tea or coffee, accompanied by a kind smile or a supportive word. This special Leonaur edition contains three accounts of these remarkably brave volunteers on the Western Front. Theirs was essential but often dangerous work and many of them made the ultimate sacrifice. This fascinating book relates an often unsung aspect of the Great War, but one which will be of enormous interest to those who require a complete understanding of the conflict and are interested in the changing role of women in the early years of the 20th century.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

During the final years of the Second World War, a decisive change took place in the Italian left, as the Italian Communist Party (PCI) rose from clandestinity and recast itself as a mass, patriotic force committed to building a new democracy. This book explains how this new party came into being. Using Rome as its focus, it explains that the rebirth of the PCI required that it subdue other, dissident strands of communist thinking. During the nine-month German occupation of Rome in 1943-44, dissident communists would create the capital's largest single resistance formation, the Communist Movement of Italy (MCd'I), which galvanised a social revolt in the capital's borgate slums. Exploring this wartime battle to define the rebirth of Italian communism, the author examines the ways in which a militant minority of communists rooted their activity in the everyday lives of the population under occupation. In particular, this study focuses on the role of draft resistance and the revolt against labour conscription in driving recruitment to partisan bands, and how communist militants sought to mould these recruits through an active effort of political education. Studying the political writing of these dissidents, their autodidact Marxism and the social conditions in which it emerged, this book also sheds light on an often-ignored underground culture in the years that preceded the armed resistance that began in September 1943. Revealing an almost unknown history of dissident communism in Italy, outside of more recognisable traditions like Trotskyism or Bordigism, this book provides an innovative perspective on Italian history. It will be of interest to those researching the broad topics of political and social history, but more specifically, resistance in the Second World War and the post-war European left.

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