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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > War & defence operations
Stephen Bungay' s magisterial history is acclaimed as the account
of the Battle of Britain. Unrivalled for its synthesis of all
previous historical accounts, for the quality of its strategic
analysis and its truly compulsive narrative, this is a book
ultimately distinguished by its conclusions - that it was the
British in the Battle who displayed all the virtues of efficiency,
organisation and even ruthlessness we habitually attribute to the
Germans, and they who fell short in their amateurism,
ill-preparedness, poor engineering and even in their old-fashioned
notions of gallantry. An engrossing read for the military scholar
and the general reader alike, this is a classic of military history
that looks beyond the mythology, to explore all the tragedy and
comedy; the brutality and compassion of war.
Even Mississippi textbooks rarely mention the part Mississippi men
and women played in World War I. Mississippians in the Great War
presents in their own words the story of Mississippians and their
roles. This body of work divides into five sections, each
associated with crucial dates of American action. Comments relating
to various military actions are interspersed throughout to give the
reader a context of the wide variety of experiences. Additionally,
where possible, Anne L. Webster provides information on the soldier
or sailor to show what became of him after his service. Webster
examined newspapers from all corners of the state for ""letters
home,"" most appearing in newspapers from Natchez, Greenville, and
Pontotoc. The authors of the letters gathered here are from
soldiers, aviators, sailors, and relief workers engaged in the
service of their country. Letter writing skills varied from
citizens of minimal literacy to those who would later become
published authors and journalists. These letters reflect the
experiences of green, young Mississippians as they endured training
camp, voyaged across the Atlantic to France, and participated in
horrific battles leaving some scarred for life. To round out the
picture, Webster includes correspondence from nurses and YMCA
workers who describe drills, uniforms, parades, and celebrations.
Covering the daily lives of American soldiers from their training
through their arrival in France and participation in the final
battles of the war, this book offers a breadth of perspectives on
the experiences of doughboys in the First World War via primary
documents of the time. Due to the mechanical typewriter and the
Linotype machine, printed materials during the World War I era were
produced quickly and widely distributed. In a time without media
other than those on paper, printed materials like newspapers,
magazines, books, letters, and army orders were critical for
communication. This book examines the range of documents written
during World War I or within a few years of the end of the conflict
to reveal the experiences of the doughboys who participated in "the
war to end all wars." Through documents such as military
communications, newspaper accounts, personal letters, divisional
histories written soon after the end of hostilities, and other
sources, readers get detailed glimpses into the doughboy experience
during World War I. The book covers subject matter throughout their
time as soldiers, including training in the United States and in
France, early participation in conflicts, daily life in the
American Expeditionary Force, the major battles for American
troops, and what returning home was like for those lucky ones. The
assembled narrative of the war experience from many different
voices and individuals creates a resource that enables a better
understanding the attitudes and perspectives from 1918 through the
very early 1920s. Readers will also gain an appreciation of the
many changes in American culture that were to follow immediately
after the war's conclusion and contribute to the decade of the
Roaring Twenties.
The conquest of the air-and beyond
This interesting book, which includes photographs and diagrams,
describes the early years of man's attempts to gain mastery of the
air. It chronicles the first, rudimentary attempts at flight in
balloons to their ultimate development including their use during
the Great War. Next came the age of the dirigible including, of
course, the mighty Zeppelin. Allied dirigibles of the First World
War are also considered. Most significant, however, was the
development of powered, heavier than air, winged, machines and in
this account they are described from their genesis with the Wright
brothers to their use in the first great conflict which led to the
creation of the air forces of the world. German and Allied aircraft
are discussed, together with their various uses, applications and
the deeds of the intrepid young men who flew them. There are not
many accounts of the early days of aviation in peace and war so any
addition to their number is welcome. This book was written before
the potential of the aircraft had been fully realised and is an
interesting perspective on how the first pilots, aircraft
designers, manufacturers and visionaries saw them and their future
in the opening decades of the twentieth century. An essential
addition to any library of early aviation, this book is
recommended.
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.
Why did Abraham Lincoln sneak into Washington for his inauguration? was the Gettysburg Address written on the back of an envelope? Where did the Underground Railroad run? Did General Sherman really say, "War is Hell"? If you can't answer these questions, you're not alone. Millions of Americans, bored by dull textbooks, are in the dark about the most significant event in our history. Now New York Times bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis comes to the rescue, deftly sorting out the players, the politics, and the key events - Emancipation and Reconstruction, Shiloh and Gettysburg, Generals Grant and Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and much more. Drawing on moving eyewitness accounts, Davis includes a wealth of "hidden history" about the roles played by women and African Americans before and during the war, along with lesser-known facts that will enthrall even learned Civil War buffs. Vivid, informative, and hugely entertaining, Don't Know Much About the Civil War is the only book you'll ever need on "the war that never ended."
The fall of 2016 saw the release of the widely popular First World
War video game Battlefield 1. Upon the game's initial announcement
and following its subsequent release, Battlefield 1 became the
target of an online racist backlash that targeted the game's
inclusion of soldiers of color. Across social media and online
communities, players loudly proclaimed the historical inaccuracy of
black soldiers in the game and called for changes to be made that
correct what they considered to be a mistake that was influenced by
a supposed political agenda. Through the introduction of the
theoretical framework of the 'White Mythic Space', this book seeks
to investigate the reasons behind the racist rejection of soldiers
of color by Battlefield 1 players in order to answer the question:
Why do individuals reject the presence of people of African descent
in popular representations of history?
The Women of the Great War
It has been a salient feature of twentieth century warfare that
the industrial nature of conflict, combined with the huge number of
men required and the numerous machines and armaments involved, has
meant that industry has-of necessity-had to increase its capacity
to keep the fighting forces constantly and consistently supplied.
Yet each conflict has inevitably drained the places of industry of
the very workforce it required to function effectively. The
solution in both World Wars has been for women to step forward to
fill the roles formally undertaken by men who were by then enlisted
into the armed services. Of course, women invariably proved
themselves to be equal to the tasks assigned to them and indeed
without them wartime industrial production would inevitably have
been compromised to the point of peril for the military outcome.
The work was invariably hard and often dangerous, but women on the
home front have long been regarded as the essential, if largely
unsung, heroines of the war effort. The principal benefit of this
book is that it not only describes the activities of women in the
workplace, but that it includes many photographs of women at work,
demonstrating the multitude of weapons, armaments, equipment and
vehicles they manufactured during the First World War. This concise
Leonaur edition includes two books-that were originally so short as
to not have seen re-publication in modern times-for good
value.
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.
Victory at Home is at once an institutional history of the federal
War Manpower Commission and a social history of the southern labor
force within the commission's province. Charles D. Chamberlain
explores how southern working families used America's rapid wartime
industrialization and an expanded federal presence to gain
unprecedented economic, social, and geographic mobility in the
chronically poor region. Chamberlain looks at how war workers,
black leaders, white southern elites, liberal New Dealers,
nonsouthern industrialists, and others used and shaped the federal
war mobilization effort to fill their own needs. He shows, for
instance, how African American, Latino, and white laborers worked
variously through churches, labor unions, federal agencies, the
NAACP, and the Urban League, using a wide variety of strategies
from union organizing and direct action protest to job shopping and
migration. Throughout, Chamberlain is careful not to portray the
southern wartime labor scene in monolithic terms. He discusses, for
instance, conflicts between racial groups within labor unions and
shortfalls between the War Manpower Commission's national
directives and their local implementation. An important new work in
southern economic and industrial history, Victory at Home also has
implications for the prehistory of both the civil rights revolution
and the massive resistance movement of the 1960s. As Chamberlain
makes clear, African American workers used the coalition of unions,
churches, and civil rights organizations built up during the war to
challenge segregation and disenfranchisement in the postwar South.
1-Recce was the sharpest, most versatile and deadliest specialist unit in the
entire South African army. These men were super fit, unbelievably tough and
stopped at nothing. Time and again they put their lives at risk in the execution of
highly secret operations behind enemy lines.
For decades these missions have been kept secret. Now, for the first time, the
Recces' most famous generals (including the legendary colonel Jan Breytenbach)
reveal their involvement in many highly sensitive political operations.
Explosive revelations are made of a collapsed mission to blow up key ANC
figures in the final years of the apartheid era. They tell of 1-Recce's involvement
in the controversial Border War and reveal the existence of a top secret squadron
in the then Rhodesian army.
After years of myths and secrecy, this book gives a new perspective on the
Recces and the way they operated invisibly behind the scenes.
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Above the Pigsty
(Hardcover)
Peter Van Essen; Illustrated by Miranda Van Essen; Edited by Dela Wilkins
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R1,161
Discovery Miles 11 610
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Ships in 18 - 22 working days
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War was no stranger to the town of Sudbury, Massachusetts. A small
farming community at the outbreak of the Civil War, Sudbury stood
ready to support the cause of the Union. Uriah and Mary Moore, a
local farmer and his wife, parents of ten children, sent four sons
off to fight for the Union. George Frederick Moore was twenty years
old when he joined the Thirty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment in 1862,
along with brother, Albert. Their brother, John, had enlisted in
the Thirteenth Massachusetts Regiment and had been serving since
1861. In 1864, a fourth brother, Alfred, joined the Fifty-ninth
Massachusetts Regiment. The eighty-four letters in this collection
span the years from August 1862 to the end of the War and include
correspondence to and from Pvt. George Moore and five family
members. George's personal diaries from 1863 and 1864 are also
included, as well as the 1867 diary of Sarah Jones, the girl he
married. Through research the family is traced long after the war,
revealing their travels and accomplishments. Explanatory passages
that accompany these letters highlight the campaigns of the
Thirty-fifth Massachusetts through the war years. George Moore took
part in battles from South Mountain and Antietam to Fredericksburg,
Vicksburg, Campbell's Station, and the Siege of Knoxville. He
participated in the Battles of the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and the
assault on Petersburg. The letters to and from George Moore and his
loved ones provide an intimate glimpse of the trials, not only of
the soldiers, but of the family who sent their boys off to war.
In the search for the deeper causes of the 'War to end all wars'
the reading public has been presented with countless titles by
military, diplomatic and intellectual historians. Some of these
have, however, been motivated by a desire to show how their authors
would have preferred the past events to have been, so as to promote
some present-day agenda. This is the fallacy of 'presentism'. John
Moses was trained at the Universities of Munich and Erlangen by
professors committed to the Rankean tradition of showing 'how it
actually was', as far as humanly possible, based on diligent
archival research and with the strictest objectivity and emotional
detachment. Consequently, both Moses and Overlack have been at
pains to identify the essential peculiarity of the Kaiser's Germany
and have focused sharply on the question of how its war planning
impinged on Australasia.
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