"Battle: A History of Combat and Culture" spans the globe and the centuries to explore the way ideas shape the conduct of warfare. Drawing its examples from Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and America, John A. Lynn challenges the belief that technology has been the dominant influence on combat from ancient times to the present day. In battle, ideas can be more far more important than bullets or bombs. Carl von Clausewitz proclaimed that war is politics, but even more basically, war is culture. The hard reality of armed conflict is formed by - and, in turn, forms - a culture's values, assumptions, and expectations about fighting. The author examines the relationship between the real and the ideal, arguing that feedback between the two follows certain discernable paths. Battle rejects the currently fashionable notion of a "Western way of warfare" and replaces it with more nuanced concepts of varied and evolving cultural patterns of combat. After considering history, Lynn finally asks how the knowledge gained might illuminate our understanding of the war on terrorism.

There is a vigorous debate on the exact beginnings of the Crusades, as well as a growing conviction that some practices of crusading may have been in existence, at least in part, long before they were identified as such. The Prehistory of the Crusades explores how the Crusades came to be seen as the use of aggressive warfare to Christianise pagan lands and peoples. Reynolds focuses on the Baltic, or Northern, Crusades, an aspect of the Crusades that has been little documented, thus bringing a new perspective to their historical and ideological origins. Baltic Crusades were distinctive because they were not directed at the Holy Land, and they were not against Muslim opponents, but rather against pagan peoples. From the Emperor Charlemagne's wars against the Saxons in the 8th and 9th centuries to the Baltic Crusades of the 12th century, this book explores the sanctification of war in creating the ideal of crusade. In so doing, it shows how crusading ultimately developed in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Prehistory of the Crusades provides a valuable insight into the topic for students of medieval history and the Crusades.

The war and views of a foot soldier in gray
The author of this book has written of his experiences of the American Civil War from the perspective of an ordinary private soldier of the North Carolina Infantry. Modern readers should allow for the fact that James Carson was very much a man of his time and place. His support for the Confederacy and the Southern way of life of the mid-nineteenth century is evident within these pages and include an ardent belief in the slave system. Nevertheless, this book is invaluable for those interested in a Confederate view of life on the sharp end of the infantryman's war including scenes of the march, camp life and the battlefield particularly at Petersburg. Available in soft cover and hard cover for collectors.

The quantity of journalism produced during World War I was unlike anything the then-budding mass media had ever seen. Correspondents at the front were dispatching voluminous reports on a daily basis, and though much of it was subject to censorship, it all eventually became available. It remains the most extraordinary firsthand look at the war that we have. Published immediately after the cessation of hostilities and compiled from those original journalistic sources-American, British, French, German, and others-this is an astonishing contemporary perspective on the Great War. This replica of the first 1919 edition includes all the original maps, photos, and illustrations, lending an even greater immediacy to readers a century later. Volume IV covers December 1916 through March 1918, from the entrance of the United States into the conflict through the last of the zeppelin raids on the Western Front. American journalist and historian FRANCIS WHITING HALSEY (1851-1919) was literary editor of The New York Times from 1892 through 1896. He wrote and lectured extensively on history; his works include, as editor, the two-volume Great Epochs in American History Described by Famous Writers, From Columbus to Roosevelt (1912), and, as writer, the 10-volume Seeing Europe with Famous Authors (1914).

Armoured Cars in Eden. A president's son at war in the land that became modern day Iraq. This is the story of a young American man serving in a little documented force in an almost forgotten campaign. More remarkably, he was from a background of military tradition and adventure and the son of a former United States president. His war was against the Turkish Ottoman Empire, his service that of a volunteer in the British army, his familiar locations Negef, Falujah, Baghdad - exotic place names once again familiar to Americans at war. His is a story of parallels and contrasts - of religious sensitivities, rivalries, civil unrest, occupying armies and conflict along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers almost a century ago. Roosevelt's experiences conclude in the Argonne at the end of hostilities.

This is the story of Chęciny, my hometown in southern Poland, and of the people who lived there between the two world wars of the 20th Century.

The Nazi invasion of Poland in October 1939 started World War II. Millions of Polish Jews died in the ensuing Holocaust, including 4,000 citizens of Chęciny, and 50 members of my family. I was lucky: my mother, brother, three sisters and I had joined my father in America in 1930. I finished high school in Chicago, went to college and graduated from the University of Illinois Medical School. I became a doctor and a psychiatrist, setting up a long and rewarding private practice in Los Angeles that spanned more than 50 years.

Like the wall paintings in Pompeii, which offer a glimpse into the daily life of that city before the volcano, I hope that these stories offer a glimpse into the daily life of my hometown before the Holocaust.

But most of all, this is the story of my family, and a tribute to my beloved Aunt Chana and her daughter, my cousin Rachel, whose courage and self-sacrifice saved Miriam - Chęciny's youngest survivor of the Holocaust - from the Nazi murderers.

This book explores five cases of monument and public commemorative space related to World War II (WWII) in contemporary China (Mainland), Hong Kong and Taiwan, all of which were built either prior to or right after the end of the War and their physical existence still remains. Through the study on the monuments, the project illustrates past and ongoing controversies and contestations over Chinese nation, sovereignty, modernism and identity. Despite their historical affinities, the three societies in question, namely, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, vary in their own ways of telling, remembering and forgetting WWII. These divergences are not only rooted in their different political circumstances and social experiences, but also in their current competitions, confrontations and integrations. This book will be of great interest to historians, sinologists and analysts of new Asian nationalism.

At war with the Escadrilles of France
Henry Farre was an observer with French bombers during the Great War and was thus in a position to have a clear understanding of the subject of his writings. This fascinating book is partly comprised of Farre's own experiences and his view-combined with contributions from his comrades in arms-of the French effort for the war in the air. Within its pages we share the experiences of the French Aces and join the bombers on raids in daylight and night-time. There are interesting observations and anecdotes of aerial photography flights, the bombing of enemy held cities and harbours and the work of the aviators who operated far out to sea to torpedo German submarines. This is a vital book for every student of the early air forces in combat."

Bennett collects oral histories from men of three United States regiments that participated in the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. The 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment was the most widely scattered of the American parachute infantry regiments to be dropped on D-Day. However, the efforts of 180 men to stop the advance of an SS Panzer Grenadier division largely have been ignored outside of France. The 116th Infantry Regiment received the highest number of casualties on Omaha Beach of any Allied unit on D-Day. Stationed in England through most of the war, it had been the butt of jokes while other regiments did the fighting and dying in North Africa and the Mediterranean; that changed on June 6, 1944. And the 22nd Infantry Regiment, a unit that had fought in almost every campaign waged by the U.S. Army since 1812, came ashore on Utah Beach quite easily before getting embroiled in a series of savage fights to cross the marshland behind the beach and to capture the German heavy batteries to the north. Each participant's story is woven into the larger picture of the assault, allowing Bennett to go beyond the largely personal viewpoints yielded by traditional oral history but avoiding the impersonal nature of studies of grand strategy. In addition to the interviews and memoirs Bennett collected, he also discovered fresh documentary evidence from American, British, and French archives that play an important part in facilitating this new approach, as well as archives in Britain and France. The author unearths new stories and questions from D-Day, such as the massacre of soldiers from the 507th at Graignes, Hemevez, and elsewhere. This new material includes a focus on the regimental level, which is all but ignored by historians, while still covering strategic, tactical, and human issues. His conclusions highlight common misperceptions about the Normandy landings. Questions have already been raised about the wisdom of the Anglo-American amphibious doctrine employed on D-Day. In this study, Bennett continues to challenge the assumption that the operation was an exemplary demonstration of strategic planning.

As the day for Lincoln's second inauguration drew near, Americans wondered what their sixteenth president would say about the Civil War. Would Lincoln guide the nation toward "Reconstruction"? What about the slaves? They had been emancipated, but what about the matter of suffrage? When Lincoln finally stood before his fellow countrymen on March 4, 1865, and had only 703 words to share, the American public was stunned. The President had not offered the North a victory speech, nor did he excoriate the South for the sin of slavery. Instead, he called the whole country guilty of the sin and pleaded for reconciliation and unity.

In this compelling account, noted historian Ronald C. White Jr. shows how Lincoln's speech was initially greeted with confusion and hostility by many in the Union; commended by the legions of African Americans in attendance, abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass among them; and ultimately appropriated by his assassin John Wilkes Booth forty-one days later.

Filled with all the facts and factors surrounding the Second Inaugural, "Lincoln's Greatest Speech" is both an important historical document and a thoughtful analysis of Lincoln's moral and rhetorical genius.