Search results

This essential book offers a compelling and original interpretation of the rise of military aviation. Jeremy Black, one of the world's finest scholars of military history, provides a lucid analysis of the use of airpower over land and sea both during the two world wars and the more limited wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Considering both the theory and praxis of air power, the author begins with hot air balloons, and then highlights the use of zeppelins, piston engine fighters...

The Vietnam War is unique in its continued influence upon American consciousness. It was the USA's most prolonged military engagement since World War II, and the first war to receive wide-spread television coverage. This study of the Vietnam War attempts to combine a broad understanding of the background to the conflict in Vietnamese and world history with detailed material on US military tactics and the failure of pacification. There are chapters on the US presidential administrations of Johnso...

Merriam Press Military Monograph MM36 (Seventh Edition, 2011). Extremely detailed day-by-day chronological history of the entire campaign in the Philippines during the first six months after America's entry into the war. Considerable information on units, personalities, combat, and more. Allows you to follow the conduct of the entire campaign in context, and to more easily relate this slice of World War II with other aspects of the war at the same time. Contents: Dedication; Introduction; Decemb...

Ulysses S. Grant's ingenious campaign to capture the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River was one of the most decisive events of the Civil War and one of the most storied military expeditions in American history. The ultimate victory at Vicksburg effectively cut the Confederacy in two, gave control of the river to Union forces, and delivered a devastating blow from which the South never fully recovered. Encompassed in this first of five planned volumes on the Vicksburg campaign...

In times of war . . . in times of peace . . . in times of sweeping social change . . . a leader for all seasons . . . Whether scaling the seemingly insurmountable cliffs of Pointe du Hoc with his advance assault troops during the Normandy invasion, restoring integrity to the Texas Land Office, or overseeing transitions in an academic institution with hallowed traditions during a time of contentious cultural change, James Earl Rudder (1910-1970) forged a legacy of wartime gallantry and peacetime...

The American Revolution Reader is a collection of leading essays on the American revolutionary era from the eve of the imperial crisis through George Washington’s presidency. Articles have been chosen to represent classic themes, such as the British-colonial relationship during the eighteenth century, the political and ideological issues underlying colonial protests, the military conflict, the debates over the Constitution, and the rise of political parties. The volume also captures how the fiel...

This is the story of the oldest warship afloat in the world, the venerable frigate USS Constitution, the cornerstone of the nascent American navy created by act of Congress in 1794. To set the stage for the dominance of this remarkable vessel, military historian Colonel David Fitz-Enz re-creates the world of sail, when seven knots an hour was considered blinding speed for a warship. In Old Ironsides (a nickname the boat received after a British sailor observed a cannonball bouncing off its side)...

Born in Civil War-era Cincinnati in 1857, William Howard Taft rose rapidly through legal, judicial, and political ranks, graduating from Yale and becoming a judge while still in his twenties. In 1900, President William McKinley appointed Taft to head a commission charged with preparing the Philippines for US-led civil government, setting the stage for Taft's involvement in US-Philippine relations and the development of his imperial vision across two decades. While biographies of Taft and histori...

Since the first days of the Iraqi invasion, supporters of the war have cautioned the public not to view this conflict as another Vietnam. They rightfully point to many important distinctions. There is no unified resistance in Iraq. No political or religious leader has been able to galvanize opposition to U.S. intervention the way that Ho Chi Minh did in Vietnam. And it is not likely that 580,000 American troops will find their way to Iraq. However, there are two similarities that may dwarf the t...

On January 16, 1942, the battered, exhausted men of the 26th U.S. Cavalry, of the Army's Philippine Scouts, climbed astride their horses. They flung themselves moments later against the blazing gun muzzles of Japanese tanks. It was the last mounted charge in America's annals and proved the climax of the 26th Cavalry's magnificent but doomed horseback campaign against the Imperial Japanese Army during the fall of the Philippines in 1941-42. Through recently declassified and unpublished documents,...

At Milliken's Bend, Louisiana, a Union force composed predominantly of former slaves met their Confederate adversaries in one of the bloodiest small engagements of the war. This important fight received some attention in the North and South but soon drifted into obscurity. In Milliken's Bend, Linda Barnickel uncovers the story of this long-forgotten and highly controversial battle. The fighting at Milliken's Bend occurred in June 1863, about fifteen miles north of Vicksburg on the west bank of...