Category: Military History

First released in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

WINNER of the 2014 ALBERT CASTEL booklet AWARD and the 2014 WALT WHITMAN AWARD

John Bell Hood was once one of many Confederacy’s such a lot successful—and enigmatic—generals. He died at forty eight after a short affliction in August of 1879, abandoning the 1st draft of his memoirs enhance and Retreat: own reviews within the usa and accomplice States Armies. released posthumously the subsequent yr, the memoirs instantly turned as arguable as their writer. A cautious and balanced exam of those “controversies,” despite the fact that, coupled with the hot discovery of Hood’s own papers (which have been lengthy thought of misplaced) eventually units the checklist instantly in John Bell Hood: the increase, Fall, and Resurrection of a accomplice General.

Outlived by means of so much of his critics, Hood’s released model of a few of the significant occasions and controversies of his accomplice army profession have been met with scorn and skepticism. a few defined his memoirs as not anything greater than a polemic opposed to his arch-rival Joseph E. Johnston. those unflattering evaluations continued in the course of the a long time and reached their nadir in 1992, whilst an influential writer defined Hood’s memoirs as “merely a sour, deceptive, and hugely distorted treatise” replete with “distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications.” with none own papers to contradict them, many historians and writers portrayed Hood as a clumsy and cheating opium addict and a conniving, vindictive cripple of a guy. One author went as far as to model him “a idiot with a license to kill his personal men.” What such a lot readers don’t understand is that just about all of those authors misused assets, missed opposite proof, and/or suppressed evidence sympathetic to Hood.

Stephen M. “Sam” Hood, relative of the overall, launched into a meticulous forensic learn of the typical perceptions and controversies of his recognized kinsman. His cautious exam of the unique resources applied to create the largely authorized “facts” approximately John Bell Hood exposed startlingly bad scholarship through probably the most famous and influential historians of the 20 th and twenty first centuries. those discoveries, coupled along with his entry to a wide cache of lately chanced on Hood papers—many penned by means of generals and different officials who served with Hood—confirm Hood’s account that initially seemed in his memoir and get to the bottom of, for the 1st time, essentially the most arguable points of Hood’s lengthy career.

“Blindly accepting historic ‘truths’ with no energetic challenge,” cautions one historian, “is a deadly route to figuring out actual history.” The surprising revelations in John Bell Hood: the increase, Fall, and Resurrection of a accomplice basic will eternally swap our perceptions of Hood as either a guy and a basic, and those that got down to form his legacy.

In a hundred Miles to Freedom, U.S. Marine Bob Holland tells the tale of the discharge of 3,700 American civilian prisoners of the japanese at Santo Tomas college Internment Camp in Manila, the Philippines. till their dazzling rescue on February three, 1945, those civilians were interned for greater than 3 and a part years. This wartime account is whole with interviews of a number of prisoners describing their reviews and hardships within the camp, in addition to black-and-white pictures depicting Marines and prisoners in this tumultuous occasion in historical past. detect why Brigadier basic Robert E. Galer says that “through this ebook, we will be able to be aware of and higher savor what our proud and devoted iteration of real american citizens did for our country.”

international warfare II Tragedy at Bari Harbour

The poor occasion of two December 1943 within the Italian port of Bari has been shrouded in secrecy and topic to legitimate censorship. On that evening, the Allied convoy of 21 ships, wearing hugely flammable gasoline oil and ammunition, used to be bombed via the Luftwaffe as its risky shipment was once being unloaded.

It was once a devastating assault and the ships trapped within the overcrowded harbour quickly grew to become an exploding mass of burning oil and white-hot metal.For many staff, survival from this mayhem used to be to jump into the harbour waters and pray for rescue. however the rescued and the rescuers didn't be aware of that they have been immersed in a dangerous cocktail of oil and liquid mustard gasoline. this can be the original tale of that deadly evening and its poor lingering aftermath advised by way of a guy who was once there.

it really is 1944 over the last fifteen months of WWII. Twelve thousand Jews, males, girls and youngsters have been being herded day-by-day onto the Budapest teach platform for shipping to Auschwitz. but on an adjoining platform one other teach used to be poised to move a thousand 600 eighty-four Jews to Switzerland.
What was once occurring the following? Why this ordinary variety of Jews at the different teach? What and who used to be at the back of this great, absolutely incredible state of affairs? permitting a teach choked with Jews to continue to Switzerland in the midst of the struggle by way of the SS, used to be resembling sending it to the moon. Concluding that the order should have come down from the top echelon of the Nazi hierarchy, the author’s interest received the higher of him and he launched into a 5 12 months study quest. because the complete photo opened up, layer via complicated layer, his doubt to whether there has been nonetheless an untold WWII tale to be informed was once quickly alleviated. The peculiar passenger teach became out to be simply the end of an iceberg.
The writer takes the reader alongside from one incongruous plot to a different, to an array of unbelievable, amazing and surreal sub-plots. the tale gallops throughout Europe, from conflict torn, gritty Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg and Budapest, to the Bergen-Belsen and Mauthausen camps, to impartial, peaceable Stockholm and to dependent St. Gallen and Zurich and directly to unique Istanbul, Aleppo, Jerusalem and Cairo, all in an adventurous and breathless chase aimed toward beating the clock and keep as many lives as attainable, between them camp inmates, POW’s, British troops and native civilians, all prior to war’s finish. a colourful solid of characters accompanies the reader, between them global leaders and together with Oskar Schindler and Raul Wallenberg.
It is a story of human nature in all its vagaries, a ‘tour-de-force’ of mind vs. brawn that demanding situations the brain, a precipitous gamble of existence and demise in a quick, excessive stakes poker game.

“I used to be a prisoner prior to the warfare; i'm no freer now after the war.”
This memoir of an Iraqi soldier writing below a pseudonym makes use of “red flags” as a metaphor for army ambitions in the course of his country’s invasion via the us in 2003. He recounts his involvement in Saddam Hussein’s military below possibility of execution, and says possibility got here as a lot from the suspicious Iraqi executive as from American invaders. Even the autumn of Baghdad and the Hussein executive has no longer resulted in a greater lifestyles for his humans, whom he says are nonetheless divided by way of war.

together with greater than 200 classic pictures and illustrations, Portsmouth Harbor�s army and Naval historical past chronicles the background of the Piscataqua River�s naval shipyard and harbor defenses. lengthy sooner than it grew to become domestic to 1 of the U.S. Navy�s first federal shipyards, the harbor at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Kittery, Maine, used to be secure via gun batteries, as a rule at citadel element, New fort, New Hampshire. by means of the tip of worldwide conflict II, glossy concrete batteries mounting weapons of ever longer variety were developed at this and 3 different forts straddling the river�s mouth. those fortifications mirrored the more and more vital function of the shipyard, devoted after 1917 to development submarines that contributed considerably to the realm struggle II victory.