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The Last Lion Volume 2: Alone 1932-1940

2008-07-29T15:34:00.000-07:00

Barnes & Nobel Synopsis

For years, Churchill warned the British government against the growing Nazi threat. For years he was ignored. Politically isolated in Parliament, sometimes jeered at and scorned, Churchill stood alone, a beacon of reality amid the gathering storm. This book tells of perhaps the Last Lion's finest hour in the historical context not only of the 1930s, on which this volume focuses, but of the events that preceded the decade. In the Author's notes Manchester writes:

``In the view of this writer, there can be no enlightening life which does not include an account of the man's times. This need for context is even greater when the central figure is a towering statesman. It is impossible to understand Churchill and his adversaries in the 1930s, for example, without grasping the British revulsion against the horrors of World War I.''

The Last Lion Volume 1: Visions of Glory 1874-1932

2008-07-29T15:30:00.000-07:00

Barnes & Nobel Synopsis

When Winston Spencer Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace, Imperial Britain stood at the splendid pinnacle of her power. Yet within a few years, the Empire would hover on the brink of a catastrophic new era. This first volume of the best-selling biography of the adventurer, aristocrat, soldier, and statesman covers the first 58 years of the remarkable man whose courageous vision guided the destiny of those darkly troubled times—and who looms today as one of the greatest figures of the 20th century. Black and white photos & illustrations. "Adds a grand dimension...Rich in historical and social contexts."—Time. "Bedazzling.''—Newsweek. "Absolutely magnificent...A delight to read."—Russell Baker. "Stylish...The heroic Churchill is in these pages, but so is the little boy writing forlorn letters to the father who all but ignored him, and the romantic who once courted Ethel Barrymore and ended up with a lovely fifty-seven-year-long marriage to a woman whose pet name for him was 'Pig'...An altogether absorbing popular biography."

Truman

2008-07-29T15:25:00.000-07:00

From Publishers Weekly
Cracker-barrel plain in speech and looks, this seemingly ordinary man turned out to be one of our most dynamic presidents. It was Harry S. Truman who ordered the atomic bomb dropped, halted Communists in Turkey and Greece, initiated the Marshall Plan, NATO and the Berlin Airlift, ordered desegregation of the armed forces, established the CIA and the Defense Department, committed U.S. forces to Korea and upheld the principle of civilian control over the military by firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur. McCullough ( Mornings on Horseback ) has written a surefooted, highly satisfying biography of the 33rd president, one that not only conveys in rich detail Truman's accomplishments as a politician and statesman, but also reveals the character and personality of this constantly-surprising man--as schoolboy, farmer, soldier, merchant, county judge, senator, vice president and chief executive. The book relates how Truman (1884-1972) overcame the stigma of business failure and debt (as well as the accusation that he was "bellboy" to Kansas City's Pendergast machine) and acquired a reputation for honesty, reliability and common sense. McCullough pays considerable attention to Truman's family, especially his fervent and touching courtship of Bess Wallace, the idolized love of his life. Her mother never felt Truman was good enough for her daughter, even after he became president. The book's re-creation of the 1948 presidential campaign, during which Newsweek 's poll of 50 political writers predicted that the incumbent would lose the election to Thomas Dewey, is the most complete account of that surprise victory to date. The book is an impressive tribute to a man whose brisk cheerfulness and self-confidence were combined with a God-fearing humility; a great and good man who, in McCullough's opinion, was a great president. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC main selection; History Book Club and QPB alternatives; author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The War for All the Oceans

2008-07-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

From Publishers Weekly
Husband and wife Roy Adkins (Nelson's Trafalgar) and Lesley Adkins (Empires of the Plain) team up for this vivid account of the naval campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars (1798–1815). Contending that the wars were won at sea, the authors trace the nautical action from the Battle of the Nile (1798), where a British fleet destroyed the French fleet and stranded Napoleon's army in Egypt, to the decisive Battle of Trafalgar (1805), where the British overwhelmed a combined French and Spanish fleet supporting an invasion of Britain. The narrative concludes with an account of the protracted war of attrition that followed Trafalgar and ended with Bonaparte's final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. This low-grade conflict—coastal blockades and shipping raids—caught neutral nations like the United States in the middle and ultimately led the Americans to declare war on England in 1812—a conflict that was never more than a sideshow for the British. This rollicking saga ranges from the Mediterranean to the Indies, East and West, and ends with Britain in control of the world's sea lanes—the foundation for her future empire. Meticulously researched—drawing on extensive and intimate eyewitness accounts from contemporary journals, letters and memoirs—this lively narrative will delight students and fans of nautical history.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Book of War

2008-07-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

Barnes & Nobel Synopsis

For two thousand years, Sun-tzu's The Art of Warfare was the indispensable volume of warcraft. Although his work is the first known analysis of war and warfare, Sun-tzu struck upon a thoroughly modern concept: "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." Karl von Clausewitz, the canny military theorist who famously declared that war is a continuation of politics by other means, also claims paternity of the notion "total war." His is the magnum opus of the era of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars." "Now these two great military minds are made to share the same tent, metaphorically speaking, in The Book of War." "Military writer Ralph Peters has written a new Introduction for this Modern Library edition.

The Twelve Caesars

2008-07-29T14:48:00.000-07:00

The Barnes & Noble Review

Historians value Suetonius as an innovator in biographical and historical writing -- he abandoned straight chronology for a more thematic approach to his subjects, in this case the emperors of Rome from Julius Caesar to Domitian (from 50 B.C. to A.D. 100), and he practiced a rare objectivity in his portraiture. That said, Livy (History of Rome) and Tacitus (Germania, Agricola, The Annals) are usually viewed as greater writers, both as historians and stylists. Where Suetonius stands alone, at least for the modern reader, is in the quality of his weird and fascinating gossip.

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

2007-10-16T18:13:00.000-07:00

Amazon.com
Published in 1988 to universal acclaim, this single-volume treatment of the Civil War quickly became recognized as the new standard in its field. James M. McPherson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for this book, impressively combines a brisk writing style with an admirable thoroughness. He covers the military aspects of the war in all of the necessary detail, and also provides a helpful framework describing the complex economic, political, and social forces behind the conflict. Perhaps more than any other book, this one belongs on the bookshelf of every Civil War buff. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Likely to become the standard one-volume history of our Civil War, this vivifies, with palpable immediacy, scholarly acumen and interpretive skill, events foreshadowing the conflict, the war itself and its basic issue: slavery. Photos.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The Coming of the Third Rich

2007-10-16T17:54:00.000-07:00

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com

There is a certain way of writing about German history, and especially about Nazism, that is characteristically British. Soon after the demise of Adolf Hitler's "one-thousand-year Reich," such historians as A.J.P. Taylor, John Wheeler-Bennett, Hugh Trevor-Roper and Alan Bullock wrote influential accounts of the course of German history, the nemesis of Prussian militarism and the nature of Nazi tyranny. Aimed at scholars and the general public, these often elegantly written books avoided excessive footnotes, synthesized and generalized complex events and eschewed both high-flown rhetoric and convoluted interpretations.

By perceiving the Third Reich through their own rationalist and empiricist prism, though, British historians gave short shrift to the ideological fanaticism that was an inherent part of Nazism. It was impossible for them to believe that any more than a handful of extremists would have either taken Hitler's rhetoric seriously or willingly perpetrated the crimes he ordered. For some, not even Hitler himself could have meant what he preached. Rather, he was depicted as an especially ruthless but otherwise quite "normal" dictator whose main goal was to seize and hold on to power.

In the intervening decades, numerous studies have added greatly to our understanding of support and opposition to Nazism, the destruction of the Weimar Republic, the function of Hitler as leader of party and state and the role of ideological conviction and indoctrination. Indeed, so much detailed scholarship has been produced that it seemed appropriate to write an updated synthesis that would provide an overview of a regime for which the public's fascination has hardly diminished. Richard Evans, a prolific British social historian of Germany, has applied his considerable energies to this task. The Coming of the Third Reich is the first of a projected three-volume study intended to provide the definitive general history of Nazi Germany for the next generation.

Curiously, the British historian Michael Burleigh did just that four years ago. But his massive study, The Third Reich: A New History, presented Nazism as a political religion that took hold of the German population and manifested itself as a cult of violence and destruction. In contrast, Evans depicts the rise to power of a manipulative, power-greedy and violent political party that exploited the dire circumstances of the time to establish a dictatorship over a nation that never fully embraced Nazi rule and ideology.

The Coming of the Third Reich thus returns to older interpretations of the origins of Hitler's rise. For Evans, Hitler "seems to have regarded the conquest of power as the essence of the Nazi Revolution." While he concedes that "the Nazis not only seized political power, they also seized ideological and cultural power" and notes that their "ideas appealed directly to . . . the German educated elite," Evans has little to say about the Nazis' ideas beyond stating that "what mattered to them above all was race, culture, and ideology."

Though well-written and accessible, the narrative has some notable shortcomings. For example, Evans argues that while the rise of Nazism was not predetermined, its origins can be traced to Bismarck's imperial Germany. But even as he vividly describes the emergence of radical anti-Semitism in the late 19th century, he neglects to analyze the political structure of the empire, whose deficiencies contributed greatly to the failure of democracy in the Weimar Republic.

Similarly, while he rightly stresses the centrality of World War I to the rise of Nazism, Evans devotes very little space to the war itself. Nor does the German revolution of 1918 feature prominently, although it was the specific origin of political extremism in that country and imbued the German bourgeoisie with intense fear of social upheaval, both of which contributed to the Nazis' subsequent success. Finally, Evans has remarkably little to say on the expansion of anti-Semitism in the 1920s and tends to relegate the Nazi Party's rabid anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence to a secondary role.

Most troublesome is the contradiction between the author's central contention that the rise of Nazism was not inevitable and his simultaneous assertion that the republic was doomed from the start. "In writing this book I have tried to remind the reader repeatedly that things could easily have turned out very differently," Evans writes in the introduction -- only to later ask, in analyzing the fall of the Weimar Republic, "Where the law and its administrators were against it, what chance did it have?" He might have avoided this by focusing on the intrigues by the presidential "camarilla," the army, big business and the conservative elites, which eventually led to Hitler's appointment as chancellor. But here, too, the narrative flows too quickly, with the result of making the outcome appear all but unavoidable.

Evans has accomplished his goal of writing a readable account of the origins of the Third Reich from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the establishment of the Nazi regime in 1933. He provides many insights into the political culture of imperial and Weimar Germany, the mentality of the Nazi storm troopers and the impacts of the inflation of the early 1920s and the depression and unemployment of the early 1930s. But the book often skimps precisely on the themes it recognizes as crucial and weaves a plot that contradicts its central thesis. Most important, perhaps, it fails to explain the sense of rapture that seized the rapidly growing numbers of Germans associated with the "movement." Combining worship of the Führer, the nation and the Aryan race with extreme violence, racism and anti-Semitism, the "spirit" that imbued Hitler's followers penetrated far and wide into German society. By 1933 an evil but potent wind was blowing in Germany; within a few years it would wreak destruction throughout Europe.

Reviewed by Omer Bartov
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

How They Won the War in the Pacific: Nimitz and His Admirals

2007-05-16T15:16:00.000-07:00

Author: Edwin P. Hoyt
Publisher: The Lyons Press
ISBN: 978-1585741489

Publisher Description: This meticulous study is a concentrated look at Naval Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and his subordinate leaders – fighting men under stress – and the relationship of fighting admirals to their top leaders each other.

“The Patton of the Pacific,” Bull Halsey could win a battle; ascetic and cultivated Raymond Spruance could win a campaign; but Chester W. Nimitz, the quiet but dauntless battler from the banks of the Pedernales River, could win a war. And they way he did win that war in the Pacific is the center of this excellent and absorbing biography of naval operations and of men command relationships.

How They Won The War In The Pacific covers, at length or briefly, many leaders including the top fighting ones afloat and ashore, and shows Admiral Chester W. Nimitz as history will record him – as the wise, calm tower of strength in adversity and success, the principal architect of victory in the Pacific during World War II.

Imperial Japanese Navy Aircraft Carriers 1921-45

2007-05-16T15:11:00.000-07:00

Author: Mark Stille
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
ISBN: 978-1841768533

Publisher Description: The Imperial Japanese Navy was a pioneer in naval aviation, having commissioned the world's first built-from-the-keel-up carrier, the Hosho. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, it experimented with its carriers, perfecting their design and construction. As a result, by the time Japan entered World War II and attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor in 1941, it possessed a fantastically effective naval aviation force. This book covers the design, development and operation of IJN aircraft carriers built prior to and during World War II. Pearl Harbor, Midway and the first carrier vs carrier battle, the battle of the Coral Sea, are all discussed.

2007-05-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

Author: Mark Stille
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
ISBN: 978-1841768908

Publisher Description: The USS Langley, the first American aircraft carrier, entered service in 1922. Despite being converted into an aircraft tender, it was the first step in a new direction for the US Navy and naval warfare. This book covers the design, development and operation of USN aircraft carriers built prior to World War II, including their aircraft and weaponry. It also explains their various successes and losses such as the first carrier vs carrier battle at Midway; the battle of the Coral Sea; the battle of the Philippine Sea; and the Operation Torch landings.

US Navy Aircraft Carriers 1942-45: World War Two Built Ships

2007-05-16T14:57:00.000-07:00

Author: Mark Stille
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
ISBN: 978-1846030376

Publisher Description: Dominating the seas during World War II, the US aircraft carrier played a crucial role in every major naval combat of the war.

Development of the Essex class began in 1941, and was the largest class of carrier ever built. During the Pacific War it formed the backbone of any fighting force and became renowned for its mighty 'Sunday Punch' - the impressive offensive power of 36 fighter planes, 36 dive bombers, and 18 torpedo planes.

The Independence class was a lighter and faster carrier, built after Pearl Harbor, to bring more ships into action as quickly as possible. Alongside the Essex class their crews saw a dramatic change in tactical deployment as they began to form the fast carrier task forces that were so effective in Pacific operations.

Featuring an annotated cutaway and artwork detailing both the interior and exterior features of the ships, this book explores the design, development, and deployment of both the Essex and Independence class of light carriers. This sequel to US Navy Aircraft Carriers 1922-45: Prewar classes (New Vanguard 114), provides a detailed exploration of the carriers that were at the forefront of many actions in World War II, including the climatic battles of Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf in 1944.

The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History

2007-05-16T14:52:00.000-07:00

Author: Rebecca Fraser
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 978-0393060102

Publisher Description: Starred Review. This immense labor of patriotic love has already won widespread critical acclaim across the Atlantic for its fluid storytelling and evenhanded judgments. Its populism has nothing to do with, say, Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. Fraser intends simply to "guide the average person through the confusing shoals of disputed facts," and many an average reader (and student) will warm to her self-consciously old-fashioned narration. Her vision is gently Blairite: she considers the National Health Service to be one of modernity's great achievements and accuses Margaret Thatcher of a failure of sympathetic imagination, but she is resolutely hostile to the Old Left and generous in her appraisal of the monarchy. Daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser and heir to much of her mother's literary talent, she weaves together many of the distant moments that traditionally shaped the collective consciousness of the British, but which have been half-forgotten. Fraser celebrates a free-spirited resistance to tyranny, which she traces from the ancient chieftain Caractacus (who resisted Roman rule) through the bulldog bloody-mindedness of Winston Churchill, and gives broad latitude to myths that have dissipated in the glare of empirical history. Resurrecting King Arthur and retelling the gloriously ironic tale of King Alfred—burning a peasant woman's cakes as he hid from the Danish hordes—Fraser stokes the embers of pride in a past from which the British themselves have become emotionally detached, and in which an American audience will find much that is compelling. B&w illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

British Napoleonic Ship-of-the-Line

2007-05-16T14:46:00.000-07:00

Author: Angus Konstam
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
ISBN: 978-1841763088

Publisher Description: The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars encompassed a period when rival European fleets vied for naval supremacy, and naval tactics were evolving. The British Royal Navy emerged triumphant as the leading world sea power, and the epitome of Britannic naval strength was the Ship-of-the-Line. These 'wooden walls' were more than merely floating gun batteries: they contained a crew of up to 800 men, and often had to remain at sea for extended periods. This book offers detailed coverage of the complex vessels that were the largest man-made structures produced in the pre-Industrial era.

The Third Reich in Power

2007-05-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

Author: Richard Evans
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 978-0143037903

Publisher Description: The second volume of Cambridge historian Evans's trilogy on the Third Reich (after The Coming of the Third Reich) is a major achievement. No other recent synthetic history has quite the range and narrative power of Evans's work. There are no surprises here. Instead, the reader will find careful, detailed analyses of all the major issues relating to the Third Reich between Hitler's assumption of power on January 31, 1933, and the start of WWII on September 1, 1939: the construction of the dictatorship, the propaganda, the economy, the racial policy and the planning for war. Evans shows just how difficult it was for Hitler to secure his power in Germany (it required unabashed terror to defeat the Nazis' many opponents), but also how successful was the establishment of the Volksgemeinschaft, the racial community. Once Hitler had successfully consolidated his power, every other aspect of Nazi policy, from education to the economy, became subordinated to the preparation for war. The war, Evans emphasizes, was never simply an effort to redraw the map of Europe. The vast, overarching aim of establishing a racial utopia, a newly modern, German-dominated Europe cleansed of Jews and other undesirables, could only be accomplished through war. When complete, Evans's trilogy will take its place alongside Ian Kershaw's monumental two-volume biography of Hitler as the standard works in English. Illus. and maps not seen by PW.(On sale Oct. 24)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Carrier: A Guided Tour of the Aircraft Carrier

2007-05-11T12:14:00.000-07:00

Author: Tom Clancy
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
ISBN: 9780425166826

Description:
"This is 4.5 acres of sovereign U.S. territory."
— Rear Admiral Michael Mullen, Commander, George Washington Battle Group

Admiral Mullen's quote, which introduces one of Tom Clancy's chapters, captures in a short, quick phrase the essence of the aircraft carrier, both its form and its function. Its 4.5-acre flight deck (the equivalent of more than four football fields) overwhelms the imagination and impresses upon the reader what a massive war machine a carrier is. And by asserting the "sovereignty" of the carrier, it calls to mind the absolute resolve of the U.S. military mission. A carrier takes no crap.

To help those interested cope with the scale of a carrier's operation, Carrier takes the reader on a detailed tour of the ship and goes in great depth into the role of the carrier in the armed forces.

The standard awe-inspiring information is all there (a carrier is as tall as a 24-story building, has a combined ship and air crew of more than 6,000, and can carry and launch 80 aircraft), but Clancy's tour is aimed at the fan who wants much, much greater depth and much, much more jargon. The 13-page glossary at the back of the book (from "A-12" to "XO," with more arcane and colloquial entries along the way, such as "GBU-29/30/31/32 JDAM" and "pucker factor") is an essential guide for the novice, though even with that help, CARRIER can be a dense, technical read: "Joint Task Force Exercise (JTFEX) 97-3 — Run over three weeks in late August and early September of 1997, JTFEX 97-3 was a 'final exam' for the combinedGWCVBG/CVW/ARG/MEU (SOC) team."

But whereas a casual fan may lose interest, a military buff will revel. Clancy spends almost 70 pages detailing the aircraft you find aboard a carrier and their armaments. He includes a fascinating 50-page chapter on "Building the Boats," a process that makes the Hoover Dam's construction seem like an afternoon of Lego play. Here, mercifully, Clancy opts more for a detail of the process than a rundown of the engineering specs, a flood of numbers that would surely drown all but the most qualified technician.

And, of course, because this is Tom Clancy, the text flows smoothly and quickly. Clancy's interview with Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jay Johnson reads like the novelist's research notes for one of his thrillers. The final chapter is an informed but fictionalized projection of what a carrier's job will be in 2016. This chapter is one of Clancy's thrillers.

—Greg Sewell
— Barnesandnoble.com

Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship

2007-05-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

Author: Tom Clancy
Publisher: Berkley Trade
ISBN: 978-0425183007
Publisher Description: This is an "examination of the technology employed by

U.S.

nuclear attack submarines.

Exclusive photographs, illustrations, and diagrams
Mock war scenarios and weapons-launch procedures
An inside look at life on board, from captain to crew, from training exercises to operations
The fascinating history and evolution of submarines

Armored Cav

2007-05-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

Title: Armored Cav
Author: Tom Clancy
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 0425158365

Publisher Description: Tom Clancy portrays today's military as only army personnel can know it, with compelling immediacy and unsurpassed authority. His first nonfiction book, Submarine, spent more than two months on the New York Times bestseller list. Now he presents a unique opportunity to go behind the scenes of an armored cavalry regiment: the tanks, helicopters, and artillery systems displayed in Desert Storm. Photos and illustrations.

Red Rabbit

2007-05-11T12:09:00.000-07:00

Author: Tom Clancy
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
ISBN: 9780425191187

Publisher Description: Long before he was President or head of the CIA, before he fought terrorist attacks on the Super Bowl or the White House, even before a submarine named Red October made its perilous way across the Atlantic, Jack Ryan was an historian, teacher, and recent ex-Marine temporarily living in England while researching a book. A series of deadly encounters with an IRA splinter group had brought him to the attention of the CIA's Deputy Director, Vice Admiral James Greer-as well as his counterpart with the British SIS, Sir Basil Charleston-and when Greer asked him if he wanted to come aboard as a freelance analyst, Jack was quick to accept. The opportunity was irresistible, and he was sure he could fit it in with the rest of his work.

And then Jack forgot all about the rest of his work, because one of his first assignments was to help debrief a high-level Soviet defector, and the defector told an amazing tale: Top Soviet officials, including Yuri Andropov, were planning to assassinate the Pope, John Paul II.

Could it be true? As the days and weeks go by, Ryan must battle, first to try to confirm the plot, and then to prevent it, but this is a brave new world, and nothing he has done up to now has prepared him for the lethal game of cat-and-mouse that is the Soviet Union versus the United States. In the end, it will be not just the Pope's life but the stability of the Western world that is at stake. . . and it may already be too late for a novice CIA analyst to do anything about it.

"Clancy creates not only compelling characters but frighteningly topical situations and heart-stopping action," wrote The Washington Post about The Bear and the Dragon. "Among the handful of superstars, Clancy still reigns, and he is not likely to be dethroned any time soon." These words were never truer than about the remarkable pages of his breathtaking new novel. This is Clancy at his best-and there is none better.

The Hunt for Red October

2007-05-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

Author: Tom Clancy
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 978-0870212857

Publisher Description: The Soviet's most valuable ship -- a new ballistic-missile submarine with their most trusted and skilled naval officer at the helm -- is attempting to defect to the United States. It is high treason on an unprecedented scale, and the Soviet's mission is to seek and destroy her at any cost.

If the U.S. fleet can locate the Red October and get her safely to port, it will be the intelligence coup of all time. But the submarine has a million square miles in which to hide and the deadly game of hide-and-seek is on.

"THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER is a thriller that stands in a category all alone. With his rich imagination and grasp of advanced technology, Clancy has created a dramatic and realistic adventure." (Publisher's Source)

Patton: A Genius for War

2007-05-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

Author: Carlo D'Este
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition
ISBN: 978-0060927622

Publisher Description: Patton: A Genius for War is a full-fledged portrait of an extraordinary American that reveals the complex and contradictory personality that lay behind the swashbuckling and brash facade. According to Publishers Weekly, the result is "a major biography of a major American military figure."

"This massive work is biography at its very best. Literate and meaty, incisive and balanced, detailed without being pedantic. Mr. D'Este's Patton takes its rightful place as the definitive biography of this American warrior." --Calvin L. Christman, Dallas Morning News

"D'Este tells this story well, and gives us a new understanding of this great and troubled man."-The Wall Street Journal

"An instant classic." --Douglas Brinkley, director, Eisenhower Center

The Art of War

2007-05-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

Author: Sun Tzu
Publisher: Dover Publications
ISBN: 9780486425573

Description: The Art of War is the Swiss army knife of military theory--pop out a different tool for any situation. Folded into this small package are compact views on resourcefulness, momentum, cunning, the profit motive, flexibility, integrity, secrecy, speed, positioning, surprise, deception, manipulation, responsibility, and practicality. Thomas Cleary's translation keeps the package tight, with crisp language and short sections. Commentaries from the Chinese tradition trail Sun-tzu's words, elaborating and picking up on puzzling lines. Take the solitary passage: "Do not eat food for their soldiers." Elsewhere, Sun-tzu has told us to plunder the enemy's stores, but now we're not supposed to eat the food? The Tang dynasty commentator Du Mu solves the puzzle nicely, "If the enemy suddenly abandons their food supplies, they should be tested first before eating, lest they be poisoned." Most passages, however, are the pinnacle of succinct clarity: "Lure them in with the prospect of gain, take them by confusion" or "Invincibility is in oneself, vulnerability is in the opponent." Sun-tzu's maxims are widely applicable beyond the military because they speak directly to the exigencies of survival. Your new tools will serve you well, but don't flaunt them. Remember Sun-tzu's advice: "Though effective, appear to be ineffective." --Brian Bruya

Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France 1870-1871

2007-05-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

Author: Michael Howard
Publisher: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
ISBN: 9780415266710

Publisher Description: In 1870 Bismarck ordered the Prussian Army to invade France, inciting one of the most dramatic conflicts in European history. It transformed not only the states-system of the Continent but the whole climate of European moral and political thought. The overwhelming triumph of German military might, evoking general admiration and imitation, introduced an era of power politics, which was to reach its disastrous climax in 1914.
First published in 1961 and now with a new introduction, The Franco-Prussian War is acknowledged as the definitive history of one of the most dramatic and decisive conflicts in the history of Europe.

The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon

2007-05-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

Author: Gunther E. Rothenberg
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253202604

Publisher Description: Some 12 years ago it was estimated that well over 300,000 works existed on this period and since then several thousand more have appeared. Therefore, it might be reasonably argued that there is little room for another volume. Nonetheless, this vast outpouring of literature has usually dealt with major leaders, specific battles or campaigns, and with certain branches of the service. Moreover, at least in English, the literature tends to concentrate primarily on the French or British armies. There appears to be a lack of works combining a description of the major changes and trends in the art of war, especially at the cutting edge of events, with a discussion of the French military establishment and the armies of the major opponents, British as well as continental. And while this book is only a brief survey, I do believe that it may serve as a contribution towards filling this gap in our historical knowledge of military institutions and fighting men.