From the author of Bay of Pigs and Betrayal and Survival in Hitler’s Germany comes a full scope look at the bombing of Hiroshima, from the race to create the bomb to its detrimental dropping on Japan and the terrifying consequences that are still affecting the world over seventy years later. Hiroshima was an event of such magnitude that it divided history into two periods: before and after the bomb. It led to the first day of a new age in which all life would be at risk. Almost seventy years later, as Peter Wyden began this book, the world was still dealing with the fallout of the bomb’s creation. Wyden draws on eyewitness accounts, interviews, and documents never before published in order to trace the nuclear state of the modern world to the historical roots of Hiroshima. Skillfully weaving together all the strands, stories, and characters, including the scientific, political, moral, military, and human viewpoints, Wyden provides a full understanding of how the bomb was created, why it was used, and what the aftermath of those decisions has been.

The Saga Of The Jomsvikings is a book written by Lee Milton Hollander, which tells the story of the legendary Jomsvikings, a group of Viking warriors who lived in the 10th century. The book is a translation of the original Icelandic saga, which is one of the most famous and important sagas of the Viking Age.The Jomsvikings were a group of elite warriors who lived in a fortress on the island of Jomsborg, located in modern-day Poland. They were known for their bravery, skill in battle, and strict code of honor, which included loyalty to their leader and fellow warriors.The book follows the story of the Jomsvikings, from their origins as a group of mercenaries to their rise as one of the most feared and respected warrior groups in the Viking world. It also explores the relationships between the Jomsvikings and their allies and enemies, including the Danish king Harald Bluetooth and the Norwegian king Olaf Tryggvason.Throughout the book, the reader is taken on a journey through the Viking Age, with vivid descriptions of battles, raids, and political intrigue. The Saga Of The Jomsvikings is a fascinating and exciting read for anyone interested in Viking history and culture.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Few documents have had more of an impact on the course of history as has the Communist Manifesto. From its famous opening lines--"A specter is haunting Europe: the specter of Communism"--to its final rallying cry--"Workers of the world unite!"--the words of Marx and Engels have moved millions to join in the struggle against capitalism. But they have also inspired a legion of critics, detractors, and even a few despots to intentionally distort their meanings so as to sow confusion and justify untold horrors. According to Hal Draper, these mis-readings have, in part, been made possible by the enduring prevalence of translations from the original German that fail to accurately capture the intended meaning of certain key phrases. In this magisterial volume, Draper assembles the original German text, the first English translation, the officially authorized English translation--providing enlightening commentary throughout--as well as his own new translation of the pamphlet.

Edward Ellsberg's The Far Shore is the riveting first-hand account of the Allied D-Day landings in France in June 1944. A key actor in the invasion, Ellsberg describes in detail the massive preparations for the launch of the greatest armada in history, focusing on Hitler's Atlantic Wall defenses along the Normandy beaches and the ingenious creation of the Mulberry artificial floating harbor which would prove vital in securing an Allied beach-head in France. Ellsberg devotes the second half of his book to an unforgettable real-time account of the bloody D-Day landings.

One of the most colorful and controversial figures in American intelligence, Herbert O. Yardley (1889-1958) gave America its best form of information, but his fame rests more on his indiscretions than on his achievements. In this highly readable biography, a premier historian of military intelligence tells Yardley's story and evaluates his impact on the American intelligence community. Yardley established the nation's first codebreaking agency in 1917, and his solutions helped the United States win a major diplomatic victory at the 1921 disarmament conference. But when his unit was closed in 1929 because "gentlemen do not read each other's mail," Yardley wrote a best-selling memoir that introduced-and disclosed-codemaking and codebreaking to the public. David Kahn de-scribes the vicissitudes of Yardley's career, including his work in China and Canada, offers a capsule history of American intelligence up to World War I, and gives a short course in classical codes and ciphers. He debunks the accusations that the publication of Yardley's book caused Japan to change its codes and ciphers and that Yardley traitorously sold his solutions to Japan. And he asserts that Yardley's disclosures not only did not hurt but actually helped American codebreaking during World War II.

The Battle of Trafalgar is well-known for the magnanimous nature of the British victory, even though it cost the nation its greatest hero Lord Admiral, Horatio Nelson. For this reason, the battle itself has been remembered as a momentary success, the resulted only from a stroke of immediate genius or from a brief plan. But as Alan Schom shows, the Battle of 21 October 1805, a meeting of the might of the British and French navies, was the result of a strategy laid out by the British Admiralty two years earlier, in 1803. The period from that year until the Battle of Trafalgar was known as 'the Great Terror', when British naval forces were on constant alert for attacks by the Frenchman. Various political figures are written about, debating manoeuvres and quota of ships to be constructed, and putting down mutinies. Exploring previously unexplored archives of both England and France, Schom places Trafalgar in the context of the era. He draws portraits of the key personnel on both sides, such as Dumouriez, Decrès, Talleyrand, Berthier, Pitt, Cornwallis and Castlereagh. There is also a comprehensive discussion of the growth of the French naval fleet, helped by Dutch ships, and the preparations to build ports, which were hampered by their extraordinary costs and inclement weather. There are detailed descriptions of the fleets meeting during the run-in to Trafalgar, and Schom is engaging and sometimes humorous in his commentary on events. He also debunks several myths which should put an end to certain debates pertaining to a great battle of modern history. "[A] riveting narrative...Lively, dramatic." - Kirkus Reviews "Fresh and ever interesting...Triumphantly justifies adding to an already crowded bookshelf...The style is vigorous, the narrative packed with facts but relieved with excellently chosen quotations and off-beat insights." - The Sunday Times "Deftly drawn biographies bring to life the principal actors in the great drama...A thoroughly researched and splendidly written book." - The Los Angeles Times Book Review Alan Schom was a professor of French and European history before retiring to write full-time. He is the author of Emile Zola: A Biography and One Hundred Days: The Road to Waterloo .

At the age of five, Zoltan Zinn-Collis was torn from his home in Slovakia and cast into the deepest horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. In Bergen-Belsen concentration camp he survived the inhuman brutality of the Ss guards, the ravages of near starvation, disease, and squalor. All but one of his family died there, his mother losing her life on the very day the British finally marched into the camp. Discovered by a Red Cross nurse who described him as 'an enchanting scrap of humanity', Zoltan was brought to Ireland and adopted by one of the liberators, Dr Bob Collis, who raised him as his own son on Ireland's east coast. Now aged 65, Zoltan is ready to speak. His story is one of deepest pain and greatest joy. Zoltan tells how he lost one family and found another; of how, escaping from the ruins of a broken Europe, he was able to build himself a life – a life he may never have had.

When war broke out in Iraq, every major U.S. network pulled its correspondents from the scene. Despite the risk, Richard Engel stayed. As our tanks entered Baghdad in April 2003, he was there, bringing the Iraqi war into American homes as a stringer for ABC news. Determined to deliver the whole Middle East story, Engel moved to Cairo in 1996 after graduating from Stanford to learn 'street' Arabic. Then to dig even deeper into the complicated powder-keg of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he settled in Jerusalem. Now as Iraq enters its post-war phase and the Gulf region continues to dominate our nation's consciousness, more and more Americans will come to know and trust Richard Engel--especially in his current role as a correspondent for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. Both analytical and anecdotal, this book leads us through the war in Iraq, dissecting a myriad of Middle East issues, all from the vantage point of someone who is 'on the ground and in the streets' to get the real story.

In great shape

A renowned historian and Resistance fighter --later executed by the Nazis --analyzes at first hand why France fell in 1940. Marc Bloch wrote Strange Defeat during the three months following the fall of France, after he returned home from military service. In the midst of his anguish, he nevertheless "brought to his study of the crisis all the critical faculty and all the penetrating analysis of a first-rate historian" (Christian Science Monitor). Bloch takes a close look at the military failures he witnessed, examining why France was unable to respond to attack quickly and effectively. He gives a personal account of the battle of France, followed by a biting analysis of the generation between the wars. His harsh conclusion is that the immediate cause of the disaster was the utter incompetence of the High Command, but his analysis ranges broadly, appraising all the factors, social as well as military, which since 1870 had undermined French national solidarity.

Newsweek' s Jerusalem bureau chief Joshua Hammer arrived in the West Bank in October 2000 -- just after Ariel Sharon made his inflammatory visit to the Haram al-Sharif, otherwise known as the Temple Mount. Sharon's trip ignited the worst violence the Middle East had seen in decades. Overnight, the peace process gave way to an ever-worsening cycle of attack, revenge, and retaliation, destabilizing the entire region, killing thousands, and culminating in Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian towns in 2002. A Season in Bethlehem is the story of one West Bank town's two-year disintegration, as witnessed by a reporter who was there from the beginning. Woven together from Hammer's own firsthand reportage plus hundreds of interviews, it follows a dozen characters whose lives collided on the streets of this biblical city. They include a Bedouin tribesman who rose to become the commander of Bethlehem's most feared and brutal gang of gunmen; the beleaguered governor, an opponent of the al-Aqsa intifada, who believed he had a mandate to stop the violence, only to discover that Yasser Arafat was undermining him; a Christian businesman who watched helplessly as his community was squeezed between Muslim militants and the Israeli army; an eighteen-year-old female honors student turned suicide bomber; and an Israeli reservist, son of a leader of the Peace Now movement, who wrestled with his left-wing convictions as he rode to battle through the predawn streets. The narrative reaches a climax with a moment-by-moment recreation of the epochal drama that drew many of these characters together: the thirty-nine-day siege of the Church of the Nativity. A clear-eyed chronicle of deepening chaos and violence, in which Hammer lets the opposing sides speak for themselves, A Season in Bethlehem is both a timely and timeless look at how longstanding religious and political tensions finally boiled over in a place of profound resonance: the birthplace of Jesus.

When American-born Haim Watzman immigrated to Israel, he was drafted into the army and, after eighteen months of compulsory service, was assigned to Company C, the reserve infantry unit that would define the next twenty years of his life. From 1984 until 2002, for at least a month a year, Watzman, who had never aspired to military adventure, was a soldier. Watzman was a soldier as he adjusted to his new country, raised his children, and pursued a career as a writer and translator. At times he defended his adopted country’s borders; at other times he patrolled beyond them, or that gray area, the occupied territories. A religiously observant Jew who opposed Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he served in uniform in conflicts that he demonstrated against in civilian clothes. Throughout, he developed a deep and abiding bond with the diverse men of Company C--a fellowship that cemented his commitment to reserve service even as he questioned the occupation he was enforcing. In this engrossing account of the first Intifada, the period of the Oslo Accords, and Israel’s reoccupation of the West Bank as lived by citizen-soldiers in the field, Watzman examines our obligations to country, friends, family, and God--and our duty to protect our institutions even as we fight to reform them.

This book distinguishes itself by the author's ability to dispel clichés and elucidate the factual underpinnings of the ongoing naval warfare. The author possesses a lucid and pragmatic understanding of contemporary sea power, recognizing it as a practical rather than a convoluted concept. Unlike many works, this book does not promise a quick route to victory and avoids the typical broad and disdainful criticisms of the British and American high commands. Instead, the author elucidates the intricate challenges these commands have encountered, articulating the complexities in non-specialized language. The text notably avoids excessive use of tactical jargon.

"The Bolshevik Myth" from Alexander Berkman. Anarchist known for his political activism and writing (1870-1936).

A star cast of distinguished contributors-- including Dmitri Volkogonov, John Erickson, Catherine Andreyev, David Glantz, and Oleg Rzheshevsky-- paint a crucial portrait of a defining period in world history. Unlike most military history, which usually deals with large-scale army movements and campaign strategy, this looks at the training, experience, and personalities of the generals themselves. The result is illuminating, revealing how 25 men succeeded in taking Stalin from the Volga to Berlin.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter ii the uses of A king The reason why we trust one man, rather than many, is because one man can negotiate and many men can't. Two masses of people have no way of dealing directly with each other. They have to deal through representatives. It is a pure fiction to speak of negotiations between the United States and Germany. For when you look around to find the "United States" you discover a hundred million people spread over vast territory, with certain common habits, ideas, and loyalties, but nowhere do you find anything called the "United States " which can strike a bargain with "Germany." The American people cannot all seize the same pen and indite a note to sixty-five million people living within the German Empire. They cannot say: We ask for this, but if you will grant that, we'll do so-and-so, and then we'll both be satisfied. Each man may know what he thinks (a tremendous assumption), but what "we the American people" think is one of the most difficult matters in the world to find out. We all try to find it out. The papers print editorial comment from different parts of the country, they interview leaders of opinion, publish letters from correspondents, take straw ballots, and ask questions in the smoking-room of the club, on the street car, and at the quick-lunch counter. They may throw some light on the general reaction to a particular event. But more accurate than this it is hardly possible to be. The "will" and "mind" and "voice" of a great people are not the same thing as the will and mind and voice of a single man. When an individual thinks out a course of action, he goes through a delicate mental operation, a good part of which is unconscious. But a whole people can no more think in unison than it can make love in...

Originally delivered as an address to the American Academy of Political and Social Science, this work addresses the impact of World War I on American democracy and society. Walter Lippmann argues that the war will fundamentally transform the role of the United States in world affairs and will require a new understanding of the responsibilities of citizenship. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Colonel David "Mickey" Marcus--after serving his country with distinction in World War II--responded to the appeal of a beleaguered country in the Middle East and became one of the truly great heroes of modern Israel, the only soldier interred at West Point who was killed while fighting under a foreign flag.

This book provides the first dedicated study of the Evian Conference of July 1938, an international initiative called by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While on the surface the conference appeared as an attempt to alleviate the distress faced by Jews being forced out of Germany and Austria, in reality it only served to demonstrate that the nations of the world were not willing to accept Jews as refugees. Since the Holocaust, a generally-held assumption has been that the Evian Conference represented a lost opportunity to save Germany’s Jews, and that the conference failed to rescue the Jews of Europe. In this study, Paul Bartrop argues that in fact it did not fail when measured against the original reasons for which it was called. Exposing many of the myths surrounding the meeting, this work addresses a glaring lacuna in the literature of the Holocaust, and places the so-called 'failure' of the Evian Conference into its proper context.