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Author: J. J. Valdés
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811776808
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
On New Year’s Day 1959, Fidel Castro’s revolutionary movement overthrew the ruling regime in Cuba, bringing the Cold War to the United States’ doorstep and setting the island nation and its superpower neighbor on a collision course. The clash came in April 1961 on the southern coast of Cuba at the Bahía de Cochinos—the Bay of Pigs. In an hour-by-hour chronicle that is as even-handed as it is dramatic, J. J. Valdés gets to the heart of this Cold War battle, from the beaches and skies of Cuba to the corridors of power in Washington and Havana. Long entangled in Cuba’s economy and politics, the United States watched Castro’s revolution carefully and grew wary as Castro drew closer to the Soviet Union. Within a few months, the CIA, with President Dwight Eisenhower’s approval, was recruiting and training Cuban exiles for a paramilitary force to topple Castro. By early 1960, when John F. Kennedy became president after campaigning on a hard line on Cuba, policymakers believed the window for action was closing. Kennedy gave the go-ahead for the island’s invasion, but not before ordering changes, aimed at concealing American involvement, that weakened the operation. Early on April 17, 1961, 1,400 men of Brigade 2506—Cuban exiles trained by the CIA in Guatemala—began landing at the Bay of Pigs, just over 100 miles southeast of Havana. Nearly everything went wrong. Boat engines failed. Coral reefs snarled landing craft. Castro’s planes destroyed ships carrying vital ammunition and medical supplies. Expected popular support within Cuba did not materialize. Khrushchev rattled the nuclear saber, spooking Kennedy from ordering assistance he was reluctant to provide anyway. Over the course of three days, the Brigade obstinately defended a rapidly shrinking beachhead, but the exiles—outnumbered and under supported —were no match for the air and ground forces Castro threw against them. By April 19, the invasion had failed and 1,200 scattered survivors were captured over the ensuing days. What had been intended as a Cold War masterstroke ended in embarrassment for the U.S. The Bay of Pigs disaster would set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis eighteen months later and shape U.S.-Cuba relations up until the present. Decades in the making, Besieged Beachhead draws from English and Spanish sources in the United States and Cuba to tell the story of this conflict as it has never been told before. Along the way, the work sheds light on events that have been shrouded in secrecy, myth, and propaganda for six decades.
Author: J. J. Valdés
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811776808
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Get Book Here
Book Description
On New Year’s Day 1959, Fidel Castro’s revolutionary movement overthrew the ruling regime in Cuba, bringing the Cold War to the United States’ doorstep and setting the island nation and its superpower neighbor on a collision course. The clash came in April 1961 on the southern coast of Cuba at the Bahía de Cochinos—the Bay of Pigs. In an hour-by-hour chronicle that is as even-handed as it is dramatic, J. J. Valdés gets to the heart of this Cold War battle, from the beaches and skies of Cuba to the corridors of power in Washington and Havana. Long entangled in Cuba’s economy and politics, the United States watched Castro’s revolution carefully and grew wary as Castro drew closer to the Soviet Union. Within a few months, the CIA, with President Dwight Eisenhower’s approval, was recruiting and training Cuban exiles for a paramilitary force to topple Castro. By early 1960, when John F. Kennedy became president after campaigning on a hard line on Cuba, policymakers believed the window for action was closing. Kennedy gave the go-ahead for the island’s invasion, but not before ordering changes, aimed at concealing American involvement, that weakened the operation. Early on April 17, 1961, 1,400 men of Brigade 2506—Cuban exiles trained by the CIA in Guatemala—began landing at the Bay of Pigs, just over 100 miles southeast of Havana. Nearly everything went wrong. Boat engines failed. Coral reefs snarled landing craft. Castro’s planes destroyed ships carrying vital ammunition and medical supplies. Expected popular support within Cuba did not materialize. Khrushchev rattled the nuclear saber, spooking Kennedy from ordering assistance he was reluctant to provide anyway. Over the course of three days, the Brigade obstinately defended a rapidly shrinking beachhead, but the exiles—outnumbered and under supported —were no match for the air and ground forces Castro threw against them. By April 19, the invasion had failed and 1,200 scattered survivors were captured over the ensuing days. What had been intended as a Cold War masterstroke ended in embarrassment for the U.S. The Bay of Pigs disaster would set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis eighteen months later and shape U.S.-Cuba relations up until the present. Decades in the making, Besieged Beachhead draws from English and Spanish sources in the United States and Cuba to tell the story of this conflict as it has never been told before. Along the way, the work sheds light on events that have been shrouded in secrecy, myth, and propaganda for six decades.
Author: Paul K. Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195219309
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
From ancient times to the present, great sieges have had an enormous impact on the shaping of world history. Now, in this spectacular, fully-illustrated volume, one hundred of the world's most monumental and mind-boggling sieges are laid out in detail. Besieged covers the most important sieges from around the world throughout history--from Joshua's assault on Jericho in the fifteenth century B.C. to the Russian attack on the Chechen capital of Grozny at the end of the twentieth. Each entry provides the name and date of the siege, its exact location in terms of today's world, the number of forces engaged, when known, the names of the commanders on each side, and the overall importance of the siege in its historical context. Thoroughly examining the actions of both the attackers and the defenders, the book explores the motivations of both, and strategically surveys the technical and tactical innovations and conditions both inside besieged positions and in the besiegers' ranks. The entries detail the historical setting, the particular circumstances of the event itself, and the long-term results of the siege. These riveting accounts are enhanced by illustrations, over seventy maps, and references for further reading. A glossary and a comprehensive index complete the book. Global in scope, and with stirring accounts of familiar sieges as well as many lesser known conflicts, Besieged is essential reading for military buffs and everyone interested in how the modern world came to be. Includes the sieges of: * Jericho (1405 B.C.) * Troy (1250 B.C.) * Acre (1189--1191) * Constantinople (1453) * Tenochtitlan (1521 * La Rochelle (1627--1628) * Leningrad (1941--1944) * Malta (1940--1942) * Dien Bien Phu (1954) * Khe Sanh (1968) * Beirut (1982) * Sarajevo (1991--1995)
Author: J. Bowyer Bell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351314106
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
J. Bowyer Bell's Beseiged is built on the premise that as long as men have constructed walls, other men have tried to scale them. From ancient Jericho and Joshua's trumpet to London and the onslaught of the Luftwaffe, people have always devised cunning weapons, with all the skills at their command, to breach such barriers and invade the camps and fortified places of their enemies. Beseiged is the story of seven great modern sieges: Madrid in the Spanish Civil War; London, Warsaw, Singapore and Stalingrad in World War II; Berlin during the Post World War II Airlift; and Jerusalem under Arab attack from four sides in 1947. Bell, a veteran historian, describes in detail the actual battles involved, clearly demonstrating the universality of sieges and siegecraft and showing that all these beleaguered places have things in common and obey certain basic laws or principles. Bell points out commonalities showing, for example, though no bullets were fired during the Berlin Airlift, the city itself was as much under siege as was Warsaw, where the Polish Underground fought a fierce but hopeless battle against Hitler's Wehrmacht. By the same token, Bell shows though no German infantry ever came close to London, it was nonetheless besieged by aerial squadrons just as surely as Stalingrad was by both German and Russian ground forces. The histories of these sieges are ones of heroism and cowardice, meticulous planning and incredible blunders, all of which can be studied and used even currently in similar situations in either defending, or piercing the defenses of, a location in times of unrest or war. Beseiged is a must-read for those interested in modern conflict pondering the enigma of human endeavor in wall building and breaking involved in siegecraft. A must-read for everyone from military strategist aficionados and historians to science and technology buffs. If it is to be believed the danger of not knowing history is the possibility of unknowingly repeating it, then Beseiged should appear on all required reading lists.
Author: Bill Gilbert
Publisher: Triumph Books (IL)
ISBN: 1572433663
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
A Korean War rescue.
Author: Donal Sexton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135906874
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 583
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Book Description
The Western European and Mediterranean Theaters in World War II is a concise, comprehensive guide for students, teachers, and history buffs of the Second World War. With an emphasis on the American forces in these theaters, each entry is accompanied by a brief annotation that will allow researchers to navigate through the vast amount of literature on the campaigns fought in these regions with ease. Focusing on all aspects surrounding the U.S. involvement in the Western European and Mediterranean theaters, including politics, religion, biography, strategy, intelligence, and operations, this bibliography will be a welcome addition to the collection of any academic or research library. Routledge Research Guides to American Military Studies provide concise, annotated bibliographies to the major areas and events in American military history. With the inclusion of brief critical annotations after each entry, the student and researcher can easily assess the utility of each bibliographic source and evaluate the abundance of resources available with ease and efficiency. Comprehensive, concise, and current—Routledge Research Guides to American Military Studies are an essential research tool for any historian.
Author: Walt Larimore
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1642939609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349
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Book Description
What makes 2nd Lieutenant Phil Larimore’s story special is what happened in World War II’s closing days and the people—and horses—he interacted with in this Forrest Gump-like tale that is emotional, heartbreaking, and inspiring. Growing up in the 1930s in Memphis, Tennessee, Phil Larimore is the ultimate Boy Scout—able to read maps, put a compass to good use, and traverse wild swamps and desolate canyons. His other great skill is riding horses. Phil does poorly in school, however, leading his parents send to him to a military academy. After Pearl Harbor, Phil realizes he is destined for war. Three weeks before his eighteenth birthday, he becomes the youngest candidate to ever graduate from Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Fort Benning, Georgia. Landing on the Anzio beachhead in February 1944, Phil is put in charge of an Ammunition Pioneer Platoon in the 3rd Infantry Division. Their job: deliver ammunition to the frontline foxholes—a dangerous assignment involving regular forays into No Man’s Land. As Phil fights his way up the Italian boot, into Southern France and across the Rhine River into Germany, he is caught up in some of the most intense combat ever. But it’s what happens in the final stages of the war and his homecoming that makes Phil’s story incredibly special and heartwarming. An emotional tale of courage, daring, and heroism, At First Light will remind you of the indomitable human spirit that lives in all of us.
Author: Charles R. Herrick
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1636244742
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
This new account carefully details the events surrounding Robert Capa's D-Day adventures, using official SHAEF files and a variety of accounts of witnesses. Although Capa's Falling Soldier image from the Spanish Civil War has been definitively proven to be a staged propaganda fake, no one has applied a similarly critical eye to his later work. This book is the first effort to establish the facts behind the fables surrounding his D-Day adventures and the images he produced during that period. This book examines the fictionalized account Robert Capa penned in his pseudo biography Slightly Out of Focus. Written in the hopes of it becoming a movie, Capa included many elements which were exaggerated or simply not true, while omitting many relevant events. As he himself said in the dust jacket for that book: Writing the truth being obviously so difficult, I have in the interests of it allowed myself to go sometimes slightly beyond and slightly this side of it. All events and persons in the book are accidental and have something to do with the truth. This new account carefully details the actual events surrounding Capa's D-Day adventures, using official SHAEF files, still and motion picture images taken by other cameramen who were near or with Capa, and a variety of accounts of witnesses. It examines several aspects of Capa's narrative and reveals the truth behind the fiction: he claimed that he landed in the First Wave with Company E, in reality he landed almost two hours later in Wave 13 with the regimental commander. Analysis reveals how many of his images were presented in a false context and as a result have been misinterpreted for decades. Building on Allan Colleman and his team's proof that the bulk of Capa D-Day photos could not possibly have been ruined in a darkroom accident, this gripping expose details the effects the FORTITUDE deception plans had on censorship, and how the censorship system would have retained the images popularly thought to have been lost.
Author: Elizabeth Stewart
Publisher: Exisle Publishing
ISBN: 1877568880
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
The history of warfare and the history of medicine are closely intertwined. War has been an accelerator of advances in medical treatment and surgery. As modern weaponry became more destructive, medicine developed techniques and procedures to deal with the volume and nature of battlefield casualties. Preventative medicine has also increased the effectiveness of fighting forces through improvements in soldiers' health and disease resistance.This book is a collection of chapters by historians, medical practitioners and researchers, former and serving military medical officers, surgeons, nurses and veterans, who explore the impact of war, wounds and trauma through the historical record, reported narratives and personal experiences. The book includes major sections on World War One (including chapters on shell shock and plastic surgery), World War Two (including a chapter on the Nazi death camps), the Vietnam War (including chapters on Agent Orange and sexually transmitted diseases), together with chapters on the Korean War and the current conflict in Afghanistan. In addition, the book includes several personal stories in which veterans describe their experiences of injury and recovery. War Wounds is a truly unique book, which offers considerable insights into an aspect of war that is often mentioned but seldom examined as it is here. Medical professionals, military personnel and the general public will all find it a remarkably revealing read.
Author: David M. Kennedy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199743827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 3045
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Book Description
Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. This book tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities. The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, wastefully consuming capital and inflicting untold misery on city and countryside alike. Freedom From Fear explores how the nation agonized over its role in World War II, how it fought the war, why the United States won, and why the consequences of victory were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. In a compelling narrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American strategy, the painful choices faced by commanders and statesmen, and the agonies inflicted on the millions of ordinary Americans who were compelled to swallow their fears and face battle as best they could. Both comprehensive and colorful, this account of the most convulsive period in American history, excepting only the Civil War, reveals a period that formed the crucible in which modern America was formed. The Oxford History of the United States The Atlantic Monthly has praised The Oxford History of the United States as "the most distinguished series in American historical scholarship," a series that "synthesizes a generation's worth of historical inquiry and knowledge into one literally state-of-the-art book. Who touches these books touches a profession." Conceived under the general editorship of one of the leading American historians of our time, C. Vann Woodward, The Oxford History of the United States blends social, political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and military history into coherent and vividly written narrative. Previous volumes are Robert Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution; James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (which won a Pulitzer Prize and was a New York Times Best Seller); and James T. Patterson's Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974 (which won a Bancroft Prize).
Author: Major Philips D. Carleton
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786257459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Contains numerous maps. One of a series of monographs prepared by the Historical Division that deals with the activities of Marine Corps units in World War II, this monograph is the work of Captain Carleton. While on Okinawa he lived with the men of the Sixth Marine Division, watched them fight and listened to their accounts of the action. He was with the Twenty Ninth Marines on Motobu Peninsula, the Twenty Second Marines during the fight for Naha, and spent considerable time with the Sixth Reconnaissance Company. Most of the material in this monograph is the result of Captain Carleton’s personal observations or was gained through his interviews with the officers and men who fought in the Okinawa battles.
