Soldiers of Folly

Soldiers of Folly PDF Author: Barry Flynn
Publisher: Collins Press
ISBN: 9781848890169
Category : Insurgency
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Border Campaign was an ambitious plan to use the tactics of Flying Columns in the Irish War of Independence. This account of the campaign, immortalized in Dominic Behan's ballad The Patriot Game, outlines the origins, planning, and phases of the conflict, and how it was wrapped in outdated notions of republican romanticism. The campaign was to wage a guerrilla war, make Northern Ireland ungovernable and force a British withdrawal. It was an abject failure. The IRA received little support from Northern nationalists, while governments north and south introduced internment.

Soldiers of Folly

Soldiers of Folly PDF Author: Barry Flynn
Publisher: Collins Press
ISBN: 9781848890169
Category : Insurgency
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Border Campaign was an ambitious plan to use the tactics of Flying Columns in the Irish War of Independence. This account of the campaign, immortalized in Dominic Behan's ballad The Patriot Game, outlines the origins, planning, and phases of the conflict, and how it was wrapped in outdated notions of republican romanticism. The campaign was to wage a guerrilla war, make Northern Ireland ungovernable and force a British withdrawal. It was an abject failure. The IRA received little support from Northern nationalists, while governments north and south introduced internment.

Making War at Fort Hood

Making War at Fort Hood PDF Author: Kenneth T. MacLeish
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069116570X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
An intimate look at war through the lives of soldiers and their families at Fort Hood Making War at Fort Hood offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it. Kenneth MacLeish conducted a year of intensive fieldwork among soldiers and their families at and around the US Army's Fort Hood in central Texas. He shows how war's reach extends far beyond the battlefield into military communities where violence is as routine, boring, and normal as it is shocking and traumatic. Fort Hood is one of the largest military installations in the world, and many of the 55,000 personnel based there have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. MacLeish provides intimate portraits of Fort Hood's soldiers and those closest to them, drawing on numerous in-depth interviews and diverse ethnographic material. He explores the exceptional position that soldiers occupy in relation to violence--not only trained to fight and kill, but placed deliberately in harm's way and offered up to die. The death and destruction of war happen to soldiers on purpose. MacLeish interweaves gripping narrative with critical theory and anthropological analysis to vividly describe this unique condition of vulnerability. Along the way, he sheds new light on the dynamics of military family life, stereotypes of veterans, what it means for civilians to say "thank you" to soldiers, and other questions about the sometimes ordinary, sometimes agonizing labor of making war. Making War at Fort Hood is the first ethnography to examine the everyday lives of the soldiers, families, and communities who personally bear the burden of America's most recent wars.

McNamara's Folly

McNamara's Folly PDF Author: Hamilton Gregory
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781495805486
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description


Polk's Folly

Polk's Folly PDF Author: William Roe Polk
Publisher: Doubleday Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
The grand saga of American history told through the story of one remarkable family--a chronicle of pioneers and generals, presidents and scoundrels, cowboys and killers, Southern belles and civil rights heroes. In 1680, a Scots-Irish mercenary named Robert Pollok fled war-torn Ireland with his family, in search of safe haven and a better life in the New World. When Robert (now using the name "Polk") arrived in Maryland, the only land available was a wretched piece of swampfront the locals derisively dubbed "Polk's Folly." From this desperate and hardscrabble beginning, the Polk clan would flourish, and generate some of the most fascinating and colorful characters in American history. When William Polk was a boy in Texas, he sat rapt as his grandmother Molly spun tales of family lore, of Civil War heroes and rascals, presidents and slaves, Indian traders and fighters. Polk would go on to have a long and prestigious career as a historian and diplomat, but he kept his grandmother's stories alive for his children, and when he retired, decided to research the truth behind the family history. And what a history. In these pages one finds drafters of an early Declaration of Independence, oft-wounded soldiers of the Revolutionary War, women taken hostage by Indians, land speculators, slaveholding aristocrats and populist crusaders, one of our greatest presidents, Civil War generals and foot soldiers from North and South, a grandfather who shot the sheriff of Laredo and became a cattle baron, the founders of the Wall Street firm Davis Polk, Patton's lead tank commander, Martin Luther King's lawyer, and the author's amazing brother, a World War II Navy pilot and journalist who was thefirst casualty of the Cold War. The saga of this family is the story of the United States. Polk's Folly is both epic in scope and intimate in detail--a unique book about our shared past. When Bill Polk was a boy in Texas, he sat rapt as his grandmother spun tales of family history, of Civil War heroes and rascals, of presidents and slaves, Indian traders and fighters. Throughout his long and distinguished career as a historian, Bill kept her stories alive for his children, and when he retired decided to approach his family story as a historian would. And what a history. In these pages one finds drafters of an early Declaration of Independence, oft-wounded soldiers of the Revolutionary War, women taken hostage by Indians, land speculators, slaveholding aristocrats and populist crusaders, one of our greatest presidents, Civil War generals and foot soldiers from North and South, a grandfather who shot the sheriff of Laredo and became a cattle baron, the founders of the powerful Wall Street firm Davis, Polk, Patton's lead tank commander, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s lawyer, and the author's amazing brother, a Navy pilot and journalist who was the first casualty of the Cold War. The saga of this family is the story of the United States. It is both epic in scope and intimate in detail--a unique book for an age obsessed with the past. -->

The March of Folly

The March of Folly PDF Author: Barbara W. Tuchman
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0345308239
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Barbara W. Tuchman, author of the World War I masterpiece The Guns of August, grapples with her boldest subject: the pervasive presence, through the ages, of failure, mismanagement, and delusion in government. Drawing on a comprehensive array of examples, from Montezuma’s senseless surrender of his empire in 1520 to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Barbara W. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives. In brilliant detail, Tuchman illuminates four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain’s George III, and the United States’ own persistent mistakes in Vietnam. Throughout The March of Folly, Tuchman’s incomparable talent for animating the people, places, and events of history is on spectacular display. Praise for The March of Folly “A glittering narrative . . . a moral [book] on the crimes and follies of governments and the misfortunes the governed suffer in consequence.”—The New York Times Book Review “An admirable survey . . . I haven’t read a more relevant book in years.”—John Kenneth Galbraith, The Boston Sunday Globe “A superb chronicle . . . a masterly examination.”—Chicago Sun-Times

Stalin's Folly

Stalin's Folly PDF Author: Konstantin Pleshakov
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0618773614
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Stalin's cunning and ruthlessness brought him to supreme power in the Soviet Union. Yet in the summer of 1941 he appeared to lose his touch. With unparalleled access to the Soviet archives, this text reveals why the dictator behaved as he did.

The Folly and the Glory

The Folly and the Glory PDF Author: Tim Weiner
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1627790861
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
From Tim Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, an urgent and gripping account of the 75-year battle between the US and Russia that led to the election and impeachment of an American president With vivid storytelling and riveting insider accounts, Weiner traces the roots of political warfare—the conflict America and Russia have waged with espionage, sabotage, diplomacy and disinformation—from 1945 until 2020. America won the cold war, but Russia is winning today. Vladimir Putin helped to put his chosen candidate in the White House with a covert campaign that continues to this moment. Putin’s Russia has revived Soviet-era intelligence operations gaining ever more potent information from—and influence over—the American people and government. Yet the US has put little power into its defense. This has put American democracy in peril. Weiner takes us behind closed doors, illuminating Russian and American intelligence operations and their consequences. To get to the heart of what is at stake and find potential solutions, he examines long-running 20th-century CIA operations, the global political machinations of the Soviet KGB, the erosion of American political warfare after the cold war, and how 21st-century Russia has kept the cold war alive. The Folly and the Glory is an urgent call to our leaders and citizens to understand the nature of political warfare—and to change course before it’s too late.

The Last Full Measure

The Last Full Measure PDF Author: Michael Stephenson
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
ISBN: 0307395847
Category : Battle casualties
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Considers how soldiers through the ages have met their deaths in times of war, covering such subjects as weapons and battlefield strategies while offering insight into cultural differences and the nature of military combat.

Nuclear Folly

Nuclear Folly PDF Author: Serhii Plokhy
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141993294
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
*Shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History* 'An enthralling account of a pivotal moment in modern history. . . replete with startling revelations about the deception and mutual suspicion that brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of Armageddon in October 1962' Martin Chilton, Independent The definitive new history of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize For more than four weeks in the autumn of 1962 the world teetered. The consequences of a misplaced step during the Cuban Missile Crisis could not have been more grave. Ash and cinder, famine and fallout; nuclear war between the two most-powerful nations on Earth. In Nuclear Folly, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy tells the riveting story of those weeks, tracing the tortuous decision-making and calculated brinkmanship of John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and of their advisors and commanders on the ground. More often than not, Plokhy argues, the Americans and Soviets simply misread each other, operating under mutual distrust, second-guesses and false information. Despite all of this, nuclear disaster was avoided thanks to one very human reason: fear. Drawing on an impressive array of primary sources, including recently declassified KGB files, Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama of those tense days. Authoritative, fast-paced and unforgettable, this is the definitive new account of the Cold War's most perilous moment.

This Republic of Suffering

This Republic of Suffering PDF Author: Drew Gilpin Faust
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375703837
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.