The Allure of Battle PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Allure of Battle PDF full book. Access full book title The Allure of Battle by Cathal Nolan. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Cathal Nolan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199874654
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 729
Get Book Here
Book Description
History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could be considered "decisive." Cannae, Konigsberg, Austerlitz, Midway, Agincourt-all resonate in the literature of war and in our imaginations as tide-turning. But these legendary battles may or may not have determined the final outcome of the wars in which they were fought. Nor has the "genius" of the so-called Great Captains - from Alexander the Great to Frederick the Great and Napoleon - play a major role. Wars are decided in other ways. Cathal J. Nolan's The Allure of Battle systematically and engrossingly examines the great battles, tracing what he calls "short-war thinking," the hope that victory might be swift and wars brief. As he proves persuasively, however, such has almost never been the case. Even the major engagements have mainly contributed to victory or defeat by accelerating the erosion of the other side's defences. Massive conflicts, the so-called "people's wars," beginning with Napoleon and continuing until 1945, have consisted of and been determined by prolonged stalemate and attrition, industrial wars in which the determining factor has been not military but matériel. Nolan's masterful book places battles squarely and mercilessly within the context of the wider conflict in which they took place. In the process it help corrects a distorted view of battle's role in war, replacing popular images of the "battles of annihilation" with somber appreciation of the commitments and human sacrifices made throughout centuries of war particularly among the Great Powers. Accessible, provocative, exhaustive, and illuminating, The Allure of Battle will spark fresh debate about the history and conduct of warfare.
Author: Cathal Nolan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199874654
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 729
Get Book Here
Book Description
History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could be considered "decisive." Cannae, Konigsberg, Austerlitz, Midway, Agincourt-all resonate in the literature of war and in our imaginations as tide-turning. But these legendary battles may or may not have determined the final outcome of the wars in which they were fought. Nor has the "genius" of the so-called Great Captains - from Alexander the Great to Frederick the Great and Napoleon - play a major role. Wars are decided in other ways. Cathal J. Nolan's The Allure of Battle systematically and engrossingly examines the great battles, tracing what he calls "short-war thinking," the hope that victory might be swift and wars brief. As he proves persuasively, however, such has almost never been the case. Even the major engagements have mainly contributed to victory or defeat by accelerating the erosion of the other side's defences. Massive conflicts, the so-called "people's wars," beginning with Napoleon and continuing until 1945, have consisted of and been determined by prolonged stalemate and attrition, industrial wars in which the determining factor has been not military but matériel. Nolan's masterful book places battles squarely and mercilessly within the context of the wider conflict in which they took place. In the process it help corrects a distorted view of battle's role in war, replacing popular images of the "battles of annihilation" with somber appreciation of the commitments and human sacrifices made throughout centuries of war particularly among the Great Powers. Accessible, provocative, exhaustive, and illuminating, The Allure of Battle will spark fresh debate about the history and conduct of warfare.
Author: Paul G. Halpern
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025311019X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 203
Get Book Here
Book Description
Called by some a "Mediterranean Jutland," the Battle of the Otranto Straits involved warships from Austria, Germany, Italy, Britain, and France. Although fought by light units with no dreadnoughts involved, Otranto was a battle in three dimensions -- engaging surface vessels, aircraft, and subsurface weapons (both submarines and mines). An attempt to halt the movement of submarines into the Adriatic using British drifters armed with nets and mines led to a raid by Austrian light cruisers. The Austrians inflicted heavy damage on the drifters, but Allied naval forces based at Brindisi cut off their withdrawal. The daylight hours saw a running battle, with the Austrians at considerable risk. Heavier Austrian units put out from Cattaro in support, and at the climactic moment the Allied light forces had to turn away, permitting the Austrians to escape. In the end, the Austrians had inflicted more damage than they suffered themselves. The Otranto action shows the difficulties of waging coalition warfare in which diplomatic and national jealousies override military efficiency.
Author: Jurgen Brauer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226071650
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 425
Get Book Here
Book Description
Castles, Battles, and Bombs reconsiders key episodes of military history from the point of view of economics—with dramatically insightful results. For example, when looked at as a question of sheer cost, the building of castles in the High Middle Ages seems almost inevitable: though stunningly expensive, a strong castle was far cheaper to maintain than a standing army. The authors also reexamine the strategic bombing of Germany in World War II and provide new insights into France’s decision to develop nuclear weapons. Drawing on these examples and more, Brauer and Van Tuyll suggest lessons for today’s military, from counterterrorist strategy and military manpower planning to the use of private military companies in Afghanistan and Iraq. "In bringing economics into assessments of military history, [the authors] also bring illumination. . . . [The authors] turn their interdisciplinary lens on the mercenary arrangements of Renaissance Italy; the wars of Marlborough, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon; Grant's campaigns in the Civil War; and the strategic bombings of World War II. The results are invariably stimulating."—Martin Walker, Wilson Quarterly "This study is serious, creative, important. As an economist I am happy to see economics so professionally applied to illuminate major decisions in the history of warfare."—Thomas C. Schelling, Winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics
Author: Carter Malkasian
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1573568856
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Get Book Here
Book Description
A war of attrition is usually conceptualized as a bloody slogging match, epitomized by imagery of futile frontal assaults on the Western Front of the First World War. As such, many academics, politicians, and military officers currently consider attrition to be a wholly undesirable method of warfare. This first book-length study of wars of attrition challenges this viewpoint. A historical analysis of the strategic thought behind attrition demonstrates that it was often implemented to conserve casualties, not to engage in a bloody senseless assault. Moreover, attrition frequently proved an effective means of attaining a state's political aims in warfare, particularly in serving as a preliminary to decisive warfare, reducing risk of escalation, and coercing an opponent in negotiations. Malkasian analyzes the thought of commanders who implemented policies of attrition from 1789 to the present. His study includes figures central to the study of war, such as the Duke of Wellington, Carl von Clausewitz, B. H. Liddell Hart, General William Slim, General Douglas MacArthur, General Matthew Ridgeway, and General William Westmoreland. While special attention is devoted to the Second World War in the Pacific and the Korean War, this study notes the utility of attrition during the Cold War, as the risk of a Third World War rendered more aggressive strategies unattractive. Increasingly, the United States finds itself facing conflicts that are not amenable to a decisive military solution in which opponents seek prolonged war that will inflict as many casualties as possible on American forces.
Author: Antonio Salinas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781944193027
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Susan Jacoby
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300155840
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267
Get Book Here
Book Description
Books on Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss abound, as countless scholars have labored to uncover the facts behind Chambers's shocking accusation before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the summer of 1948, that Alger Hiss, a former rising star in the State Department, had been a Communist and engaged in espionage. In this work, the author turns her attention to the Hiss case, including his trial and imprisonment for perjury, as a mirror of shifting American political views and passions.
Author: Wayne E. Lee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190920645
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Get Book Here
Book Description
Focusing on three battles, each reflective of asymmetrical, intercultural, and irregular warfare, this provocative, harrowing, and illuminating book shows how American soldiers have experienced combat in which the "standard" rules of engagement did not apply.
Author: Mark Fainaru-Wada
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0770437567
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 457
Get Book Here
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “meticulously documented and endlessly chilling” (The New York Times) exploration of the NFL’s decades-long attempt to deny and cover up mounting evidence connecting football and brain damage. “A first-rate piece of reporting [that] adds crucial detail, texture, and news to the concussion story, which despite the NFL’s best efforts, isn’t going away.”—Time ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Boston Globe, NPR “Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.” So concluded the National Football League in a December 2005 scientific paper on concussions in America’s most popular sport. That judgment, implausible even to a casual fan, also contradicted the opinion of a growing cadre of neuroscientists who worked in vain to convince the NFL that it was facing a deadly new scourge: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a chronic brain disease that was driving an alarming number of players—including some of the all-time greats—to madness. Everyone knows that football is violent and dangerous. But what the players who built the NFL into a $10 billion industry didn’t know—and what the league sought to shield from them—is that no amount of padding could protect the human brain from the force generated by modern football. In League of Denial, award-winning ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru expose the public health crisis that emerged from the playing fields and examine how the league used its power and resources to attack independent scientists and elevate its own flawed research—a campaign with echoes of Big Tobacco’s fight to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer. They chronicle the tragic fates of players like Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who was so disturbed at the time of his death he fantasized about shooting NFL executives, and former San Diego Chargers great Junior Seau, whose diseased brain became the target of a scientific battle between researchers and the NFL. Based on exclusive interviews, previously undisclosed documents, and private e-mails, League of Denial is the story of what the NFL knew and when it knew it—questions at the heart of a crisis that threatens American football—and of the battle for the sport’s future.
Author: Chris Hedges
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610395107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 156
Get Book Here
Book Description
General George S. Patton famously said, "Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, I do love it so!" Though Patton was a notoriously single-minded general, it is nonetheless a sad fact that war gives meaning to many lives, a fact with which we have become familiar now that America is once again engaged in a military conflict. War is an enticing elixir. It gives us purpose, resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. Chris Hedges of The New York Times has seen war up close -- in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central America -- and he has been troubled by what he has seen: friends, enemies, colleagues, and strangers intoxicated and even addicted to war's heady brew. In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, he tackles the ugly truths about humanity's love affair with war, offering a sophisticated, nuanced, intelligent meditation on the subject that is also gritty, powerful, and unforgettable.
Author: Jason Lyall
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069119243X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530
Get Book Here
Book Description
How do armies fight and what makes them victorious on the modern battlefield? In Divided Armies, Jason Lyall challenges long-standing answers to this classic question by linking the fate of armies to their levels of inequality. Introducing the concept of military inequality, Lyall demonstrates how a state's prewar choices about the citizenship status of ethnic groups within its population determine subsequent battlefield performance. Treating certain ethnic groups as second-class citizens, either by subjecting them to state-sanctioned discrimination or, worse, violence, undermines interethnic trust, fuels grievances, and leads victimized soldiers to subvert military authorities once war begins. The higher an army's inequality, Lyall finds, the greater its rates of desertion, side-switching, casualties, and use of coercion to force soldiers to fight. In a sweeping historical investigation, Lyall draws on Project Mars, a new dataset of 250 conventional wars fought since 1800, to test this argument. Project Mars breaks with prior efforts by including overlooked non-Western wars while cataloguing new patterns of inequality and wartime conduct across hundreds of belligerents. Combining historical comparisons and statistical analysis, Lyall also marshals evidence from nine wars, ranging from the Eastern Fronts of World Wars I and II to less familiar wars in Africa and Central Asia, to illustrate inequality's effects. Sounding the alarm on the dangers of inequality for battlefield performance, Divided Armies offers important lessons about warfare over the past two centuries—and for wars still to come.
