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The Hacker and the State
Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics
Ben Buchanan
Harvard University Press, 2020

“A must-read…It reveals important truths.”
—Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer

“One of the finest books on information security published so far in this century—easily accessible, tightly argued, superbly well-sourced, intimidatingly perceptive.”
—Thomas Rid, author of Active Measures

Cyber attacks are less destructive than we thought they would be—but they are more pervasive, and much harder to prevent. With little fanfare and only occasional scrutiny, they target our banks, our tech and health systems, our democracy, and impact every aspect of our lives. Packed with insider information based on interviews with key players in defense and cyber security, declassified files, and forensic analysis of company reports, The Hacker and the State explores the real geopolitical competition of the digital age and reveals little-known details of how China, Russia, North Korea, Britain, and the United States hack one another in a relentless struggle for dominance. It moves deftly from underseas cable taps to underground nuclear sabotage, from blackouts and data breaches to election interference and billion-dollar heists.

Ben Buchanan brings to life this continuous cycle of espionage and deception, attack and counterattack, destabilization and retaliation. Quietly, insidiously, cyber attacks have reshaped our national-security priorities and transformed spycraft and statecraft. The United States and its allies can no longer dominate the way they once did. From now on, the nation that hacks best will triumph.

“A helpful reminder…of the sheer diligence and seriousness of purpose exhibited by the Russians in their mission.”
—Jonathan Freedland, New York Review of Books

“The best examination I have read of how increasingly dramatic developments in cyberspace are defining the ‘new normal’ of geopolitics in the digital age.”
—General David Petraeus, former Director of the CIA

“Fundamentally changes the way we think about cyber operations from ‘war’ to something of significant import that is not war—what Buchanan refers to as ‘real geopolitical competition.’”
—Richard Harknett, former Scholar-in-Residence at United States Cyber Command

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Hanoi Jane
War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal
Jerry Lembcke
University of Massachusetts Press, 2010
From Aristophanes' Lysistrata to the notorious Mata Hari and the legendary Tokyo Rose, stories of female betrayal during wartime have recurred throughout human history. The myth of Hanoi Jane, Jerry Lembcke argues, is simply the latest variation on this enduring theme. Like most of the iconic femmes fatales who came before, it is based on a real person, Jane Fonda. And also like its predecessors, it combines traces of fact with heavy doses of fiction to create a potent symbol of feminine perfidy—part erotic warrior-woman Barbarella, part savvy antiwar activist, and part powerful entrepreneur.

Hanoi Jane, the book, deconstructs Hanoi Jane, the myth, to locate its origins in the need of Americans to explain defeat in Vietnam through fantasies of home-front betrayal and the emasculation of the national will-to-war. Lembcke shows that the expression "Hanoi Jane" did not reach the eyes and ears of most Americans until five or six years after the end of the war in Vietnam. By then, anxieties about America's declining global status and deteriorating economy were fueling a populist reaction that pointed to the loss of the war as the taproot of those problems. Blaming the antiwar movement for undermining the military's resolve, many found in the imaginary Hanoi Jane the personification of their stab-in-the- back theories.

Ground zero of the myth was the city of Hanoi itself, which Jane Fonda had visited as a peace activist in July 1972. Rumors surrounding Fonda's visits with U.S. POWs and radio broadcasts to troops combined to conjure allegations of treason that had cost American lives. That such tales were more imagined than real did not prevent them from insinuating themselves into public memory, where they have continued to infect American politics and culture.

Hanoi Jane is a book about the making of Hanoi Jane by those who saw a formidable threat in the Jane Fonda who supported soldiers and veterans opposed to the war they fought, in the postcolonial struggle of the Vietnamese people to make their own future, and in the movements of women everywhere for gender equality.
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Hanoi Journal, 1967
Carol McEldowney
University of Massachusetts Press, 2007
In the fall of 1967, Carol McEldowney, a twenty-four-year-old community organizer living in Cleveland, embarked on a remarkable journey. In a climate of growing domestic unrest and international turmoil, she traveled illegally to North Vietnam with fellow members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to meet the enemy face-to-face. She was determined to understand the foe that had troubled America's leaders in Washington since the end of World War II. With an eye toward history and a recognition of the significance of her journey, McEldowney documented her experiences in the journal reproduced in this book. Through her words we bear witness to a political ideology that saw a connection between the struggles of the poor in America and the tragedy of war-torn Vietnam.

McEldowney first gained the respect of her fellow activists as a student organizer at the University of Michigan. High regard for her intelligence, skill, and hard work with SDS's Economic Recovery Action Program during the years following her graduation in 1964 earned her an invitation to attend an international conference in Czechoslovakia and an offer to continue on to North Vietnam. Though her journal displays only traces of the feminist consciousness that would mark her later political activism, she recorded her observations of North Vietnam clearly aware that she was an outsider—a woman not subject to the military draft, not married to a soldier, and without the heartache of a brother or even a close friend serving in the war.

McEldowney searched for glimpses of everyday life that would help her to better relate to women in Hanoi and the hardships they faced during wartime. As she traveled in North Vietnam, she sought a deeper understanding of the events of her time. Her journal provides readers with a unique lens through which to study those events and gain a new perspective on the Vietnam War era.
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Hard Aground
The Wreck of the USS Tennessee and the Rise of the US Navy
Andrew C. A. Jampoler
University of Alabama Press, 2023

Three intertwined stories that reveal the challenges faced by the US Navy in its evolution between the Civil War and the First World War

Hard Aground brings together three intertwined stories documenting the US Navy’s strategic and matériel evolution from the end of Civil War through the First World War. These incidents had lasting consequences for how the navy would modernize itself throughout the rest of the twentieth century.

The first story focuses on the reconstruction of the US Navy following the swift and near-total dismantling of the Union Navy infrastructure after the Civil War. This reconstruction began with barely enough time for the navy’s campaigns in the Spanish-American War, and for its role in the First World War. Jampoler argues that the federal government discovered that the fleet requested by the navy, and paid for by Congress, was the wrong fleet. Focus was on battleships and cruisers rather than destroyers and other small combat vessels needed to hunt submarines and serve as convoy escorts.

The second story relates the short, tragic life of the USS Tennessee (later renamed Memphis), one of the steel-hulled ships of the new Armored Cruiser Squadron that was a centerpiece of the navy’s modernization effort. The USS Tennessee was ordered on two unusual missions in the early months of the First World War, long before the United States formally entered the war. These little-known missions and the ship's shocking destruction in a storm surge in the Caribbean serve as the centerpiece of the story. Threaded through the narrative are biographical sketches of the principal players in the drama that unfolded following the ship’s demise, including two of Tennessee’s commanding officers: Vice Admiral Sims, who commanded the US Navy squadrons deployed to Europe in support of the Royal Navy; Rear Admiral William Caperton, who commanded the Caribbean squadron before the Memphis (formerly the Tennessee) was lost; Charles Pond, squadron commander during the wreck; and the American ambassador to the Ottoman court, President Wilson’s enthusiastic supporter, Henry Morgenthau.

Jampoler rounds out this fascinating account with the story of how the USS Tennessee’s destruction prompted fierce deliberations about the US Navy’s operations and chains of command for the remainder of the First World War and the high-level political wrangling inside the Department of the Navy immediately after the war, as civilian appointees and senior officers wrestled to reshape the department in their image.

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The Hardest Journey Home
A True Story of Loss and Duty during the Iraq War
Donleigh O. Gaunky
Westholme Publishing, 2017
Pulled Out of a Combat Deployment, the Author Escorted His Younger Brother's Body Home from War 

“Sergeant Donleigh Gaunky’s moving memoir speaks to everyone who has lost a loved one in defense of our great nation. It serves as a reminder that freedom is not free, and it is our responsibility to continue to care for our service members, veterans, and their families. I am touched that Fisher House provided a refuge for Sergeant Gaunky during such a difficult journey.”—Ken Fisher, Chairman and CEO, Fisher House Foundation
 
“Fewer and fewer Americans have any close association with anyone serving in the Armed Forces. Donleigh Gaunky offers a heart-rending glimpse into his family as he, and they, grapple with the loss of Donleigh’s brother on a battlefield in Iraq. Every American should read this and, in so doing, learn what “Thank You for Your Service” really means.”
Gen. Carter F. Ham, USA, Ret., President and CEO, Association of the United States Army

In November 2005, while analyzing live action reports at his base in Baghdad, Iraq, Donleigh O. Gaunky froze. His younger brother Alex’s unit had been hit by the enemy. Almost immediately, arrangements were made for Donleigh to meet his wounded brother in Germany, but Alex succumbed to his injuries before he arrived. Instead, Donleigh was asked to assume the role of remains escort. Most of the time a remains escort is picked at random from the appropriate branch of service or is someone with a relationship to the deceased, most often from the soldier’s own unit. Rarely—if ever in modern times—is the escort a family member. In The Hardest Journey Home: A True Story of Loss and Duty During the Iraq War, Donleigh O. Gaunky describes the events that unfolded over the course of a few days, from the front line in Iraq to the Landstuhl military hospital in Germany to their small town in Wisconsin, where he arrived with his brother’s body on Thanksgiving Day. In an effort to keep his mind off the tragedy and remain focused on his task, the author describes the proto­col for escorting a body home—paperwork, appropriate attire, the proper use of the flag, when and where to salute—as well as how his divorced parents coped with the loss of one of their four sons serving in the military. Relying on commercial flights to bring Alex home, there was no military reception when they first landed in the United States and the author learned how little his brother’s sacrifice meant on a national level. But he was uplifted by his town’s response to his family’s loss when they unexpectedly lined the streets to pay their respects to one of their own. An important and moving story, The Hardest Journey Home reveals the human cost of a long, seemingly invisible war. 
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Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists
Robert H. Ferrell
University of Missouri Press, 2006
The idea of revising what is known of the past constitutes an essential procedure in historical scholarship, but revisionists are often hasty and argumentative in their judgments. Such, argues Robert H. Ferrell, has been the case with assessments of the presidency of Harry S. Truman, who was targeted by historians and political scientists in the 1960s and ’70s for numerous failings in both domestic and foreign policy, including launching the cold war—perceptions that persist to the present day.
Widely acknowledged as today’s foremost Truman scholar, Ferrell turns the tables on the revisionists in this collection of classic essays. He goes below the surface appearances of history to examine how situations actually developed and how Truman performed sensibly—even courageously—in the face of unforeseen crises.
While some revisionists see Truman as consumed by a blind hatred of the Soviet Union and adopting an unrestrainedly militant stance, Ferrell convincingly shows that Truman wished to get along with the Soviets and was often bewildered by their actions. He interprets policies such as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and support for NATO as prudent responses to perceived threats and credits the Truman administration for the ways in which it dealt with unprecedented problems.
What emerges most vividly from Ferrell’s essays is a sense of how weak a hand the United States held from 1945 to1950, with its conventional forces depleted by the return of veterans to civil pursuits after the war and with its capacity for delivery of nuclear weapons in a sorry state. He shows that Truman regarded the atomic bomb as a weapon of last resort, not an instrument of policy, and that he took America into a war in Korea for the good of the United States and its allies. Although Truman has been vindicated on many of these issues, there still remains a lingering controversy over the use of atomic weapons in Japan—a decision that Ferrell argues is understandable in light of what Truman faced at the start of his presidency.
Ferrell argues that the revisionists who attacked Truman understood neither the times nor the man—one of the most clearheaded, farsighted presidents ever to occupy the Oval Office. Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists shows us that Truman’s was indeed a remarkable presidency, as it cautions historians against too quickly appraising the very recent past.
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Hawker Hunter
the story of a thoroughbred
Sreco Bradic
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
The most successful British jet fighter produced was without doubt the sleek and graceful Hawker Hunter. As usual for every new aircraft type it had its share of teething problems, but once these were all adequately solved the U.K. had at that time one of the best jet fighters available. It was built in large numbers and exported to many countries.
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Health and Economic Outcomes Among the Alumni of the Wounded Warrior Project
2013
Jennifer L. Cerully
RAND Corporation, 2014
In this report, the authors use the Wounded Warrior Project’s 2013 survey of its members (alumni) to understand the physical, mental, and economic challenges that Wounded Warriors face. The researchers find that at least half of alumni reported dealing with mental health conditions such as depression and posttraumatic stress disorder, and many of these alumni reported difficulties or delays in seeking mental health care, or not doing so at all.
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Health and Economic Outcomes in the Alumni of the Wounded Warrior Project
2010–2012
Heather Krull
RAND Corporation, 2014
The Wounded Warrior Project has developed programs to help care for injured service members and veterans. This report describes how project alumnus respondents are faring in domains related to mental health and resiliency, physical health, and employment and finances.
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Heartland Heroes
Remembering World War II
Ken Hatfield
University of Missouri Press, 2003

"War is about patriotism, about sacrifice, about conquering fear. And perhaps most of all, it's about the guy in the foxhole next to you, taking care of each other, protecting each other, loving each other; a camaraderie so intense only men who have been in combat can ever know what it's like. Yes, most of all, war is about love."

Heartland Heroes is a collection of remarkable stories from ordinary men and women who lived through extraordinary times. They resided in places like Lee’s Summit, Independence, and Kansas City, yet their experiences were very much like those of World War II veterans everywhere. Some were marines, nurses, or fighter pilots, others were simply civilians who lived through the war under the martial law imposed on the Hawaiian Islands after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In Heartland Heroes, Ken Hatfield gathers the stories of more than eighty men and women, whom he began interviewing in 1984 while reporting for a small weekly newspaper in Liberty, Missouri. Hatfield’s first subject was a marine named Bob Barackman, the uncle of one of Hatfield’s coworkers. That interview, which lasted for several hours, had a profound effect on Hatfield. He began to realize that as a journalist he had a unique opportunity to preserve that small piece of history each veteran carries with him.
Hatfield spent the next seventeen years interviewing nearly one hundred World War II veterans and other individuals, but it was not until August 2001 that he decided to compile the stories into a book. The interviewees, most of whom lived in the Kansas City area at the time of the interviews, included Jim Daniels, a Grumman Wildcat pilot, who while trying to land at Pearl Harbor on the evening after the Japanese attack, survived a blizzard of friendly fire, which claimed the lives of three of his friends and fellow pilots; Charles McGee, a pilot with 143 combat missions to his credit, who fought the Germans in the air and racism on the ground as one of the Tuskegee Airmen; and Dee Nicholson, who was just six years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and her home on Hawaii. She and her father recall what life was like for them and others, including Japanese Americans, after that fateful day.
Following the war, these courageous men and women returned to the lives they had left and tried to adjust as best they could. Hatfield collects their personal memories—the memories of the heroes who helped to defend their nation in the last global conflict this country has seen. They loaned Hatfield their medals, commendations, and regimental and divisional histories to help him document and piece together their stories. Virtually all of them downplayed their honors, insisting they had done nothing special. Through their stories, Heartland Heroes effectively captures this fading period of time for future generations.
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Heath Robinson's Home Front
How to Make Do and Mend in Style
W. Heath Robinson and Cecil Hunt
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2016
Heath Robinson’s Home Front sees the well-loved cartoonist working in collaboration with the writer and humorist Cecil Hunt. Together, they offer hopelessly impractical solutions to some of the most perplexing problems of the day. Pity the poor Briton advised to play his weekly bridge tournament while wearing a gas mask, the gardener who substitutes a complex configuration of magnets in the shortage of simple pea-sticks, or the motorist who must find a way to power her vehicle without gasoline. The result is an amusingly idiosyncratic celebration of the British population’s remarkable ability to “make do and mend.”

Heath Robinson was a household name in Britain, and millions of readers around the world continue to thoroughly enjoy his cartoons today. A classic military-themed compendium, Heath Robinson’s Home Front will be a favorite with fans of the cartoonist’s complicated, fanciful contraptions.
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Heavenly Warriors
The Evolution of Japan’s Military, 500–1300
William Wayne Farris
Harvard University Press, 1992
"In a government, military matters are the essential thing," said Japan's "Heavenly Warrior," the Emperor Temmu, in 684. Heavenly Warriors traces in detail the evolutionary development of weaponry, horsemanship, military organization, and tactics from Japan's early conflicts with Korea up to the full-blown system of the samurai. Enhanced by illustrations and maps, and with a new preface by the author, this book will be indispensable for students of military history and Japanese political history.
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Heavy Marching
The Civil War Letters of Lute Moseley, 22nd Wisconsin
Lucius S. Moseley, edited by Sara DeLuca
University of Wisconsin Press, 2023
Lucius “Lute” Moseley was a nineteen-year-old student at Beloit Academy when he enlisted in the Union Army. Moseley grew up on a family farm outside Beloit, Wisconsin, where his father operated the first dray service before opening a blacksmith shop and lumber yard. His father lost most of his modest assets through litigation of a building contract he had received, which likely influenced his son’s decision to enlist in the army.

From 1862 to 1865, Moseley fought in the Civil War as an infantry soldier in Wisconsin’s 22nd Volunteers. Briefly captured and interred in a Confederate POW Camp, he returned to action and participated in Sherman’s Atlanta campaign. He marched in the Washington, D.C., Grand Review before returning to the Beloit area, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Mosely wrote detailed missives to his family in Beloit about his wartime experiences, demonstrating a flair for describing both camp life and battles. Frank and forthright, he was remarkably articulate, insightful, and thoughtful, whether describing mundane activities or the nearly unfathomable death of President Lincoln. These 125 letters, never before made available to scholars or students of the war, became touchstones and sources of pride for the Moseley family—and provide a uniquely candid and vivid view of this tumultuous period in US history.
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Helping Soldiers Leverage Army Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities in Civilian Jobs
Jeffrey B. Wenger
RAND Corporation, 2017
This report discusses the results of occupation surveys administered to soldiers in selected Army military occupational specialties (MOSs) to assess the level and importance of the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed in these MOSs and to develop better crosswalks between military and civilian occupations. The report identifies both a broader range of military-civilian occupation matches and higher-quality matches than existing crosswalks.
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Henry Ware Lawton
Union Infantryman, Frontier Soldier, Charismatic Warrior
Michael E. Shay
University of Missouri Press, 2016

Henry Ware Lawton’s nearly four decades as a professional soldier in the U.S. Army tie his story closely to that of America in the nineteenth century, from the Civil War to the settlement of the West, to the experiment with empire. Lawton served the country nearly uninterrupted from the day he enlisted at age 18—soon after Lincoln’s first call for volunteers to fight in the Civil War, where he earned a Medal of Honor—to his death at age 56, a major general in the Philippine War. In between, he fought in the Spanish-American War and the Indian Wars; during that time he rose to national prominence as the man who captured Geronimo.

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Her War Story
Twentieth-Century Women Write About War
Edited by Sayre P. Sheldon
Southern Illinois University Press, 1999

Sayre P. Sheldon chose the twentieth century for this collection of women's war writing because women's roles in war have changed dramatically in this century. The twentieth century has redefined the meaning of combat and expanded the territory of war to include women in larger numbers than ever before. When the technological advances of modern war began to target civilians, the home front became the front line. Women took an active part in war whether or not by choice, often by moving into occupations previously closed to them. Women covered wars for their newspapers, wrote war propaganda for their governments, published their wartime diaries, described fighting alongside men, and used wartime experience for their fiction and poetry.

Women writers also chose the right to imagine war, just as men for centuries had written about war without actually experiencing it. Women writers anthologized here include Anna Akhmatova, Vera Brittain, Gwendolyn Brooks, Willa Cather, Colette, Martha Gellhorn, H.D., Etty Hillesum, Käthe Kollwitz, Doris Lessing, Amy Lowell, Katherine Mansfield, Mary McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Dorothy Parker, Mary Lee Settle, Gertrude Stein, Huong Tram, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and Mitsuye Yamada.

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A Hercules in the Cradle
War, Money, and the American State, 1783–1867
Max M. Edling
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Explores the origin and evolution of American public finance and shows how the nation’s rise to great-power status in the nineteenth century rested on its ability to go into debt.

Two and a half centuries after the American Revolution the United States stands as one of the greatest powers on earth and the undoubted leader of the western hemisphere. This stupendous evolution was far from a foregone conclusion at independence. The conquest of the North American continent required violence, suffering, and bloodshed. It also required the creation of a national government strong enough to go to war against, and acquire territory from, its North American rivals.

In A Hercules in the Cradle, Max M. Edling argues that the federal government’s abilities to tax and borrow money, developed in the early years of the republic, were critical to the young nation’s ability to wage war and expand its territory. He traces the growth of this capacity from the time of the founding to the aftermath of the Civil War, including the funding of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. Edling maintains that the Founding Fathers clearly understood the connection between public finance and power: a well-managed public debt was a key part of every modern state. Creating a debt would always be a delicate and contentious matter in the American context, however, and statesmen of all persuasions tried to pay down the national debt in times of peace. 
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Hero of the Angry Sky
The World War I Diary and Letters of David S. Ingalls, America’s First Naval Ace
David S. Ingalls
Ohio University Press, 2012

Hero of the Angry Sky draws on the unpublished diaries, correspondence, informal memoir, and other personal documents of the U.S. Navy’s only flying “ace” of World War I to tell his unique story. David S. Ingalls was a prolific writer, and virtually all of his World War I aviation career is covered, from the teenager’s early, informal training in Palm Beach, Florida, to his exhilarating and terrifying missions over the Western Front. This edited collection of Ingalls’s writing details the career of the U.S. Navy’s most successful combat flyer from that conflict.

While Ingalls’s wartime experiences are compelling at a personal level, they also illuminate the larger, but still relatively unexplored, realm of early U.S. naval aviation. Ingalls’s engaging correspondence offers a rare personal view of the evolution of naval aviation during the war, both at home and abroad. There are no published biographies of navy combat flyers from this period, and just a handful of diaries and letters in print, the last appearing more than twenty years ago. Ingalls’s extensive letters and diaries add significantly to historians’ store of available material.

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Hiroshima in History
The Myths of Revisionism
Edited with an introduction by Robert James Maddox
University of Missouri Press

When President Harry Truman authorized the use of atomic weapons against Japan, he did so to end a bloody war that would have been bloodier still had the planned invasion of Japan proved necessary. Revisionists claim that Truman’s real interest was a power play with the Soviet Union and that the Japanese would have surrendered even earlier had the retention of their imperial system been assured. Truman wanted the war to continue, they insist, in order to show off America’s powerful new weapon.

This anthology exposes revisionist fallacies about Truman’s motives, the cost of an invasion, and the question of Japan’s surrender. Essays by prominent military and diplomatic historians reveal the hollowness of revisionist claims, exposing the degree to which these agenda-driven scholars have manipulated the historical record to support their contentions. They show that, although some Japanese businessmen and minor officials indicated a willingness to negotiate peace, no one in a governmental decision-making capacity even suggested surrender. And although casualty estimates for an invasion vary considerably, the more authoritative approximations point to the very bloodbath that Truman sought to avoid.

Volume editor Robert Maddox first examines the writings of revisionist Gar Alperovitz to expose the unscholarly methods Alperovitz employed to support his claims, then distinguished Japanese historian Sadao Asada reveals how difficult it was for his country’s peace faction to prevail even after the bombs had been dropped. Other contributors point to continuing Japanese military buildups, analyze the revisionists’ low casualty estimates for an invasion, reveal manipulations of the Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, and show how even the exhibit commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum hewed to the revisionist line. And a close reading of Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s acclaimed Racing the Enemy exposes many grave discrepancies between that recent revisionist text and its sources.

The use of atomic bombs against Japan remains one of the most controversial issues in American history. Gathered in a single volume for the first time, these insightful readings take a major step toward settling that controversy by showing how insubstantial Hiroshima revisionism really is—and that sometimes history cannot proceed without decisive action, however regrettable.

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Hispanic Representation in the Department of Defense Civilian Workforce
Trend and Barrier Analysis
Miriam Matthews
RAND Corporation, 2017
Hispanics are less represented in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) civilian workforce than in the federal civilian workforce and the civilian labor force. This report assesses what factors might account for Hispanic underrepresentation in DoD. It includes assessments of trends in Hispanic employment and analyses of job applicant data. It also presents findings from interviews with representatives of DoD and of Hispanic-serving institutions.
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The History
Michael Attaleiates
Harvard University Press, 2012

In 1039 Byzantium was the most powerful empire in Europe and the Near East, controlling the Balkans south of the Danube and all of Asia Minor into Armenia and Syria. By 1079 it had become a politically unstable state half the size, menaced by powerful enemies on all sides. The History of Michael Attaleiates is our main source for this astonishing reversal, and offers a gripping narrative of the foreign and civil wars of those years. Attaleiates was a highly placed legal and military official of the empire with first-hand knowledge of the events he describes. He knew many of the emperors and includes an eyewitness account of the battle of Mantzikert (1071), where the Seljuk Turks crushed the Byzantine armies and opened the door for the permanent Turkish conquest of Asia Minor. He also provides vivid narratives of civil unrest and decries the corruption and economic exploitation of his society, looking to the heroes of the Roman Republic for models of nobility.

Michael Attaleiates’ History has never before been translated into English. The present translation, based on the most recent critical edition, makes the text accessible through its notes, maps, and glossary of Byzantine terms.

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History of the Empire, Volume I
Books 1–4
Herodian
Harvard University Press

A chronicle of Rome in crisis.

The History of Herodian (born ca. AD 178–179) covers a period of the Roman empire from the death of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 180) to the accession of Gordian III (238), half a century of turbulence, in which we can see the onset of the revolution which, in the words of Gibbon, “will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth.” In these years, a succession of frontier crises and a disastrous lack of economic planning established a pattern of military coups and increasing cultural pluralism.

Of this revolutionary epoch we know all too little. The selection of chance has destroyed all but a handful of the literary sources that deal with the immediate post-Antonine scene. Herodian’s work is one of the few that have survived, and it has come down to us completely intact. Of the author we know virtually nothing, except that he served in some official capacity in the empire of which he wrote. His History was apparently produced for the benefit of people in the Greek-speaking half of the Roman empire. It betrays the faults of an age when truth was distorted by rhetoric and stereotypes were a substitute for sound reason. But it is an essential document for any who would try to understand the nature of the Roman empire in an era of rapidly changing social and political institutions.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Herodian is in two volumes.

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History of the Empire, Volume II
Books 5–8
Herodian
Harvard University Press, 1969

A chronicle of Rome in crisis.

The History of Herodian (born ca. AD 178–179) covers a period of the Roman empire from the death of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 180) to the accession of Gordian III (238), half a century of turbulence, in which we can see the onset of the revolution which, in the words of Gibbon, “will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth.” In these years, a succession of frontier crises and a disastrous lack of economic planning established a pattern of military coups and increasing cultural pluralism.

Of this revolutionary epoch we know all too little. The selection of chance has destroyed all but a handful of the literary sources that deal with the immediate post-Antonine scene. Herodian’s work is one of the few that have survived, and it has come down to us completely intact. Of the author we know virtually nothing, except that he served in some official capacity in the empire of which he wrote. His History was apparently produced for the benefit of people in the Greek-speaking half of the Roman empire. It betrays the faults of an age when truth was distorted by rhetoric and stereotypes were a substitute for sound reason. But it is an essential document for any who would try to understand the nature of the Roman empire in an era of rapidly changing social and political institutions.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Herodian is in two volumes.

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A History of the Ninth Regiment
Illinois Volunteer Infantry, with the Regimental Roster
Marion Morrison. Foreword by John Y. Simon
Southern Illinois University Press, 1997

When the Civil War erupted in April 1861, many German immigrants in Illinois rushed to enlist in the Union Army. Volunteers from Illinois towns in St. Clair County—Belleville, Millstadt, Mascoutah, Lebanon, and others—marched to Springfield under the command of August Mersy, a veteran of the failed 1848 revolt in Baden, Germany.

Marion Morrison notes that when the German immigrants reached Springfield, August Mersy was rejected as commander because of his limited facility with English. Replaced by Colonel Eleazer A. Paine, an Ohioan and West Point graduate, Lieutenant Colonel Mersy fell to second in command of the Ninth Illinois Infantry Volunteers. Within a few months, however, Paine received a promotion to general that left Mersy in charge of the "Bloody Ninth."

Once Grant began his Tennessee River campaign, the Ninth found itself in the thick of battle, bearing the brunt of the Confederate attempt at Fort Donelson to break Grant’s siege lines. Less than two months later, the Ninth shored up sagging Union lines after the surprise Confederate attack at Shiloh Church, retreating only when their ammunition was gone.

Morrison’s account of the "Bloody Ninth" is one of the few histories written during the war.

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History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume I
Books 1–2
Thucydides
Harvard University Press, 1919

Classic political realism.

Thucydides of Athens was born about 471 BC. He saw the rise of Athens to greatness under the inspired leadership of Pericles. In 430, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, he caught and survived the horrible plague that he described so graphically. Later, as general in 423 he failed to save Amphipolis from the enemy and was disgraced. He tells us about this, not in volumes of self-justification, but in one sentence of his history of the war—that it befell him to be an exile for twenty years. He then lived probably on his property in Thrace, but was able to observe both sides in certain campaigns of the war, and returned to Athens after her defeat in 404. He had been composing his famous history, with its hopes and horrors, triumphs and disasters, in full detail from first-hand knowledge, along with the accounts of others.

The war was really three conflicts with one uncertain peace after the first; and Thucydides had not unified them into one account when death came sometime before 396. His history of the first conflict, 431–421, was nearly complete; Thucydides was still at work on this when the war spread to Sicily and into a conflict (415–413) likewise complete in his awful and brilliant record, though not fitted into the whole. His story of the final conflict of 413–404 breaks off (in the middle of a sentence) when dealing with the year 411. So his work was left unfinished and as a whole unrevised. Yet in brilliance of description and depth of insight this history has no superior.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Thucydides is in four volumes.

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History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume II
Books 3–4
Thucydides
Harvard University Press, 1991

Classic political realism.

Thucydides of Athens was born about 471 BC. He saw the rise of Athens to greatness under the inspired leadership of Pericles. In 430, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, he caught and survived the horrible plague that he described so graphically. Later, as general in 423 he failed to save Amphipolis from the enemy and was disgraced. He tells us about this, not in volumes of self-justification, but in one sentence of his history of the war—that it befell him to be an exile for twenty years. He then lived probably on his property in Thrace, but was able to observe both sides in certain campaigns of the war, and returned to Athens after her defeat in 404. He had been composing his famous history, with its hopes and horrors, triumphs and disasters, in full detail from first-hand knowledge, along with the accounts of others.

The war was really three conflicts with one uncertain peace after the first; and Thucydides had not unified them into one account when death came sometime before 396. His history of the first conflict, 431–421, was nearly complete; Thucydides was still at work on this when the war spread to Sicily and into a conflict (415–413) likewise complete in his awful and brilliant record, though not fitted into the whole. His story of the final conflict of 413–404 breaks off (in the middle of a sentence) when dealing with the year 411. So his work was left unfinished and as a whole unrevised. Yet in brilliance of description and depth of insight this history has no superior.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Thucydides is in four volumes.

[more]

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History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume III
Books 5–6
Thucydides
Harvard University Press, 1991

Classic political realism.

Thucydides of Athens was born about 471 BC. He saw the rise of Athens to greatness under the inspired leadership of Pericles. In 430, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, he caught and survived the horrible plague that he described so graphically. Later, as general in 423 he failed to save Amphipolis from the enemy and was disgraced. He tells us about this, not in volumes of self-justification, but in one sentence of his history of the war—that it befell him to be an exile for twenty years. He then lived probably on his property in Thrace, but was able to observe both sides in certain campaigns of the war, and returned to Athens after her defeat in 404. He had been composing his famous history, with its hopes and horrors, triumphs and disasters, in full detail from first-hand knowledge, along with the accounts of others.

The war was really three conflicts with one uncertain peace after the first; and Thucydides had not unified them into one account when death came sometime before 396. His history of the first conflict, 431–421, was nearly complete; Thucydides was still at work on this when the war spread to Sicily and into a conflict (415–413) likewise complete in his awful and brilliant record, though not fitted into the whole. His story of the final conflict of 413–404 breaks off (in the middle of a sentence) when dealing with the year 411. So his work was left unfinished and as a whole unrevised. Yet in brilliance of description and depth of insight this history has no superior.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Thucydides is in four volumes.

[more]

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History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume IV
Books 7–8
Thucydides
Harvard University Press, 1991

Classic political realism.

Thucydides of Athens was born about 471 BC. He saw the rise of Athens to greatness under the inspired leadership of Pericles. In 430, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, he caught and survived the horrible plague that he described so graphically. Later, as general in 423 he failed to save Amphipolis from the enemy and was disgraced. He tells us about this, not in volumes of self-justification, but in one sentence of his history of the war—that it befell him to be an exile for twenty years. He then lived probably on his property in Thrace, but was able to observe both sides in certain campaigns of the war, and returned to Athens after her defeat in 404. He had been composing his famous history, with its hopes and horrors, triumphs and disasters, in full detail from first-hand knowledge, along with the accounts of others.

The war was really three conflicts with one uncertain peace after the first; and Thucydides had not unified them into one account when death came sometime before 396. His history of the first conflict, 431–421, was nearly complete; Thucydides was still at work on this when the war spread to Sicily and into a conflict (415–413) likewise complete in his awful and brilliant record, though not fitted into the whole. His story of the final conflict of 413–404 breaks off (in the middle of a sentence) when dealing with the year 411. So his work was left unfinished and as a whole unrevised. Yet in brilliance of description and depth of insight this history has no superior.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Thucydides is in four volumes.

[more]

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History of the Wars, Volume I
Books 1–2
Procopius
Harvard University Press

Late antique military operations.

Procopius, born at Caesarea in Palestine late in the fifth century, became a lawyer. In AD 527 he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.

Procopius’ History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532–546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536–552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History—vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and the Buildings of Justinian (down to AD 558) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

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History of the Wars, Volume II
Books 3–4
Procopius
Harvard University Press

Late antique military operations.

Procopius, born at Caesarea in Palestine late in the fifth century, became a lawyer. In AD 527 he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.

Procopius’ History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532–546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536–552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History—vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and the Buildings of Justinian (down to AD 558) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

[more]

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History of the Wars, Volume III
Books 5–6.15
Procopius
Harvard University Press

Late antique military operations.

Procopius, born at Caesarea in Palestine late in the fifth century, became a lawyer. In AD 527 he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.

Procopius’ History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532–546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536–552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History—vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and the Buildings of Justinian (down to AD 558) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
History of the Wars, Volume IV
Books 6.16–7.35
Procopius
Harvard University Press

Late antique military operations.

Procopius, born at Caesarea in Palestine late in the fifth century, became a lawyer. In AD 527 he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.

Procopius’ History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532–546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536–552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History—vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and the Buildings of Justinian (down to AD 558) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
History of the Wars, Volume V
Books 7.36–8
Procopius
Harvard University Press

Late antique military operations.

Procopius, born at Caesarea in Palestine late in the fifth century, became a lawyer. In AD 527 he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.

Procopius’ History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532–546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536–552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History—vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and the Buildings of Justinian (down to AD 558) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

[more]

front cover of A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks
A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks
Stewart Gordon
University Press of New England, 2017
Stories of disasters at sea, whether about Roman triremes, the treasure fleet of the Spanish Main, or great transatlantic ocean liners, fire the imagination as little else can. From the historical sinkings of the Titanic and the Lusitania to the recent capsizing of a Mediterranean cruise ship, the study of shipwrecks also makes for a new and very different understanding of world history. A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks explores the age-old, immensely hazardous, persistently romantic, and ongoing process of moving people and goods across the seven seas. In recounting the stories of ships and the people who made and sailed them, from the earliest craft plying the ancient Nile to the Exxon Valdez, Stewart Gordon argues that the gradual integration of mainly local and separate maritime domains into fewer, larger, and more interdependent regions offers a unique perspective on world history. Gordon draws a number of provocative conclusions from his study, among them that the European “Age of Exploration” as a singular event is simply a myth: over the millennia, many cultures, east and west, have explored far-flung maritime worlds, and technologies of shipbuilding and navigation have been among the main drivers of science and exploration throughout history. In a series of compelling narratives, A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks shows that the development of institutions and technologies that made the terrifying oceans familiar and turned unknown seas into well-traveled sea-lanes matters profoundly in our modern world.
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Holy War in the Baltic and the Battle of Lyndanise 1219
Carsten Selch Jensen
Arc Humanities Press, 2024
In June 1219 Danish crusaders fought a vicious battle against local pagan warriors at the place in northern Estonia where Tallinn now lies. The battle—known then as the Battle of Lyndanise—was a narrow victory for the crusaders and eventually turned out to be a pivotal event in the national histories of both Denmark and Estonia as a milestone in the overall military conquest of the entire region by (mostly) western military powers. The main scope of this book is to present a study of this military conquest of Estonia around 1200 with a special focus on the Scandinavian involvement, enabling us to better understand the intense political, military, and religious changes that came to influence the region and its many people from the early high medieval period onwards.
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Home Front to Battlefront
An Ohio Teenager in World War II
Frank Lavin
Ohio University Press, 2016

Carl Lavin was a high school senior when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The Canton, Ohio, native was eighteen when he enlisted, a decision that would take him with the US Army from training across the United States and Britain to combat with the 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge. Home Front to Battlefront is the tale of a foot soldier who finds himself thrust into a world where he and his unit grapple with the horrors of combat, the idiocies of bureaucracy, and the oddities of life back home—all in the same day. The book is based on Carl’s personal letters, his recollections and those of the people he served beside, official military history, private papers, and more.

Home Front to Battlefront contributes the rich details of one soldier’s experience to the broader literature on World War II. Lavin’s adventures, in turn disarming and sobering, will appeal to general readers, veterans, educators, and students of the war. As a history, the book offers insight into the wartime career of a Jewish Ohioan in the military, from enlistment to training through overseas deployment. As a biography, it reflects the emotions and the role of the individual in a total war effort that is all too often thought of as a machine war in which human soldiers were merely interchangeable cogs.

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front cover of Home Front to Battlefront
Home Front to Battlefront
An Ohio Teenager in World War II
Frank Lavin
Ohio University Press, 2001

Carl Lavin was a high school senior when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The Canton, Ohio, native was eighteen when he enlisted, a decision that would take him with the US Army from training across the United States and Britain to combat with the 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge. Home Front to Battlefront is the tale of a foot soldier who finds himself thrust into a world where he and his unit grapple with the horrors of combat, the idiocies of bureaucracy, and the oddities of life back home—all in the same day. The book is based on Carl’s personal letters, his recollections and those of the people he served beside, official military history, private papers, and more.

Home Front to Battlefront contributes the rich details of one soldier’s experience to the broader literature on World War II. Lavin’s adventures, in turn disarming and sobering, will appeal to general readers, veterans, educators, and students of the war. As a history, the book offers insight into the wartime career of a Jewish Ohioan in the military, from enlistment to training through overseas deployment. As a biography, it reflects the emotions and the role of the individual in a total war effort that is all too often thought of as a machine war in which human soldiers were merely interchangeable cogs.

[more]

front cover of The Home Fronts of Iowa, 1939-1945
The Home Fronts of Iowa, 1939-1945
Lisa L. Ossian
University of Missouri Press, 2009
As Americans geared up for World War II, each state responded according to its economy and circumstances—as well as the disposition of its citizens. This book considers the war years in Iowa by looking at activity on different home fronts and analyzing the resilience of Iowans in answering the call to support the war effort.
With its location in the center of the country, far from potentially threatened coasts, Iowa was also the center of American isolationism—historically Republican and resistant to involvement in another European war. Yet Iowans were quick to step up, and Lisa Ossian draws on historical archives as well as on artifacts of popular culture to record the rhetoric and emotion of their support.
Ossian shows how Iowans quickly moved from skepticism to overwhelming enthusiasm for the war and answered the call on four fronts: farms, factories, communities, and kitchens. Iowa’s farmers faced labor and machinery shortages, yet produced record amounts of crops and animals—even at the expense of valuable topsoil. Ordnance plants turned out bombs and machine gun bullets. Meanwhile, communities supported war bond and scrap drives, while housewives coped with rationing, raised Victory gardens, and turned to home canning.
The Home Fronts of Iowa, 1939–1945 depicts real people and their concerns, showing the price paid in physical and mental exhaustion and notes the heavy toll exacted on Iowa’s sons who fell in battle. Ossian also considers the relevance of such issues as race, class, and gender—particularly the role of women on the home front and the recruitment of both women and blacks for factory work—taking into account a prevalent suspicion of ethnic groups by the state’s largely homogeneous population.
The fact that Iowans could become loyal citizen soldiers—forming an Industrial and Defense Commission even before Pearl Harbor—speaks not only to the patriotism of these sturdy midwesterners but also to the overall resilience of Americans. In unraveling how Iowans could so overwhelmingly support the war, Ossian digs deep into history to show us the power of emotion—and to help us better understand why World War II is consistently remembered as “the Good War.”
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front cover of The Horde
The Horde
How the Mongols Changed the World
Marie Favereau
Harvard University Press, 2021

Cundill Prize Finalist
A Financial Times Book of the Year
A Spectator Book of the Year
A Five Books Book of the Year


The Mongols are known for one thing: conquest. But in this first comprehensive history of the Horde, the western portion of the Mongol empire that arose after the death of Chinggis Khan, Marie Favereau takes us inside one of the most powerful engines of economic integration in world history to show that their accomplishments extended far beyond the battlefield. Central to the extraordinary commercial boom that brought distant civilizations in contact for the first time, the Horde had a unique political regime—a complex power-sharing arrangement between the khan and nobility—that rewarded skillful administrators and fostered a mobile, innovative economic order. From their capital on the lower Volga River, the Mongols influenced state structures in Russia and across the Islamic world, disseminated sophisticated theories about the natural world, and introduced new ideas of religious tolerance.

An eloquent, ambitious, and definitive portrait of an empire that has long been too little understood, The Horde challenges our assumptions that nomads are peripheral to history and makes it clear that we live in a world shaped by Mongols.

“The Mongols have been ill-served by history, the victims of an unfortunate mixture of prejudice and perplexity…The Horde flourished, in Favereau’s fresh, persuasive telling, precisely because it was not the one-trick homicidal rabble of legend.”
Wall Street Journal

“Fascinating…The Mongols were a sophisticated people with an impressive talent for government and a sensitive relationship with the natural world…An impressively researched and intelligently reasoned book.”
The Times

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front cover of The Horrible Peace
The Horrible Peace
British Veterans and the End of the Napoleonic Wars
Evan Wilson
University of Massachusetts Press, 2023

Few battles in world history provide a cleaner dividing line than Waterloo: before, there was Napoleon; after, there was the Pax Britannica. While Waterloo marked France’s defeat and Britain’s ascendance as an imperial power, the war was far from over for many soldiers and sailors, who were forced to contend with the lasting effects of battlefield trauma, the realities of an impossibly tight labor market, and growing social unrest. The Horrible Peace details a story of distress and discontent, of victory complicated by volcanism, and of the challenges facing Britain at the beginning of its victorious century.

Examining the process of demobilization and its consequences for British society, Evan Wilson draws on archival research and veterans’ memoirs to tell the story of this period through the experiences of veterans who struggled to reintegrate and soldiers and sailors who remained in service as Britain attempted to defend and expand the empire. Veterans were indeed central to Britain’s experience of peace, as they took to the streets to protest the government’s indifference to widespread unemployment and misery. The fighting did not stop at Waterloo.

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front cover of How to Shoot the Longbow
How to Shoot the Longbow
A Guide from Historical and Applied Sources
Hugh D. H. Soar
Westholme Publishing, 2015
A Leading Expert on Traditional Archery Offers Insight Into How the Longbow Was Drawn from Medieval Sources to Modern Recreations
“Soar’s book [The Crooked Stick] is indispensible.”—Bernard Cornwell, New York Times bestselling author
Relying on more than fifty years’ experience in archery, historian Hugh D. H. Soar reflects on how the longbow was drawn and shot across the centuries through examining the design of the bow and early literature about the bow, combined with his and his colleagues’ applied knowledge using replica bows. No complete medieval longbow has survived, but those found aboard the Tudor warship Mary Rose provide the best archaeological evidence to the possible construction of the medieval bow. Contemporary treatises written about the proper manner of shooting the bow, together with the resurgence in interest and construction of replica bows beginning in the late sixteenth century that form part of the author’s collection provide the basis for this work. How to Shoot the Longbow: A Guide from Historical and Applied Sources is a fascinating and practical look at the use of a legendary invention.
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front cover of Hypersonic Missile Nonproliferation
Hypersonic Missile Nonproliferation
Hindering the Spread of a New Class of Weapons
Richard H. Speier
RAND Corporation, 2017
This report examines the implications of the proliferation of hypersonic missiles and possible measures to hinder it. This report first explores some of the potential strategic implications of the proliferation of hypersonic missile technology beyond the three major powers, the United States, Russia, and China. It then examines the process of such proliferation. And finally, it discusses possible means for hindering such proliferation.
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