A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY19 start with C start with C
The Definitive Account of the Battle of the Marne, One of World War I's Most Important Events
"A masterly account of the First World War in the West."—John Keegan
"A distinguished piece of historical writing."—Journal of Modern History
"Admirable... clear and interesting."—Foreign Affairs
"Direct and clear... it lays bare a most complicated course of events so that even the layman can follow."—New Republic
Named as One of The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century
With diplomacy unraveling during the summer of 1914, Germany swept into Belgium during the first week of August in an audacious attempt to catch France and England off guard. First contemplated after the Franco-Prussian War, the Schlieffen Plan was designed to keep Germany from fighting on two fronts. With a quick and decisive victory over France and its allies to the west, Germany could then confront Russia to the east. Despite the surprise of Germany's initial advance, the plan ultimately failed because it required much more mobile troops than were available at the time - something that would have to await the mechanized blitzkrieg of World War II—allowing France and British Expeditionary Forces to establish a tenacious defense. What followed was a stalemate along the Marne River and the beginning of four long years of destructive trench warfare that would only be lifted by a joint French, British, and American offensive across this same river plain in 1918. In The Campaign of the Marne, the entire genesis of the Schlieffen Plan, its modification, implementation, and the complex series of grueling battles that followed is laid out with the intent to make the entire episode comprehensible to the general reader. Hailed as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of the twentieth century by eminent military historian John Keegan, this is the first time the book has been available since its original publication in 1935.
Public consciousness of the threat of nuclear war is rising steadily. Responses to the nuclear dilemma are conflicting and often confusing. Never have we been more in need of information and perspective, for if we wish to avoid war we must understand it.
Michael Howard offers an analysis of our present predicament by discussing those issues that cause war and make peace. His book includes an examination of nuclear strategy today, views of the past about the conduct of international relations, ethics, modes of defense, and studies of military thinkers and leaders. The Causes of Wars illuminates the interrelationship between men and ideas, between war and other social forces, and between our present situation and its roots in the past.
A History of the Finest and Most Flamboyant Cavalry Arm of the Civil War
While Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia prosecuted the war in the East for the Confederacy, the Army of Tennessee fought in the West, ranging over a tremendous expanse during the course of the Civil War, from southern Ohio and eastern Kentucky all the way to Georgia and the Carolinas. Unlike Lee’s army, however, the Army of Tennessee suffered at the hands of a series of uninspired commanders and had few impressive victories. It did have, however, arguably the best cavalry of any army in the war in terms of numbers and leadership. Led by some of the most colorful officers of the Civil War—the brilliant, passionate Nathan Bedford Forrest, the flamboyant but erratic John Hunt Morgan, and the quietly competent “Fightin’ Joe” Wheeler—and grabbing headlines for daring raids, such as Morgan’s foray into Ohio, the mounted forces of the Army of Tennessee developed a strategy of a highly mobile fighting unit that could be deployed rapidly in strength to strike deep behind enemy lines and maneuver at a moment’s notice during a battle, tactics that were to have the most impact on military operations in the future.
As distinguished historian Edward G. Longacre chronicles in Cavalry of the Heartland: The Mounted Forces of the Army of Tennessee, the army’s top generals failed to recognize the battle-winning potential of their cavalry and instead sent them off on sideshow operations rather than deploying them consistently to assist the main body’s efforts. Based on a wide array of research materials, Cavalry of the Heartland is the only book-length study of the strategy and tactics of the Army of Tennessee’s mounted forces from its inception in the spring of 1861 to its final bow at Bentonville, North Carolina, four years later. Throughout, numerous campaigns and battles are described in full detail, including Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro (Stones River), Tullahoma, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Nashville, and the Carolinas.
Why do weak states resist threats of force from the United States, especially when history shows that this superpower carries out its ultimatums? Cheap Threats upends conventional notions of power politics and challenges assumptions about the use of compellent military threats in international politics.
Drawing on an original dataset of US compellence from 1945 to 2007 and four in-depth case studies—the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 2011 confrontation with Libya, and the 1991 and 2003 showdowns with Iraq—Dianne Pfundstein Chamberlain finds that US compellent threats often fail because threatening and using force became comparatively “cheap” for the United States after the Cold War. Becoming the world’s only superpower and adopting a new light-footprint model of war, which relied heavily on airpower and now drones, have reduced the political, economic, and human costs that US policymakers face when they go to war. Paradoxically, this lower-cost model of war has cheapened US threats and fails to signal to opponents that the United States is resolved to bear the high costs of a protracted conflict. The result: small states gamble, often unwisely, that the United States will move on to a new target before achieving its goals.
Cheap Threats resets the bar for scholars and planners grappling with questions of state resolve, hegemonic stability, effective coercion, and other issues pertinent in this new era of US warfighting and diplomacy.
Cold War Rhetoric is the first book in over twenty years to bring a sustained rhetorical critique to bear on central texts of the Cold War. The rhetorical texts that are the subject of this book include speeches by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, the Murrow- McCarthy confrontation on CBS, the speeches and writings of peace advocates, and the recurring theme of unAmericanism as it has been expressed in various media throughout the Cold War years. Each of the authors brings to his texts a particular approach to rhetorical criticism—strategic, metaphorical, or ideological. Each provides an introductory chapter on methodology that explains the assumptions and strengths of their particular approach.
As the costs of a preemptive foreign policy in Iraq have become clear, strategies such as containment and deterrence have been gaining currency among policy makers. This comprehensive book offers an agenda for the contemporary practice of deterrence—especially as it applies to nuclear weapons—in an increasingly heterogeneous global and political setting.
Moving beyond the precepts of traditional deterrence theory, this groundbreaking volume offers insights for the use of deterrence in the modern world, where policy makers may encounter irrational actors, failed states, religious zeal, ambiguous power relationships, and other situations where the traditional rules of statecraft do not apply. A distinguished group of contributors here examines issues such as deterrence among the Great Powers; the problems of regional and nonstate actors; and actors armed with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Complex Deterrence will be a valuable resource for anyone facing the considerable challenge of fostering security and peace in the twenty-first century.
As part of a new series, The Western Theater in the Civil War, this volume reflects the premise that truly understanding the outcome of the war can only be gained through greater knowledge of the western campaigns and the generals who waged them. The essays gathered here—such as Roland’s reassessment of Albert Sidney Johnston, Williams’s examination of P. G. T. Beauregard’s role at Shiloh, Bearss’s look at Bedford Forrest’s great tactical victory at Brice’s Cross Roads, and Vandiver’s analysis of John Bell Hood’s use of logistics—are admirable contributions to this goal. Significantly, in addition to highlighting the Western Theater’s best-known generals, this volume also includes essays on two of its less familiar ones, Patton Anderson and Daniel C. Govan, thus rescuing these fascinating figures from undeserved oblivion.
Future volumes of Confederate Generals in the Western Theater will showcase the latest scholarship with new essays written expressly for the series. By gathering classic earlier work between one set of covers, this opening foray sets a high standard indeed.
Many students of the Civil War have concluded that the overstudied conflict in the Eastern Theater resulted only in an unwinnable stalemate. For that reason they are now looking to the West for more precise explanations of the Confederates’ failure to win independence. To editors Lawrence Hewitt and Arthur Bergeron, the answers lie with the generals who waged a calamitous war that stretched across nine states and left a long trail of bloody battlefields, surrendered fortresses, burned cities, wrecked infrastructure, and, ultimately, a lost cause.
For this book, which follows an earlier volume of previously published essays, Hewitt and Bergeron have enlisted ten gifted historians—among them James M. Prichard, Terrence J. Winschel, Craig Symonds, and Stephen Davis—to produce original essays, based on the latest scholarship, that examine the careers and missteps of several of the Western Theater’s key Rebel commanders. Among the important topics covered are George B. Crittenden’s declining fortunes in the Confederate ranks, Earl Van Dorn’s limited prewar military experience and its effect on his performance in the Baton Rouge Campaign of 1862, Joseph Johnston’s role in the fall of Vicksburg, and how James Longstreet and Braxton Bragg’s failure to secure Chattanooga paved the way for the Federals’ push into Georgia.
Confederate Generals in the Western Theater will ultimately comprise several volumes that promise a host of provocative new insights into not only the South’s ill-fated campaigns in the West but also the eventual outcome of the larger conflict.
Lawrence Lee Hewitt is professor of history emeritus at Southeastern Louisiana University. A recipient of SLU’s President’s Award for Excellence in Research and the Charles L. Dufour Award for outstanding achievements in preserving the heritage of the American Civil War, he is a former managing editor of North & South. His publications include Port Hudson: Confederate Bastion on the Mississippi.
Arthur W. Bergeron Jr. is a reference historian with the United States Army Military History Institute and a past president of the Louisiana Historical Association. Among his earlier books are Confederate Mobile and A Thrilling Narrative: The Memoir of a Southern Unionist.
Like its predecessors, the fourth and final volume of Confederate Generals in the Western Theater makes a generous contribution to the historiography of a poorly understood theater of war, presenting new interpretations of major figures while bringing to light both the triumphs and failures of lesser-known generals. Its cutting-edge scholarship offers further grounding for the editors’ contention that the South’s bid for independence was lost on its western battlefields and that the responsibility for those defeats lay more with the Confederate generals than with their opponents.
Among the ten chapters, this collection includes C. David Dalton on the death of Felix Zollicoffer at the Battle of Mill Springs in Kentucky; Roger Durham on Robert E. Lee’s leadership early in the war of the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida; Brian S. Wills on Abraham Buford’s behind-the-scenes contributions to Nathan Bedford Forrest’s famous exploits; the late Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes Jr. on the achievements and failings of Gideon J. Pillow; James M. Prichard on John Hunt Morgan and his “last Kentucky raid”; and Keith S. Bohannon on Edward C. Walthall, a Virginia lawyer who overcame his lack of prior military experience to become one of the ablest generals in any of the war’s theaters. Some essays offer full biographies of their subjects; others focus on a single campaign. Along with the previous volumes, this exemplary collection encourages an important rethinking of the course of the Civil War and its ultimate outcome.
Emory Upton (1839–1881) was thrust into the Civil War immediately upon graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in May of 1861. He was wounded three times during the war. He participated in nearly every major battle in the Eastern Theater including Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania, where he led a prominent attack on entrenched Confederate positions—a signal of Upton’s brilliance as an officer and of his military creativity that foreshadowed his later work in revising the Army’s tactics. Upton was mustered out of service in 1866 and later named commandant of cadets at West Point, a position that carved a path for Upton to focus more on Army tactics and reforms.
Until now, the only lenses through which scholars could study Upton were two biographies published nearly a century apart but practically identical in scope and treatment. The two-volume Correspondence of Major General Emory Upton follows Upton through his enrollment at West Point to his extensive Army activities following the Civil War and contains the bulk of his wartime correspondence. Volume one, with Upton’s Civil War correspondence encompasses both larger battle details and day-to-day activities in the life of a soldier. His letters reveal a mercurial individual: a humorous person used to suffering and rejoicing, who could be flawed and brilliant, vain and humble.
These selected letters and reports, expertly annotated and gathered from repositories across the country, present a more complex, human Emory Upton. He is both the “clean, pure, and spotless” individual of biographies and the ambitious, yet flawed Army officer obsessed with his career. These volumes explore his trials and frustrations as well as his triumphs.
Salvatore G. Cilella Jr., now retired, was president of the Atlanta Historical Society. He is the author of Upton’s Regulars: The 121st New York Infantry in the American Civil War and Fund Raising for Small Museums in Good Times and Bad.
Emory Upton (1839–1881) was thrust into the Civil War immediately upon graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in May of 1861. He was wounded three times during the war. He participated in nearly ever major battle in the Eastern Theater including Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania, where he led a prominent attack on entrenched Confederate positions—a signal of Upton’s brilliance as an officer and of his military creativity that foreshadowed his later work in revising the Army’s tactics. Upton was mustered out of service in 1866 and later named commandant of cadets at West Point, a position that carved a path for Upton to focus more on Army tactics and reforms.
Until now, the only lenses through which scholars could study Upton were two biographies published nearly a century apart but practically identical in scope and treatment of Upton. The two-volume Correspondence of Major General Emory Upton follows Upton through his enrollment at West Point to his extensive Army activities following the Civil War and contains the bulk of Emory Upton’s wartime correspondence. Volume two collects Upton’s foreign correspondence and observations on military tactics and Army reform. At the behest of U.S. Army Commanding General William T. Sherman, Upton was sent on a tour to study the armies of Asia and Europe, and more specifically the German army after conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War. This tour resulted in the publication of his monumental The Armies of Europe and Asia, which warned that the U.S. Army was woefully below the standards of European nations, and between Upton’s death in 1881 and the turn of the twentieth century, military policy was fiercely debated in both the military and popular press. Upton’s ideas on reform were often central to the arguments, and his letters and writings provoked a wide range of discussion over military and, inevitably, civilian issues.
These selected letters and reports, expertly annotated and gathered from repositories across the country, present a more complex, human Emory Upton. He is both the “clean, pure, and spotless” individual of Michie’s biographies and the ambitious, yet flawed Army officer obsessed with his career. These volumes explore his trials and frustrations as well as his triumphs.
Salvatore G. Cilella, now retired, was president of the Atlanta Historical Society. He is the author of Upton’s Regulars: The 121st New York Infantry in the American Civil War and Fund Raising for Small Museums in Good Times and Bad.
Coup d’État astonished readers when it first appeared in 1968 because it showed, step by step, how governments could be overthrown. Translated into sixteen languages, it has inspired anti-coup precautions by regimes around the world. In addition to these detailed instructions, Edward Luttwak’s revised handbook offers an altogether new way of looking at political power—one that considers, for example, the vulnerability to coups of even the most stable democracies in the event of prolonged economic distress.
The world has changed dramatically in the past half century, but not the essence of the coup d’état. It still requires the secret recruitment of military officers who command the loyalty of units well placed to seize important headquarters and key hubs in the capital city. The support of the armed forces as a whole is needed only in the aftermath, to avoid countercoups. And mass support is largely irrelevant, although passive acceptance is essential. To ensure it, violence must be kept to a minimum. The ideal coup is swift and bloodless. Very violent coups rarely succeed, and if they trigger a bloody civil war they fail utterly.
Luttwak identifies conditions that make countries vulnerable to a coup, and he outlines the necessary stages of planning, from recruitment of coconspirators to postcoup promises of progress and stability. But much more broadly, his investigation of coups—updated for the twenty-first century—uncovers important truths about the nature of political power.
The True Story of an Impossible Mission During the Liberation of Italy
"World War II history writing at its best.” —Dallas Morning News
“Schultz convey stories of individual courage and fear. He presents the Rapido crossing as part of an experience that changed lives utterly.” —Publishers Weekly
“Well written, superbly documented and containing many helpful illustrations and maps, this fine book will appeal to military history enthusiasts of all ages.” —Read@MPL (Milwaukee Public Library)
“Duane Schultz has written another powerful account of the Second World War.” —Daily News, Iron Mountain, Michigan
“A fast-paced, dramatic account of World War II combat.”—Global War StudiesThe Rapido River was the last natural barrier between General Mark W. Clark’s Fifth U.S. Army and Rome. Ignoring intelligence reports that the Germans had significant forces protecting the opposite side of the river, Clark ordered the 36th Division to make a nighttime crossing on January 20, 1944. The division, already coming through some of the heaviest fighting in Italy, knew they could not succeed: they had to cross a fast-flowing river at night in bitter cold and face one of the strongest, most formidable German defensive lines in Europe, full of minefields, veteran troops, and withering artillery and mortar fire. Once in the water, men in full field gear were borne away by the current or vanished in massive explosions. The few who managed to reach the other side found themselves pinned down unable to move. Soldiers died by the hundreds, yet the stunned survivors who fell back to the launch site were ordered to attack again, this time in daylight. Of the 4,000 men who attempted the crossing, more than half did not return. General Clark never accepted blame for ordering the assault despite the numerous warnings he received from both British and American commanders. Although they were decimated, the division went on to lead a key surprise attack that opened Rome to Allied forces, and ultimately fought in France, where they had the distinction of capturing Hermann Goering and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.
In Crossing the Rapido: A Tragedy of World War II, Duane Schultz follows the action at the ground level using survivors’ interviews and army documents to tell the story of one division’s sacrifice in war. In doing so, he demonstrates that the American soldier will face the greatest odds without protest, but expects those in command to share any failure or success.“Those of us who were present will always remember the men of the 36th, climbing silently in the night behind the enemy, armed with little but their American competence and a personal faith in their quiet, retiring general who had never let them down. If Generals Alexander and Clark received the key to the city of Rome, it was General Walker who turned the key and handed it to them.” —Eric Sevareid, reporting from Italy during World War II
“I have never seen so many dead as on that day.” —John Huston, Academy Award winning director during his wartime filming of The Battle of San Pietro
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