Fighting Different Wars

Fighting Different Wars PDF

Author: Janet S. K. Watson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-02-19

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 9780521831536

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The popular idea of the First World War is a story of disillusionment and pointless loss. This vision, however, dates from well after the Armistice. In this 2004 book Janet Watson separates out wartime from retrospective accounts and contrasts war as lived experience - for soldiers, women and non-combatants - with war as memory, comparing men's and women's responses and tracing the re-creation of the war experience in later writings. Using a wealth of published and unpublished wartime and retrospective texts, Watson contends that participants tended to construct their experience - lived and remembered - as either work or service. In fact, far from having a united front, many active participants were in fact 'fighting different wars', and this process only continued in the decades following peace. Fighting Different Wars is an interesting, richly textured and multi-layered book which will be compelling reading for all those interested in the First World War.

Fighting the Great War

Fighting the Great War PDF

Author: Michael S. NEIBERG

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0674041399

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Michael Neiberg offers a concise history based on the latest research and insights into the soldiers, commanders, battles, and legacies of the Great War.

War: How Conflict Shaped Us

War: How Conflict Shaped Us PDF

Author: Margaret MacMillan

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1984856146

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Is peace an aberration? The New York Times bestselling author of Paris 1919 offers a provocative view of war as an essential component of humanity. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Margaret MacMillan has produced another seminal work. . . . She is right that we must, more than ever, think about war. And she has shown us how in this brilliant, elegantly written book.”—H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World The instinct to fight may be innate in human nature, but war—organized violence—comes with organized society. War has shaped humanity’s history, its social and political institutions, its values and ideas. Our very language, our public spaces, our private memories, and some of our greatest cultural treasures reflect the glory and the misery of war. War is an uncomfortable and challenging subject not least because it brings out both the vilest and the noblest aspects of humanity. Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. War: How Conflict Shaped Us explores such much-debated and controversial questions as: When did war first start? Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? Is war ever within our control? Drawing on lessons from wars throughout the past, from classical history to the present day, MacMillan reveals the many faces of war—the way it has determined our past, our future, our views of the world, and our very conception of ourselves.

How Wars End

How Wars End PDF

Author: Gideon Rose

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-12-20

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1416590552

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The first comprehensive treatment of how the United States has handled the final stages of its conflicts-from World War I to Iraq-spoiled repeatedly by leaders' failures to plan clearly for what to do when the guns fall silent. Concerned with not repeating past errors, our leaders miscalculate and prolong the conflict or invite unwelcome results. In his penetrating analysis of past, present, and future wars, Rose suggests how to break this cycle.

On Combat

On Combat PDF

Author: Dave Grossman

Publisher: Ppct Research Publications

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13:

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Looks at the effect of deadly battle on the body and mind and offers new research findings to help prevent lasting adverse effects.

Democracies at War

Democracies at War PDF

Author: Dan Reiter

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-07-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9781400824458

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Why do democracies win wars? This is a critical question in the study of international relations, as a traditional view--expressed most famously by Alexis de Tocqueville--has been that democracies are inferior in crafting foreign policy and fighting wars. In Democracies at War, the first major study of its kind, Dan Reiter and Allan Stam come to a very different conclusion. Democracies tend to win the wars they fight--specifically, about eighty percent of the time. Complementing their wide-ranging case-study analysis, the authors apply innovative statistical tests and new hypotheses. In unusually clear prose, they pinpoint two reasons for democracies' success at war. First, as elected leaders understand that losing a war can spell domestic political backlash, democracies start only those wars they are likely to win. Secondly, the emphasis on individuality within democratic societies means that their soldiers fight with greater initiative and superior leadership. Surprisingly, Reiter and Stam find that it is neither economic muscle nor bandwagoning between democratic powers that enables democracies to win wars. They also show that, given societal consent, democracies are willing to initiate wars of empire or genocide. On the whole, they find, democracies' dependence on public consent makes for more, rather than less, effective foreign policy. Taking a fresh approach to a question that has long merited such a study, this book yields crucial insights on security policy, the causes of war, and the interplay between domestic politics and international relations.

War without Mercy

War without Mercy PDF

Author: John Dower

Publisher: Pantheon

Published: 2012-03-28

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0307816141

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WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • AN AMERICAN BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A monumental history that has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most original and important books to be written about the war between Japan and the United States.” In this monumental history, Professor John Dower reveals a hidden, explosive dimension of the Pacific War—race—while writing what John Toland has called “a landmark book ... a powerful, moving, and evenhanded history that is sorely needed in both America and Japan.” Drawing on American and Japanese songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret reports, and a wealth of other documents of the time, Dower opens up a whole new way of looking at that bitter struggle of four and a half decades ago and its ramifications in our lives today. As Edwin O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, has pointed out, this book offers “a lesson that the postwar generations need most ... with eloquence, crushing detail, and power.”

What Every Person Should Know About War

What Every Person Should Know About War PDF

Author: Chris Hedges

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1416583149

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Acclaimed New York Times journalist and author Chris Hedges offers a critical -- and fascinating -- lesson in the dangerous realities of our age: a stark look at the effects of war on combatants. Utterly lacking in rhetoric or dogma, this manual relies instead on bare fact, frank description, and a spare question-and-answer format. Hedges allows U.S. military documentation of the brutalizing physical and psychological consequences of combat to speak for itself. Hedges poses dozens of questions that young soldiers might ask about combat, and then answers them by quoting from medical and psychological studies. • What are my chances of being wounded or killed if we go to war? • What does it feel like to get shot? • What do artillery shells do to you? • What is the most painful way to get wounded? • Will I be afraid? • What could happen to me in a nuclear attack? • What does it feel like to kill someone? • Can I withstand torture? • What are the long-term consequences of combat stress? • What will happen to my body after I die? This profound and devastating portrayal of the horrors to which we subject our armed forces stands as a ringing indictment of the glorification of war and the concealment of its barbarity.