Modern Military

Science and violence converge in modern warfare. While the finest minds of the 20th century have improved human life, they have also produced human injury. They engineered radar, developed electronic computers, and helped mass produce penicillin all in the context of military mobilization. Scientists also developed chemical weapons, atomic bombs, and psychological warfare strategies. Rational Fog explores the quandary of scientific and technological productivity in an era of perpetual war.

In Maritime Power and the Struggle for Freedom, Peter Padfield presents a superb description and analysis of naval campaigns conducted between 1788 and 1851 that shaped the modern world. Winner of the Mountbatten Maritime Prize, this is the second of Padfield's masterful trilogy that traces the impact of naval power on modern history, and the means by which it has been enacted.

Love, Norm is a multifaceted retelling of inspirational profiles of famous Jewish fighters from across history, and it is also the singular story of how one man dug into his own past and found pieces to preserve his Jewish identity. Together, empathetically channeled through his heartfelt letters and remembrances, Love, Norm shares a collected wisdom with the next generation.

Step into a world of shadow diplomacy, double agents, and nuclear tension in this riveting exploration of the Cold War era. In The Cold War Files, acclaimed historian and bestselling author Isabella Hayes delivers a powerful narrative of one of the most dangerous and defining periods in modern history. From the chilling silence of spy tunnels beneath Berlin to the nerve-wracking hours of the Cuban Missile Crisis, this audiobook brings to life the hidden battles, betrayals, and global maneuverings that shaped the post-war world.

Considering herself unsuitable for any other contribution to the war effort, Monica Dickens opts for nursing, imagining herself gliding through the wards, serene in a pure white halo cap. On enrolment, however, she is promptly stripped of all illusions. Intelligent and headstrong, Monica struggles to submit to the iron rule of the Matron and toils over the mountains of menial work that are a trainee's lot. But there are friends among the staff and patients, night-time escapades to dances with dashing army men and her secret writing project to keep her going.

In the dog days of August 2008, a column of Russian tanks and troops rolled across the Republic of Georgia’s northern border and into South Ossetia, sparking a war that was over almost before it began. The war, while not insignificant, lasted all of five days. The number of casualties did not exceed one thousand, the threshold most political scientists use to classify a war, although thousands of Georgians were displaced. By historical comparison, when Soviet tanks entered Hungary in 1956 and Afghanistan in 1979-89, the fatalities totaled 2,500 and roughly 14,000 respectively.

The Middle Ages witnessed almost constant warfare in Europe, so mercenaries were a constant on the battlefield, but the 15th century also saw the rise of mercenary usage by the increasingly wealthy aristocracy. At the time, England and France existed in smaller versions than in the modern age, while the Spanish had unified into a few large kingdoms and were slowly pushing the Moors off the Iberian Peninsula. Norway and Hungary were larger than they are now, but otherwise, most of Europe was a patchwork quilt of small, constantly warring states.

Midway was a naval battle like no other. It was fought thousands of miles from land, by dozens of planes over distances of hundreds of miles. It saw four massive Japanese aircraft carriers pitted against three similarly huge American carriers in a contest for domination of the Pacific. The battle is the story of the young Japanese empire seeking to challenge the established industrial power of America.

Making Makers presents a comprehensive history of a seminal work of scholarship which has exerted a persistent attraction for scholars of war and strategy: Makers of Modern Strategy. It reveals the processes by which scholars conceived and devised the book, considering both successful and failed attempts to make and remake the work across the twentieth century, and illuminating its impact and legacy.

Max Hastings grew up with romantic dreams of a life amongst warriors. But after his failure as a parachute soldier in Cyprus in 1963, he became a journalist instead. Before he was thirty he had reported conflicts in Northern Ireland, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Middle East, Cyprus, Rhodesia, India and a string of other trouble spots. His final effort was as a war correspondent during the Falklands War. Going to the Wars is a story of his experiences reporting from these battlefields. It is also the story of a self-confessed coward: a writer with heroic ambitions.

This is a personal journey of faith, heritage, race, and family wrapped around the grace of God through the eyes and honest thoughts of a modern Black man. Arnold argues for African Americans to embrace Confederate heritage to capture the enriched Black history of the Civil War era. He bestows dignity and honor on his Confederate ancestor and challenges the traditional thoughts of modern African Americans. Arnold rests in his faith as the uniting force that reconciles our colorful past to our bright future.

The conduct of warfare is constantly shaped by new forces that create complexities in the battlespace for military operations. As the nature of how and where wars are fought changes, new challenges to the application of the extant body of international law that regulates armed conflicts arise. This inaugural volume of the Lieber Studies series seeks to address several issues in the confluence of law and armed conflict, with the primary goal of providing the listener with both academic and practitioner perspectives.

Between 1817 and 1898, New York City evolved from a vital Atlantic port of trade to the center of American commerce and culture. Although this important urban transformation is well documented, the critical role of select Union soldiers turned New York engineers has, until now, remained largely unexplored.

War. World War. This is the story of the first world war, the great war. The then-biggest war to shake the globe. It is the story of the leaders, technological advancements, politics, and people that fueled a four-year conflict between countries and empires from every continent on the globe. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand sparked an ultimatum that would ignite the war. Nearly 11 million soldiers and seven million civilian lives were lost on both sides of the battle.

The Ottoman Empire lasted more than six centuries. Its soldiers fought, died, and conquered lands on three different continents, making it one of the few stable multi-ethnic empires in history - and likely one of the last. Thus, it's somewhat inevitable that the history of its dissolution is at the heart of complex geopolitical disputes, as well as sectarian tensions that are still key to understanding the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans.

Warrior Ways focuses on the lore produced by modern American warriors, illuminating the ways in which members of the armed services creatively express the complex experience of military life. In short, lively essays, contributors to the volume, all of whom have close personal or professional relationships to the military, examine battlefield talismans, personal narrative (storytelling), “Jody calls” (marching and running cadences), slang, homophobia and transgressive humor, music, and photography, among other cultural expressions.

In today’s modern world, every political regime - even the most authoritarian or repressive - describes itself as democracy or a democratic people’s republic. The concept of rule by the people and on behalf of the people has come to be accepted as the norm. Very few would overtly espouse the cause of dictatorship, absolute monarchy, or oligarchy as the most desirable political system upon which to base the government of any country.

A Modern Military Mother - Tales from the Domestic Frontline is about the life, reflections and rants of military wife Clare Macnaughton. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad and sometimes crazy, this is a quick and easy listen, with Clare herself reading her account of life on the domestic frontline. Meet ‘Hagar’, the Chinook-flying husband frequently on secret missions in ‘Afghan’, and the children, a son, ‘The Grenade’, and, a daughter, ‘The Menace’.

This is a raw and sincere play-by-play account of life as a teenager in war-torn Bosnia from 1992-1996. It is based on a child's diary. The beginning gives you snippets of a typical innocent childhood in pre-war Sarajevo. The book then progresses to years of her family's fight to survive and endure, all the while providing us with the thoughts, emotions, and experiences of a typical teenage girl caught in the middle of it all.

Project Spinnaker was a joint Canada-US defense project conceived in the waning days of the Cold War. Spinnaker’s secret purpose was to reassert Canada’s Arctic sovereignty by providing the capability to monitor submarine traffic in Canadian Arctic waters. The star of Project Spinnaker was Theseus - a massive, Canadian-made, autonomous underwater vehicle designed for a single purpose: laying fiber-optic cable in ice-covered waters.