Union History

In the predawn darkness of June 22, 1941, three million men waited along a front stretching from the Baltic coast of Poland to the Balkans. Ahead of them lay the Soviet Union, its border guarded by millions of Red Army troops. This massive gathering of Wehrmacht soldiers from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and his allied states stood poised to carry out Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's surprise attack against the country of his putative ally, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Zerstört, geteilt, geeint, zwischen Taumel und Triumph: Die Geschichte Europas wie Timothy Garton Ash sie erlebt hat – als Historiker, Kommentator und Zeitzeuge. Timothy Garton Ash ist leidenschaftlicher Europäer. Schon vor 1989 wollte er sich nicht mit der Teilung des Kontinents abfinden, bis zuletzt kämpfte er gegen den Brexit. Nun schreibt er seine ganz persönliche Geschichte Europas, die 1945 mit der Stationierung seines Vaters als Besatzungssoldat in Deutschland beginnt.

In this examination of Union and Confederate foreign relations during the Civil War, from both European and American perspectives, Howard Jones demonstrates that the consequences of the conflict between North and South reached far beyond American soil.

This audiobook is the first to offer a concise, accessible overview of the evolution of the Soviet Union as a multiethnic empire. It reflects on how the Soviet Union was home to many ethnic minorities, and how their fates, and that of the USSR itself, were bound to the question of how the Soviet state responded variously throughout its existence to the fundamental question of ethnic difference across its vast and diverse territory. The audiobook then examines how the Soviet collapse in 1991 fractured the Union along markedly national lines.

Already infamous for the arbitrary, paranoid persecution of its own citizens throughout much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union - as is revealed in John Koeher’s revelatory, eye-opening exposé - also waged a vicious espionage campaign against the Catholic Church and its followers. From the persecution of local priests to an assassination order against Pope John Paul II, the KGB viewed Catholicism as a threat to stability in Eastern Europe and treated the church as an enemy of the State. Lifetime journalist and former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer John Koehler has written the definitive book on this startling history.

The Cold War is usually thought of in terms of fear, potential nuclear war, and espionage. While these were elements of the years between the end of World War II and the 1990s, the competition between the US and the USSR had some real benefits. Perhaps, the best and most impressive accomplishments during this time resulted from the Space Race.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of "imitation democracy," marked by "a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule." How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future? These questions animate Dmitrii Furman's Imitation Democracy, a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power.

Kaum einer kennt Russland besser als Michael Thumann, der seit über 25 Jahren aus Osteuropa für die ZEIT berichtet. Er legt nun ein atemberaubend geschriebenes Buch vor, das Russlands Absturz in eine zunehmend totalitäre Diktatur und den Weg in Putins imperialistischen Krieg aus nächster Nähe nachzeichnet. Das Motiv des Diktators und seiner Getreuen: Revanche zu nehmen für die demokratische Öffnung nach 1991 und die vermeintliche Demütigung durch den Westen. Putins Herrschaft radikalisiert sich weiter. Es ist das bedrohlichste Regime der Welt.

This fun quiz book, complete with images, is a tribute to the first 45 presidents of the United States of America. From George Washington to Donald Trump, this book is packed with interesting trivia tidbits and lots of images! From simple questions in the front to lesser known facts in the back, this book will test your knowledge while learning little known facts and trivia about the leaders who have shaped the United States of America. Play on your own, or enjoy it with family and friends! Have fun and enjoy! Each question is worth one point unless otherwise noted. Notice: The Amazon "Look...

This book is an extraordinary day-to-day documentary of the Civil War's most infamous Confederate prison, Camp Sumter, better known as Andersonville.

Russia is famous for its vodka, and its culture of extreme intoxication. But just as vodka is central to the lives of many Russians, it is also central to understanding Russian history and politics. In Vodka Politics, Mark Lawrence Schrad argues that debilitating societal alcoholism is not hard-wired into Russians' genetic code, but rather their autocratic political system, which has long wielded vodka as a tool of statecraft. Through a series of historical investigations stretching from Ivan the Terrible through Vladimir Putin, Vodka Politics presents the secret history of the Russian state itself.

During the American Civil War, he served the Union for most of the war as a colonel and on February 14, 1865 was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a brevet brigadier general of volunteers to rank from January 23, 1865. Afterwards, he unsuccessfully ran for the governorship of Indiana but was later elected to the U.S. Senate by the Indiana legislature.

After decades of the Cold War and renewed tensions, in the wake of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, cooperation between the United States and Russia seems impossible to imagine - and yet, as Douglas Smith reveals, it has a forgotten but astonishing historical precedent. In 1921, facing one of the worst famines in history, the new Soviet government under Vladimir Lenin invited the American Relief Administration, Herbert Hoover’s brainchild, to save communist Russia from ruin.

Today the Space Race is widely viewed poignantly and fondly as a race to the Moon that culminated with Apollo 11 “winning” the Race for the United States. In fact, it encompassed a much broader range of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States that affected everything from military technology to successfully launching satellites that could land on Mars or orbit other planets in the Solar System.

The Cold War drove military innovation and none more than the need to spy on Soviet Bloc countries in the 1950s. The best way to spy other than tap phones and have agents on the ground was from the air. For this several cutting edge aircraft were designed and built by the legendary Kelly Johnson and Lockheed Skunk works – which pushed the boundaries of technology. At the same time a secret airbase to test these revolutionary aircraft in the form of Area 51 came into being. Follow the exciting true story of some very famous aircraft that would fly faster and higher than anything seen ...

The 17th century was marked by multiple pro-democratic revolutions exploding in both hemispheres. In Europe and its neighbors to the east, border-changing wars were fought incessantly. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the underlying premises of political, governmental and social structures within several European and Asian states were shaken to the core after centuries of royalty and one-family rule. By the onset of World War I, royal families began to experience a long, slow decline, with some quietly fading into the status of national symbols and others experiencing political overthrow. Some were horrified by the suddenness of a changing public, while others barely noticed.

The Battle of New Market in the Shenandoah Valley suffers from no lack of drama, interest, or importance. The ramifications of the May 1864 engagement, which involved only 10,000 troops, were substantial. Previous studies, however, focused on the Confederate side of the story. David Powell’s Union Command Failure in the Shenandoah: Major General Franz Sigel and the War in the Valley of Virginia, May 1864 provides the balance that has so long been needed.

A distinguished historian of Spain and Europe provides an enlightening account of the development of nationalist and separatist movements in contemporary Catalonia and Scotland.

Defectors fleeing the Soviet Union seized the world's attention during the Cold War. Their stories were given sensational news coverage and dramatized in spy novels and films. Upon reaching the West, they were entitled to special benefits, including financial assistance and permanent residency. In contrast to other migrants, defectors were pursued by the states they left even as they were eagerly sought by the United States and its allies. Defectors follows their treacherous journeys and looks at how their unauthorized flight via land, sea, and air gave shape to a globalized world.

The implosion of the Soviet Union was the culmination of a gripping game played out between two men who intensely disliked each other and had different concepts for the future. Mikhail Gorbachev, a sophisticated and urbane reformer, sought to modernize and preserve the USSR; Boris Yeltsin, a coarse and a hard drinking “bulldozer,” wished to destroy the union and create a capitalist Russia. The defeat of the August 1991 coup attempt, carried out by hardline communists, shook Gorbachev’s authority and was a triumph for Yeltsin.