Military History

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  Confederate General R.S. Ewell: Robert E. Lee's Hesitant Commander

  Richard Stoddert Ewell is best known as the Confederate General selected by Robert E. Lee to replace "Stonewall" Jackson as chief of the Second Corps in the Army of Northern Virginia. Ewell is also remembered as the general who failed to drive Federal troops from the high ground of Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill during the Battle of Gettysburg. Many historians believe that Ewell’s inaction cost the Confederates a victory in this seminal battle and, ultimately, cost the Civil War.

  During his long military career, Ewell was never an aggressive warrior. He graduated from West Point and served in the ...Read More

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  Yankee Blitzkrieg: Wilson's Raid through Alabama and Georgia

  Yankee Blitzkrieg is the first comprehensive survey of Wilson's Raid, the largest independent mounted expedition of the Civil War.

  The Confederacy was reeling when Wilson's raiders left their camps along the Tennessee River in March 1865 and rode south. But there was talk of prolonged rebel resistance in the deep South using the agricultural and industrial facilities of a sweep of territory that ran from Macon to Meridian. That area had hardly been touched by the war, and in Columbus, Georgia, and Selma, Alabama, the South had two of its most productive industrial communities. Twenty-seven year-old General Wilson was certain ...Read More

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  Yanks Over Europe: American Flyers in World War II

  Contrasts between fighter combat and the bombers' war support Klinkowitz's belief that notions of the air war were determined by one's position in it. He extends his thesis by showing the vastly different style of air war described by veterans of the North African and Mediterranean campaigns and concludes by studying the effects of such combat on adversaries and victims.

  Air combat, Klinkowitz writes, offers a unique perspective on the nature of war. The experience of combat has inspired authors to combine exquisite descriptions with probing thoughtfulness, covering the full range of human expression from exultation to heartbreak. Here is ...Read More

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  Passing the Test: Combat in Korea, April-June 1951

  For U.S. and UN soldiers fighting the Korean War, the spring of 1951 was brutal. The troops faced a tough and determined foe under challenging conditions. The Chinese Spring Offensive of 1951 exemplified the hardships of the war, as the UN forces struggled with the Chinese troops over Line Kansas, a phase line north of the 38th parallel, in a conflict that led to the war's final stalemate. This book explores the UN responses to the offensive in detail, looking closely at combat from the perspectives of platoons, squads, and the men themselves. The book emphasizes the tactical operations on ...Read More

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  The Gulf: The Bush Presidencies and the Middle East

  Despite the appearance of familiar faces in both Bush administrations, significant differences existed between the foreign policies of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. The Gulf refers to these differences and argues that they can be explained by the personal beliefs and styles of each George Bush. Describing George H.W. Bush as an “enlightened” realist and George W. Bush as a “cowboy” liberal, the book begins by exploring the life experiences that contributed to each president’s belief system. Comparing and contrasting each president throughout, it focuses on each administration’s policy in the Middle East, with specific attention given to ...Read More

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  Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War

  No place symbolizes the Cold War more than Berlin. This book examines the “Berlin question” from its origin in wartime plans for the occupation of Germany through the Paris Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in 1949. Tracing the blockade’s origins, it explains why British and American planners during the Second World War neglected Western access to postwar Berlin and why Western officials did little to reduce Berlin’s vulnerability as Cold War tensions increased. Standard accounts mistakenly emphasize an early decision to rely on an airlift to defeat the blockade. Leaders did not sit down, weigh alternatives, and choose “airlift” as ...Read More

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  Rückzug: The German Retreat from France, 1944

  The Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, marked a critical turning point in the European theater of World War II. The massive landing on France’s coast had been meticulously planned for three years, and the Allies anticipated a quick and decisive defeat of the German forces. Many of the planners were surprised, however, by the length of time it ultimately took to defeat the Germans. While much has been written about D-day, very little has been written about the crucial period from August to September, immediately after the invasion. In Rückzug, Joachim Ludewig draws on military records from ...Read More

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  Nothing Less Than War: A New History of America’s Entry into World War I

  This history of how Woodrow Wilson attempted to keep the United States out of World War I is also an exercise in nostalgia for an era when Americans debated a war before the president launched one rather than afterward. The book states that Americans greeted Germany's 1914 invasion of Belgium with horrified fascination, but with little sense of foreboding. Most citizens and President Woodrow Wilson favored the Allies, but wanted to remain neutral. The book recounts how this feeling gradually changed over two and a half years in response to Germany's self-defeating actions, the foremost being the new submarine warfare, ...Read More

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  Kontum: The Battle to Save South Vietnam

  In the spring of 1972, North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in what became known as the Easter Offensive. Almost all of the American forces had already withdrawn from Vietnam except for a small group of American advisers to the South Vietnamese armed forces. The 23rd ARVN Infantry Division and its American advisers were sent to defend the provincial capital of Kontum in the Central Highlands. They were surrounded and attacked by three enemy divisions with heavy artillery and tanks but, with the help of air power, managed to successfully defend Kontum and prevent South Vietnam from being cut in half ...Read More

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  One of Morgan’s Men: Memoirs of Lieutenant John M. Porter of the Ninth Kentucky Cavalry

  John Marion Porter (1839–1898) grew up working at his family's farm and dry goods store in Butler County, Kentucky. The oldest of Reverend Nathaniel Porter's nine children, he was studying to become a lawyer when the Civil War began. As the son of a family of slave owners, Porter identified with the Southern cause and wasted little time enlisting in the Confederate army. He and his lifelong friend Thomas Henry Hines served in the Ninth Kentucky Calvary under John Hunt Morgan, the “Thunderbolt of the Confederacy.” When the war ended, Porter and Hines opened a law practice together, but Porter ...Read More