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Author : Jonathan M. Steplyk Publisher : University Press of Kansas Page : 304 pages File Size : 40,7 Mb Release : 2020-10-05 Category : History ISBN : 9780700631865
“War means fighting, and fighting means killing,” Confederate cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest famously declared. The Civil War was fundamentally a matter of Americans killing Americans. This undeniable reality is what Jonathan Steplyk explores in Fighting Means Killing, the first book-length study of Union and Confederate soldiers’ attitudes toward, and experiences of, killing in the Civil War. Drawing upon letters, diaries, and postwar reminiscences, Steplyk examines what soldiers and veterans thought about killing before, during, and after the war. How did these soldiers view sharpshooters? How about hand-to-hand combat? What language did they use to describe killing in combat? What cultural and societal factors influenced their attitudes? And what was the impact of race in battlefield atrocities and bitter clashes between white Confederates and black Federals? These are the questions that Steplyk seeks to answer in Fighting Means Killing, a work that bridges the gap between military and social history—and that shifts the focus on the tragedy of the Civil War from fighting and dying for cause and country to fighting and killing.
Killing a person is in general among the most seriously wrongful forms of action, yet most of us accept that it can be permissible to kill people on a large scale in war. Does morality become more permissive in a state of war? Jeff McMahan argues that conditions in war make no difference to what morality permits and the justifications for killing people are the same in war as they are in other contexts, such as individual self-defence. This view is radically at odds with the traditional theory of the just war and has implications that challenge common sense views. McMahan argues, for example, that it is wrong to fight in a war that is unjust because it lacks a just cause.
Author : Gary W. Gallagher Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press Page : 693 pages File Size : 40,6 Mb Release : 2000-11-09 Category : History ISBN : 9780807882344
Fighting for the Confederacy by Gary W. Gallagher Pdf
Originally published by UNC Press in 1989, Fighting for the Confederacy is one of the richest personal accounts in all of the vast literature on the Civil War. Alexander was involved in nearly all of the great battles of the East, from First Manassas through Appomattox, and his duties brought him into frequent contact with most of the high command of the Army of Northern Virginia, including Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and James Longstreet. No other Civil War veteran of his stature matched Alexander's ability to discuss operations in penetrating detail-- this is especially true of his description of Gettysburg. His narrative is also remarkable for its utterly candid appraisals of leaders on both sides.
"On War" by Carl von Clausewitz (translated by J. J. Graham). Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
Based on Evan Wright's National Magazine Award-winning story in Rolling Stone, this is the raw, firsthand account of the 2003 Iraq invasion that inspired the HBO® original mini-series. Within hours of 9/11, America’s war on terrorism fell to those like the twenty-three Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ended combat since Vietnam. They were a new pop-culture breed of American warrior unrecognizable to their forebears—soldiers raised on hip hop, video games and The Real World. Cocky, brave, headstrong, wary and mostly unprepared for the physical, emotional and moral horrors ahead, the “First Suicide Battalion” would spearhead the blitzkrieg on Iraq, and fight against the hardest resistance Saddam had to offer. Hailed as “one of the best books to come out of the Iraq war”(Financial Times), Generation Kill is the funny, frightening, and profane firsthand account of these remarkable men, of the personal toll of victory, and of the randomness, brutality and camaraderie of a new American War.
Fighting The Enemy, first published in 2000, is about men with the job of killing each other. Based on the wartime writings of hundreds of Australian front-line soldiers during World War II, this powerful and resonant book contains many moving descriptions of high emotion and drama. Soldiers' interactions with their enemies are central to war and their attitudes to their adversaries are crucial to the way wars are fought. Yet few books look in detail at how enemies interpret each other. This book is an unprecedented and thorough examination of the way Australian combat soldiers interacted with troops from the four powers engaged in World War II: Germany, Italy, Vichy France and Japan. Each opponent has themes peculiar to it: the Italians were much ridiculed; the Germans were the most respected of enemies; the Vichy French were regarded with ambivalence; while the Japanese were the subject of much hostility, intensified by the real threat of occupation.
Scales on War is a collection of ideas, concepts and observations about contemporary war taken from over 30 years of research, writing and personal experience by retired Major General Bob Scales. The book melds Scales’ unique style of writing that includes contemporary military history, current events and his philosophy of ground warfare to create a very personal and expansive view of where Americn defense policies are heading in the future. The book is a collection. Each chapter addresses distinct topics that embrace tactical ground warfare, future gazing, the draft and the role of women in the infantry. His uniting thesis is that throughout its history the United States has favored a technological approach to fighting its wars and has neglected its ground forces. America’s enemies have learned though the experience of battle how to defeat American technology. The consequences of a learning and adaptive enemy has been a continuous string of battlefield defeats. Scales argues that only a resurgent land force of Army and Marine small units will restore America’s fighting competence.
They were collectively known as “The Rock.” For one year, in 2007-2008, Sebastian Junger accompanied 30 men—a single platoon—from the storied 2nd battalion of the U.S. Army as they fought their way through a remote valley in eastern Afghanistan.Over the course of five trips, Junger was in more firefights than he could count, as men he knew were killed or wounded and he himself was almost killed. His relationship with these soldiers grew so close that they considered him part of the platoon, and he enjoyed an access and a candidness that few, if any, journalists ever attain. War is a narrative about combat: the fear of dying, the trauma of killing and the love between platoon-mates who would rather perish than let each other down. Gripping, honest and intense, War explores the neurological, psychological and social elements of combat, as well as the incredible bonds that form between these small groups of men. This is not a book about Afghanistan or the “War on Terror”; it is a book about all men, in all wars. Junger set out to answer what he thought of as the “hand-grenade question”: why would a man throw himself on a hand grenade to save other men he has known for probably only a few months? The answer is elusive but profound, going to the heart of what it means not just to be a soldier, but to be human.
War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Margaret MacMillan Pdf
NATIONAL BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED for the 2021 Lionel Gelber Prize Thoughtful and brilliant insights into the very nature of war--from the ancient Greeks to modern times--from world-renowned historian Margaret MacMillan. War--its imprint in our lives and our memories--is all around us, from the metaphors we use to the names on our maps. As books, movies, and television series show, we are drawn to the history and depiction of war. Yet we nevertheless like to think of war as an aberration, as the breakdown of the normal state of peace. This is comforting but wrong. War is woven into the fabric of human civilization. In this sweeping new book, international bestselling author and historian Margaret MacMillan analyzes the tangled history of war and society and our complicated feelings towards it and towards those who fight. It explores the ways in which changes in society have affected the nature of war and how in turn wars have changed the societies that fight them, including the ways in which women have been both participants in and the objects of war. MacMillan's new book contains many revelations, such as war has often been good for science and innovation and in the 20th century it did much for the position of women in many societies. But throughout, it forces the reader to reflect on the ways in which war is so intertwined with society, and the myriad reasons we fight.
Who Killed Canadian History? by J. L. Granatstein Pdf
Have we lost our past, and, in turn, ourselves? Who is slamming shut our history books -- and why? In an indictment that points damning fingers at our education system, the media and our government's preoccupation with multiculturalism to the exclusion of English Canadian culture, historian J.L. Granatstein offers astonishing evidence of our lack of historical knowledge. He shows not only how "dumbing down" in our education system is contributing to the death of Canadian history, but how a multi-disciplinary social studies approach puts more nails in the coffin. He explains how some teachers think studying the Second World War glorifies violence and may worsen French-English conflicts if conscription is mentioned, And he tells how the pride Canadians should feel over their past has been brushed aside by efforts to create a history that suits the misguided ideas of successive ministers of Canadian heritage and multiculturalism. Finally, he shows that there is hope, and there are steps we must take if we are to renew our past -- and ensure our future. With his intelligent and outspoken "blow the dust off the history books" approach to his subject, J.L. Granatstein has produced a brilliantly argued book that addresses a subject too important to ignore. Published to coincide with the anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge (April 9, 1917), and appearing at a time when our education system is coming under ever sharper attack Who Killed Canadian History? is a timely and provocative release. A recent test on Canada given to 100 first-year students at an Ontario university revealed the following statistics: -- 61% did not know that Sir John A. Macdonald was our first English-speaking prime minister -- 55% did not know that Canada was founded in 1867 -- 95% did not know that 1837 was the date of the Rebellions of Upper and Lower Canada -- 92% did not know the year of the first Quebec referendum
General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as war progresses -- not hold true in the Civil War? It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America's preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of the American Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--"the best Government ever made"--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. "I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard," one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, "My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace." Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. "While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I should be willing to make the sacrifice," one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, "I still love my country." McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war. Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called "history writing of the highest order." For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson's masterful prose and the soldiers' own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it.
A sweeping political and cultural history, Killing for the Republic closes with a compelling argument in favor of resurrecting the citizen-soldier ideal in modern America.
Easy Prey by Janet Fleischman,Human Rights Watch (Organization) Pdf
"Child soldiers are among the most tragic victims of the war in Liberia. Although international law forbids the use of children under the age of 15 as soldiers, thousands of young children have been involved in the fighting since it began in December 1989. The main rebel forces, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) and the United Liberian Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO), have consistently used children under the age of 18, including thousands under 15. Children are also reportedly used by the other warring factions. As a consequence, thousands of children in Liberia have suffered cruelly during the war: many have been killed or wounded or witnessed terrible atrocities. Moreover, many children themselves have been forced to take part in the killing, maiming or rape of civilians. The use of children as soldiers presents grave human rights problems. Many of these children have been killed during the conflict, thus denied the most basic right -- the right to life. Others have been forcibly conscripted by the warring factions, and separated from their families against their wills. Many have joined warring factions to survive. All have been denied a normal childhood. Reintegrating these children into their communities is a task of immense difficulty. Some children's parents have been killed, their families have fled, and no relatives can be found. In others, families have refused to take children back because of the abuses they have committed. Human Rights Watch believes that 18 is the minimum age at which people may properly take part in armed conflict."--cover.
This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust Pdf
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.