Military History

Northern Ireland, 1975. Violence has erupted on the streets of Belfast. After years as a sleepy, guerilla army, the IRA is clashing with Loyalist gangs and heavily armed British soldiers. But the Troubles have spilled beyond the small island: An ocean away, in the heart of Philadelphia's Irish enclave, a teenage girl finds a letter in her mailbox. Inside is a bullet, and the message is clear: The next one is for you or your family. From New York Times reporter and Pulitzer finalist Ali Watkins, this true-crime saga is the long-buried story of how a group of Philadelphia gunrunners armed the IRA at the height of the Troubles. A ragtag band of carpenters, family men and fugitives, the Philadelphia Five, as they came to be known, banded together, bolstering the fight for a united Ireland but fuelling the Troubles at an untold cost. This small group of Irish nationalists smuggled hundreds of rifles, rocket launchers, explosives and armour-piercing bullets across the Atlantic Ocean and into Northern Ireland. Whether they were skimming money from innocuous-seeming charities, coolly slipping weapons into hidden compartments of vans and houses, or scouring local graveyards for the names of dead Irishmen to use on firearm forms, the gunrunners approached their mission -to unite Ireland under one flag, by any means necessary -with ruthless poise, even as investigators closed in, members of their own movement began to turn on them, and bodies stacked up on all sides. A gripping tale of crime, rebellion and the hazy line between them, The Next One Is for You is the definitive account of America's hand in the Troubles - a conflict whose resonance is still felt on both sides of the Atlantic today.

Working in Europe, across enemy lines in occupied China and in Washington D.C., Betty, Zuzka, Jane and Marlene forged letters and 'official' military orders, wrote and produced entire newspapers, scripted radio broadcasts and songs and even developed rumours for undercover spies and double agents to spread to the enemy.

The thrilling true story behind the Allies' mission to take back Venice from the Germans - and save its artistic and architectural treasures.

Afghan wars

Relaying the events of Desmond Ibbotson's short but eventful but eventful career as well as what happened next, investigating his tragic death on a routine test flight, and how he came to have two graves

This book is the first comprehensive account of the tsarist army's relationship to Muslim soldiers in late imperial Russia. It will be of interest to researchers in European History, Modern History, Military and Naval History, and Central Asian, Russian and Eastern European Studies.

This book analyses the origins, experiences and challenges of total defence in Europe, and comprises a broad spectrum of national case studies as well as one international organisation - NATO.

Sounds of Survival tells a story of unexpected musical continuity across some of the twentieth century's most cataclysmic events. It examines an integrated Polish-Jewish musical community as its members contended with antisemitism in the 1930s, were persecuted during the Nazi occupation, and attempted to establish a renewed musical culture from the ashes of World War II and the Holocaust. Attending to these musicians from the 1920s into the 1950s, the book is a rigorous examination of Jewishness within twentieth-century Polish classical music, and the first to examine how the Holocaust was a defining event for the country's musical culture. J. Mackenzie Pierce argues that despite the nearly unimaginable violence experienced by these musicians, many of their projects and ideals were reinvited and preserved across war and genocide. Thus, he rejects the common assumption that World War II and the Holocaust were epoch-defining ruptures in Polish, Jewish, and European culture, instead showing that the midcentury was a period of fervent reinvention and cultural development in response to trauma.

Exploring the role that courts martial played in the professional lives of flag officers in the late Georgian Royal Navy, this book examines the genesis, proceedings and outcomes of nine trials faced by British admirals in the American and French wars. Despite only one admiral being found guilty as charged, the implications of facing trial were highly significant on all of these officers' careers and their surrounding political climates. For some officers, courts martial provided them a means of preserving their honour and professional reputations in the face of perceived mistreatment or criticism.This study sets the experiences of these nine admirals in the context of the naval courts martial system and considers their charging and conviction rate with other naval personnel in the period to understand how the naval justice system worked at the top of society. Drawing on a range of sources, from Admiralty records in the National Archives to official and personal papers, publications of the Naval Records Society and press literature, it sheds new light on prominent individuals' careers and key moments in 18th century naval history.

'A true artist. A brilliant writer. An original thinker' Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieYorùbá Boy Running charts Samuel Ajayi Crowther's miraculous journey from slave to liberator, boy to man, running to resisting'Run, Àjàyí, run!'The day the Malian slave traders invaded the Nigerian town of Òsogùn, thirteen-year-old Àjàyí's life was split in two.Before, there was his childhood, surrounded by friends and family, watched over by the ancient Yorùbá gods of forest and water, earth and sky. After: capture, slavery - and release, into the service of a new god, his own culture left far behind. So Àjàyí becomes Samuel Crowther - missionary, linguist, minister - and abolitionist: driven to negotiate against his own people to end the miserable trade in human beings which destroyed his family.Drawing on the prolific writings of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Biyi Bándélé has created a many-voiced, kaleidoscopic portrait of an extraordinary man. From the heart-stopping drama of Àjàyí's last day of freedom to the farcical intrigue of the Òsogùn court; from a meeting with Queen Victoria; to his consecration as the first African Bishop of the Anglican Church, his journey, like all great odysseys, circles back to where he began. By turns witty, moving and quietly political, Biyi Bándélé's reimagining of Crowther's life is a brilliant tour de force.WITH AN INTRODUCTION FROM WOLE SOYINKA'Biyi Bándélé had a prolifically talented and creative mind, shown in everything he touched. Yorùbá Boy Running is no exception' Chiwitel EjioforCover artwork Chris Ofili, Blind Leading Blind, 2005 (c) The artist.

Former intelligence officer Will Britten lifts the lid on his work for BRIXMIS at the height of the Cold War

This book is a unique combination of intellectual history, personal memoir, and military theory. When Conrad Crane retired from twenty six years of active duty to become a research professor at the Army War College, he never expected to become a modern Cassandra, fated to tell truth to power without being heeded. As he watched the world change after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, he warned the Army that it was not prepared for Phase IV stability operations, counterinsurgency, and eventually the reconstruction of Iraq. Eventually his work attracted the attention of Lieutenant General David Petraeus, who along with his Marine counterpart James Mattis, was launching a broad program to make the American military a learning organization better prepared for modern war. Crane soon found himself in charge of a team of Soldiers, Marines, and civilian academics with the mission to create the very counterinsurgency doctrine he had pleaded for. For the next year he wrestled with conflicting ideas, complex personalities, and bureaucratic inertia to create the groundbreaking Field Manual 3-24/ Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5 Counterinsurgency. The process was long and tortuous, and much more complicated than the way it has been characterized so far in other narratives. The end result was a unique blend of traditional and modern theory, tempered by hard lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan. Its principles and paradoxes of counterinsurgency, focus on legitimacy, and concepts of operational campaign design have had immense influence on US and NATO doctrine. The new doctrine was not perfect, and had been rushed through production in record time, but the guidance it provided would be an essential element in the Surge in Iraq that secured breathing space for the nascent Iraqi government to solve its political differences. Crane found that out when General Petraeus asked him to come observe the Surge himself in late 2007. Traveling all around that embattled nation, Crane watched the greatest counterinsurgency force the world had ever seen adapting to the exigencies of modern counterinsurgency is a very complex environment. He describes in great detail the hard work of dedicated Soldiers, Marines, and civilians that were creating a mosaic peace out of a mosaic war, in places as disparate as Baghdad, Anbar Province, and the detention facilities at Bucca. There were still problem areas, such as in the British zone and Diyala Province, but the conflict was definitely trending in the right direction. Crane closes his book with an account of what went wrong in Iraq, as the mosaic peace unraveled with the Americandeparture, and also how the new counterinsurgency doctrine was never properly resourced or applied in Afghanistan. His final chapter covers the lessons be believes should be gleaned from the past decade and a half of global war. There have been many critics of the new doctrine, and Crane recounts their arguments and concedes that promises of counterinsurgency were oversold. But much of what has been labeled as counterinsurgency is really just modern warfare, and while the United States is understandably reluctant to engage in further irregular conflicts and nation building, they remain a growth industry in the rest of the world. The United States government, military and civilian agencies, must be prepared to do better next time. And Cassandra says, there will be a next time.