Archive for Items Categorized 'History', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

Jock Lewes, Co-Founder of the SAS

by John Lewes

This early admirer of Hitler became so disillusioned with the Nazi regime’s methods that he volunteered for an elite British outfit specializing in counter-espionage, the Special Air Service and became its principal training officer.

The Bomber Mafia

by Malcom Gladwell

Planning to watch the movie Oppenheimer? A nuclear bomb!? Why had other military strategies not broken Japan’s ability to fight? Because no matter what the strategists of the Bomber Mafia thought, pinpoint hits from high altitude were not achievable in those days.

The Vault of Horror

by Craig, Davis, Feldstein et al.

There are fans, historians, and academics who take comic books quite seriously. EC titles, especially from the early 1950s, have a long-standing, proliferating reputation for excellence among all of these. We take a look at a representative sample of available EC reprints as we toss our hats of commendation and recommendation into the ring.

Tattered Cover Book Store, A Storied History

by Mark A. Barnhouse

If you think of the book as a dying breed (not!) what about brick-and-mortar book stores, especially independents? Tattered Cover in Denver is also a cultural institution and garnered nationwide attention in a First Amendment Supreme Court case. A former employee has recorded the first fifty years.

Masters of Mayhem

by James Stejskal

Context-rich, this book is not just another flogger of the T.E. Lawrence myth. Its overarching theme is that of small, agile teams acting as a force multiplier, a concept of timeless relevance and urgency to warfighting practice.

Lessons in Imperial Rule

by Andrew Skeen

Sounds like “ancient history” but while it doesn’t have application today, it has implications that are still relevant in a world of terror and guerilla fighting.

Napalm: An American Biography

by Robert M. Neer

Horrible stuff. And horribly effective. This is a disturbing examination of the disconnect between technocratic progress and morals and the laws of war. What ends justify such nightmarish means?

The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford

by Beth Tompkins Bates

Built it and they will come. Henry Ford did a lot more than rethink the assembly line or the $5 workday. He hired African Americans and they left the South and came by the tens of thousands. What did each expect of the other?

The First World War: Unseen Glass Plate Photographs of the Western Front

by Carl De Keyzer and David Van Reybrouck

Whether you’re a student of history or photography this book has new things to say and show—none of them simple or simplistic but all wrenching and necessary.

We Speak from the Air, WW2 Broadcasts from the RAF

by the Ministry of Information

Read this alongside some of Winston Churchill’s speeches and there won’t be a dry eye in the house. The over 1000 RAF and WAAF personnel that made these wartime broadcasts remained anonymous but the highly personal pictures they paint cut to the bone.

The 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam: Unparalleled and Unequaled

by Ira A. Hunt Jr.

This book was written by someone who was there—and is here reviewed by someone who was also there. And the two points of view could not be less similar, raising the eternal question: how can a reader who was not there know what is true?

The Tower of London Prisoner Book

by Brian A. Harrison

Inextricably woven into the history of Britain, the Tower of London has served as a royal residence and a zoo but it is as a state prison and torture chamber that it claims its place in the cultural consciousness. Over 8000 names tell its story here.

« Older Entries