Collected together in a handsome boxed set, this is the perfect gift for any Civil War buff.Fort Sumter to Perryville"Here, for a certainty, is one of the great historical narratives of our century, a unique and brilliant achievement, one that must be firmly placed in the ranks of the masters." -Van Allen Bradley, Chicago Daily News"Anyone who wants to relive the Civil War, as thousands of Americans apparently do, will go through this volume with pleasure.... Years from now, Foote's monumental narrative most likely will continue to be read and remembered as a classic of its kind." -New York Herald Tribune Book ReviewFredericksburg to Meridian"This, then, is narrative history-a kind of history that goes back to an older literary tradition.... The writing is superb...one of the historical and literary achievements of our time." -The Washington Post Book World"Gettysburg...is described with such meticulous attention to action, terrain, time, and the characters of the various commanders that I understand, at last, what happened in that battle.... Mr. Foote has an acute sense of the relative importance of events and a novelist's skill in directing the reader's attention to the men and the episodes that will influence the course of the whole war, without omitting items which are of momentary interest. His organization of facts could hardly be bettered." -AtlanticRed River to Appomattox"An unparalleled achievement, an American Iliad, a unique work uniting the scholarship of the historian and the high readability of the first-class novelist." -Walker Percy"I have never read a better, more vivid, more understandable account of the savage battling between Grant's and Lee's armies

    naval operations in World War II. Morison was a distinguished historian, a former Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University. But he also wrote as a participant in many of the events described in this volume: he served on eleven different ships during the war, emerging as a captain with seven battle stars on his service ribbons, having gone to sea specifically to be able to write in contact with the events covered. Fully illustrated with 35 photographs and 54 charts and maps of key engagements, this is a blazing record of the action from Pearl Harbor to the long war of attrition between submarines and convoys in the Atlantic, through Midway and Guadalcanal, to the invasion of continental Europe, to Okinawa, Leyte, and the final grudging surrender of the Japanese. Morison's narrative is rich enough to reveal all levels of each wartime encounter, dramatizing the strategic arguments that went on between Churchill and King, between MacArthur and Nimitz, as well as highlighting the glory of individual feats of arms. The Two-Ocean War is a truly outstanding contribution to military history.

    He represents toughness, focus, determination, and the ideal of achievement in the face of overwhelming odds. He was the most feared and respected adversary to his enemies and an object of envy, admiration, and sometimes, scorn to his professional peers. An early proponent of tank warfare, George S. Patton moved from being a foresighted lieutenant in the First World War to commanding the Third Army in the next, leading armored divisions in the Allied offensive that broke the back of Nazi Germany. Patton was an enigmatic figure. His image among his troops and much of the press achieved legendary status through his bold and colorful comments and combat leadership, yet these same qualities nearly jeopardized his career and forced him out of the battle on several occasions. Victory was impossible without Patton, and returning to the field, his army was responsible for one of the most crushing advances in the history of warfare.In Ladislas Farago's masterpiece, Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, the complete story of this fascinating personality is revealed. Born into an aristocratic California family, Patton rose in military rank quickly and was tapped to lead the Allied landings in North Africa in 1942. Under Patton's direction, American troops cut their teeth against Rommel's Afrikakorps, advanced further and more quickly than British General Montgomery's army in the conquest of Sicily, and ultimately continued their exploits by punching into Germany and checking the Russian westward advance at the end of World War II. A sweeping, absorbing biography and critically hailed, Patton: Ordeal and Triumph provides unique insights into Patton's life and leadership style and is military history at its finest.

    Besieged for two months by a rabble in arms, the British decided to break out of town. American spies discovered their plans, and on the night of June 16, 1775, a thousand rebels marched out onto Charlestown peninsula and began digging a redoubt (not on Bunker Hill, which they had been ordered to fortify, but on Breeds Hill, well within cannon shot of the British batteries and ships). At daybreak, HMS Lively began firing. It was the opening round of a battle that saw unbelievable heroism and tragic blunders on both sides (a battle that marked a point of no return for England and her colonies), the beginning of all-out war.

    Many stories of fascinating secrets and spies during WW II.

    Marshall has until now remained voiceless and unportrayed. And yet, in the absence of his full life story, the books by other leaders of the free world give an incomplete picture: a key figure is missing.In entrusting to the George C. Marshall Foundation the abundant record of his career to be made into a biography, George Marshall filled a vital gap in the history of our age. The unprecedented collection of source material, either bequeathed by General Marshall to the Foundation or collected later by it, consists of: all General Marshall's personal papers, including his letters; taped interviews with the General made in 1956 and 1957 containing some 125,000 words about his early life; taped interviews with several score of his relatives, classmates, fellow officers, friends, and associates; incomparable newspaper files of the period; and microfilm copies of more than half a million items from official government files, many of them classified until now, but released for this purpose by the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations.Much of the material about the conduct of both World Wars and about the crucial problems of international diplomacy -- and almost all the rich personal material -- will be new even to students of the period.Education of a General, 1880-1939, the first of the three-volume definitive biography, follows Marshall's unswerving progress from his childhood in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, to 1939 when Hitler marched into Poland and Marshall took the oath as Chief of Staff of the United States Army. The scenes of his strenuous career include the Philippine Islands during the Spanish-American War, France in World War I, China in the time of the War Lords, and the length and breadth of his native land.In triumphing over formidable odds to become, first, an army officer with responsibilities far beyond his rank, then a member of Pershing's staff, and finally Chief of Staff amidst the complex tensions of service rivalries, Marshall never lost sight of the ideals of integrity and fair play. We come to understand not only the soldier but the man -- his family devotion, his humanity, his unfailing consideration toward his fellow officers and those who served under him, and his increasing insight into men and nations.Education of a General is also a picture of America's end of innocence, her altered course toward world power, away from isolation, and the part played by a great American in shaping his country for her new role in world affairs.

    These years, from 630-680, not only transformed a whole vast region, but ensured that the pattern of life in the Middle East would never be the same again. Muhammed and his immediate successors decided the framework of many things for thirteen hundred years. In this vivid book, Arabic scholar John "Pasha" Glubb chronicles the amazingly short period of time in which the Bedouin Empire developed, highlighting the simplicity of its administration and the many victories achieved through sheer zeal and courage by relatively untrained and unorganized armies. Illustrated with carefully researched b&w maps, Glubb's history is made relevant and highly readable by his forthright style, his knowledge of the terrain, and his gift for seeing modern parallels, rendering this one of the best one-volume treatments of the subject ever written.

    The fallen soldiers were driven down the 172-kilometre stretch of highway between Trenton and Toronto, and pedestrians lined the overpasses, hoping to make a connection with the grieving families. The support these people show isnt political; its not a movement for or against Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. Its always been a grassroots movement about showing respect for our fallen champions. People young and old, emergency services workers, Canadian Legion members, military personnel, friends of the fallen, and family of fallen soldiers stand atop each bridge along the highway in the blistering heat or bone-chilling cold. After five years of this display of patriotism, the Highway of Heroes was officially named in the summer of 2007 and has been a gleaming example of a nation's grief and its pride.

    "The operation must be postponed," one general wrote. "We risk having the men refuse to leave the assault trenches." French soldiers cursed their commanders, drank openly in the trenches, singing ditties about war profiteers and wooden graveyard crosses. Their commanders were unable to stem the distribution of papillons, the pacifist leaflets that filled French barracks like white spring snow. As May 1917 approached, commanders adjusted to the troop upheavals, coining a euphemism ("collective indiscipline") to substitute for the more terrifying "mutiny". Long out of print, Richard M. Watt's engulfing narrative of the calamitous French army mutinies throws fresh light on the weakness of the Army of France in the last years of the war and, indirectly, on the importance of American intervention. Its argument dovetails smoothly with that of John Mosier's THE MYTH OF THE GREAT WAR, which has drawn so much recent attention.

    A famous account of one of the most dramatic and tragic episodes of the Second World War * Published to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the outbreak of World War II * Also famous as a major television documentary under the same title

    It helps us to understand why Kolchak, former commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, hated the Reds.He led a counter revolution centered in Omsk, where he was installed as Supreme Ruler of All the Russias. Despite the gingerly support of American, British, French and Japanese forces, Omsk fell to the Red Army, doomed by its corruption and incompetence.Kolchak was handed over to the Soviets. This book throws light on Kolchak's nine-day interrogation in gaol and his fate.

    From Yugoslavia to Vietnam, from Lawrence of Arabia to Mao Tse-tung - a military expert's fascinating study of guerrilla warfare and the men who fight it.

    First World War memoir.

    Each is also shown in a World War II era photograph.

    The Battle of Plassey, won by Robert Clive for Britain, was decisive in establishing a firm base in Bengal and from that victory the British became an imperial power whose Indian Empire was to last for nearly 200 years.Plentiful and apposite illustrations throughout this work lend humanity and colour to a study important not less in imperial than in purely military terms.

    Biography of Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba, Commander in Chief of the the Spanish Armies during Spain's Golden Age of Conquest and Exploration.