Covering famous battles, the birth of the air force, naval engagements, the War Department, and experiences of the troops, this indispensable volume is again available in paperback for students and general readers.

     Nothing could have prepared him for the reality he ended up facing. Placing his focus on the day to day existence of the soldiers in the trenches, Adams presents a grim picture of mud-coated billets, relentless artillery barrages, working parties, training and the art of military sniping. Just as it would have been for the soldiers’ lives, Adams heightens his work with an emotive account of his first night patrol, the detonation of mines, battlefield duels and being wounded whilst out wiring in No Man’s Land. Understated and striving for truth over melodrama, Nothing of Importance is the original memoir of the First World War — the only record published while the conflict was still being fought — and the definitive account of trench warfare. Bernard Adams (1890-1917) was a British Army officer, joining 1 Royal Welsh Fusiliers as a Lieutenant in November 1914. He was the first of a triumvirate of authors who, for a time, served simultaneously in the same battalion: the second was Siegfried Sassoon, the third Robert Graves. Written whilst convalescing in 1916, he did not live to see it published.

    This rich collection, filled with interviews, essays, and color reproductions of testosterone-heavy thirty-five-cent magazines with names like Man's Exploits, Rage, and Escape to Adventure (to name a few), illustrates the culture created to help veterans confront the confusion of jobs, girls, and the Cold War on their return from World War II and the Korean War.Contributions from the original men's magazine talent like Bruce Jay Friedman, Mario Puzo, and Mort Künstler bring the reader inside the offices, showing us how the writers, illustrators, editors, and publishers put together decades of what were then called "armpit slicks." Reproductions of original paintings from Norman Saunders, Künstler, and Norm Eastman are featured within, and Bill Devine's annotated checklist of the many thousands of adventure magazines is essential for collectors of the genre.The expanded paperback edition includes wartime illustrations and advertisements from mass-produced magazines that preview the xenophobia and racist ideas later seen throughout men's adventure magazines of the '50s and '60s.

    The major topics of the day: terrorism, globalization, immigration, consumerism, the collapse of moral values, and the rivalry of superpowers. The twentieth century was not born in the trenches of the Somme or Passchendaele—but rather in the fifteen vertiginous years preceding World War I.In this short span of time, a new world order was emerging in ultimately tragic contradiction to the old. These were the years in which the political and personal repercussions of the Industrial Revolution were felt worldwide: Cities grew like never before as people fled the countryside and their traditional identities; science created new possibilities as well as nightmares; education changed the outlook of millions of people; mass-produced items transformed daily life; industrial laborers demanded a share of political power; and women sought to change their place in society—as well as the very fabric of sexual relations.From the tremendous hope for a new century embodied in the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris to the shattering assassination of a Habsburg archduke in Sarajevo in 1914, historian Philipp Blom chronicles this extraordinary epoch year by year. Prime Ministers and peasants, anarchists and actresses, scientists and psychopaths intermingle on the stage of a new century in this portrait of an opulent, unstable age on the brink of disaster.Beautifully written and replete with deftly told anecdotes, The Vertigo Years brings the wonders, horrors, and fears of the early twentieth century vividly to life.

    in the first 20 months of US involvement in the First World War. Of these, over 50,000 were killed on European soil. These were the Doughboys, the young men recruited from the cities and farms of the United Sates, who travelled across the Atlantic to aid the allies in the trenches and on the battlefields. Without their courage and determination, the outcome of the war would have been very different. Why did America become involved in the First World War? What was the fighting experience of the A.E.F. in France and Russia? Most importantly, why has the vital contribution made by the Americans been largely neglected by historians of the Great War? Drawing upon the often harrowing personal accounts of the soldiers of the A.E.F., this book establishes the pivotal role played by the Americans in the defeat of the central powers in November 1918. In this fascinating study, based on original research, Gary Mead adjusts the balance of history in favour of these unsung heroes. Drawing on a rich selection of engaging personal accounts, he brings us the stories of the young men whose courage and tenacity changed the course of the war. ‘The appearance of the Americans was decisive...the achievements of the doughboys were unfairly forgotten’ – John Keegan, Daily Telegraph ‘Gary Mead argues that Europeans, especially the British and French, have allowed a fog of ignorance and forgetfulness to obscure the decisive role of America's doughboys...Their story is well worth telling.’ – Charles Wheeler, Literary Review ‘Mead has done a good job in placing the AEF where it heroically belongs...[he] does well to set the record straight.’ – Cal McCrystal, Financial Times ‘A fine account of the Great War...an impressive historical debut that gazes behind time's curtain at the startling, pivotal experiences of the American fighting men of WWI’ – Kirkus Reviews Gary Mead was a journalist for the Financial Times for ten years and has worked extensively with the BBC. Endeavour Press is the UK’s leading independent publisher of digital books.

    It was during the carnival of 1913 that a young Stalin arrived on a mission that would launch him into the upper echelon of Russian revolutionaries, and it was here that he first collided with Trotsky. It was in Vienna that the failed artist Adolf Hitler kept daubing watercolors and spouting tirades at fellow drifters in a flophouse. Here Archduke Franz Ferdinand had a troubled audience with Emperor Franz Joseph—and soon the bullet that killed the archduke would set off the Great War that would kill ten million more. With luminous prose that has twice made him a finalist for the National Book Award, Frederic Morton evokes the opulent, elegant, incomparable sunset metropolis—Vienna on the brink of cataclysm.

    The photographs never sleep of this four-month battle, fought from July to November 1917, the worst year of the war: blackened tree stumps rising out of a field of mud, corpses of men and horses drowned in shell holes, terrified soldiers huddled in trenches awaiting the whistle.The intervening century, the most violent in human history, has not disarmed these pictures of their power to shock. At the very least they ask us, on the 100th anniversary of the battle, to see and to try to understand what happened here. Yes, we commemorate the event. Yes, we adorn our breasts with poppies. But have we seen? Have we understood? Have we dared to reason why? What happened at Passchendaele was the expression of the 'wearing-down war', the war of pure attrition at its most spectacular and ferocious.Paul Ham's Passchendaele: Requiem for Doomed Youth shows how ordinary men on both sides endured this constant state of siege, with a very real awareness that they were being gradually, deliberately, wiped out. Yet the men never broke: they went over the top, when ordered, again and again and again. And if they fell dead or wounded, they were casualties in the 'normal wastage', as the commanders described them, of attritional war. Only the soldier's friends at the front knew him as a man, with thoughts and feelings. His family back home knew him as a son, husband or brother, before he had enlisted. By the end of 1917 he was a different creature: his experiences on the Western Front were simply beyond their powers of comprehension.The book tells the story of ordinary men in the grip of a political and military power struggle that determined their fate and has foreshadowed the destiny of the world for a century. Passchendaele lays down a powerful challenge to the idea of war as an inevitable expression of the human will, and examines the culpability of governments and military commanders in a catastrophe that destroyed the best part of a generation.

     Britain’s Naval supremacy is being challenged for the first time since Trafalgar. At large in South American waters within reach of the convoy routes across the Atlantic and the Pacific was Vice-Admiral Graf von Spee with the East Asiatic Cruiser Squadron of the Imperial German Navy, including the armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Graf von Spee’s belief that a cruiser squadron was of more strategic value than independent raiders seemed amply justified at Coronel on 1st November, when the powerful German unit inflicted a heavy defeat on four courageous but weaker British ships under Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock. Reaction in Britain was immediate and violent. The Royal Navy had been seen as invincible. Now, in the first major engagement in which battle had been offered since the days of Nelson, it had suffered a morale-shattering blow. Public bewilderment turned swiftly to anger: the Royal Navy thirsted for revenge. The Admiralty, in the persons of the First Lord, Mr. Winston Churchill, and the First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher, ordered the destruction of the East Asiatic Squadron; everything must be done to recapture command of the Southern Seas. A powerful force including the two battle-cruisers Invincible and Inflexible, was sent to the Falkland Islands, prepared for a long search and a battle of annihilation. The Battle of the Falkland Islands was fought on 8th December. The desperate gallantry of the Imperial German Navy challenged the vengeful pride of the Royal Navy in a struggle for control over the ocean trade-routes of the Southern Seas. Two of the major participants, Cradock and von Spee, died with their ships. Basing his text upon German and British records, Pitt has reconstructed the events of the two ‘missing periods’: the fatal hours during which Cradock decided to fling his puny force against von Spee’s squadron; and the days when von Spee was forced to risk his ships and men upon the information contained in an ill-considered telegram and an unfounded rumour. In Coronel and Falkland Barrie Pitt presents a vivid picture of these epic battles of the First World War. His description of the actions are precise and graphic, his judgement of the motives and decisions of those in command, scrupulous and detailed. Praise for Zeebrugge “Mr. Barrie Pitt has done a splendid job in pulling together all the details of this operation and presenting it in a lively way, with plenty of maps and diagrams.” — News Chronicle “A breathless and unforgettable narrative.” — Sphere “Mr. Pitt’s description of the desperate action on Zeebrugge Mole itself must be one of the most graphic accounts ever written in the annals of sea warfare. This in truth was a magnificent feat by the Royal Navy.” — Yorkshire Evening Post “A lively and detailed narrative, admirably illustrated, of a particularly gallant effort, which will serve to keep alive the fame of that band of heroes.” — Naval Review Praise for Special Boat Squadron ‘Barrie Pitt’s account of the exploits of these brave men in the Mediterranean is as much a thriller as a history book’ - The Daily Mail, Hull (less)

    At Mons, Le Cateau, the Marne, on the Aisne and at the Battle of First Ypres, they shot the Kaiser's legions to pieces. This is the dramatic story of how those men, regular soldiers from every walk of life, plunged into this new and terrible war, held their muddy trenches against impossible odds and gave the Empire time to muster its forces and ready itself for the long struggle ahead. 'The Old Contemptibles' brings those battles vividly to life in all their terror and glory. But Robin Neillands does more than explain the role of the BEF in the early months of the First World War. He also tells the story of why they were sent to France and of that wily officer, General Henry Wilson, whose years of secret intrigue with the French High Command first committed the British Army to this global war.'Excellent' - Literary Review'Informed and explicit, this is military history at its best' - Western Daily Press'Brings to life the horrific experiences of the British Expeditionary Force' - SoldierRobin Neillands is the author of several acclaimed works on the First World War including ‘The Great War Generals on the Western Front’, ‘Attrition: The Great War on the Western Front, 1916’ and ‘The Death of Glory’.Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

    Best-selling author Max Arthur brilliantly conveys not only the heroism, but also the universal horror, futility, absurdity and boredom of early 20th-century warfare. From the frontline troops and the daily dance with death, to the support lines, communications, enlistment, training, and propaganda, the story of the war is illustrated with over 200 images that have been handpicked from the world famous collection of the Imperial War Museum in London. Every aspect of the soldier's life is covered in this brilliant collection of images and eyewitness accounts that bring the Great War to life once more.

    But in 1914, Europe walked into a catastrophic conflict that killed millions, bled its economies dry, shook empires and societies to pieces, and fatally undermined Europe’s dominance of the world. It was a war that could have been avoided up to the last moment—so why did it happen?Beginning in the early nineteenth century and ending with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, award-winning historian Margaret Macmillan uncovers the huge political and technological changes, national decisions, and just as important, the small moments of human muddle and weakness that led Europe from peace to disaster. This masterful exploration of how Europe chose its path towards war will change and enrich how we see this defining moment in history.

    Scrub, cliffs, spurs and hills meant that both Anzac and Turkish positions often overlooked one another. The unwary or unlucky were prey to snipers on both sides, and the sudden crack of a gunshot and instant death were an ever-present menace. The most successful and most feared sniper of the Gallipoli campaign was Billy Sing, a Light Horseman from Queensland, who was almost unique among the Australian troops in having a Chinese-born father. A combination of patience, stealth and an amazing eye made him utterly deadly, with the incredible - and horrifying - figure of over 200 credited 'kills'. John Hamilton has written an extraordinary account of a hidden side of the campaign - the snipers' war. Following Sing from his recruitment onwards, Hamilton takes us on a journey into the squalor, dust, blood and heroism of Gallipoli, seen from the unique viewpoint of the sniper. Gallipoli Sniper is a powerful and very different account of war and its effect on those who fight.

    W. Crocker III (The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War, Robert E. Lee on Leadership, etc.) now turns his guns on the epic story of America’s involvement in the First World War with his new book The Yanks Are Coming: A Military History of the United States in World War I. 2014 marks the centenary of the beginning of that war, and in Crocker’s sweeping, American-focused account, readers will learn: How George S. Patton, Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall (of the Marshall Plan), "Wild Bill" Donovan (future founder of the OSS, the World War II precursor to the CIA), Harry S. Truman, and many other American heroes earned their military spurs in "The Great War"Why, despite the efforts of the almost absurdly pacifistic administration of Woodrow Wilson, American involvement in the war was inevitableHow the First World War was "the War that Made the Modern World"—sweeping away most of the crowned heads of Europe, redrawing the map of the Middle East, setting the stage for the rise of communism and fascismWhy the First World War marked America’s transition from a frontier power—some of our World War I generals had actually fought Indians—to a global superpower, with World War I generals like Douglas MacArthur living to see, and help shape, the nuclear age"The Young Lions of the War" -- heroes who should not be forgotten, like air ace Eddie Rickenbacker, Sergeant Alvin York (memorably portrayed by Gary Cooper in the Academy Award–winning movie Sergeant York), and all four of Theodore Roosevelt’s sons (one of whom was killed) Stirring, and full of brilliantly told stories of men at war, The Yanks Are Coming will be the essential book for readers interested in rediscovering America’s role in the First World War on its hundredth anniversary.

    But for much of the rest of Europe this was a day with no meaning, as a continuing, nightmarish series of conflicts engulfed country after country.In The Vanquished, a highly original and gripping work of history, Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War. In large part it was not the fighting on the Western Front that proved so ruinous to Europe's future, but the devastating aftermath, as countries on both sides of the original conflict were savaged by revolutions, pogroms, mass expulsions, and further major military clashes. In the years immediately after the armistice, millions would die across central, eastern, and southeastern Europe before the Soviet Union and a series of rickety and exhausted small new states would come into being. It was here, in the ruins of Europe, that extreme ideologies such as fascism would take shape and ultimately emerge triumphant.As absorbing in its drama as it is unsettling in its analysis, The Vanquished is destined to transform our understanding of not just the First World War but the twentieth century as a whole.

    An act of terrorism of staggering efficiency, it fulfilled its every aim: it would liberate Bosnia from Habsburg rule and it created a powerful new Serbia, but it also brought down four great empires, killed millions of men and destroyed a civilization. What made a seemingly prosperous and complacent Europe so vulnerable to the impact of this assassination? In The Sleepwalkers Christopher Clark retells the story of the outbreak of the First World War and its causes. Above all, it shows how the failure to understand the seriousness of the chaotic, near genocidal fighting in the Balkans would drag Europe into catastrophe.