Book picks similar to
Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy Since 1945 by John Lewis Gaddis
cold-war
history-cold-war
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us-history
Apache Snow
William L. Casselman - 2015
While the characters are fictional, the battle was very real and when it was over 70 Americans were killed in action, 420 were wounded and 633 North Vietnamese were confirmed dead. Matthew Kendal, a pastor’s youngest son from a white middle-class California background, enlists in the army and volunteers for service in Vietnam to avenge his brother’s death; a Green Beret sergeant killed in 1968. During training Matthew becomes close friends with John Adams, a tough-skinned Afro-American youth from the poorer neighborhoods right outside our nation’s capital, and Jose Martinez, a street wise Chicano from East Los Angeles. Together they experience the rigors of Airborne training and journey to Vietnam to become Screaming Eagles, of the 101st Airborne. Placed in 2nd Squad, the story follows the actual events surrounding D Company during the intense battle for Hill # 937, which would later be known as the “Battle for Hamburger Hill”.
The Tragedy of American Diplomacy
William Appleman Williams - 1959
In this pioneering book, "the man who has really put the counter-tradition together in its modern form" (Saturday Review) examines the profound contradictions between America's ideals and its uses of its vast power, from the Open Door Notes of 1898 to the Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam War.
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932-72
William Manchester - 1974
It encompasses politics, military history, economics, the arts, science, fashion, fads, social change, sexual mores, communications, graffiti - everything and anything indigenous that can be captured in print.Masterfully compressing four crowded decades of our history, The Glory and the Dream relives the epic, significant, or just memorable events that befell the generation of Americans whose lives pivoted between the America before and the America after the Second World War. From the Great Depression through the second inauguration of Richard M. Nixon, Manchester breathes life into this great period of America's growth.
Postcards From Nam
Uyen Nicole Duong - 2011
when the postcards begin to arrive. Postmarked from Thailand, each hand-drawn card is beautifully rendered and signed simply "Nam." Mimi doesn't recognize the name, but Nam obviously knows her well, spurring her to launch what will become a decade-long quest to find him. As her search progresses, long-repressed memories begin to bubble to the surface: her childhood in 1970s Vietnam in a small alley in pre-Communist Saigon. Back then, who was her best friend as well as her brother's playmate, and what did art have anything to do with the alleys of her childhood? What was the dream of these children then? What happened when these children were separated by the end of the Vietnam war, their lives diverged onto different paths: one to freedom and opportunity, the other to tragedy and pain? Now Mimi must uncover the mystery of the postcards, including what might have happened to the people who where less fortunate: those who escaped the ravaged homeland by boat after the fall of Saigon. When the mystery is solved, Mimi has to make a resolution: what can possibly reunite the children from the alley of her childhood even when the alley exists no more?
Reflections on a Ravaged Century
Robert Conquest - 1999
Graced with one of the most acute gifts for political prescience since Orwell, Conquest assigns responsibility for our century’s cataclysms not to impersonal economic or social forces but to the distorted ideologies of revolutionary Marxism and National Socialism. The final, sobering chapters of Reflections on a Ravaged Century concern themselves with some coming storms, notably that of the European Union, which Conquest believes is an economic, cultural, and geographical misconception divisive of the West and doomed to failure. Winner of the Ingersoll Prize; winner of the Richard M. Weaver Prize; a New York Times Notable Book. "Provides many glowing embers of reasoned and wise argument."—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times "A book that ought to be required reading for everyone about to enter college, and by every member of Congress."—Frank Wilson, Philadelphia Inquirer
Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War
Ken Adelman - 2014
Planned as a short, inconsequential gathering to outline future talks, the meeting quickly turned to major international issues, including the strategic defense initiative and the possibility of eliminating all nuclear weapons—negotiations that laid the groundwork for the most sweeping arms accord in history the following year.Scrupulously researched and based on now-declassified information, Reagan at Reykjavik tells the gripping tale of this weekend that changed the world. Filled with illustrative accounts of the private discussions between Reagan and his team, Ken Adelman provides an honest and up-close portrait of President Reagan at one of his finest and most challenging moments.Reagan at Reykjavik includes 16 pages of black-and-white photos and 11 illustrations.
Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis
Graham T. Allison - 1971
Not simply revised, but completely re-written, the Second Edition of this classic text is a fresh reinterpretation of the theories and events surrounding the Cuban Missle Crisis, incorporating all new information from the Kennedy tapes and recently declassified Soviet files. Essence of Decision Second Edition, is a vivid look at decision-making under pressure and is the only single volume work that attempts to answer the enduring question: how should citizens understand the actions of their government?
1999: Victory Without War
Richard M. Nixon - 1988
In his seventh book, former President Nixon draws on a lifetime of experience in international affairs to examine the crucial challenge facing the United States and the West: What must be done in the closing years of the twentieth century to ensure that the twenty-first will be a century of peace, prosperity, and expanding freedom?
Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350
Janet L. Abu-Lughod - 1989
In this reading of history, China and Japan, the kingdoms of India, Muslim caliphates, the Byzantine Empire and European maritime republics alike enjoyed no absolute dominance over their neighbours and commercial partners - and the egalitarian international trading network that they built endured until European advances in weaponry and ship types introduced radical instability to the system.Abu-Lughod's portrait of a more balanced world is a masterpiece of synthesis driven by one highly creative idea: her world system of interlocking spheres of influence quite literally connected masses of evidence together in new ways. A triumph of fine critical thinking.
Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command
Kent Masterson Brown - 2021
Meade guided his forces to victory in the Civil War's most pivotal battle. Commentators often dismiss Meade when discussing the great leaders of the Civil War. But in this long-anticipated book, Kent Masterson Brown draws on an expansive archive to reappraise Meade's leadership during the Battle of Gettysburg. Using Meade's published and unpublished papers alongside diaries, letters, and memoirs of fellow officers and enlisted men, Brown highlights how Meade's rapid advance of the army to Gettysburg on July 1, his tactical control and coordination of the army in the desperate fighting on July 2, and his determination to hold his positions on July 3 insured victory.Brown argues that supply deficiencies, brought about by the army's unexpected need to advance to Gettysburg, were crippling. In spite of that, Meade pursued Lee's retreating army rapidly, and his decision not to blindly attack Lee's formidable defenses near Williamsport on July 13 was entirely correct in spite of subsequent harsh criticism. Combining compelling narrative with incisive analysis, this finely rendered work of military history deepens our understanding of the Army of the Potomac as well as the machinations of the Gettysburg Campaign, restoring Meade to his rightful place in the Gettysburg narrative.
Courage to Change-One Day at a Time in Al‑Anon II: Part 1
Al-Anon Family Groups - 2015
Insightful reflections reveal surprisingly simple things that can transform lives.
Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America
Mae M. Ngai - 2003
immigration policy--a process that profoundly shaped ideas and practices about citizenship, race, and state authority in the 20th century.Mae Ngai offers a close reading of the legal regime of restriction that commenced in the 1920s--its statutory architecture, judicial genealogies, administrative enforcement, differential treatment of European and non-European migrants, and long-term effects. In well-drawn historical portraits, Ngai peoples her study with the Filipinos, Mexicans, Japanese, and Chinese who comprised, variously, illegal aliens, alien citizens, colonial subjects, and imported contract workers.She shows that immigration restriction, particularly national-origin and numerical quotas, re-mapped the nation both by creating new categories of racial difference and by emphasizing as never before the nation's contiguous land borders and their patrol. This yielded the illegal alien, a new legal and political subject whose inclusion in the nation was a social reality but a legal impossibility--a subject without rights and excluded from citizenship. Questions of fundamental legal status created new challenges for liberal democratic society and have directly informed the politics of multiculturalism and national belonging in our time.Ngai's analysis is based on extensive archival research, including previously unstudied records of the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Naturalization Service. Contributing to American history, legal history, and ethnic studies, Impossible Subjects is a major reconsideration of U.S. immigration in the 20th century.
The Oxford Companion to Politics in India: Student Edition
Niraja Gopal Jayal - 2010
The thirty-eight essays provide every significant topic in the study of Indian politics by eminent experts. They address the links between Indian politics and institutions of the state, ideologies, political processes, social movements, identity politics, government policy, international affairs, and the academia.The success of India's democratic political system despite immense and multidimensional diversity and differences has been a subject of longstanding academic debate and analysis. In the last few decades, in an increasingly globalized and multicultural world, India has carved its position as a globaleconomic and political power, and Indian polity and society have witnessed rapid transformation in terms of structure, processes, success, and failures. Grasping this swift and phenomenal change is a mammoth task, and The Oxford Companion to Politics in India is the best resource to capture themacro as well as micro view of Indian politics in a global world.Specially designed and priced to serve the needs of students and teachers of Indian politics, this unprecedented survey presents in one volume, thirty-eight essays on every theme of Indian politics written by experts in the field, and a substantial new Preface for the student readers. Clustered intoeight sections, these essays address the links between Indian politics and institutions of the state, ideologies, political processes, social movements, identity politics, government policy, international affairs, and the academia. Weaving together historical narratives with fresh analyses, thisvolume provides an accessible yet deeply researched narrative of politics in modern India.
Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic
Matthew Stewart - 2014
Drawing deeply on the study of European philosophy, Matthew Stewart brilliantly tracks the ancient, pagan, and continental ideas from which America’s revolutionaries drew their inspiration. In the writings of Spinoza, Lucretius, and other great philosophers, Stewart recovers the true meanings of “Nature’s God,” “the pursuit of happiness,” and the radical political theory with which the American experiment in self-government began.