June 6, 1944. For Captain John Miller and his squad of youn soldiers, this fateful day would become something much more. Washington has sent them on a personal mission to save one life. Captain Miller and his men quickly realize this is not a simple rescue operation.
With essays from leading names in military history, this new book re-examines the crucial issues and debates of the D-Day campaign. It tackles a range of core topics, placing them in their current historiographical context, to present new and sometimes revisionist interpretations of key issues, such as the image of the Allied armies compared with the Germans, the role of air power, and the lessons learned by the military from their operations. As the Second World War is increasingly becoming a field of revisionism, this book sits squarely within growing debates, shedding new light on topics and bringing current thinking from our leading military and strategic historians to a wider audience. This book will be of great interest to students of the Second World War, and of military and strategic studies in general.
The world of sports seems entwined with lawsuits. This is so, Paul Weiler explains, because of two characteristics intrinsic to all competitive sports. First, sporting contests lose their drama if the competition becomes too lopsided. Second, the winning athletes and teams usually take the "lion's share" of both fan attention and spending. So interest in second-rate teams and in second-rate leagues rapidly wanes, leaving one dominant league with monopoly power. The ideal of evenly balanced sporting contests is continually challenged by economic, social, and technological forces. Consequently, Weiler argues, the law is essential to level the playing field for players, owners, and ultimately fans and taxpayers. For example, he shows why players' use of performance-enhancing drugs, even legal ones, should be treated as a more serious offense than, say, use of cocaine. He also explains why proposals to break up dominant leagues and create new ones will not work, and thus why both union representation of players and legal protection for fans--and taxpayers--are necessary. Using well-known incidents--and supplying little-known facts--Weiler analyzes a wide array of moral and economic issues that arise in all competitive sports. He tells us, for example, how Commissioner Bud Selig should respond to Pete Rose's quest for admission to the Hall of Fame; what kind of settlement will allow baseball players and owners to avoid a replay of their past labor battles; and how our political leaders should address the recent wave of taxpayer-built stadiums.
This critical text offers a behind-the-scenes look at fifteen of the most important American war films of the last 60 years. Based on original interviews and archival research and featuring rare photographs, this book covers films considered unusually realistic for the genre. The original edition (1981) covered war films through World War II, while the present, expanded edition includes seven new chapters covering the Civil War, the American gunboat presence in China in the 1920s, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the fighting in Mogadishu in 1993 and the war in Iraq.
The end of the Cold War, the Revolution in Military Affairs, 9/11 and the War on Terror have radically altered the nature of conflict and security in the Twenty-first Century. This book considers how developments in technology effect the prosecution of war and what the changing nature of warfare means for human rights and civil society.
If the practice of war is as old as human history, so too is the need to reflect upon war, to understand its meaning and implications. The Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus asserted in 600BC that War (polemos) is justice, thus inaugurating a long philosophical tradition of consideration of the morality of war. In recent times, the increased specialisation of academic disciplines has led a to a fragmentation of the thematic of war within the academy - the topic of war is as likely to be addressed by sociologists, cultural theorists, psychologists and even computer scientists as it is by historians, philosophers or political scientists. This diversity of disciplinary approaches to war is undoubtedly fruitful in itself but can lead to an isolation of respective disciplinary analyses of war from each other. In July 2002, at Mansfield College, Oxford, an inter-disciplinary conference on war (entitled 'War and Virtual War') was held so as to redress some of this disciplinary isolationism and to forge an integrative dialogue on war, in all its facets. The papers in this volume were nominated by delegates as the most paradigmatic of the ethos of the original project and the most successful in achieving its aims of inter-disciplinarity and critical dialogue.
In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a small detachment of British airborne troops stormed the German defense forces and paved the way for the Allied invasion of Europe. Pegasus Bridge was the first engagement of D-Day, the turning point of World War II. This gripping account of it by acclaimed author Stephen Ambrose brings to life a daring mission so crucial that, had it been unsuccessful, the entire Normandy invasion might have failed. Ambrose traces each step of the preparations over many months to the minute-by-minute excitement of the hand-to-hand confrontations on the bridge. This is a story of heroism and cowardice, kindness and brutality—the stuff of all great adventures.
Film Style and the World War II Combat Genre is a detailed examination of the stylistic means by which filmmakers depict stories of combat. The work furthers contemporary discussions by analyzing a range of World War II combat films to a degree of detail which has previously escaped critical attention. This substantial examination of cinematography, sound, editing and acting in a range of movies including Saving Private Ryan, Windtalkers, Bataan, and Objective Burma! demonstrates the importance of close attention to the textual construction of these films specifically, as well as cinematic texts more generally. The work advances the original analytic descriptions of “controlled spontaneity” and “reported realism” as theoretical concepts which explain why viewers regard certain stylistic techniques as realistic. This notion of realism is then further understood through reference to a body of research in cognitive psychology to argue that the density of audio-visual information in contemporary combat films is a significant factor in creating a sense of realism.
The many works on the Battle of Gettysburg have neglected the role of the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters, known for their extensive training and specialized tactics. This history is the first to explore the actions on July 2, 1863, of this Union Army regiment largely composed of men from Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Drawing on newly discovered primary sources, this book seeks to clarify mysteries such as the identity of the non-commissioned officer who met with Company B of the 20th Maine and the location of Major Homer R. Stoughton during the battle. Following the understrength regiment as it confronts two Confederate brigades, this thorough historical narrative presents a long untold story of the Battle of Gettysburg.
The New York Times bestselling author of Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire shares his proven methods for creating compassionate children During twenty-five years of teaching at Hobart Elementary School in inner city Los Angeles, Rafe Esquith has helped thousands of children maximize their potential—and became the only teacher in history to receive the president's National Medal of Arts. In Lighting Their Fires, Esquith translates the inspiring methods from Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire for parents. Using lessons framed by a class trip to a Dodgers game, he moves inning by inning through concepts that explain how to teach children to be thoughtful and honorable people—as well as successful students—and to have fun in the process.