- 1812
- Jon Latimer
- In the first complete history of the War of 1812 written from a British perspective, Latimer offers an authoritative and compelling account that places the conflict in its strategic context within the Napoleonic wars. Drawing on personal letters, diaries, and memoirs, Latimer describes events not merely through the eyes of generals, admirals, and politicians but through those of the soldiers, sailors, and ordinary people who were directly affected.
- Hardcover 2007
- The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction
- Mark E. Neely
- The Civil War is often portrayed as the most brutal war in America's history, a premonition of twentieth-century carnage. In challenging this view, Neely considers the war's destructiveness in a comparative context, revealing the sense of limit that guided the conduct of American soldiers and statesmen. The modern overemphasis on violence in Civil War literature has led many scholars to go too far in drawing close analogies with the twentieth century's "total war" and the grim guerrilla struggles of Vietnam.
- Hardcover 2007
- Commander of All Lincoln’s Armies
- John F. Marszalek
- In the first comprehensive biography of Halleck, Marszalek recreates the life of a man of enormous achievement who bungled his most important mission. When Lincoln summoned him to the nation's capital, Halleck boasted outstanding qualifications as a military theorist, a legal scholar, a brave soldier, and a California entrepreneur. Yet in the thick of battle, he couldn't make essential decisions. Unable to produce victory for the Union forces, he saw his power become subsumed by Grant's emergent leadership, a loss that paved the way for Halleck's path to obscurity.
- Hardcover 2004
- The Confederate Battle Flag
- John M. Coski
- Pursuing the flag's conflicting meanings, Coski suggests how this provocative artifact, which has been viewed with pride, fear, anger, nostalgia, and disgust, might ultimately provide Americans with the common ground of a shared and complex history. He reveals the flag's origins as one of many banners unfurled on the battlefields of the Civil War and shows how it emerged as the preeminent representation of the Confederacy and was transformed into a cultural icon from Reconstruction on, becoming an aggressively racist symbol only after World War II and during the Civil Rights movement.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2006
- The Echo of Battle
- Brian McAllister Linn
- From Lexington and Gettysburg to Normandy and Iraq, wars have defined the United States. But after the guns fall silent, the army searches the lessons of past conflicts, developing the strategies, weapons, doctrines, and commanders that it hopes will guarantee future victory. Linn surveys the past assumptions--and errors--that underlie the army's many visions of warfare up to the present day.
- Hardcover 2007
- The First Vietnam War
- Edited by Mark Atwood Lawrence
- Edited by Fredrik Logevall
- How did the conflict between Vietnamese nationalists and French colonial rulers erupt into a major Cold War struggle between communism and Western liberalism? In this illuminating work, leading scholars examine various dimensions of the struggle between France and Vietnamese revolutionaries that began in 1945 and reached its climax at Dien Bien Phu. Taken together, the essays enable us to understand the origins of the later American war in Indochina by positioning Vietnam at the center of the clash between East and West and North and South in the twentieth century.
- Hardcover 2007 / Paperback
- GI Jews
- Deborah Dash Moore
- Whether they came from Sioux Falls or the Bronx, over half a million Jews entered the U.S. armed forces during the Second World War. Deborah Dash Moore offers an unprecedented view of the struggles they faced, having to battle not only the enemy but also the prejudices of their fellow soldiers.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2006
- Making Citizen-Soldiers
- Michael S. Neiberg
- While most modern military systems educate and train junior officers at insular academies like West Point, only the United States has relied heavily on the active cooperation of its civilian colleges. In his examination of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), Michael Neiberg argues that the creation of officer education programs on civilian campuses emanates from a traditional American belief (which he traces to the colonial period) in the active participation of civilians in military affairs.
- Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2001
- The Regulars
- Edward M. Coffman
- In 1898 the American Regular Army was a small frontier constabulary engaged in skirmishes with Indians and protesting workers. Forty-three years later, in 1941, it was a large modern army ready to wage global war against the Germans and the Japanese. In this definitive social history of America's standing army, military historian Coffman tells how that critical transformation was accomplished.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2007