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Most Popular Books by James MJames M is the author of Mildred Pierce (2010), Abraham Lincoln (2009), This Mighty Scourge (2007), Luther the Reformer (2016), The Postman Always Rings Twice (2010).
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release date: Dec 29, 2010
release date: Jan 01, 2009
release date: Jan 29, 2007
release date: Oct 01, 2016
The Postman Always Rings Twice
release date: Nov 03, 2010
release date: Jan 01, 2008
release date: Jan 01, 2005
release date: Apr 13, 2016
release date: Oct 15, 2021
release date: Jan 05, 2011
release date: Jan 01, 2004
Essentials of Sociology New Mysoclab With Pearson Etext Passcode
release date: Jan 10, 2014
release date: Mar 08, 2017
Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution
release date: Jun 04, 1992
release date: Dec 11, 2003
release date: May 02, 2008
"Nothing goes wrong quite so dramatically as a disastrous military expedition."--from the Introduction ARROGANT ARMIES Spanning more than two hundred years of martial adventurism, aggression, and outright blundering, Arrogant Armies chronicles the profoundly misguided and utterly calamitous military expeditions of the great empire builders and overconfident expeditionary forces. From colonial America to South Africa, from Mesopotamia to Khartoum, an extraordinary number of presumably superior armies grievously underestimated native forces. Using contemporary newspaper accounts, military memoirs, diaries of soldiers who fought in the battles, and other firsthand letters and papers, noted journalist James Perry brings a sense of urgency and immediacy to these historic defeats. At times devastating, at times hilarious, his vast panorama of human folly is peopled by frightened soldiers, zealous native resistance, and, of course, a colorful gallery of arrogant, often inept officers. Many of them received their ultimate comeuppance in these battles: Generals Edward Braddock, Charles MacCarthy, William R. Shafter, Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend, Charles "Chinese" Gordon, William George Keith Elphinstone, Manuel Fernandez Silvestre, and others. What is most remarkable about Arrogant Armies is the cumulative power of these ironic encounters. Black humor, brutality, staggering incompetence, and genuine drama come together with devastating force. In Arrogant Armies Perry casts a sharply critical eye on what he describes as the "small wars, what Kipling called the ''savage wars of peace.''" It is fascinating history and a compelling commentary on politics and "the dark side of the human race . . . its deadly preoccupation with war." "As one of our nation''s top political reporters, Jim Perry has covered his share of political disasters. Now he has turned his skills to this sad but brilliant chronicle of military disasters. In the process, he has produced a classic."--Sander Vanocur The History Channel "Jim Perry has long been one of America''s great political reporters. This has been perfect training to write this marvelous book, Arrogant Armies. Having covered more than a few contemporary political disasters, Perry is able to brilliantly, often hilariously, capture the worst military blunders of the past several hundred years. These fiascoes span the globe from the Middle East to Southeast Asia to Haiti, and chronologically from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. There are common characteristics: commanders afflicted with drunkenness, debauchery, arrogance, and often just plain stupidity. With vitality, a sense of irony and history, Jim Perry gives you a battle-side seat at these debacles."--Albert R. Hunt Executive Washington Editor Wall Street Journal "Jim Perry has done, in Arrogant Armies, what he has always done. He has told us stories we haven''t heard before. He has explored an unmined vein of history with enthusiasm, skill, and style. History buffs will delight in Arrogant Armies. I''m not so sure, however, about the generals."=Roger Mudd The History Channel
release date: Apr 03, 1997
General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn''t get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as war progresses -- not hold true in the Civil War? It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America''s preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of the American Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--"the best Government ever made"--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. "I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard," one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, "My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace." Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. "While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I should be willing to make the sacrifice," one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, "I still love my country." McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war. Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson''s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called "history writing of the highest order." For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson''s masterful prose and the soldiers'' own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it.
History of Bergen County, New Jersey
Family Life in Native America
release date: Oct 30, 2007
release date: Dec 18, 1997
release date: Jan 01, 2005
release date: Jun 30, 2004
release date: Aug 23, 2021
Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction
release date: Mar 02, 2010
release date: Feb 16, 2016
Advancing Family Theories
release date: Jan 01, 2005
release date: Dec 10, 2008
release date: Jan 01, 2019
release date: Apr 17, 2017
Daily Life in Civil War America
release date: Oct 13, 2009
Rockin' in the Ivory Tower
release date: Jun 16, 2023
Music and Some Highly Musical People
release date: Sep 16, 2022
The War That Forged a Nation
release date: Feb 12, 2015
release date: Nov 15, 2022
Peter Pan (Peter Pan and Wendy)
release date: May 28, 2019
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