When the Guns Fall Silent


Book Description

Jack Loveless attempts to avert his grandson's questions about his role in World War I by taking him to visit the battlefield graveyards in France. While there he meets a German soldier from the past and vividly remembers the Christmas truce, a miraculous moment when the guns fell silent and horrors of war were temporarily forgotten in a football match. Suggested level: secondary.




After the Guns Fall Silent


Book Description

Years after peace treaties have been signed and military conflict is nominally over, anti-personnel mines continue to claim innocent lives. This text offers data showing that landmines victimize civilians in direct contravention of the Geneva convention and examines the impact landmines have on people, on their communities and on their outlook and view of life. The report, commissioned by the VVAF, examines the consequences of landmine use on post-conflict reconstruction and development, on refugee movement and resettlement and on the environment. It also investigates mine clearance and mine awareness and medical, rehabilitative and psychological costs. Using original research, the report uses case studies from countries including Angola, Mozambique, Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia. Scholarly and accurate analysis combines with people's own words and real personal stories to present a detailed evaluation of the effect of this most potent of weapons. This work is published by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and distributed in the UK and Ireland by Oxfam.




The Silent Guns of Two Octobers


Book Description

The Silent Guns of Two Octobers uses new as well as previously under-appreciated documentary evidence to link the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Checkpoint Charlie tank standoff to achieve the impossible—craft a new, thoughtful, original analysis of a political showdown everyone thought they knew everything about. Ultimately the book concludes that much of the Cold War rhetoric the leaders employed was mere posturing; in reality neither had any intention of starting a nuclear war. Theodore Voorhees reexamines Khrushchev’s and Kennedy’s leadership, decision, and rhetoric in light of the new documentary evidence available. Voorhees examines the impact of John F. Kennedy's domestic political concerns about his upcoming first midterm elections on his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis through his use of back-channel dealings with Khrushchev during the lead-up to the crisis and in the closing days when the two leaders managed to reach a settlement.




The Guns at Last Light


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The magnificent conclusion to Rick Atkinson's acclaimed Liberation Trilogy about the Allied triumph in Europe during World War II It is the twentieth century's unrivaled epic: at a staggering price, the United States and its allies liberated Europe and vanquished Hitler. In the first two volumes of his bestselling Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted how the American-led coalition fought through North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory. Now, in The Guns at Last Light, he tells the most dramatic story of all—the titanic battle for Western Europe. D-Day marked the commencement of the final campaign of the European war, and Atkinson's riveting account of that bold gamble sets the pace for the masterly narrative that follows. The brutal fight in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the disaster that was Operation Market Garden, the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and finally the thrust to the heart of the Third Reich—all these historic events and more come alive with a wealth of new material and a mesmerizing cast of characters. Atkinson tells the tale from the perspective of participants at every level, from presidents and generals to war-weary lieutenants and terrified teenage riflemen. When Germany at last surrenders, we understand anew both the devastating cost of this global conflagration and the enormous effort required to win the Allied victory. With the stirring final volume of this monumental trilogy, Atkinson's accomplishment is manifest. He has produced the definitive chronicle of the war that unshackled a continent and preserved freedom in the West. One of The Washington Post's Top 10 Books of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013




The Guns Fall Silent


Book Description

This book discusses part of the military-stability problem, notably the part relating to East-West relationships, which is becoming synonymous with military stability between the Soviet Union and NATO.




Against All Odds


Book Description

*The instant New York Times bestseller* The untold story of four of the most decorated soldiers of World War II—all Medal of Honor recipients—from the beaches of French Morocco to Hitler’s own mountaintop fortress, by the national bestselling author of The First Wave “Pitch-perfect.”—The Wall Street Journal • “Riveting.”—World War II magazine • “Alex Kershaw is the master of putting the reader in the heat of the action.”—Martin Dugard As the Allies raced to defeat Hitler, four men, all in the same unit, earned medal after medal for battlefield heroism. Maurice “Footsie” Britt, a former professional football player, became the very first American to receive every award for valor in a single war. Michael Daly was a West Point dropout who risked his neck over and over to keep his men alive. Keith Ware would one day become the first and only draftee in history to attain the rank of general before serving in Vietnam. In WWII, Ware owed his life to the finest soldier he ever commanded, a baby-faced Texan named Audie Murphy. In the campaign to liberate Europe, each would gain the ultimate accolade, the Congressional Medal of Honor. Tapping into personal interviews and a wealth of primary source material, Alex Kershaw has delivered his most gripping account yet of American courage, spanning more than six hundred days of increasingly merciless combat, from the deserts of North Africa to the dark heart of Nazi Germany. Once the guns fell silent, these four exceptional warriors would discover just how heavy the Medal of Honor could be—and how great the expectations associated with it. Having survived against all odds, who among them would finally find peace?




The Echo of Battle


Book Description

From Lexington and Gettysburg to Normandy and Iraq, the wars of the United States have defined the nation. But after the guns fall silent, the army searches the lessons of past conflicts in order to prepare for the next clash of arms. In the echo of battle, the army develops the strategies, weapons, doctrine, and commanders that it hopes will guarantee a future victory. In the face of radically new ways of waging war, Brian Linn surveys the past assumptions--and errors--that underlie the army's many visions of warfare up to the present day. He explores the army's forgotten heritage of deterrence, its long experience with counter-guerrilla operations, and its successive efforts to transform itself. Distinguishing three martial traditions--each with its own concept of warfare, its own strategic views, and its own excuses for failure--he locates the visionaries who prepared the army for its battlefield triumphs and the reactionaries whose mistakes contributed to its defeats. Discussing commanders as diverse as Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Colin Powell, and technologies from coastal artillery to the Abrams tank, he shows how leadership and weaponry have continually altered the army's approach to conflict. And he demonstrates the army's habit of preparing for wars that seldom occur, while ignoring those it must actually fight. Based on exhaustive research and interviews, The Echo of Battle provides an unprecedented reinterpretation of how the U.S. Army has waged war in the past and how it is meeting the new challenges of tomorrow.




When the Guns Fell Silent


Book Description

Twelve short stories that portray the experiences of children as they face situations of conflict in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, Liberia, the Basque Countries (Spain), Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine, Chechnya (Russia), Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, and Sri Lanka"--edited from P. [4] of cover.




An Environmental History of the Civil War


Book Description

This sweeping new history recognizes that the Civil War was not just a military conflict but also a moment of profound transformation in Americans' relationship to the natural world. To be sure, environmental factors such as topography and weather powerfully shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns, and the war could not have been fought without the horses, cattle, and other animals that were essential to both armies. But here Judkin Browning and Timothy Silver weave a far richer story, combining military and environmental history to forge a comprehensive new narrative of the war's significance and impact. As they reveal, the conflict created a new disease environment by fostering the spread of microbes among vulnerable soldiers, civilians, and animals; led to large-scale modifications of the landscape across several states; sparked new thinking about the human relationship to the natural world; and demanded a reckoning with disability and death on an ecological scale. And as the guns fell silent, the change continued; Browning and Silver show how the war influenced the future of weather forecasting, veterinary medicine, the birth of the conservation movement, and the establishment of the first national parks. In considering human efforts to find military and political advantage by reshaping the natural world, Browning and Silver show not only that the environment influenced the Civil War's outcome but also that the war was a watershed event in the history of the environment itself.




The Great Silence


Book Description

This account of British life in the wake of World War I is “social history at its very best . . . insightful and utterly absorbing” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). As the euphoria of Armistice Day in 1918 quickly subsided, there was no denying the carnage that the Great War had left in its wake. Grief and shock overwhelmed the psyche of the British people—but from their despair, new life would slowly emerge. For veterans with faces demolished in the trenches, surgeon Harold Gillies brings hope with his miraculous skin-grafting procedure. Women win the vote, skirt hems leap, and Brits forget their troubles at packed dance halls. And two years later, the remains of a nameless combatant would be laid to rest in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Westminster Abbey, as “The Great Silence,” observed in memory of the countless dead, halted citizens in silent reverence. This history of two transformative years in the life of a nation features countless characters, from an aging butler to a pair of newlyweds, from the Prince of Wales to T. E. Lawrence, the real-life Lawrence of Arabia. The Great Silence depicts a nation fighting the forces that threaten to tear it apart and discovering the common bonds that hold it together. “A pearl of anecdotal history, The Great Silence is a satisfying companion to major studies of World War I and its aftermath . . . as Nicolson proceeds through the familiar stages of grief—denial, anger and acceptance—she gives you a deeper understanding of not only this brief period, but also how war’s sacrifices don’t end after the fighting stops.” —The Seattle Times “It may make you cry.” —The Boston Globe