Military Studies

May 10, 1940. The Netherlands was swarming with Third Reich troops. In seven days it's entirely occupied by Nazi Germany. Joining a small resistance cell in the Dutch city of Haarlem were three teenage girls: Hannie Schaft, and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, who would soon band together to form a singular female underground squad.

Korea was one of the last countries in Asia to be visited by Westerners, and its borders have remained largely unchanged since it was unified in the seventh century. Though it is one of the world's oldest and most ethnically homogeneous states, Korea was not born in a vacuum. Geographically isolated, the country was heavily influenced by powerful China and was often used as a bridge to the mainland by Japan. Calling themselves as "a shrimp among whales", Koreans borrowed elements of government, culture, and religion, all the while fiercely fighting to maintain independence.

Sun Tzu's Art of War for Women helps women find the peaceful path to success through strategies made famous in the ancient Chinese text, The Art of War. Female wisdom, or common sense, is about avoiding needless confrontation, conserving energy for the things that matter, and seeking an outcome in which everyone wins. And for women, as for Sun Tzu, success doesn't come simply from knowing what to do, but from knowing who you are.

The era of modern warfare introduced in World War II presented the Allied Powers with one of the more complicated logistical challenges of the century: how to develop an extensive support network that could supply and maintain a vast military force comprised of multiple services and many different nations thousands of miles away from their home ports. The need to keep tanks rolling, airplanes flying, and food and aid in continuous supply was paramount to defeating the Nazi regime.

In World War II, 59,000 women voluntarily risked their lives for their country as US Army nurses. For more than half a century these women's experiences remained untold, almost without reference in books, historical societies, or military archives. After years of research and hundreds of hours of interviews, Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee have created a dramatic narrative that at last brings to light the critical role that women played throughout the war.

Written by two of the world's leading authorities on the subject, Imperial Germany and War, 1871-1918 examines the most essential components of the imperial German military system, with an emphasis on such foundational areas as theory, doctrine, institutional structures, training, and the officer corps. In the period between 1871 and 1918, rapid technological development demanded considerable adaptation and change in military doctrine and planning.

This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha.

Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial.

In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.

Much of the history written about the Vietnam War overlooks the US Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons. These CAPs lived in the Vietnamese villages, with the difficult and dangerous mission of defending the villages from both the National Liberation Front guerrillas and the soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army. The CAPs also worked to improve living conditions by helping the people with projects, such as building schools, bridges, and irrigation systems for their fields.

Even without the right to vote, members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy proved to have enormous social and political influence throughout the South - all in the name of preserving Confederate culture. Karen L. Cox's history of the UDC, an organization founded in 1894 to vindicate the Confederate generation and honor the Lost Cause, shows why myths surrounding the Confederacy continue to endure.

There is a war on masculinity, and everywhere we look—on every front we hold sacred—we can see the painful reminders of this collapsing order. The chaos and crisis we are experiencing today should be a signal for men everywhere to rise up; to fight to preserve our way of life by once again walking the ancient paths. But this isn’t a journey that need be taken alone.

Women have bravely served in the US Navy for nearly a century, but they have been allowed to serve in combat roles for only the last 25 years. When the combat exclusion law was lifted in 1993, women in the navy soon had a new range of opportunities available to them. The repeal of the law finally gave women the chance to serve on combatant ships for the first time. Among the first women to step onto these warships as a new crewmember was Joanna Sprtel Walters.

In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat the powerful Nazi propaganda machine, which crowed victory and smeared its enemies. But inside Germany, there was one notable voice of dissent from the very heart of the military machine, Der Chef, a German whose radio broadcasts skilfully questioned Nazi doctrine. But what these audiences didn't know was that Der Chef was a fiction, a character created by the British propagandist Sefton Delmer.

Taken from George Armstrong Custer's own writings, An Autobiography of General Custer is the “true story” of one of the most praised, most despised, but surely most remembered American military heroes. Indeed, few figures in our history were - in their own time, as well as in our own - so wildly cheered and so roundly hated.

Although he took command of the Army of the Potomac only three days before the first shots were fired at Gettysburg, Union general George G. 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.

The Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP)—Full-Size Edition: From Beginner to Black Belt is a comprehensive guide to the United States Marine Corps' dynamic combat system, integrating martial arts techniques with the principles of the Marine Corps ethos. This manual covers a wide range of skills, including striking, grappling, chokes, throws, weapon manipulation, ground fighting, and defensive tactics against armed and unarmed attackers. Designed to develop the "warrior ethos," it emphasizes mental and character discipline alongside physical techniques.

Singer provides the first account of the military services industry and its broader implications. Corporate Warriors includes a description of how the business works, as well as portraits of each of the basic types of companies: military providers that offer troops for tactical operations; military consultants that supply expert advice and training; and military support companies that sell logistics, intelligence, and engineering.

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

Amazons - fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world - were the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a powerful Amazon army. In historical times, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman general Pompey tangled with Amazons.