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Whether as a curiosity or a beloved idol, Gene Kelly (1912-1996) lives on in our cultural memory as a fantastic dancer in MGM musicals, especially Singin' in the Rain. But dancing, however extraordinary, was only one of his many gifts. This book, for the first time, offers a full picture of Gene Kelly as the Renaissance man he actually was - dancer, yes, but also choreographer, actor, clown, singer, director, teacher, and mentor. Kelly was star of radio and television as well as film, avant-garde as artist and auteur but also ahead of the curve in opening the world of dance to different races, ethnicities, and genders.Gene Kelly: The Making of a Creative Legend takes us from Kelly's youth in Depression-era Pittsburgh through his years on Broadway and ascendance to stardom in Hollywood. Authors Hess and Dabholkar pay particular attention to his work with the US Navy, solo directing, and lesser-known but considerable accomplishments in television, radio, and on the stage in later years. The book gives us a rare inside look at Kelly's relationships with dancing partners and peers from Leslie Caron, Vera-Ellen, and Cyd Charisse to Fred Astaire, and at his directorial collaboration with Stanley Donen and Vincent Minnelli. The authors show us significant but little-examined facets of Kelly's character and career, such as the political convictions that got him graylisted in Hollywood; his passion for creating cine-dance and serving as an ambassador of dance in America; and his forging of links between dance, civil rights, and the 'common man.'Steeped in research and replete with photographs, this career biography uniquely encompasses all phases of Gene Kelly's life and work - and finally gives us a full portrait of this central figure in the history of the film musical during Hollywood's Golden Age.

Starting with his coverage of the largest tornado in Kansas history, legendary correspondent, anchorman, and producer Bill Kurtis details his whirlwind career reporting American history as it unfolded, from the Chicago Seven to Charles Manson to Agent Orange. A fast-paced, entertaining, and inspiring story about the potent combination of talent and luck in the network era of television.From his beginnings as a kid from Kansas working at local radio and television stations to pay for college and law school, Bill Kurtis had a hunger for telling stories and finding the truth. With passion, skill, and just the right amount of luck, Kurtis’s reporting of the infamous Topeka Tornado of 1966 launched him into a whirlwind career in broadcast journalism. Only four years later, after passing the Kansas bar exam, Kurtis had already reported four of the largest trials of the twentieth century: Richard Speck, the Chicago Seven, Charles Manson, and Angela Davis.During his career as a West Coast correspondent for Cronkite’s CBS Evening News, anchorman and foreign correspondent at the revolutionary local newsroom at WBBM-TV Chicago, co-anchor with Dianne Sawyer at CBS Morning News, and beyond, Kurtis brought history to the American people in real time.Recounting moments in his remarkable career as a television journalist, Kurtis brings us into some of the most iconic moments of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. He was in the streets during the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; he uncovered the truth about the deadly effects of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War; he was the first US television journalist to return to Chernobyl after the infamous nuclear disaster; and much more. Kurtis also offers an insider look at how television evolved from an emerging news source to the dominating force in American media.A natural storyteller, Kurtis remembers his career with honesty and insight and gives a rare picture of American history and broadcast journalism.

The Carpathian campaign of 1915, described by some as the ""Stalingrad of the First World War,"" engaged the million-man armies of Austria-Hungary and Russia in fierce winter combat that drove them to the brink of annihilation. Habsburg forces fought to rescue 130,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers trapped by Russian troops in Fortress Przemysl, but the campaign was waged under such adverse circumstances that it produced six times as many casualties as the number besieged. It remains one of the least understood and most devastating chapters of the war-a horrific episode only glimpsed previously but now vividly restored to the annals of history by Graydon Tunstall.The campaign, consisting of three separate and ultimately doomed offensives, was the first example of ""total war"" conducted in a mountainous terrain, and it prepared the way for the great battle of Gorlice-Tarnow. Habsburg troops under Conrad von Htzendorf faced those of General Nikolai Ivanov, which together totaled more than two million soldiers. None of the participants were psychologically or materially prepared to engage in prolonged winter mountain warfare, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers suffered from frostbite or succumbed to the ""White Death."" Tunstall reconstructs the brutal environment-heavy snow, ice, dense fog, frigid winds-to depict fighting in which a man lasted on average between five to six weeks before he was killed, wounded, captured, or committed suicide. Meanwhile, soldiers warmed rifles over fires to make them operable and slaughtered thousands of horses just to ward off starvation.This riveting depiction of the Carpathian Winter War is the first book-length account of that vicious campaign, as well as the first English-language account of Eastern Front military operations in World War I in more than thirty years. Based on exhaustive research in Vienna's and Budapest's War Archives, Tunstall's gripping narrative incorporates material drawn from eyewitness accounts, personal diaries, army logbooks, and correspondence among members of the high command.As Tunstall shows, the roots of the Habsburg collapse in Russia in 1916 lay squarely in the winter campaign of 1915. Packed with insights from previously unexploited primary sources, his book provides an engrossing read—and the definitive account of the Carpathian Winter War.

In January 1951, Lieutenant Evgeniy Borisov was sent to the headquarters of the Soviet 5th Army in Spassk-Dalnii, a small city in the Russian Far East. Borisov was there on a secret mission. Together with his superior, Major Rusinov, his job was to establish the 91st Special Forces Company. The 91st was to be one of forty-six similar units spread out across the Soviet Union. The new forces were called “spetsnaz”—short for spetsnialnoe naznachenie, which translates to “special purpose.”In Spetsnaz, Tor Bukkvoll presents the first in-depth history of the Soviet, and, later, Russian special operations forces from their establishment until today. He focuses on three broad topics: Soviet and later Russian thinking on the use of special operations forces; the actual process of constructing these forces and how this was facilitated or hampered by other agencies of the Soviet and Russian states; and the use of these forces in combat.Bukkvoll uses a variety of sources, but the most important are the recollections of former spetsnaz soldiers and officers themselves, which allow Bukkvoll to present the history of these forces as the men of spetsnaz see and have seen it. Bukkvoll also draws upon observations and judgments from other parts of the Soviet and Russian militaries, from a number of KGB sources, and from independent Russian experts and journalists.Spetsnaz is essential reading for anyone interested in special operations forces or Russian military history.

For Hitler and the German military, 1942 was a key turning point of World War II, as an overstretched but still lethal Wehrmacht replaced brilliant victories and huge territorial gains with stalemates and strategic retreats. In this major reevaluation of that crucial year, Robert Citino shows that the German army's emerging woes were rooted as much in its addiction to the ""war of movement""—attempts to smash the enemy in ""short and lively"" campaigns—as they were in Hitler's deeply flawed management of the war.From the overwhelming operational victories at Kerch and Kharkov in May to the catastrophic defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, Death of the Wehrmacht offers an eye-opening new view of that decisive year. Building upon his widely respected critique in The German Way of War, Citino shows how the campaigns of 1942 fit within the centuries-old patterns of Prussian/German warmaking and ultimately doomed Hitler's expansionist ambitions. He examines every major campaign and battle in the Russian and North African theaters throughout the year to assess how a military geared to quick and decisive victories coped when the tide turned against it.Citino also reconstructs the German generals' view of the war and illuminates the multiple contingencies that might have produced more favorable results. In addition, he cites the fatal extreme aggressiveness of German commanders like Erwin Rommel and assesses how the German system of command and its commitment to the ""independence of subordinate commanders"" suffered under the thumb of Hitler and chief of staff General Franz Halder.More than the turning point of a war, 1942 marked the death of a very old and traditional pattern of warmaking, with the classic ""German way of war"" unable to meet the challenges of the twentieth century. Blending masterly research with a gripping narrative, Citino's remarkable work provides a fresh and revealing look at how one of history's most powerful armies began to founder in its quest for world domination.

By 1943, the war was lost, and most German officers knew it. Three quarters of a century later, the question persists: What kept the German army going in an increasingly hopeless situation? Where some historians have found explanations in the power of Hitler or the role of ideology, Robert M. Citino, the world’s leading scholar on the subject, posits a more straightforward solution: Bewegungskrieg, the way of war cultivated by the Germans over the course of history. In this gripping account of German military campaigns during the final phase of World War II, Citino charts the inevitable path by which Bewegungskrieg, or a “war of movement,” inexorably led to Nazi Germany’s defeat.The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand analyzes the German Totenritt, or “death ride,” from January 1944—with simultaneous Allied offensives at Anzio and Ukraine—until May 1945, the collapse of the Wehrmacht in the field, and the Soviet storming of Berlin. In clear and compelling prose, and bringing extensive reading of the German-language literature to bear, Citino focuses on the German view of these campaigns. Often very different from the Allied perspective, this approach allows for a more nuanced and far-reaching understanding of the last battles of the Wehrmacht than any now available. With Citino’s previous volumes, Death of the Wehrmacht and The Wehrmacht Retreats, The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand completes a uniquely comprehensive picture of the German army’s strategy, operations, and performance against the Allies in World War II.

For Frederick the Great, the prescription for warfare was simple: kurz und vives ("short and lively")—wars that relied upon swift, powerful, and decisive military operations. Robert Citino takes us on a dramatic march through Prussian and German military history to show how that primal theme played out time and time again.Citino focuses on operational warfare to demonstrate continuity in German military campaigns from the time of Elector Frederick Wilhelm and his great "sleigh-drive" against the Swedes to the age of Adolf Hitler and the blitzkrieg to the gates of Moscow. Along the way, he underscores the role played by the Prussian army in elevating a small, vulnerable state to the ranks of the European powers, describes how nineteenth-century victories over Austria and France made the German army the most respected in Europe, and reviews the lessons learned from the trenches of World War I.Through this long view, Citino reveals an essential recurrent pattern—characterized by rapid troop movements and surprise attacks, maneuvers to outflank the enemy, and a determination to annihilate the opposition—that made it possible for the Germans to fight armies often larger than their own. He highlights the aggressiveness of Prussian and German commanders—trained simply to find the enemy and keep attacking—and destroys the myth of Auftragstaktik ("flexible command"), replacing it with the independence of subordinate commanders. He also brings new interpretations to well-known operations, such as Moltke's 1866 campaign and the opening campaign in 1914, while introducing readers to less familiar but important battles like Langensalza and the Annaberg.The German way of war, as Citino shows, was fostered by the development of a widely accepted and deeply embedded military culture that supported and rewarded aggression. His book offers a fresh look at one of the most remarkable, respected, and reviled militaries of the past half millennium and marks another sterling contribution to the history of operational warfare.

Winner: Paul Birdsall PrizeWinner: Society for Military History book AwardWhen Germany launched its blitzkrieg invasion of France in 1940, it forever changed the way the world waged war. Although the Wehrmacht ultimately succumbed to superior Allied firepower in a two-front war, its stunning operational achievement left a lasting impression on military commanders throughout the world, even if their own operations were rarely executed as effectively.Robert Citino analyzes military campaigns from the second half of the twentieth century to further demonstrate the difficulty of achieving decisive results at the operational level. Offering detailed operational analyses of actual campaigns, Citino describes how UN forces in Korea enjoyed technological and air superiority but found the enemy unbeatable; provides analyses of Israeli operational victories in successive wars until the Arab states finally grasped the realities of operational-level warfare in 1973; and tells how the Vietnam debacle continued to shape U.S. doctrine in surprising ways. Looking beyond major-power conflicts, he also reveals the lessons of India's blitzkrieg-like drive into Pakistan in 1971 and of the senseless bloodletting of the Iran-Iraq War.Citino especially considers the evolution of U.S. doctrine and assesses the success of Desert Storm in dismantling an entrenched defending force with virtually no friendly casualties. He also provides one of the first scholarly analyses of Operation Iraqi Freedom, showing that its plan was curiously divorced from the realities of military history, grounded instead on nebulous theories about expected enemy behavior. Throughout Citino points to the importance of mobility—especially mobilized armor—in modern operational warfare and assesses the respective roles of firepower, training, doctrine, and command and control mechanisms.Brimming with new insights, Citino's study shows why technical superiority is no guarantee of victory and why a thorough grounding in the history of past campaigns is essential to anyone who wishes to understand modern warfare. Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm provides that grounding as it addresses the future of operational-level warfare in the post-9/11 era.

Winner of the Arthur Goodzeit AwardThroughout 1943, the German army, heirs to a military tradition that demanded and perfected relentless offensive operations, succumbed to the realities of its own overreach and the demands of twentieth-century industrialized warfare. In his new study, prizewinning author Robert Citino chronicles this weakening Wehrmacht, now fighting desperately on the defensive but still remarkably dangerous and lethal. Drawing on his impeccable command of German-language sources, Citino offers fresh, vivid, and detailed treatments of key campaigns during this fateful year: the Allied landings in North Africa, General von Manstein's great counterstroke in front of Kharkov, the German attack at Kasserine Pass, the titanic engagement of tanks and men at Kursk, the Soviet counteroffensives at Orel and Belgorod, and the Allied landings in Sicily and Italy. Through these events, he reveals how a military establishment historically configured for violent aggression reacted when the tables were turned; how German commanders viewed their newest enemy, the U.S. Army, after brutal fighting against the British and Soviets; and why, despite their superiority in materiel and manpower, the Allies were unable to turn 1943 into a much more decisive year. Applying the keen operational analysis for which he is so highly regarded, Citino contends that virtually every flawed German decision-to defend Tunis, to attack at Kursk and then call off the offensive, to abandon Sicily, to defend Italy high up the boot and then down much closer to the toe-had strong supporters among the army's officer corps. He looks at all of these engagements from the perspective of each combatant nation and also establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt the synergistic interplay between the fronts. Ultimately, Citino produces a grim portrait of the German officer corps, dispelling the longstanding tendency to blame every bad decision on Hitler. Filled with telling vignettes and sharp portraits and copiously documented, The Wehrmacht Retreats is a dramatic and fast-paced narrative that will engage military historians and general readers alike.

Renowned military historian Earl Hess offers the first book dedicated to the history of underground tactics and strategy in warfare from antiquity to the present.From as early as ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese warfare to the battles of World War I, military mining was an essential component of siege warfare. Armies have tunneled underneath castle walls, dug trenches across no-man’s-land, and engineered confusing defensive countermines. These tactics for assaulting enemy fortifications and positions by creating underground access have adapted to changes in warfare, technology, geography, and culture. While its use diminished after 1918, when speed and movement took precedence over capturing strongpoints, military mining remains a viable strategy still deployed to this day. Although military historians have given mining marginal treatment in virtually every study of siege warfare, it has not yet been treated with depth or comprehensiveness as a subject in its own right. In this first book-length study of the subject, renowned military historian Earl Hess now fully addresses the topic of military mining from its earliest origins to the twenty-first century.In War Underground, Hess offers a sweeping study of the use of offensive and defensive military mining in more than 300 sieges from around the world and across almost three millennia. The result is an impressively broad and comprehensive treatment of the grand history of military mining, which offers novel insights to the evolution and trajectory of the strategy since its ancient origins.

Wounded five times and awarded numerous decorations for valor, Gottlob Herbert Bidermann saw action in the Crimea and siege of Sebastopol, participated in the vicious battles in the forests south of Leningrad, and ended the war in the Courland Pocket.In his memoir, he shares his impressions of countless Russian POWs seen at the outset of his service, of peasants struggling to survive the hostilities while caught between two ruthless antagonists, and of corpses littering the landscape. He recalls a Christmas gift of gingerbread from home that overcame the stench of battle, an Easter celebrated with a basket of Russian hand grenades for eggs, and his miraculous survival of machine gun fire at close range. In closing, he relives the humiliation of surrender to an enemy whom the Germans had once derided and offers a sobering glimpse into life in the Soviet gulags. Bidermann's account debunks the myth of a highly mechanized German army that rolled over weaker opponents with impunity.Despite the vast expanses of territory captured by the Germans during the early months of Operation Barbarossa, the war with Russia remained tenuous and unforgiving. His story commits that living hell to the annals of World War II and broadens our understanding of its most deadly combat zone.

During its struggle for survival from 1954 to 1975, the region known as the Central Highlands was the strategically vital high ground for the South Vietnamese state. Successive South Vietnamese governments, their American allies, and their Communist enemies all realized early on the fundamental importance of this region. Paul Harris's new book, based on research in American archives and the use of Vietnamese Communist literature on a very large scale, examines the struggle for this region from the mid-1950s, tracing its evolution from subversion through insurgency and counterinsurgency to the bigger battles of 1965.The rugged mountains, high plateaus, and dense jungles of the Central Highlands seemed as forbidding to most Vietnamese as it did to most Americans. During 1954 to 1965, the great majority of its inhabitants were not ethnic Vietnamese. Ngo Dinh Diem's regime initially supported an American counterinsurgency alliance with the Highlanders only to turn dramatically against it. As the war progressed, however, the Central Highlands became increasingly important. It was the area through which most branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail passed. With its rugged, jungle-clad terrain, it also seemed to the North Vietnamese the best place to destroy the elite of South Vietnam's armed forces and to fight initial battles with the Americans. For many North Vietnamese, however, the Central Highlands became a living hell of starvation and disease. Even before the arrival of the American 1st Cavalry Division, the Communists were generally unable to win the decisive victories they sought in this region.Harris's study culminates with an account of the campaign in Pleiku province in October to November-a campaign that led to dramatic clashes between the Americans and the North Vietnamese in the Ia Drang valley. Harris's analysis overturns many of the accepted accounts about NVA, US, and ARVN performances.

In Stumbling Colossus, David Glantz explored why the Red Army was unprepared for the German blitzkrieg that nearly destroyed it and left more than four million of its soldiers dead by the end of 1941. In Colossus Reborn he recounts the miraculous resurrection of the Red Army, which, with a dazzling display of military strategy and operational prowess, stopped the Wehrmacht in its tracks and turned the tide of war.A major achievement in the recovery and preservation of an entire nations military experience, Colossus Reborn is marked by Glantzs unrivalled access to and use of Soviet archival sources. This allows him to illuminate not only Russian victories in the Battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk, but also to rescue a host of major forgotten battles, many of which had been suppressed to preserve reputations and national pride. As he reveals in unprecedented detail, disastrous defeats vied with resounding victories throughout the early years of the conflict, as the Red Army struggled to find itself in the Great Patriotic War."Beyond the battles themselves, Glantz also presents an in-depth portrait of the Red Army as an evolving military institution. Assessing more clearly than ever before the army’s size, strength, and force structure, he provides keen insights into its doctrine, strategy, tactics, weaponry, training, officer corps, and political leadership. In the process, he puts a human face on the Red Armys commanders and soldiers, including women and those who served in units—security (NKVD), engineer, railroad, auto-transport, construction, and penal forces—that have till now remained poorly understood.The worlds top authority on the Soviet military, Glantz has produced a remarkable study that adds immeasurably to our understanding of the one part of World War II that’s still struggling to emerge from the shadows of history.

A volume for Glantzophiles and anyone else who would like a richer and more complete documentary and statistical foundation for Colossus Reborn. Its contents include key documents relating to the every-day lives of the Red Army's soldiers, a full roster of the senior command cadre during wartime, a description of the army's weaponry and equipment, and an exhaustively detailed listing of the Red Army's and NKVD's order of battle at six crucial points from June 22, 1941, through December 31, 1943.

On first publication, this uncommonly concise and readable account of Soviet Russia's clash with Nazi Germany utterly changed our understanding of World War II on Germany's Eastern Front, immediately earning its place among top-shelf histories of the world war. Revised and updated to reflect recent Russian and Western scholarship on the subject, much of it the authors' own work, this new edition maintains the 1995 original's distinction as a crucial volume in the history of World War II and of the Soviet Union and the most informed and compelling perspective on one of the greatest military confrontations of all time.In 1941, when Pearl Harbor shattered America's peacetime pretensions, the German blitzkrieg had already blasted the Red Army back to Moscow. Yet, less than four years later, the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flew above the ruins of Berlin, stark symbol of a miraculous comeback that destroyed the Germany Army and put an end to Hitler's imperial designs. In swift and stirring prose, When Titans Clash provides the clearest, most complete account of this epic struggle, especially from the Soviet perspective. Drawing on the massive and unprecedented release of Soviet archival documents in recent decades, David Glantz, one of the world's foremost authorities on the Soviet military, and noted military historian Jonathan House expand and elaborate our picture of the Soviet war effort—a picture sharply different from accounts that emphasize Hitler's failed leadership over Soviet strategy and might.Rafts of newly available official directives, orders, and reports reveal the true nature and extraordinary scale of Soviet military operations as they swept across the one thousand miles from Moscow to Berlin, featuring stubborn defenses and monumental offensives and counteroffensives and ultimately costing the two sides combined a staggering twenty million casualties. Placing the war within its wider context, the authors also make use of recent revelations to clarify further the political, economic, and social issues that influenced and reflected what happened on the battlefield. Their work gives us new insight into Stalin's political motivation and Adolf Hitler's role as warlord, as well as a better understanding of the human and economic costs of the war—for both the Soviet Union and Germany.While incorporating a wealth of new information, When Titans Clashed remains remarkably compact, a tribute to the authors' determination to make this critical chapter in world history as accessible as it is essential.

In the first half of the twentieth century, both czarist Russia and its successor, the Soviet Union, were confronted with the problem of conducting military operations involving mass armies along broad fronts, a characteristic of modern war. Despite the ideological and technological differences between the two regimes, both strove toward a theory that became known as operational art - that level of warfare that links strategic goals to actual combat engagements. From the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, through World War I, the civil war, and to the eve of World War II, modern operational art grew from theoretical speculations by a small group of officers to become a critical component of the Soviet art of war. In this first comprehensive treatment of the subject, Richard Harrison shows how this theory emerged and developed to become - despite radically different political settings and levels of technology - essential to the Red Army's victory over Germany in World War II. Tracking both continuity and divergence between the imperial and Red armies. Harrison analyzes, on the basis of theoretical writings and battlefield performance, the development of such operationally significant phenomena as the ""front"" (group of armies), consecutive operations, and the deep operation, which relied upon aircraft and mechanized formations to penetrate the kind of intractable defense systems that characterized so much of World War I. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, including memoirs, theoretical works, and materials from the Russian military archives (many presented here for the first time), Harrison traces the debates within the Russian and Soviet armies that engaged such theorists as Neznamov, Svechin, Triandafillov, and Isserson. The end result is an exemplary military intellectual history that helps illuminate a critical element in the ""Russian way of war.

President George H. W. Bush assumed office at a critical juncture, as the Cold War came to an end and the world shifted to a new era of international relations. In The Gulf War, Spencer Bakich argues that Bush fashioned a grand strategy to bring about a New World Order designed to transform international politics by focusing on great power cooperation through the United Nations. The Persian Gulf War became the chance for Bush to put his strategy into action. This latest volume in the Landmark Presidential Decision series offers a fresh and concise look at President Bush’s strategic decision making and his choice to wage war against Iraq.Bakich, an expert in wartime strategy, traces the ideas and actions of Bush’s new world order strategy between 1989 and 1991, which had a profound impact on the diplomacy of Desert Shield and the warfighting of Desert Storm. Bush’s strategic beliefs contained core elements of Wilsonian internationalism—specifically its goals of promoting democracy, conducting multilateral diplomacy through international institutions, and transforming the United Nations into the collective security institution that its founders envisioned. His “New World Order” was not mere political sloganeering intended to bolster support for the Persian Gulf War among a skeptical American public. Rather, Bush intended the Gulf War to exercise and firmly establish the UN’s collective security function in the post–Cold War era.In this bold new interpretation of George H. W. Bush’s foreign policy, Bakich challenges conventional wisdom, arguing that Bush’s New World Order was carefully defined and had a comprehensive logic. He shows how Bush’s strategic beliefs oriented American statecraft in peace and war. Bush’s grand strategy was remarkably coherent, powerfully affecting how his administration decided to go to war to evict Iraq from Kuwait, how it waged war in the Persian Gulf, and ultimately the reasons why the fighting was terminated before the coalition’s war aims were completely achieved. In the end, the Gulf War’s outcome exposed faulty assumptions about the international system that underpinned the strategy, weakening the president’s fidelity to his own approach. Ultimately, the Gulf War did usher in a New World Order, but not the one Bush had envisioned.

In this long-awaited follow-up to his critically acclaimed 1967 classic, Six Seconds in Dallas, Josiah Thompson reveals major new forensic discoveries since the year 2000 that overturn previously accepted 'facts' about the Kennedy assassination. Together they provide what no previous book on the assassination has done - incontrovertible proof that JFK was killed in a crossfire.Last Second in Dallas is not a conspiracy book. No theory of who did it is offered or discussed. Among the discoveries: The test showing that all recovered bullet fragments came from Oswald's rifle was mistaken. Several fragments could have come from bullets of any manufacturer and any caliber. The sudden two-inch forward movement of the president's head in the Zapruder film just before his head explodes is revealed to be an optical illusion caused by the movement of Zapruder's camera. This leaves without further challenge clear evidence that this shot came from a specific location to the right front of the limousine. Detailed analysis of film frames matched by the newly validated acoustic evidence show a second shot struck the president's head from behind less than a second later. Result: two killing shots to the head from opposite directions in the final second of the shooting - hence the book's title.At once a historical detective story and a deeply personal narrative by a major figure in the field, Last Second in Dallas captures the drama and sweep of events, detailing government missteps and political bias as well as the junk science, hubris, and controversy that have dogged the investigation from the beginning. Into this account Thompson weaves his own eventful journey, that of a Yale-educated scholar who in 1976 resigned his tenured professorship in philosophy to become a private investigator in San Francisco, developing a national reputation.Profusely illustrated, Last Second in Dallas features dozens of archive photographs, including Zapruder film frames reproduced at the highest clarity ever published.

The legal system is often denounced as “Kafkaesque”—but what does this really mean? This is the question Douglas E. Litowitz tackles in his critical reading of Franz Kafka’s writings about the law.Going far beyond Kafka’s most familiar works—such as The Trial—Litowitz assembles a broad array of works that he refers to as “Kafka’s legal fiction”—consisting of published and unpublished works that deal squarely with the law, as well as those that touch upon it indirectly, as in political, administrative, and quasi-judicial procedures. Cataloguing, explaining, and critiquing this body of work, Litowitz brings to bear all those aspects of Kafka’s life that were connected to law—his legal education, his career as a lawyer, his drawings, and his personal interactions with the legal system. A close study of Kafka’s legal writings reveals that Kafka held a consistent position about modern legal systems, characterized by a crippling nihilism. Modern legal systems, in Kafka’s view, consistently fail to make good on their stated pretensions—in fact often accomplish the opposite of what they promise. This indictment, as Litowitz demonstrates, is not confined to the legal system of Kafka’s day, but applies just as surely to our own.A short, clear, comprehensive introduction to Kafka’s legal writings and thought, Kafka’s Indictment of Modern Law is not uncritical. Even as he clarifies Kafka’s experience of and ideas about the law, Litowitz offers an informed perspective on the limitations of these views. His book affords rare insight into a key aspect of Kafka’s work, and into the connection between the writing, the writer, and the legal world.

Winner of the Fletcher Pratt Award and McLemore PrizeIn the spring of 1862, there was no more important place in the western Confederacy-perhaps in all the South-than the tiny town of Corinth, Mississippi.Major General Henry W. Halleck, commander of Union forces in the Western Theater, reported to Washington that ""Richmond and Corinth are now the great strategical points of war, and our success at these points should be insured at all hazards."" In the same vein, Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard declared to Richmond that ""If defeated at Corinth, we lose the Mississippi Valley and probably our cause."" Those were odd sentiments concerning a town scarcely a decade old. By this time, however, it sat at the junction of the South's two most important rail lines and had become a major strategic locale. Despite its significance, Corinth has received comparatively little attention from Civil War historians and has been largely overshadowed by events at Shiloh, Antietam, and Perryville. Timothy Smith's panoramic and vividly detailed new look at Corinth corrects that neglect, focusing on the nearly year-long campaign that opened the way to Vicksburg and presaged the Confederacy's defeat in the West.Combining big-picture strategic and operational analysis with ground-level views, Smith covers the spring siege, the vicious attacks and counterattacks of the October battle, and the subsequent occupation. He has drawn extensively on hundreds of eyewitness accounts to capture the sights, sounds, and smells of battle and highlight the command decisions of Halleck, Beauregard, Ulysses S. Grant, Sterling Price, William S. Rosecrans, and Earl Van Dorn.This is also the first in-depth examination of Corinth following the creation of a new National Park Service center located at the site. Weaving together an immensely compelling tale that places the reader in the midst of war's maelstrom, it substantially revises and enlarges our understanding of Corinth and its crucial importance in the Civil War.

Winner of the Richard B. Harwell Award, Tennessee History Book Award and the Doughlas Southall Freeman AwardA critical moment in the Civil War, the Battle of Shiloh has been the subject of many books. However, none has told the story of Shiloh as Timothy Smith does in this volume, the first comprehensive history of the two-day battle in April 1862-a battle so fluid and confusing that its true nature has eluded a clear narrative telling until now.Unfolding over April 6th and 7th, the Battle of Shiloh produced the most sprawling and bloody field of combat since the Napoleonic wars, with an outcome that set the Confederacy on the road to defeat. Contrary to previous histories, Smith tells us, the battle was not won or lost on the first day, but rather in the decision-making of the night that followed and in the next day's fighting. Devoting unprecedented attention to the details of that second day, his book shows how the Union's triumph was far less assured, and much harder to achieve, than has been acknowledged. Smith also employs a new organization strategy to clarify the action. By breaking his analysis of both days' fighting into separate phases and sectors, he makes it much easier to grasp what was happening in each combat zone, why it unfolded as it did, and how it related to the broader tactical and operational context of the entire battle.The battlefield's diverse and challenging terrain also comes in for new scrutiny. Through detailed attention to the terrain's major features-most still visible at the Shiloh National Military Park-Smith is able to track their specific and considerable influence on the actions, and their consequences, over those forty-eight hours. The experience of the soldiers finally finds its place here too, as Smith lets us hear, as never before, the voices of the common man, whether combatant or local civilian, caught up in a historic battle for their lives, their land, their honor, and their homes.""We must this day conquer or perish,"" Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston declared on the morning of April 6, 1862. His words proved prophetic, and might serve as an epitaph for the larger war, as we see fully for the first time in this unparalleled and surely definitive history of the Battle of Shiloh.

Winner: Albert Castel Book AwardWinner: Tennessee History Book AwardWinner: Emerging Civil War Book AwardWinner: Douglas Southall Freeman History AwardWhen General Ulysses S. Grant targeted Forts Henry and Donelson, he penetrated the Confederacy at one of its most vulnerable points, setting in motion events that would elevate his own status, demoralize the Confederate leadership and citizenry, and, significantly, tear the western Confederacy asunder. More to the point, the two battles of early 1862 opened the Tennessee River campaign that would prove critical to the ultimate Union victory in the Mississippi Valley. In Grant Invades Tennessee, award-winning Civil War historian Timothy B. Smith gives readers a battlefield view of the fight for Forts Henry and Donelson, as well as a critical wide-angle perspective on their broader meaning in the conduct and outcome of the war. The first comprehensive tactical treatment of these decisive battles, this book completes the trilogy of the Tennessee River campaign that Smith began in Shiloh and Corinth 1862, marking a milestone in Civil War history.Whether detailing command-level decisions or using eye-witness anecdotes to describe events on the ground, walking readers through maps or pulling back for an assessment of strategy, this finely written work is equally sure on matters of combat and context. Beginning with Grant’s decision to bypass the Confederates’ better-defended sites on the Mississippi, Smith takes readers step-by-step through the battles: the employment of a flotilla of riverine war ships along with infantry and land-based artillery in subduing Fort Henry; the lesser effectiveness of this strategy against Donelson’s much stronger defense, weaponry, and fighting forces; the surprise counteroffensive by the Confederates and the role of their commanders’ incompetence and cowardice in foiling its success. Though casualties at the two forts fell far short of bloodier Civil War battles to come, the importance of these Union victories transcend battlefield statistics. Grant Invades Tennessee allows us, for the first time, to clearly see how and why.

It was the third week of May 1863, and after seven months and six attempts, Ulysses S. Grant was finally at the doorstep of Vicksburg. What followed was a series of attacks and maneuvers against the last major section of the Mississippi River controlled by the Confederacy—and one of the most important operations of the Civil War. Grant intended to end the campaign quickly by assault, but the stalwart defense of Vicksburg’s garrison changed his plans. The Union Assaults at Vicksburg is the first comprehensive account of this quick attempt to capture Vicksburg, which proved critical to the Union’s ultimate success and Grant’s eventual solidification as one of the most significant military commanders in American history.Establishing a day-to-day—and occasionally minute-to-minute—timeline for this crucial week, military historian Timothy B. Smith invites readers to follow the Vicksburg assaults as they unfold. His finely detailed account reaches from the offices of statesmen and politicians to the field of battle, with exacting analysis and insight that ranges from the highest level of planning and command to the combat experience of the common soldier. As closely observed and vividly described as each assault is, Smith’s book also puts the sum of these battles into the larger context of the Vicksburg campaign, as well as the entire war. His deeply informed, in-depth work thus provides the first full view of a key but little-studied turning point in the fortunes of the Union army in the West, Ulysses S. Grant, and the United States of America.

Jefferson Davis is a historical figure who provokes strong passions among scholars. Through the years historians have place him at both ends of the spectrum: some have portrayed him as a hero, others have judged him incompetent. In ""Jefferson Davis and his Generals"", Steven Woodworth aims to show that both extremes are accurate - Davis was both heroic and incompetent. Yet neither viewpoint reveals the whole truth about this complicated figure. Woodworth's portrait of Davis reveals an experienced, talented, and courageous leader who, nevertheless, undermined the Confederacy's cause in the trans-Appalachian west, where the South lost the war.

He was one of the most embattled heads of state in American history. Charged with building a new nation while waging a war for its very independence, he accepted his responsibilities reluctantly but carried them out with a fierce dedication to his ideals. Those efforts ultimately foundered on the shoals of Confederate defeat, leaving Davis stranded in public memory as both valiant leader and desolate loser.Now two renowned Civil War historians, Herman Hattaway and Richard Beringer, take a new and closer look at Davis's presidency. In the process, they provide a clearer image of his leadership and ability to handle domestic, diplomatic, and military matters under the most trying circumstances-without the considerable industrial and population resources of the North and without the formal recognition of other nations.Hattaway and Beringer examine Davis's strengths and weaknesses as president in light of both traditional evidence and current theories of presidential leadership. They show us a man so respected that northern colleagues regretted his departure from the U.S. Senate, but so bent on Southern independence he was willing to impose unthinkable burdens on his citizens-an apologist for slavery who was committed to state rights, even while growing nationalism in his new country called for a stronger central government.In assessing Davis's actual administration of the Confederate state, the authors analyze the Confederate government's constitution, institutions, infrastructure, and cabinet-level administrators. They also integrate events of Davis's presidency with the ongoing war as it encroached upon the South, offering a panoramic view of military strategy as seen from the president's office. They tell how Davis reacted to the outcomes of key battles and campaigns in order to assess his leadership abilities, his relations with civilian and military authorities, and—his own personal competency notwithstanding—his poor judgment in selecting generals.Rich in detail and exhilaratingly told with generous selections from Davis's own letters and speeches, Hattaway and Beringer provide the most insightful account available of the first and only Confederate presidency-suggesting that perhaps it was the Confederate government, rather than Davis himself, that failed. More than that, it shows us Jefferson Davis as an American leader and offers a new appreciation of his place in our country's history.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a renowned cavalryman who fought during the American Civil War. This book presents an analysis of his life, from childhood in Mississippi, to wealth from the slave trade, his role as founder and Grand Wizard of the first Ku Klux Klan, and his death.

When the Wehrmacht rolled into the Soviet Union in World War II, it got more than it bargained for. Notwithstanding the Red Army's retreat, Soviet citizens fought fiercely against German occupiers, engaging in raids, sabotage, and intelligence gathering - largely without any oversight from Stalin and his iron-fisted rule. Kenneth Slepyan provides an enlightening social and political history of the Soviet partisan movement, a people's army of irregulars fighting behind enemy lines. These insurgents included not only civilians - many of them women - but also stranded Red Army soldiers, national minorities, and even former collaborators. While others have documented the military contributions of the movement, Slepyan is the first to describe it as a social phenomenon and to reveal how its members were both challenged and transformed by the crucible of war. By tracing the movement's origins, internal squabbles, and evolution throughout the war, Slepyan shows that people who suddenly had the autonomy to act on their own came to rethink the Stalinist regime. He assesses how partisan initiative and self-reliance competed with and countered the demands of state control and how social identities influenced relations among partisans, as well as between partisans and Soviet authorities. Slepyan has tapped newly opened Soviet archives, as well as wartime radio broadcasts and Communist Party publications and memoirs, to depict the partisans as agents actively pursuing their own agendas. His book gives us a picture of their day-to-day struggle that was previously unknown to all but those few who personally survived the experience, paying special attention to questions of nationality, ethnicity, and gender to illuminate the sociopolitical relations within this diverse group. Through these varied accounts, he demonstrates that Soviet citizens reinterpreted Stalinism and the Soviet experience in the context of total war. Offering numerous fresh insights into the partisans' multifaceted relationship with the state, Slepyan's book reveals the ways in which the war simultaneously reinforced and undermined both Stalinism and the Soviet system. Ultimately, his study rescues the Soviet partisans from obscurity to depict the complexity of their lives and underscore their vital contributions to the defense of their homeland.

Who killed JFK? Ever since that fateful day in Dallas, theories about President Kennedy's murder have proliferated, running the gamut from the official "lone gunman" verdict to both serious and utterly screwball conspiracy theories. Michael Kurtz, a distinguished historian who has plumbed every crevice of this controversial case for more than thirty years, now sums up and critiques four decades of debate, while also offering provocative new perspectives.Kurtz presents an objective accounting of what we actually know and don't know about the assassination, underlining both the logic and the limitations of the major theories about the case. He then offers unique interpretations of the physical and forensic evidence and of existing areas of controversy, leading him to new conclusions that readers will find hard to dismiss.Kurtz shows how the official investigation's egregious mishandling of the crime-scene evidence—related to virtually every aspect of the case—is largely responsible for the lone gunman/conspiracy schism that confronts us today. Those responsible for that investigation (including the Dallas police, the FBI, and the Warren Commission) failed so miserably in their efforts that they would have been laughed off the air if they had been portrayed on any of TV's popular CSI series.One of the few experts writing on the subject who actually met Oswald, Kurtz also provides new information about the accused assassin's activities around the time of the assassination and about his double life, analyzing Oswald's ties to the intelligence community, to organized crime, and to both anti- and pro-Castro Cuban activists. Mustering extraordinary documentation-including exclusive interviews with key figures and extensive materials declassified by the Assassination Records Review Board-he both confirms and alters much previous speculation about Oswald and other aspects of the case.Who really killed JFK? Forty years later, most Americans still feel they don't know the truth and that their own government isn't telling them the whole story. This book offers a corrective to even the most recent "final verdicts" and establishes a sound baseline for future research.

From renowned Civil War historian Earl J. Hess comes a study of Union and Confederate soldiers as never seen before. Shattered Courage examines the experience of the men who refused to fight on the day of battle.When Abraham Lincoln took the oath of presidential office on March 4, 1865, he urged the country to care for those “who shall have borne the battle”—a reference to the Union soldiers who successfully met the challenges of combat. But while honoring and helping the good soldier, Americans have forgotten those men who tried but failed to meet the test of battle in the Civil War. Shattered Courage tells the stories of those previously obscure soldiers and explores the other side of combat courage.In this unique and groundbreaking volume, based on decades of research, Earl J. Hess provides the first comprehensive account of soldiers who refused to fight in the midst of combat. Hess charts the limits on combat morale, which affected veterans as well as green troops, officers in addition to enlisted men, and Union along with Confederate armies. Hess is the first historian to identify combat defaulters from personal accounts and official reports and to then examine their service records to discover what happened to them in the military system. He is also the first to compile statistics on defaulters and to reveal that their comrades sometimes reacted with anger, but more often accepted their failure as an unavoidable aspect of engaging in battle. Hess also discovered that the army tried unsuccessfully to stop combat defaulting but managed to contain its effects by efforts to encourage battle spirit. Far from heroes but not deserters, most of these men returned to duty and continued trying to deal with the experience of battle as lived during the Civil War.