James L. Stokesbury – författare

A concise history covering the causes and the battles of the world''s first global conflict, “the war to end all wars.”

World War I was a bloodletting so vast and unprecedented that for a generation it was known simply as the Great War. Casualty lists reached unimagined proportions as the same ground—places like Ypres and the Somme—was fought over again and again. Other major bloody battles remain vivid in memory to this day: Gallipoli and the Battle of Jutland are but two examples. Europe was at war with itself, and the effect on Western civilization was profound, its repercussions felt even today.

World War I saw the introduction of modern technology into the military arena: The tank, airplane, machine gun, submarine, and—most lethal of all—poison gas, all received their first widespread use. Professor James L. Stokesbury analyzes these technological innovations and the war''s complex military campaigns in lucid detail. At the same time he discusses the great political events that unfolded during the war, such as the Russian Revolution and the end of the Hapsburg dynasty, putting the social and political side of the war into the context of modern European history.

Includes Maps

A Short History of World War II is essentially a military history, but it reaches from the peace settlements of World War I to the drastically altered postwar world of the late 1940''s. 

Lucidly written and eminently readable, it is factual and accurate enough to satisfy professional historians. A Short History of World War II will appeal equally to the general reader, the veteran who fought in the War, and the student interested in understanding the contemporary political world.

This concise military history volume is “an excellent, coherent book that covers the major events of the Korean War admirably” (Army).

Historian James L. Stokesbury, author of A Short History of World War I and A Short History of World War II, summarizes the important events of the Korean War, citing all the major battles and key players in the conflict.

“Reducing an entire war to manageable length is a high literary art form, and Professor Stokesbury has mastered it. In the case of this Korean War history, short does not mean banal condensation or a dismal list of statistics and facts. Rather, Stokesbury begins from scratch and describes and interprets each phase of the war, as he did in his readable and well-known short histories of World Wars I and II. The narrative makes good sense of the infantry''s complicated battlefield movements; and his interpretation of the air war is exemplary.” —Library Journal

“A well-written, crisp and entertaining account.” —Richmond News Leader

“Authoritative and absorbing.” —Kirkus Reviews

The first one-volume survey of the American Revolution that is both objective and comprehensive, this outstanding narrative history traces the growth of a conflict that inexorably set the American colonies on the road to independence. Offering a spirited chronicle of the war itself -- the campaigns and strategies, the leaders on both sides, the problems of fielding and sustaining an army, and of maintaining morale -- Stokesbury also brings the reader to the Peace of Paris in 1783 and into the miltarily exhausted, financially ruined yet victorious United States as it emerged to create a workable national system.