Social Military History

In spring of 1953, newly elected President Eisenhower sat down with his staff to discuss the state of American strategy in the Cold War. America, he insisted, needed a new approach to an urgent situation. From this meeting emerged Eisenhower's teams of "bright young fellows", charged with developing competing policies, each of which would come to shape global politics.

For the last two decades, Sidney Tarrow has explored "contentious politics" - disruptions of the settled political order caused by social movements. These disruptions range from strikes and street protests to riots and civil disobedience to revolution. In War, States, and Contention, Tarrow shows how such movements sometimes trigger, animate, and guide the course of war and how they sometimes rise during war and in war's wake to change regimes or even overthrow states.

Success in war ultimately depends on the consolidation of political order. Nadia Schadlow argues that the steps needed to consolidate a new political order are not separate from war. They are instead an essential component of war and victory.

On rare occasions in American history, Congress enacts a measure so astute, so far-reaching, so revolutionary, it enters the language as a metaphor. The Marshall Plan comes to mind, as does the Civil Rights Act. But perhaps none resonates in the American imagination like the G.I. Bill.

The clashes between President Abraham Lincoln and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney over slavery, secession, and Lincoln's constitutional war powers went to the heart of Lincoln's presidency. Lincoln and Taney's bitter disagreements began with Taney's Dred Scott opinion in 1857, when the chief justice declared that the Constitution did not grant the black man any rights that the white man was bound to honor.

Flying the notorious "hump route" between India and China in 1943, a twin-engine plane suffered mechanical failure and crashed in a dense mountain jungle. Among the passengers and crew were celebrated CBS journalist Eric Sevareid, a Soviet double agent posing as an OSS operative, and General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell's personal political adviser. Against the odds, all but one of the 21 people aboard the aircraft survived - but they fell from the frying pan into the fire.

In tracing the rise of the modern idea of the American "new woman", Lynn Dumenil examines World War I's surprising impact on women and, in turn, women's impact on the war. Telling the stories of a diverse group of women, including African Americans, dissidents, pacifists, reformers, and industrial workers, Dumenil analyzes both the roadblocks and opportunities they faced. She richly explores the ways in which women helped the United States mobilize for the largest military endeavor in the nation's history.

1879 was a year of bloody conflict on the African continent. Cetsywayo, the Zulu chieftain, had wielded his armies with precision and care, defeating and driving his enemies before him. This courageous force finally butted heads with the British on the sweeping plains of Africa, inflicting grievous losses on the empire’s red coats. This book covers the conflict and the major political and military events that took place. Written the year after the war came to an end, the author weaves a compelling narrative that’s hard to put down.

An eighteen-year-old in the United States is still barred from buying alcohol, acquiring a pilot's license, or stepping into a casino. Yet, astonishingly, they can be enlisted in the military and deployed to a war zone. On the other side of the age spectrum, individuals over thirty-nine often encounter insurmountable obstacles to enlistment. Break this mold and meet Lanny Snodgrass, who, at the age of sixty-three, became the oldest American to join the Army and complete officer basic training. It was 2003, the Iraq War had just started, and the Pentagon momentarily relaxed age requirements.

Long called by some the “Andersonville of the North”, the prisoner of war camp in Elmira, New York, is remembered as the most notorious of all Union-run POW camps. It existed for only a year - from the summer of 1864 to July 1865 - but in that time, and for long after, it became darkly emblematic of man’s inhumanity to man. Confederate prisoners called it “Hellmira”. Derek Maxfield contextualizes the rise of prison camps during the Civil War, explores the failed exchange of prisoners, and tells the tale of the creation and evolution of the prison camp in Elmira.

Future war is almost here: battles fought in cyberspace, biologically enhanced soldiers, autonomous systems that can process information and strike violently before a human being can blink. A leading expert on the place of technology in war and intelligence, Robert H. Latiff, now teaching at the University of Notre Dame, has spent a career in the military researching and developing new combat technologies, observing the cost of our unquestioning embrace of innovation.

McInerney and Vallely, retired U.S. Generals, are now military analysts for FOX News. In Endgame, they direct their experience and expertise to the question of how to win the war on terror. Unlike past enemies, radical Islam is not confined to particular nationsm - and thus cannot be defeated solely through conventional warfare against enemy states.

Every day ordinary young Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq, with the same bravery, honor, and sense of duty that have distinguished American troops throughout history. One of these is Jason Dunham, a 22-year-old Marine corporal from the one-stoplight town of Scio, New York, whose stunning story reporter Michael M. Phillips discovered while he was embedded with a Marine infantry battalion in the Iraqi desert.

Jess enlisted in the Marines immediately after graduating from high school in 2001, and in 2004 she volunteered to serve in the Marine Corps' first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit in Iraq. Her platoon was tasked with recovering and processing the remains of fallen soldiers. With sensitivity and insight, Jess describes her job retrieving and examining the remains of fellow soldiers lost in combat in Iraq, and the psychological intricacy of coping with their fates, as well as her own.

In 1861, Lt. Col. William Hoffman was appointed to the post of commissary general of prisoners and urged to find a suitable site for the construction of what was expected to be the Union's sole military prison. After inspecting four islands in Lake Erie, Hoffman came upon one in Sandusky Bay known as Johnson's Island. With a large amount of fallen timber, 40 acres of cleared land, and its proximity to Sandusky, Ohio, Johnson's Island seemed the ideal location for the Union's purpose.

Women are officially barred from combat in the American armed services, yet in today’s wars, where there are no front lines, the ban on combat is virtually meaningless. More than in any previous conflict in our history, American women are engaging with the enemy, suffering injuries, and even sacrificing their lives in the line of duty. When Janey Comes Marching Home juxtaposes forty-eight photographs by Sascha Pflaeging with oral histories collected by Laura Browder to provide a dramatic portrait of women at war.

In today’s modern world, every political regime - even the most authoritarian or repressive - describes itself as democracy or a democratic people’s republic. The concept of rule by the people and on behalf of the people has come to be accepted as the norm. Very few would overtly espouse the cause of dictatorship, absolute monarchy, or oligarchy as the most desirable political system upon which to base the government of any country.

Decisive Moments in History: The Manhattan Project covers the beginning of atomic research prior to the Manhattan Project, the exodus of talented scientists fleeing Nazi Germany throughout Europe, and the history and results of the grand project that ushered in the Atomic Age.

In The Icarus Syndrome, Peter Beinart tells a tale as old as the Greeks—a story about the seductions of success. Beinart describes Washington on the eve of three wars—World War I, Vietnam, and Iraq—three moments when American leaders decided they could remake the world in their image. Each time, leading intellectuals declared that history was over, and the spread of democracy was inevitable. Each time, a president held the nation in the palm of his hand.

There is no surer way to make history come alive than to contemplate those moments when the world's future - the government and wealth of nations, the faith and culture of generations - hung in the balance. In this volume, many of our brightest historians speculate about some of history's intriguing crossroads and the ways in which our lives may have been changed for the better - or the worse.