Download or read book When the Invasion of Land Failed written by George R. McGhee Jr. and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The invasion of land by ocean-dwelling plants and animals was one of the most revolutionary events in the evolution of life on Earth, yet the animal invasion almost failed—twice—because of the twin mass extinctions of the Late Devonian Epoch. Some 359 to 375 million years ago, these catastrophic events dealt our ancestors a blow that almost drove them back into the sea. If those extinctions had been just a bit more severe, spiders and insects—instead of vertebrates—might have become the ecologically dominant forms of animal life on land. This book examines the profound evolutionary consequences of the Late Devonian extinctions and the various theories proposed to explain their occurrence. Only one group of four-limbed vertebrates exists on Earth, while other tetrapod-like fishes are extinct. This gap is why the idea of "fish with feet" seems so peculiar to us, yet such animals were once a vital part of our world, and if the Devonian extinctions had not happened, members of these species, like the famous Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, might have continued to live in our rivers and lakes. Synthesizing decades of research and including a wealth of new discoveries, this accessible, comprehensive text explores the causes of the Devonian extinctions, the reasons vertebrates were so severely affected, and the potential evolution of the modern world if the extinctions had never taken place.

Download or read book The Bay of Pigs Invasion written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-05 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures. *Includes quotes about the plan and its failure, including from declassified CIA files. *Includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading. "Openly and unabashedly they are organizing training camps; openly and unabashedly they are building air bases and air strips. Everyone knows who is building the strips and buying planes, that mercenaries are recruiting troops. They even have the cynicism to publish photographs." - Fidel Castro, March 1961 Within just a month of becoming President, the issue of communist Cuba became central to John F. Kennedy and his administration. On February 3rd, 1961, President Kennedy called for a plan to support Cuban refugees in the U.S., and a month later, he created the Peace Corps, a program that trained young American volunteers to help with economic and community development in poor countries. Both programs were integral pieces of the Cold War and were attempts to align disadvantaged groups abroad with the United State and the West against the Soviet Union and its Communist satellites. Meanwhile, covert operations were laying the groundwork for overthrowing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and he knew it. Castro railed against CIA involvement among Cubans trying to overthrow him and his still young revolution. Matters came to a head that April, when the Kennedy Administration moved beyond soft measures to direct action. From April 17-20, 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed on the beaches of Western Cuba in an attempt to overthrow Castro. This plan, known as the "Bay of Pigs," had been originally drafted by the Eisenhower Administration. The exiles landed in Cuba and were expected to be greeted by anti-Castro forces within the country, after which the U.S. would provide air reinforcement to the rebels and the Castro regime would slowly be overthrown. From the onset, almost every phase of the operation went wrong. Ships were prevented from reaching shore by reefs previously thought to be seaweed beds on the basis of U-2 photographs. Antiquated American bombers missed a high percentage of their targets, and with American involvement already apparent to the world, the second round of air attacks was cancelled. Most of those who reached the beach in the land invasion were killed or captured, and the United States suffered immeasurable embarrassment on the international stage. On April 21st, in a White House press conference, President Kennedy accepted full responsibility for the failure, and over the following year, the U.S. and Cuba negotiated the release of the imprisoned exiles, who were finally released in December of 1962 in exchange for $55.5 million worth of food and medicine. The aborted invasion also became a nationalistic rallying cry for Castro, helping to consolidate public support in favor of his revolutionary government. According to some, the invasion's famous name comes from a mistranslation for a type of fish found in the bay where the landing eventually occurred: the "Cochinos." Regardless, the Bay of Pigs is viewed historically as one of the most ill-conceived and poorly executed covert paramilitary actions in the history of the United States, or as one historian put it, "the ultimate symbol of boneheaded interventionism." More importantly, the failed invasion motivated Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to attempt to place medium range nuclear missiles in Cuba, due not only to his questioning of Kennedy's resolve but also to placate the concerns of Castro following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. That would ultimately lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, arguably the closest the Cold War came to becoming a nuclear Armageddon.

Download or read book The Perfect Failure written by Trumbull Higgins and published by W W Norton & Company Incorporated. This book was released on 1989 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the psychology of color, color composition, abstract color, representative color, and lighting conditions

Download or read book The Cuban Invasion written by Karl Ernest Meyer and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book D Day Invasion written by iMinds and published by iMinds Pty Ltd. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 6 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story behind D-Day begins in 1939 when Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, attacked Poland and ignited World War Two. The following year, the Germans occupied France and Western Europe and launched a vicious air war against Britain. In 1941, they invaded the Soviet Union. Seemingly unstoppable, the Nazis now held virtually all of Europe. They imposed a ruthless system of control and unleashed the horror of the Holocaust. However, by 1943, the tide had begun to turn in favor of the Allies, the forces opposed to Germany. In the east, despite huge losses, the Soviets began to force the Germans back.

Download or read book The Pinochet File written by Peter Kornbluh and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revised and updated: the definitive primary-source history of US involvement in General Pinochet’s Chilean coup—“the evidence is overwhelming” (The New Yorker). Published to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet’s infamous September 11, 1973, military coup in Chile, this updated edition of The Pinochet File reveals the shocking, formerly secret record of the US government’s complicity with atrocity in a foreign country. The book now completes the file on Pinochet’s story, detailing his multiple indictments between 2004 and his death on December 10, 2006, including the Riggs Bank scandal that revealed how the dictator had illegally squirreled away over $26 million in ill-begotten wealth in secret American bank accounts. When it was first released in hardcover, The Pinochet File contributed to the international campaign to hold Pinochet accountable for murder, torture, and terrorism. A new afterword tells the extraordinary story of Henry Kissinger’s attempt to undercut the book’s reception—efforts that generated a major scandal that led to a high-level resignation at the Council on Foreign Relations, illustrating the continued ability of the book to speak truth to power. “The Pinochet File should be considered the long awaited book of record on U.S. intervention in Chile . . . A crisp compelling narrative, almost a political thriller.” —Los Angeles Times

Download or read book An Invasion that Failed written by Edwyn Henry Stuart Jones and published by . This book was released on 1950 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bay of Pigs Declassified written by Peter Kornbluh and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classified as top secret for more than thirty-five years, the full text of the CIA's scathing internal report on its disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion is accompanied by an introduction, an interview with the invasion's directors, and more. Original.

Download or read book Operation Sea Lion written by Leo McKinstry and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “immaculately researched and compellingly written” WWII history sheds new light on Britain’s critical victory against Nazi invasion (The New Criterion). In the summer of 1940, the Nazi war machine was at its zenith. France, Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries were all under occupation. Only Britain stood in the way of the complete triumph, and Hitler planned a two-pronged offensive?a blistering aerial bombardment followed by a land invasion?to subdue his final enemy. But for the first time in the war, Hitler did not prevail. As Leo McKinstry details in this fascinating new history, the British were far more ruthless and proficient than is usually recognized. The brilliance of the RAF in the Battle of Britain was not an exception but part of a pattern of magnificent organization that thwarted Hitler’s armies at every turn. Using a wealth of archival and primary source materials, Leo McKinstry provides a groundbreaking new assessment of the six fateful months in mid-1940 when Operation Sea Lion was all that stood between the Nazis and total victory.

Download or read book When the United States Invaded Russia written by Carl J. Richard and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the earliest U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns outside the Western Hemisphere, the Siberian intervention was a harbinger of policies to come. At the height of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson dispatched thousands of American soldiers to Siberia, and continued the intervention for a year and a half after the armistice in order to overthrow the Bolsheviks and to prevent the Japanese from absorbing eastern Siberia. Its tragic legacy can be found in the seeds of World War II, and in the Cold War.

Download or read book The Lesson of Cuba written by United States. Department of State. Bureau of Public Affairs and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Bay of Pigs written by Howard Jones and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jones provides an account of President Eisenhower's disastrous attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. He examines the train of missteps and self-deceptions that led to the invasion of the Bay of Pigs by U.S.-trained exiles.

Download or read book On War written by Carl von Clausewitz and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book When the Press Fails written by W. Lance Bennett and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sobering look at the intimate relationship between political power and the news media, When the Press Fails argues the dependence of reporters on official sources disastrously thwarts coverage of dissenting voices from outside the Beltway. The result is both an indictment of official spin and an urgent call to action that questions why the mainstream press failed to challenge the Bush administration’s arguments for an invasion of Iraq or to illuminate administration policies underlying the Abu Ghraib controversy. Drawing on revealing interviews with Washington insiders and analysis of content from major news outlets, the authors illustrate the media’s unilateral surrender to White House spin whenever oppositional voices elsewhere in government fall silent. Contrasting these grave failures with the refreshingly critical reporting on Hurricane Katrina—a rare event that caught officials off guard, enabling journalists to enter a no-spin zone—When the Press Fails concludes by proposing new practices to reduce reporters’ dependence on power. “The hand-in-glove relationship of the U.S. media with the White House is mercilessly exposed in this determined and disheartening study that repeatedly reveals how the press has toed the official line at those moments when its independence was most needed.”—George Pendle, Financial Times “Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston are indisputably right about the news media’s dereliction in covering the administration’s campaign to take the nation to war against Iraq.”—Don Wycliff, Chicago Tribune “[This] analysis of the weaknesses of Washington journalism deserves close attention.”—Russell Baker, New York Review of Books

Download or read book Fighting the Russians in Winter Three Case Studies written by A. F. Chew and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1981 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Bay of Pigs written by Haynes Johnson and published by W. W. Norton. This book was released on 1964-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The commanders of the invasion forces break their silence to reveal the whole truth aboutThe CIASecret plans to countermand White House decisionsFatally poor intelligenceSuperb dedication and training but inadequate planning and executionThe Joint Chiefs of StaffApproval of a suicidal battle plan, disastrous in detailThe Invasion of CubaAn operation that was a combination of individual and unit heroism, of hardship, betrayal, and SNAFU.

Download or read book Mission Failure written by Michael Mandelbaum and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mission Failure argues that, in the past 25 years, the U.S. military has turned to missions that are largely humanitarian and socio-political - and that this ideologically-driven foreign policy generally leads to failure.