Download or read book Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing written by Christopher Cramer and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes issue with two common perspectives on violence and war. The first is the liberal interpretation, according to which war is exclusively negative in its effects and peace is easily achieved through democratisation and free trade. In this view, modern liberal market democracies have outgrown violence, and only resort to it in self-defence. The second is a romantic, utopian view of violence. Transposed into political rhetoric, these two views are often directly opposed, as they are nowadays in Iraq and in the 'War on Terror'. Cramer's book forges an alternative way of understanding the role of violence in the transition to capitalism and a global economy.
Download or read book Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing written by Christopher Cramer and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Next Civil War written by Stephen Marche and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-01-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Should be required reading for anyone interested in preserving our 246-year experiment in self-government.” —The New York Times Book Review * “Well researched and eloquently presented.” —The Atlantic * “Delivers Cormac McCarthy-worthy drama; while the nonfictional asides imbue that drama with the authority of documentary.” —The New York Times Book Review A celebrated journalist takes a fiercely divided America and imagines five chilling scenarios that lead to its collapse, based on in-depth interviews with experts of all kinds. The United States is coming to an end. The only question is how. On a small two-lane bridge in a rural county that loathes the federal government, the US Army uses lethal force to end a standoff with hard-right anti-government patriots. Inside an ordinary diner, a disaffected young man with a handgun takes aim at the American president stepping in for an impromptu photo-op, and a bullet splits the hyper-partisan country into violently opposed mourners and revelers. In New York City, a Category 2 hurricane plunges entire neighborhoods underwater and creates millions of refugees overnight—a blow that comes on the heels of a financial crash and years of catastrophic droughts—and tips America over the edge into ruin. These nightmarish scenarios are just three of the five possibilities most likely to spark devastating chaos in the United States that are brought to life in The Next Civil War, a chilling and deeply researched work of speculative nonfiction. Drawing upon sophisticated predictive models and nearly two hundred interviews with experts—civil war scholars, military leaders, law enforcement officials, secret service agents, agricultural specialists, environmentalists, war historians, and political scientists—journalist Stephen Marche predicts the terrifying future collapse that so many of us do not want to see unfolding in front of our eyes. Marche has spoken with soldiers and counterinsurgency experts about what it would take to control the population of the United States, and the battle plans for the next civil war have already been drawn up. Not by novelists, but by colonels. No matter your political leaning, most of us can sense that America is barreling toward catastrophe—of one kind or another. Relevant and revelatory, The Next Civil War plainly breaks down the looming threats to America and is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of its people, its land, and its government.
Download or read book The Field of Blood written by Joanne B. Freeman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The previously untold story of the violence in Congress that helped spark the Civil War In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery. These fights didn’t happen in a vacuum. Freeman’s dramatic accounts of brawls and thrashings tell a larger story of how fisticuffs and journalism, and the powerful emotions they elicited, raised tensions between North and South and led toward war. In the process, she brings the antebellum Congress to life, revealing its rough realities—the feel, sense, and sound of it—as well as its nation-shaping import. Funny, tragic, and rivetingly told, The Field of Blood offers a front-row view of congressional mayhem and sheds new light on the careers of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and other luminaries, as well as introducing a host of lesser-known but no less fascinating men. The result is a fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril.
Download or read book Everything You Were Taught About the Civil War is Wrong Ask a Southerner written by Lochlainn Seabrook and published by . This book was released on 2022-09-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Want to know the truth about the American Civil War? You won't learn it from any mainstream book. But you will in our international blockbuster, Everything You Were Taught About the Civil War Is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!
Download or read book War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning written by Chris Hedges and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General George S. Patton famously said, "Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, I do love it so!" Though Patton was a notoriously single-minded general, it is nonetheless a sad fact that war gives meaning to many lives, a fact with which we have become familiar now that America is once again engaged in a military conflict. War is an enticing elixir. It gives us purpose, resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. Chris Hedges of The New York Times has seen war up close -- in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central America -- and he has been troubled by what he has seen: friends, enemies, colleagues, and strangers intoxicated and even addicted to war's heady brew. In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, he tackles the ugly truths about humanity's love affair with war, offering a sophisticated, nuanced, intelligent meditation on the subject that is also gritty, powerful, and unforgettable.
Download or read book Grant written by Ron Chernow and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 1106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2017 “Eminently readable but thick with import . . . Grant hits like a Mack truck of knowledge.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't come close to capturing him, as Chernow shows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency. Before the Civil War, Grant was flailing. His business ventures had ended dismally, and despite distinguished service in the Mexican War he ended up resigning from the army in disgrace amid recurring accusations of drunkenness. But in war, Grant began to realize his remarkable potential, soaring through the ranks of the Union army, prevailing at the battle of Shiloh and in the Vicksburg campaign, and ultimately defeating the legendary Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Along the way, Grant endeared himself to President Lincoln and became his most trusted general and the strategic genius of the war effort. Grant’s military fame translated into a two-term presidency, but one plagued by corruption scandals involving his closest staff members. More important, he sought freedom and justice for black Americans, working to crush the Ku Klux Klan and earning the admiration of Frederick Douglass, who called him “the vigilant, firm, impartial, and wise protector of my race.” After his presidency, he was again brought low by a dashing young swindler on Wall Street, only to resuscitate his image by working with Mark Twain to publish his memoirs, which are recognized as a masterpiece of the genre. With lucidity, breadth, and meticulousness, Chernow finds the threads that bind these disparate stories together, shedding new light on the man whom Walt Whitman described as “nothing heroic... and yet the greatest hero.” Chernow’s probing portrait of Grant's lifelong struggle with alcoholism transforms our understanding of the man at the deepest level. This is America's greatest biographer, bringing movingly to life one of our finest but most underappreciated presidents. The definitive biography, Grant is a grand synthesis of painstaking research and literary brilliance that makes sense of all sides of Grant's life, explaining how this simple Midwesterner could at once be so ordinary and so extraordinary. Named one of the best books of the year by Goodreads • Amazon • The New York Times • Newsday • BookPage • Barnes and Noble • Wall Street Journal
Download or read book Understanding Civil Wars written by Edward Newman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the nature of civil war in the modern world and in historical perspective. Civil wars represent the principal form of armed conflict since the end of the Second World War, and certainly in the contemporary era. The nature and impact of civil wars suggests that these conflicts reflect and are also a driving force for major societal change. In this sense, Understanding Civil Wars: Continuity and change in intrastate conflict argues that the nature of civil war is not fundamentally changing in nature. The book includes a thorough consideration of patterns and types of intrastate conflict and debates relating to the causes, impact, and ‘changing nature’ of war. A key focus is on the political and social driving forces of such conflict and its societal meanings, significance and consequences. The author also explores methodological and epistemological challenges related to studying and understanding intrastate war. A range of questions and debates are addressed. What is the current knowledge regarding the causes and nature of armed intrastate conflict? Is it possible to produce general, cross-national theories on civil war which have broad explanatory relevance? Is the concept of ‘civil wars’ empirically meaningful in an era of globalization and transnational war? Has intrastate conflict fundamentally changed in nature? Are there historical patterns in different types of intrastate conflict? What are the most interesting methodological trends and debates in the study of armed intrastate conflict? How are narratives about the causes and nature of civil wars constructed around ideas such as ethnic conflict, separatist conflict and resource conflict? This book will be of much interest to students of civil wars, intrastate conflict, security studies and international relations in general.
Download or read book Don t Know Much About the Civil War written by Kenneth C. Davis and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 843 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Highly informative and entertaining…propels the reader light years beyond dull textbooks and Gone with the Wind.” —San Francisco Chronicle It has been 150 years since the opening salvo of America’s War Between the States. New York Times bestselling author Ken Davis tells us everything we never knew about our nation’s bloodiest conflict in Don’t Know Much About ® the Civil War—another fascinating and fun installment in his acclaimed series.
Download or read book Angola written by Patrick Chabal and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is hoped that the multiparty elections of 2007 will bring about a political system in Angola that will ensure the country's sustained economic and social development. Angola is just emerging from almost three decades of civil war, and its abundant natural resources and booming oil sector could lay the groundwork for long-term economic prosperity and cement the transition towards political stability. But are these hopes realistic? Angola provides a thorough introduction to the history of Angola and analyzes its economic, political, and social evolution since independence. Its contributors offer incisive, original, and contemporary interpretations of one of the most complex countries in Africa.
Download or read book A Short History of Mozambique written by Malyn Newitt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive overview traces the evolution of modern Mozambique, from its early modern origins in the Indian Ocean trading system and the Portuguese maritime empire to the fifteen-year civil war that followed independence and its continued after-effects. Though peace was achieved in 1992 through international mediation, Mozambique's remarkable recovery has shown signs of stalling. Malyn Newitt explores the historical roots of Mozambican disunity and hampered development, beginning with the divisive effects of the slave trade, the drawing of colonial frontiers in the 1890s and the lasting particularities of the north, centre and south, inherited from the compartmentalized approach of concession companies. Following the nationalist guerrillas' victory against the Portuguese in 1975, these regional divisions resurfaced in a civil war pitting the south against the north and centre, over attempts at far-reaching socioeconomic change. The settlement of the early 1990s is now under threat from a revived insurgency, and the ghosts of the past remain. This book seeks to distill this complex history, and to understand why, twenty-five years after the Peace Accord, Mozambicans still remain among the poorest people in the world.
Download or read book Chosen Country written by James Pogue and published by Henry Holt. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given unprecedented access to those participating in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a journalist reveals how politics and uncompromising religious belief divided communities.
Download or read book The Grammar of Civil War written by Will Fowler and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022-07 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike wars between nations, wherein the population generally comes together to defend its borders and is united by a common national goal, civil wars tear countries apart, divide families, and turn neighbors against each other. Civil wars are a form of self-harm in which a country’s people seek redemption through self-destruction, punishing or severing those parts that are seen to have made the nation ill. And yet civil wars—with their characteristically appalling violence—remain chillingly common, defying the notion that they are somehow an aberration. In The Grammar of Civil War Will Fowler examines the origin, process, and outcome of civil war. Using the Mexican Civil War of 1857–61 (or the War of the Reform, the political and military conflict that erupted between the competing liberal and conservative visions of Mexico’s future), Fowler seeks to understand how civil wars come about and, when they do, how they unfold and why. By outlining the grammatical principles that underpin a new framework for the study of civil war, Fowler stresses what is essential for one to take place and explains how, once it has erupted, it can be expected to develop and end, according to the syntax, morphology, and meanings that characterize and help understand the grammar of civil war generally.
Download or read book The Suicidal State in Somalia written by Mohamed Haji Ingiriis and published by UPA. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a critical reposition of the study of military regimes in Africa. Documenting and delving deep into the reign and rule of General Mohamed Siad Barre regime in Somalia from 1969 up to 1991, the book puts emphasis on African agencies—ostensibly shaped by external beneficiaries and patrons—over what went wrong with Africa after the much-awaited post-colonial period. It does so by critically engaging with the wider theoretical and conceptual frameworks in African Studies which more often than not tend to attribute the post-colonial African State raptures to colonialism. The main thesis of the book is that colonialism left Africa on its own space wherein African leaders could have made a difference. By putting discrete perspectives into historical context, the book circumnavigates through comparative and comprehensive holistic approach to the Siad Barre regime to reveal how colonialism did not produce less than what criminalisation of the State resulted in Somalia. This empirical analysis is crucial to understanding the contemporary conundrum facing the Somali world today. The argument is that the contemporary conflicts are not only attributable to—but also because of—the past plunders of the post-colonial leaders trained by the departed colonial authorities. Employing nuanced analytic concepts and categories, the aim of the book is to refine the past to recapture the present and envision the future. Framing new ways of analyzing military regimes in Africa begins with (re)assessment of how the Siad Barre regime was previously approached. Marshalling extensive and extraordinary amount of sources, the book unveils the intricacies and contradictions of the dictatorship and its impact on the Somali psyche. The book locates the evolution of the regime within the wider context of the Cold War political contestation between the East and the West. Unparalleled in-depth and analysis, this book is the first full-length scholarly study of the Siad Barre regime systematically explaining the politics and process of the dictatorial rule. The historicity of exploring Somali State trajectory entails employing a Braudelian longue durée approach. Thus, three interrelated sets of contexts/questions inform the study: how Siad Barre himself came into power, how he ruled and maintained his authoritarian reign over the Somalis and who had assisted him from inside and outside the Somali world.
Download or read book The Civilianization of War written by Andrew Barros and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-09 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are civilian populations targeted in modern wars despite laws and ethical claims insisting on civilian protections? This book offers answers.
Download or read book Civil War and Uncivil Development written by David Maher and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges the conventional wisdom that civil war inevitably stymies economic development and that ‘civil war represents development in reverse’. While some civil wars may have adverse economic effects, Civil War and Uncivil Development posits that not all conflicts have negative economic consequences and, under certain conditions, civil war violence can bolster processes of economic development. Using Colombia as a case study, this book provides evidence that violence perpetrated by key actors of the conflict – the public armed forces and paramilitaries – has facilitated economic growth and processes of economic globalisation in Colombia (namely, international trade and foreign direct investment), with profoundly negative consequences for large swathes of civilians. The analysis also discusses the ‘development in reverse’ logic in the context of other conflicts across the globe. This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners and students in the fields of security and development, civil war studies, peace studies, the political economy of conflict and international relations.
Download or read book Securing Peace in Angola and Mozambique written by Miranda Melcher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-03-21 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book helps explain how and why there are such diverging outcomes of UN peace negotiations and treaties through a detailed examination of peace processes in the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Does it really matter what's written on page 36, protocol V, section III, point 5 of a UN-endorsed peace treaty? Dr. Miranda Ruwart Melcher shows that seemingly small details - such as who wears suits, who has toothbrushes, and how specific words are translated between French and English - can and have delayed peace or contributed to restarting wars. Dr. Melcher uses unique primary source data, including interviews with key actors who have participated in peace treaty negotiations, as well as thousands of previously newly opened UN documents. She argues that treaty specificity is an undervalued - but important - factor in researching the success or failure of peace processes. The book offers new insights and policy recommendations for key details whose presence or absence can have a significant impact on how peace processes unfold.
