Download or read book The Blitzkrieg Legend written by Karl-Heinz Frieser and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2013-04-11 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, for the first time in English, is an illuminating new German perspective on the decisive Blitzkrieg campaign of 1940. Karl-Heinz Frieser's account provides the definitive explanation for Germany's startling success and the equally surprising and rapid military collapse of France and Britain on the European continent. In a little over a month, Germany decisively defeated the Allies in battle, a task that had not been achieved in four years of brutal fighting during World War I. First published in 1995 as the official German history of the 1940 campaign in the west, the book goes beyond standard explanations to show that German victory was not inevitable and French defeat was not preordained. Contrary to the usual accounts of the campaign, Frieser illustrates that the military systems of both Germany and France were solid and that their campaign planning was sound. The key to victory or defeat, he argues, was the execution of operational plans—both preplanned and ad hoc—amid the eternal Clausewitzian combat factors of friction and the fog of war. Frieser shows why on the eve of the campaign the British and French leaders had good cause to be confident and why many German generals were understandably concerned that disaster was looming for them. This study explodes many of the myths concerning German Blitzkrieg warfare and the planning for the 1940 campaign. A groundbreaking new interpretation of a topic that has long interested students of military history, it is being published in cooperation with the Association of the U.S. Army

Download or read book Forward with Patton written by Robert S. Allen and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2017-08-25 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The WWII diary of a US soldier and Soviet spy who worked closely with General Patton is presented in this fully annotated edition. Robert S. Allen is one of the more controversial figures of the Second World War. After serving in France during World War I, he left the military to start a career as a syndicated columnist, eventually becoming the Washington, DC, bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor. In that time, he also developed a sideline as a paid informant for the KGB. When American entered World War II, Allen rejoined the army to serve as General Patton's chief of situation and executive officer for operations. He was considered such an authority on Patton after the war that Twentieth Century-Fox asked him to develop a film script about the general. In Forward with Patton, John Nelson Rickard presents a complete, annotated edition of Colonel Allen's World War II diary for 1944-1945. The entries reflect Allen's private thoughts on the Third Army and provide an invaluable perspective on Patton, whom Allen deeply admired.

Download or read book The Legend of James Dean written by Derek Reeves and published by Archway Publishing. This book was released on 2024-09-17 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Legend of James Dean: Demonic Heroes Have Villainous Virtues challenges previously conceived notions about the actor James Dean. Author Derek Reeves argues that Dean was not a rebel against the establishment, and that class conflict, the need to redefine his public image, and a desire to attack Christianity prompted the men who ran the motion picture industry in the 1950s to portray the actor as a rebel against conformity of any kind. Members of the postwar generation embraced Dean as a symbol of rage and rebelliousness because they believed that the thuggish characters he played reflected his essential persona. Dean’s characterization of the tough teenager gave a sense of belonging to misdirected young people, whose adolescent rebellion stemmed from their inability to cope with societal demands during the Eisenhower era. The author’s analysis of Dean’s legend provides rare insight into the actor’s life, viewed from a historical perspective. If you’ve ever wondered what Dean did to earn a star on Hollywood’s “Walk of Fame,” you’ll want to read this book, which shines a spotlight on an American legend who was posthumously nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1956 and 1957.

Download or read book The Toscanini Mystique written by Kenneth A. Christensen and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2014-10-31 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kenneth A. Christensens THE TOSCANINI MYSTIQUE, is the first full length biography about the legendary Italian conductors life and career in almost thirty-five years. Maestro Toscanini had a frigid and extremely unhappy childhood, along with a severe musical education at the Parma Conservatory. This unglamorized account of a gifted teenagers professional conducting debut at Rio de Janerios Teatro Imperial, is told as it really happened. Toscanini was married to a ballerina, Carla De Martini, who bore him four children, but also had an illegitimate son with a gifted soprano, who was born retarded. Toscaninis vulgar mistreatment of nearly all the singers and musicians who performed under his direction was legendary, and is examined with unusual insight about his uncanny memory and talent for musical recreation. The recollection of many famous artists including Caruso, Debussy, Kreisler, Puccini, Stravinsky, Verdi, and Wagners descendants are quoted alongside his confrontations with Hitler, Mussolini and the Sicilian mafia. But the Maestro also was the most generous of all musicians, donating both his time and talents to many worthwhile charities, for which he received no financial compensation. The life of this great conductor is presented as the struggles of a musical and theatrical reformer, who was a major historical figure that just happened to be one of the greatest musicians who ever lived. Mr. Christensen has painstakingly wrote his narrative, using all the previous biographies and magazine articles on his life, the scripts of two video documentaries and the liner notes for the most widely available re-releases of his recordings. He rewrote and clarified the awkward original Italian translations for non-specialist readers and has supplied new English translations for the numerous operatic titles and other musical works as well as all the foreign language newspapers, magazines and theatres mentioned in the text. In addition, he has provided professional critiques on the most widely available Toscanini recordings from RCA Victors Arturo Toscanini Collection, and historic reissues of Toscaninis NBC radio broadcast concerts. Here was a man, who had the nerve to stand up to world dictators and fought hard to prevent the Western worlds supreme musical masterpieces from being abused and mistreated, but without taking any credit for laboriously recreating all these composers inspiration. He enjoyed to play practical jokes on his family and friends, but this humorous side is known only through letters, because Toscanini never published any autobiography or memoirs about his art. Toscanini gave the world premieres of 14 operas, including Leoncavallos Pagliacci, and three by Puccini, including La Boheme, La Fanciulla del West and Turandot. Toscanini served as musical director: the Teatro Regio in Turino (1895-98), La Scala in Milano (1898-1908), New Yorks Metropolitan Opera (1908-1915), barely missed dying upon the Lusitania, becoming musical director of La Scala again (1920-1929), the New York Philharmonic (1926-1936), and the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937-1954). In between, he also guest conducted at the Bayreuth, Salzburg and Lucerne Festivals and conducted the inaugural concerts of the Palestine Symphony. Toscanini then recorded his most important repertory with the BBC Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and NBC Symphony Orchestras, alongside the Robert Shaw Chorale and such esteemed soloists as Jascha Heifetz, Rudolf Serkin, plus, his own son-in-law Vladimir Horowitz. His seven operatic recordings featured Jan Peerce, Helen Traubel, Richard Tucker, Giuseppe di Stefano, Rose Bampton, Cesare Siepi, Herva Nelli, Licia Albanese, Robert Merrill, Jussi Bjoerling, Lauritz Melchior, and many other gifted singers and musicians of the past, whose names alone are too much to mention.

Download or read book Hawaiian Legends in English written by A. Grove Day and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past two centuries, a considerable number of Hawaiian legends have been translated into English. Although this material has been the subject of studies in anthropology, ethnology, and comparative mythology, no study has been made made of the translations and the translators themselves. Nor has a definitive bibliography of published translations been compiled. The purpose of this volume is to provide an extensive, annotated bibliography of both primary translations and secondary retellings in English, together with a historical and critical study of the more important translations.

Download or read book Stalin s War written by Sean McMeekin and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A prize-winning historian reveals how Stalin—not Hitler—was the animating force of World War II in this major new history. World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and he was certainly dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. The Second World War was not Hitler’s war; it was Stalin’s war. Drawing on ambitious new research in Soviet, European, and US archives, Stalin’s War revolutionizes our understanding of this global conflict by moving its epicenter to the east. Hitler’s genocidal ambition may have helped unleash Armageddon, but as McMeekin shows, the war which emerged in Europe in September 1939 was the one Stalin wanted, not Hitler. So, too, did the Pacific war of 1941–1945 fulfill Stalin’s goal of unleashing a devastating war of attrition between Japan and the “Anglo-Saxon” capitalist powers he viewed as his ultimate adversary. McMeekin also reveals the extent to which Soviet Communism was rescued by the US and Britain’s self-defeating strategic moves, beginning with Lend-Lease aid, as American and British supply boards agreed almost blindly to every Soviet demand. Stalin’s war machine, McMeekin shows, was substantially reliant on American materiél from warplanes, tanks, trucks, jeeps, motorcycles, fuel, ammunition, and explosives, to industrial inputs and technology transfer, to the foodstuffs which fed the Red Army. This unreciprocated American generosity gave Stalin’s armies the mobile striking power to conquer most of Eurasia, from Berlin to Beijing, for Communism. A groundbreaking reassessment of the Second World War, Stalin’s War is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the current world order.

Download or read book Hurricane written by John Dibbs and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2017 marks the 80th anniversary of the remarkable Hawker Hurricane formally entering service. The RAF's first monoplane fighter, it dragged the Air Force into a position where it could defend Britain in her 'hour of need'. The true workhorse of the RAF, the Hurricane came into its own in the hot summer months of 1940 valiantly defending the skies above Britain. Outnumbering Spitfires three to one, the Hurricane also downed far more enemy aircraft. Without the obvious elegance of the Me 109 or the Spitfire, the Hurricane was nonetheless beloved by its pilots for its ability to simultaneously take a battering and inflict serious damage from its remarkably stable gun platform. This stunning book reveals the Hurricane in all its glory – from fascinating first-hand accounts from the men who flew her to the truly breath-taking images from John Dibbs of the Hurricanes still in flight today. This lavish, fully illustrated edition is a must-have for all fans of aviation history.

Download or read book Cary Grant the Making of a Hollywood Legend written by Mark Glancy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive new account of the professional and personal life of one of Hollywood's most unforgettable, influential stars. Archie Leach was a poorly educated, working-class boy from a troubled family living in the backstreets of Bristol. Cary Grant was Hollywood's most debonair film star--the embodiment of worldly sophistication. Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend tells the incredible story of how a sad, neglected boy became the suave, glamorous star many know and idolize. The first biography to be based on Grant's own personal papers, this book takes us on a fascinating journey from the actor's difficult childhood through years of struggle in music halls and vaudeville, a hit-and-miss career in Broadway musicals, and three decades of film stardom during Hollywood's golden age. Leaving no stone unturned, Cary Grant delves into all aspects of Grant's life, from the bitter realities of his impoverished childhood to his trailblazing role in Hollywood as a film star who defied the studio system and took control of his own career. Highlighting Grant's genius as an actor and a filmmaker, author Mark Glancy examines the crucial contributions Grant made to such classic films as Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959), Charade (1963) and Father Goose (1964). Glancy also explores Grant's private life with new candor and insight throughout the book's nine sections, illuminating how Grant's search for happiness and fulfillment lead him to having his first child at the age of 62 and embarking on his fifth marriage at the age of 77. With this biography--complete with a chronological filmography of the actor's work--Glancy provides a definitive account of the professional and personal life of one of Hollywood's most unforgettable, influential stars.

Download or read book Regional Development Plan Report for 1942 written by United States. National Resources Planning Board and published by . This book was released on 1942 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book J W McConnell written by William Fong and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2008-10-24 with total page 835 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J.W. McConnell (1877-1963), born to a poor farming family in Ontario, became one of the wealthiest and most powerful businessmen of his generation - in Canada and internationally. Early in his career McConnell established the Montreal office of the Standard Chemical Company and began selling bonds and shares in both North America and Europe, establishing relationships that would lead to his enormous financial success. He was involved in numerous businesses, from tramways to ladies' fashion to mining, and served on the boards of several corporations. For nearly fifty years he was president of St Laurence Sugar and late in life he became the owner and publisher of the Montreal Star. McConnell was an indefatigable and formidable fundraiser for the YMCA, the war effort of 1914/18, hospitals, and McGill University, where he served as governor for almost three decades. In 1937 he established what would become The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, the first major foundation in Canada and still one of the best endowed. J.W. McConnell was a principled and brilliant visionary with a strong work ethic and a deep commitment to the public good, a Rockefellerian figure in both big business and high society who quietly became one of the greatest philanthropists of his time. His life story - told in uncompromising detail by William Fong - is a study of raising, spending, and giving away money on the grandest scale.

Download or read book Understanding War written by Christian P. Potholm and published by UPA. This book was released on 2016-08-03 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third book in Professor Christian Potholm’s war trilogy (which includes Winning at War and War Wisdom), Understanding War provides a most workable bibliography dealing with the vast literature on war and warfare. As such, it provides insights into over 3000 works on this overwhelmingly extensive material. Understanding War is thus the most comprehensive annotated bibliography available today. Moreover, by dividing war material into eighteen overarching themes of analysis and fifty seminal topics, and focusing on these, Understanding War enables the reader to access and understand the broadest possible array of materials across both time and space, beginning with the earliest forms of warfare and concluding with the contemporary situation. Stimulating and thought-provoking, this volume is essential for an understanding of the breadth and depth of the vast scholarship dealing with war and warfare through human history and across cultures.

Download or read book Texas Indian Myths Legends written by Jane Arcger and published by Taylor Trade Publishing. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step into a colorful pageantry of the powerful people who once ruled and still influence the great state of Texas. From the Caddo in the Piney Woods, the Lipan Apache in the Southwest, the Wichita at the Red River, and the Comanche across the Great Plains to the Alabama-Coushatta in the Big Thicket, five nations come alive through myth and history in Jane Archer's vividly written book about the first Texans.

Download or read book Whistling in the Dark written by Jean R. Freedman and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few historical images are more powerful than those of wartime London. Having survived a constant barrage of German bombs, the city is remembered as an island of courage and defiance. These wartime images are still in use today to support a wide variety of political viewpoints. But how well do such descriptions match the memories of those who survived the blitz? Jean Freedman interviewed more than fifty people who remember London during the war, focusing on under-represented groups, including women, Jews, and working-class citizens. In addition she examined original propaganda, secret government documents, wartime diaries, and postwar memoirs. Of particular significance to Freedman were the contemporary music, theater, film, speeches, and radio drama used by the British government to shape public opinion and impart political messages. Such bits of everyday life are mentioned in virtually every civilian's experience of wartime London but their interpretations of them often clashed with their government's intentions. By exploring the differences between wartime documentation and postwar memory, oral and written artifacts, and the voices of the powerful and the obscure, Freedman illuminates the complex interactions between myth and history. She concludes that there are as many interpretations of what really happened during Britain's finest hour as there are people who remember it.

Download or read book Reagan His Life and Legend written by Max Boot and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2024-09-10 with total page 707 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Son of the Midwest, movie star, and mesmerizing politician—America’s fortieth president comes to three-dimensional life in this gripping and profoundly revisionist biography. In this “monumental and impressive” biography, Max Boot, the distinguished political columnist, illuminates the untold story of Ronald Reagan, revealing the man behind the mythology. Drawing on interviews with over one hundred of the fortieth president’s aides, friends, and family members, as well as thousands of newly available documents, Boot provides “the best biography of Ronald Reagan to date” (Robert Mann). The story begins not in star-studded Hollywood but in the cradle of the Midwest, small-town Illinois, where Reagan was born in 1911 to Nelle Clyde Wilson, a devoted Disciples of Christ believer, and Jack Reagan, a struggling, alcoholic salesman. Boot vividly creates a portrait of a handsome young man, indeed a much-vaunted lifeguard, whose early successes mirrored those of Horatio Alger. And contextualizing Reagan’s life against American history, Boot re-creates the world in which Reagan transitioned from local Iowa sportscaster to budding screen actor. The world of Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1950s would prove significant, not only in Reagan’s coming-of-age in such classics as Knute Rockne and Kings Row but during the twilight of his film career, when he played opposite a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo, and then his eventual emergence as a television host of General Electric Theater, which established his bona fides as one of the leading conservative voices of the time. Indeed, the leap to California governor in 1966 seemed almost preordained, in which Reagan became a bellwether for a nation in the throes of a generational shift. Reagan’s 1980 presidential election augured a shift that continues into this century. Boot writes not as a partisan but as a historian seeking to set the story straight. He explains how Reagan was an ideologue but also a supreme pragmatist who signed pro-abortion and gun control bills as governor, cut deals with Democrats in both Sacramento and Washington, and befriended Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War. A master communicator, Reagan revived America’s spirits after the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate. But Boot also shows how Reagan was armored in obliviousness. He traces Reagan’s opposition to civil rights over forty years, reveals how he neglected the exploding AIDS epidemic, and details how America experienced a level of income inequality not seen since the Gilded Age. With its revelatory insights, Reagan: His Life and Legend is no apologia, depicting a man with a good-versus-evil worldview derived from his moralistic upbringing and Hollywood westerns. Providing fresh examinations of “trickle-down economics,” the Cold War’s end, the Iran-Contra affair, as well as a nuanced portrait of Reagan’s family, this definitive biography is as compelling a presidential biography as any in recent decades.

Download or read book Dambusters The Forging of a Legend written by Chris Ward and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2009-07-19 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 617 Squadron of 5 Group RAF Bomber Command was without doubt the most famous RAF Squadron in World War II. It was formed to carry out the precision low-level attack on the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe Dams, using Barnes Wallaces newly developed rotating mine, now commonly referred to as The Bouncing Bomb. The raid was a tremendous success, although at great cost to the squadron, and proved to be a great moral booster for the war-weary British public. Guy Gibson VC was tasked with organizing the formation and training of the new squadron and the Dambusters have been national heroes ever since. Although several books have previously been written on this epic adventure, this is a new look at their first raid and then the long and envious history of 617 until the end of the war. This new version of the Dams raid within the book, pays particular attention to timings, as it is easy to overlook the fact, that this was a complex three-phase operation, spanning 8 hours and 47 minutes, with action occurring simultaneously at widely dispersed locations. It also attempts to settle finally the circumstances of the losses, by examining the testimony of eyewitnesses on both sides, and presenting arguments to help readers decide for themselves what actually happened where previous accounts are contradictory or at variance. In the later war years 617 suffered greatly during an attack on the Dortmund-Ems Canal but recovered and their list of priority special targets then included the German missile research plant at Peenemunde, Hamburg, the U boat pens at La Pallice and the sinking of the battleship Tirpitz. The legendary Leonard Cheshire VC led the Squadron for much of that period. This newly researched account of 617s wartime record contains many first-hand accounts from squadron members and also German and Dutch witnesses who were present at some of the most spectacular raids and have explained many of the mysterious losses of the Squadrons aircraft.Lengthy appendices contain a Roll of Honour, Commanders, Airfields and aircraft, Operational statistics and Aircraft Histories.

Download or read book Mussolini and Hitler written by Christian Goeschel and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh treatment of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, revealing the close ties between Mussolini and Hitler and their regimes ​From 1934 until 1944 Mussolini met Hitler numerous times, and the two developed a relationship that deeply affected both countries. While Germany is generally regarded as the senior power, Christian Goeschel demonstrates just how much history has underrepresented Mussolini's influence on his German ally. In this highly readable book, Goeschel, a scholar of twentieth-century Germany and Italy, revisits all of Mussolini and Hitler's key meetings and asks how these meetings constructed a powerful image of a strong Fascist-Nazi relationship that still resonates with the general public. His portrait of Mussolini draws on sources ranging beyond political history to reveal a leader who, at times, shaped Hitler's decisions and was not the gullible buffoon he's often portrayed as. The first comprehensive study of the Mussolini-Hitler relationship, this book is a must-read for scholars and anyone interested in the history of European fascism, World War II, or political leadership.

Download or read book Intelligence and the State written by Jonathan House and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2022-04-15 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the eighty years since Pearl Harbor, the United States has developed a professional intelligence community that is far more effective than most people acknowledge--in part because only intelligence failures see the light of day, while successful collection and analysis remain secret for decades. Intelligence and the State explores the relationship between the community tasked to research and assess intelligence and the national decision makers it serves. The book argues that in order to accept intelligence as a profession, it must be viewed as a non-partisan resource to assist key players in understanding foreign societies and leaders. Those who review these classified findings are sometimes so invested in their preferred policy outcomes that they refuse to accept information that conflicts with preconceived notions. Rather than demanding that intelligence evaluations conform to administration policies, a wise executive should welcome a source of information that has not "drunk the Kool-Aid" by supporting a specific policy decision. Jonathan M. House offers a brief overview of the nature of national intelligence, and especially of the potential for misperception and misunderstanding on the part of executives and analysts. Furthermore, House examines the rise of intelligence organizations first in Europe and then in the United States. In those regions fear of domestic subversion and radicalism drove the need for foreign surveillance. This perception of a domestic threat tempted policy makers and intelligence officers alike to engage in covert action and other policy-based, partisan activities that colored their understanding of their adversaries. Such biases go far to explain the inability of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to predict and deal effectively with their opponents. The development of American agencies and their efforts differed to some degree from these European precedents but experienced some of the same problems as the Europeans, especially during the early decades of the Cold War. By now, however, the intelligence community has become a stable and effective part of the national security structure. House concludes with a historical examination of familiar instances in which intelligence allegedly failed to warn national leaders of looming attacks, ranging from the 1941 German invasion of the USSR to the Arab surprise attack on Israel in 1973.