EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book Lone Wolf  A Biography of Vladimir  Ze   ev  Jabotinsky

Download or read book Lone Wolf A Biography of Vladimir Ze ev Jabotinsky written by Shmuel Katz and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 943 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shmuel Katz’s detailed and comprehensive biography of Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940) is an unabashedly partisan defense of one of the most complex Zionists of the early 20th century. Jabotinsky was a Russian poet, playwright, journalist, and novelist as well as the founder of Revisionist Zionism and of Betar. His oratory in many languages was legendary. Katz first heard him speak in South Africa in the early part of the 20th century and was so impressed that he dropped out of university to work for Revisionist Zionism. Katz recounts Jabotinsky’s efforts to create the Jewish Legion during World War I, traces the history of Jewish relations with the British during the time of the Palestine Mandate, describes Jabotinsky’s role in the defense of the Jewish Yishuv and in organizing the Af-Al-Pi “illegal” Jewish immigration to Palestine before World War II. He paints a vivid mural of competing Jewish personalities, factions and ideologies in the decades before the establishment of Israel. “Shmuel Katz has written an intelligent, journalistic account of Jabotinsky’s life […] and was able to use a substantial amount of previously unavailable material, particularly British archival documents. Although Katz clearly has tremendous respect and affection for Jabotinsky, he does not hesitate to criticize him, for example, for his ineffectiveness as a fundraiser [...] Lone Wolf’s greatest strength is its comprehensive breadth. Every major event and many minor incidents are extensively covered. Furthermore, Katz has taken the rather unorthodox move of including verbatim large sections of Jabotinsky’s original speeches and writings.” — Paul Radensky, H-Net “[S]cholarly and yet totally gripping... we must be everlastingly grateful [...] to Shmuel Katz for so masterfully giving [Jabotinsky’s] memory fresh life... this [book] — quiet, calm, and, while certainly partisan, without a single shrill note — may one day help to direct the course of Israel’s seemingly endless argument with itself.” — Midge Decter, Commentary Magazine “Dr. Katz's monumental and superb biography is a balanced, detailed story of a lion and not a wolf. (Ze'ev in Hebrew means a wolf and this is the reason why the title isLone Wolf)” — Jewish Post

Book Lone Wolf  A Biography of Vladimir  Ze   ev  Jabotinsky

Download or read book Lone Wolf A Biography of Vladimir Ze ev Jabotinsky written by Shmuel Katz and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shmuel Katz’s detailed and comprehensive biography of Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940) is an unabashedly partisan defense of one of the most complex Zionists of the early 20th century. Jabotinsky was a Russian poet, playwright, journalist, and novelist as well as the founder of Revisionist Zionism and of Betar. His oratory in many languages was legendary. Katz first heard him speak in South Africa in the early part of the 20th century and was so impressed that he dropped out of university to work for Revisionist Zionism. Katz recounts Jabotinsky’s efforts to create the Jewish Legion during World War I, traces the history of Jewish relations with the British during the time of the Palestine Mandate, describes Jabotinsky’s role in the defense of the Jewish Yishuv and in organizing the Af-Al-Pi “illegal” Jewish immigration to Palestine before World War II. He paints a vivid mural of competing Jewish personalities, factions and ideologies in the decades before the establishment of Israel. “Shmuel Katz has written an intelligent, journalistic account of Jabotinsky’s life […] and was able to use a substantial amount of previously unavailable material, particularly British archival documents. Although Katz clearly has tremendous respect and affection for Jabotinsky, he does not hesitate to criticize him, for example, for his ineffectiveness as a fundraiser [...] Lone Wolf’s greatest strength is its comprehensive breadth. Every major event and many minor incidents are extensively covered. Furthermore, Katz has taken the rather unorthodox move of including verbatim large sections of Jabotinsky’s original speeches and writings.” — Paul Radensky, H-Net “[S]cholarly and yet totally gripping... we must be everlastingly grateful [...] to Shmuel Katz for so masterfully giving [Jabotinsky’s] memory fresh life... this [book] — quiet, calm, and, while certainly partisan, without a single shrill note — may one day help to direct the course of Israel’s seemingly endless argument with itself.” — Midge Decter, Commentary Magazine “Dr. Katz's monumental and superb biography is a balanced, detailed story of a lion and not a wolf. (Ze'ev in Hebrew means a wolf and this is the reason why the title isLone Wolf)” — Jewish Post

Book Lone Wolf

    Book Details:
  • Author : Shmuel Katz
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2003-05-13
  • ISBN : 9781569800423
  • Pages : 1855 pages

Download or read book Lone Wolf written by Shmuel Katz and published by . This book was released on 2003-05-13 with total page 1855 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stirring and passionate story of the man who was both the most beloved and the most maligned Jewish leader of his time. Jabotinsky was a journalist, novelist, poet, soldier, linguist and outstanding orator in his day, holding his audiences rapt in seven languages. Described by historian Martin Gilbert as a 'champion among writers', biographer Shmuel Katz has succeeded in creating a scholarly work that reads like a novel.

Book Jabotinsky

Download or read book Jabotinsky written by Hillel Halkin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940) was a man of huge paradoxes and contradictions and is one of the most misunderstood Zionist political leaders - a first-rate novelist, a celebrated Russian journalist, and founder of the branch of Zionism now headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. This biography, the first in English in more than two decades, undertakes to answer central questions about Jabotinsky as a man, a political thinker, and a leader. Hillel Halkin sets aside the stereotypes Jabotinsky has been reduced to, and reveals the public figure and private man who inspired both deep devotion and furious protest.

Book Vladimir Jabotinsky s Russian Years  1900   1925

Download or read book Vladimir Jabotinsky s Russian Years 1900 1925 written by Brian J. Horowitz and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This scholarly biography focuses on the early years of the influential Russian Jewish author and pioneer of Revisionist Zionism. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Russia was a place of intense social strife and political struggle. Vladimir Yevgenyevich “Ze’ev” Jabotinsky, who would go on to become the founder of the Revisionist Zionism Alliance in 1925, was already a Zionist leader and Jewish public intellectual. Although previously glossed over, these early years were crucial to Jabotinsky’s development as a thinker, politician, and Zionist. In this enlightening biography, Brian Horowitz focuses on Jabotinsky’s commitments to Zionism and Palestine as he embraced radicalism and fought against the suffering brought upon Jews through pogroms, poverty, and victimization. Horowitz also defends Jabotinsky against accusations that he was too ambitious, a fascist, and a militarist. As Horowitz delves into the years that shaped Jabotinsky’s social, political, and cultural orientation, an intriguing psychological portrait emerges.

Book City of Rogues and Schnorrers

Download or read book City of Rogues and Schnorrers written by Jarrod Tanny and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-14 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Outstanding . . . A delightfully written work of serious scholarship.” —Jewish Book World Old Odessa, on the Black Sea, gained notoriety as a legendary city of Jewish gangsters and swindlers, a frontier boomtown mythologized for the adventurers, criminals, and merrymakers who flocked there to seek easy wealth and lead lives of debauchery and excess. Odessa is also famed for the brand of Jewish humor brought there in the nineteenth century from the shtetls of Eastern Europe and that flourished throughout Soviet times. From a broad historical perspective, Jarrod Tanny examines the hybrid Judeo-Russian culture that emerged in Odessa in the nineteenth century and persisted through the Soviet era and beyond. The book shows how the art of eminent Soviet-era figures such as Isaac Babel, Il’ia Ilf, Evgenii Petrov, and Leonid Utesov grew out of the Odessa Russian-Jewish culture into which they were born and which shaped their lives. “Traces the emergence, development, and persistence of the myth of Odessa as both Garden of Eden and Gomorrah . . . A joy to read.” —Robert Weinberg, Swarthmore College

Book World War I  5 volumes

    Book Details:
  • Author : Spencer C. Tucker
  • Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
  • Release : 2014-10-28
  • ISBN : 1851099654
  • Pages : 2532 pages

Download or read book World War I 5 volumes written by Spencer C. Tucker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 2532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering exhaustive coverage, detailed analyses, and the latest historical interpretations of events, this expansive, five-volume encyclopedia is the most comprehensive and detailed reference source on the First World War available today. One hundred years after the beginning of World War I in 1914, this conflict still stands as perhaps the most important event of the 20th century. World War I toppled all of the existing empires at the time, transformed the Middle East, and vaulted the United States to becoming the world's leading economic power. Its effects were profound and lasting—and included outcomes that led to World War II. This multivolume encyclopedia provides a wide-ranging examination of World War I that covers all of the important battles; key individuals, both civilian and military; weapons and technologies; and diplomatic, social, political, cultural, military, and economic developments. Suitable as a reference tool for high school and undergraduate students as well as faculty members and graduate-level researchers, World War I: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection offers accessible, in-depth information and up-to-date analyses in a format that lends itself to quick and easy use. The set comprises alphabetically arranged, cross-referenced entries accompanied by further reading selections as well as a comprehensive bibliography. A fifth volume provides chronologically arranged documents and an A–Z index.

Book The Rise of the Israeli Right

Download or read book The Rise of the Israeli Right written by Colin Shindler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Israeli Right first came to power nearly four decades ago. Its election was described then as 'an earthquake', and its reverberations are still with us. How then did the Right rise to power? What are its origins? Colin Shindler traces this development from the birth of Zionism in cosmopolitan Odessa in the nineteenth century to today's Hebron, a centre of radical Jewish nationalism. He looks at central figures such as Vladimir Jabotinsky, an intellectual and founder of the Revisionist movement and Menahem Begin, the single-minded politician who brought the Right to power in 1977. Both accessible and comprehensive, this book explains the political ideas and philosophies that were the Right's ideological bedrock and the compromises that were made in its journey to government.

Book The Five

    Book Details:
  • Author : Vladimir Jabotinsky
  • Publisher : Cornell University Press
  • Release : 2014-09-19
  • ISBN : 0801471621
  • Pages : 228 pages

Download or read book The Five written by Vladimir Jabotinsky and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The beginning of this tale of bygone days in Odessa dates to the dawn of the twentieth century. At that time we used to refer to the first years of this period as the 'springtime,' meaning a social and political awakening. For my generation, these years also coincided with our own personal springtime, in the sense that we were all in our youthful twenties. And both of these springtimes, as well as the image of our carefree Black Sea capital with acacias growing along its steep banks, are interwoven in my memory with the story of one family in which there were five children: Marusya, Marko, Lika, Serezha, and Torik."—from The Five The Five is an captivating novel of the decadent fin-de-siècle written by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), a controversial leader in the Zionist movement whose literary talents, until now, have largely gone unrecognized by Western readers. The author deftly paints a picture of Russia's decay and decline—a world permeated with sexuality, mystery, and intrigue. Michael R. Katz has crafted the first English-language translation of this important novel, which was written in Russian in 1935 and published a year later in Paris under the title Pyatero. The book is Jabotinsky's elegaic paean to the Odessa of his youth, a place that no longer exists. It tells the story of an upper-middle-class Jewish family, the Milgroms, at the turn of the century. It follows five siblings as they change, mature, and come to accept their places in a rapidly evolving world. With flashes of humor, Jabotinsky captures the ferment of the time as reflected in political, social, artistic, and spiritual developments. He depicts with nostalgia the excitement of life in old Odessa and comments poignantly on the failure of the dream of Jewish assimilation within the Russian empire.

Book Amerigo  A Comedy of Errors in History

Download or read book Amerigo A Comedy of Errors in History written by Stefan Zweig and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-10 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stefan Zweig's Amerigo: A Comedy of Errors in History is the Austrian writer's account of how America got its name. This short, late work describes how Amerigo Vespucci, “a man of medium caliber [who] had never been entrusted with a fleet” gave his name to the New World because “of a combination of circumstances — through error, accident, and misunderstanding.” Zweig was living in exile in Brazil when he wrote Amerigo, shortly before committing suicide in despair over Hitler's conquest of Europe. “The paradox that Columbus discovered America but failed to recognize it, while Vespucci did not discover it but was the first to recognize it as a new continent,” he wrote, illustrates how “history will not be reasoned with.”

Book Modern Hebrew

    Book Details:
  • Author : Norman Berdichevsky
  • Publisher : McFarland
  • Release : 2016-03-21
  • ISBN : 1476626294
  • Pages : 239 pages

Download or read book Modern Hebrew written by Norman Berdichevsky and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ben-Yehuda's vision of a modern Hebrew eventually came to animate a large part of the Jewish world, and gave new confidence and pride to Jewish youth during the most difficult period of modern history, infusing Zionism with a dynamic cultural content. This book examines the many changes that occurred in the transition to Modern Hebrew, acquainting new students of the language with its role as a model for other national revivals, and explaining how it overcame many obstacles to become a spoken vernacular. The author deals primarily with the social and political use of the language and does not cover literature. Also discussed are the dilemmas facing the language arising from the fact that Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora "don't speak the same language," while Israeli Arabs and Jews often do.

Book Mostly Morgenthaus  A Family History

Download or read book Mostly Morgenthaus A Family History written by Henry Morgenthau III and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-10-28 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mostly Morgenthaus is the intimate portrait of an extraordinary American family, which included an ambassador, a cabinet member, prominent businessmen and a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. Reaching back to the eighteenth century, Henry Morgenthau III tells the story of this Jewish family, tracing the careers of his great-grandfather, the dynamic but unstable Lazarus Morgenthau (1815-1897), who in 1866 transported his family to New York after making and losing a fortune in Mannheim, Germany; his grandfather, the determined Henry Sr. (1856-1946), who recouped the family fortune and retired from business in midlife to devote himself to public service as ambassador to Turkey and plenipotentiary throughout the Armenian crisis of 1913-15; and his father, the diffident Henry Jr. (1891-1967), who became one of the country’s most influential men and, as secretary of the Treasury under FDR, one of the first Jews to serve in the cabinet. From his privileged vantage point, the author describes the Bretton Woods Conference, the controversial Morgenthau Plan, the scandal surrounding Harry Dexter White, his parents’ remarkably close friendship with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, his sister Joan’s spectacular White House coming-out party, the encounter his cousin — historian Barbara Tuchman — had with Roosevelt, and the career of his younger brother, Robert Morgenthau, US district attorney in New York. He also provides an inside picture of the remarkable German-Jewish families — the Strausses, Lehmans, Ochses, Guggenheims, Wertheims — who played important roles in American life. “Henry Morgenthau 3d has written a remarkable book — an admiring but still often critical account of an important American family by one of its members... The story of the Morgenthaus is classic immigrant history.” — Arthur Hertzberg, The New York Times “[A] fondly detailed, often humorous, intimate family memoir, covering the Horatio Alger-like rise of an immigrant family to affluence and influence in the New World... [with] a darker, more troubling subtext. As New York’s German Jews emerged from the cocoon of poverty, they struggled to camouflage any traces of ethnicity that might distinguish them from the predominantly Christian community...” — Stephen Birmingham, Washington Post “A fourth-generation Morgenthau pens a lively and engaging biography of his family of high achievers, overlaid with a fresh view of changing Jewish acculturation during the past two American centuries... From letters and family stories, the author assembles a gripping and tragic account of the 1915 Armenian massacre... Thirty years later, during WW II, the author’s father, Henry, Jr. — FDR’s secretary of the treasury — presented a scathing report to the President on the ‘Acquiescence of the Government to the Murder of the Jews’ with equal lack of effect. Personal history that opens to a larger cultural and political account of the 20th century: fluent and passionately humane.” — Kirkus Reviews “Storybook histories of old-line German-Jewish families in America resemble one another to a remarkable degree... Mostly Morgenthaus, the latest and one of the most interesting examples of this genre, dissents from the storybook version of events in numerous ways... this volume reminds us that American Jewish history is remarkably unpredictable, and surprises abound.” — Jonathan D. Sarna, Commentary Magazine “Sprinkled with backroom revelations of the New Deal, this dramatic family saga focuses on three patriarchs, each driven by a sense of destiny... This history of a resilient family includes closeups of FDR, Al Smith, Ike, Eleanor Roosevelt and the author’s brother, Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau.” — Publishers Weekly “Insider family chronicles rarely offer the richness and luster with which the reader is rewarded in Mostly Morgenthaus... This personalized account is both moving and fascinating. As the only recent examination of the Morgenthaus’ impact on American history, as an intimate portrait of prominent immigrant society during America’s Gilded Age, and as a model for those tracing their cultural roots, this makes good history...” — Library Journal “With the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, the Morgenthaus are a family greatly and famously in the service of the Republic. This book, partly family history, partly personal memoir, adds in a charming way to the story.” — John Kenneth Galbraith “The Morgenthaus were one of those great German-Jewish families who broke through the snobbish anti-Semitism of the Wasp mainstream in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to become a force in American public life. This is a charming, intimate portrayal of three fascinating generations in American history.” — Peter Grose “I have found Mostly Morgenthaus a marvelously engrossing and richly informative account of how a distinguished American family moved from Judaism to assimilation and back to Judaism once more. In his four-generation story, Henry Morgenthau III discusses his forebears with an admirable mix of affection and clear-sightedness. Not the least of the book’s attractions are the lively, first-hand vignettes it offers of New York’s German-Jewish patriciate and of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt at work and play. Infinitely rewarding, meticulously wrought, Mostly Morgenthaus is a model of family history, a tour de force in a tricky and taxing genre.” — H. Stuart Hughes “A fascinating volume, I am gratified that Henry Morgenthau has made the time and the effort to chronicle one of the most interesting émigré families with a background in this country of nearly two centuries.” — Abram L. Sachar

Book Living History  A Memoir

Download or read book Living History A Memoir written by Chaim Herzog and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-16 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this at times startlingly candid memoir, Chaim Herzog reviews an extraordinary life. Born in Belfast in 1918 to a Latvian mother and a Polish father who was chief rabbi of Ireland, Chaim Herzog moved with his family to Palestine in 1935 and at 16 joined the Haganah, the underground resistance led by David Ben-Gurion. He joined the British army as soon as Britain declared war on Hitler, and was part of the first Allied formation to cross into Germany, where he subsequently witnessed the horrors of the newly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He fought in Israel’s war for independence, and as director of Israel’s military intelligence molded it into one of the best organizations of its kind. As President of Israel (1983-93) Herzog helped shape Israel’s response to growing unemployment and drug use, the intifada, the Gulf War and Iraqi Scud missile attacks. Sprinkled with his brutally frank assessments of Golda Meir, Shimon Peres, Moshe Dayan, Kurt Waldheim, Reagan, Arafat and others, his memoir ends on an optimistic note, envisaging a genuine Middle East peace that could facilitate joint Israel-Arab economic and technical cooperation. “Mr. Herzog appears to have done everything and been everywhere since he came of age just before the onset of World War II... a book that is a heady mix of the public and private.” — Robert Leiter, The New York Times “One of Israel’s leading soldier-statesmen-diplomats, Chaim Herzog has written a lively account of his long life in politics.” — William B. Quandt, Foreign Affairs “President Herzog is a lion statesman in a world of mice. Israel was born in war, and its political elite sometimes seems to resemble a warrior class. But there has always been a need for leadership in Israel that looks beyond the immediate issues of security and territorial advantage, of war and peace. President Herzog... has filled that need.” — The Times (London) “Herzog invites us to live his extraordinary history with him in this lucid, elegant, and immensely human memoir. A good read about pivotal periods in modern life.” —George P. Shultz “A witty and fascinating memoir by one of this century’s great Irishmen. Chaim Herzog has made historic contributions as a warrior, diplomat, and statesman. He writes with the same vitality that he brought to each of his previous careers.” — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Book Ben Shahn  An Artist   s Life

Download or read book Ben Shahn An Artist s Life written by Howard Greenfeld and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-10 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ben Shahn was born in Lithuania in 1898 and emigrated to New York with his family in 1906. Trained as a lithographer, Shahn created social realist paintings of controversial subjects such as Sacco and Vanzetti. He worked as an assistant to Diego Rivera on Rivera’s Rockefeller Center mural, and later created his own public murals in Washington, New York, and New Jersey. In 1935, Walker Evans invited him to join the New Deal’s Farm Security Administration. As a photographer, Shahn documented the Depression in the American South with Evans and Dorothea Lange. During the war years, he worked for the Office of War Information (OWI) producing propaganda posters before returning to painting. Toward the end of his life he worked as a commercial artist, taught and wrote about art, including The Biography of a Painting(1956) and The Shape of Content (1960). Howard Greenfeld's biography is the first complete life of the artist and is illustrated with 90 of his photographs, pictures, and paintings. “Howard Greenfeld’s approach scrupulously balances the personal and the political to provide a rounded portrait... gives a convincing sense of a determined individual making his mark as an immigrant in the turbulent America of depression and war, social upheaval and reaction.” — David Cohen, The New York Times

Book The Harp and the Shield of David

Download or read book The Harp and the Shield of David written by Shulamit Eliash and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-04-05 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shedding light on Irish and Israeli foreign policy, Eliash examines the relationship between Ireland and the Zionist Movement and the state of Israel from the context of Palestine’s partition and the delay in Ireland’s recognition of the State of Israel until 1963.

Book Abba Eban  An Autobiography

Download or read book Abba Eban An Autobiography written by Abba Eban and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 718 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Israel's long-time foreign minister recounts in the first-person dramatic events in which he was a key participant on the world stage: Israel's 1948 war of independence, the 1956 Suez campaign, the Six-day war in 1967 and the Yom Kippur war in 1973. “An autobiography that makes compelling reading... Eban’s words and deeds derive from his commitment to the principle of partition [of ancient Palestine]... Eban’s testament is not only elegant, but timely.” — James Chace, The New York Times “A ‘compelling’ and well-written autobiography by the former foreign minister of Israel that ‘dramatizes the debates within the Zionist movement that has characterized the modern history of Israel.’” — The New York Times “This personal story is an informal and informative history of Israel's diplomacy since before the birth of the state and also includes a mixture of philosophic reflection and views on personalities and politics, all presented in Eban's well-known felicitous style.” — John C. Campbell, Foreign Affairs “Eban's engrossing autobiography tells us a great deal about both the author and his political activities on behalf of Israel in the world arena... Impeccably written... Eban's autobiography is an important political document and personal testimonial.” — Kirkus Reviews

Book Military Occupations in the Age of Self Determination

Download or read book Military Occupations in the Age of Self Determination written by James Gannon and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-07-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a perspective decidedly different from that of the Bush Administration and its neoconservative supporters. Since the United Nations embraced the right of national self-determination in 1945, the historical odds have been unfavorable to great powers that impose military occupations on smaller nations. This point is bolstered by the evidence from history, and is particularly pertinent to the American occupation of Iraq, where a robust insurgency has delayed projected successes by the administration and wartime planners. Drawing on historical antecedents to the occupation of Iraq, Gannon examines events such as the British Struggles in Palestine, French enterprises in Algeria, the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan, and other instances in which occupying powers to demonstrate the struggles and failures of occupying powers in the face of determined insurgencies. Since the United Nations adopted the principle of national self-determination in 1945, great powers like the United States that occupy smaller nations like Iraq lose more often than not when confronted with credible insurgencies. The evidence is taken from recent history: the Zionist victory over Britain in Palestine, and the defeats of France in Algeria, America in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and Israel in Lebanon. On the surface these outcomes seem perverse-powerful modern armies brought down by rag-tag rebels. The explanation comes from the types of warfare fought. Great powers are equipped to fight other great powers in great battles over large territory. Rebels fight shadow wars, neutralizing the fire power and mobility of the occupying army. Insurgencies continue for years, allowing political considerations to come into play, including propaganda, international pressure, and the stream of dead and wounded returning from the war zone. The home front turns against the war, and new policymakers conclude that the nation's interests are best served by getting out. History is not an exact science, so the judgment here is expressed in probability, not certainty; witness the British defeat of insurgencies in Malaya and Kenya before giving up these colonies, and the four-decades-old Israeli occupation and partial colonization of the West Bank.