Download or read book The World s Bloodiest History written by Joseph Cummins and published by Fair Winds. This book was released on 2009 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Handsomely illustrated with more than 100 striking, sometimes shocking, archival images gathered from around the world, The World's Bloodiest History combines compelling depictions of momentous events with fascinating character portraits and arresting eyewitness accounts to create an absorbing, multifaceted chronicle of a sobering, all-too-human legacy.
Download or read book World s Bloodiest History written by Joseph Cummins and published by Fair Winds Press. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a somber survey leavened by sparse but inspiring accounts of heroism, author Joseph Cummins revisits some of the most dreadful and destructive acts of violence in history—from moments of sheer madness and merciless military offensives, such as that of the Spanish conquistadors in 1521 in what is now Mexico City, to clinically orchestrated campaigns of genocide, as took place in early twentieth-century Armenia, Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, and 1970s Cambodia. Engaging, harrowing, and enlightening, his accounts convey the terror and trauma of these incidents while identifying the zealotry, prejudices, and animosities that fuelled them, and analyzing, in revealing fashion, their enduring and sometimes insidious influence on history. Handsomely illustrated with more than 100 striking, sometimes shocking, archival images gathered from around the world, The World’s Bloodiest History combines compelling depictions of momentous events with fascinating character portraits and arresting eyewitness accounts to create an absorbing, multifaceted chronicle of a sobering, all-too-human legacy.
Download or read book Atrocities The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History written by Matthew White and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-11-07 with total page 727 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An amusing (really) account of the murderous ways of despots, slave traders, blundering royals, gladiators and assorted hordes.”—New York Times Evangelists of human progress meet their opposite in Matthew White’s epic examination of history’s one hundred most violent events, or, in White’s piquant phrasing, “the numbers that people want to argue about.” Reaching back to the Second Persian War in 480 BCE and moving chronologically through history, White surrounds hard facts (time and place) and succinct takeaways (who usually gets the blame?) with lively military, social, and political histories.
Download or read book Extreme War written by Terrence Poulos and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Well-reasoned and documented answers to and explorations of the questions, the heroes, the hapless and the legends from over 2,000 years of human conflict. Poulos covers the finest hours and worst blunders the military world has seen through every period of warfare, from ancient times to the 21st century, all brought together in one illustrated volume. Topics are examined in fascinating detail, along with careful analysis of how and why each leader, weapon, tactic or battle came to fame - or infamy.
Download or read book The Great Big Book of Horrible Things written by Matthew White and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compulsively readable and utterly original account of world history—from an atrocitologist’s point of view. Evangelists of human progress meet their opposite in Matthew White's epic examination of history's one hundred most violent events, or, in White's piquant phrasing, "the numbers that people want to argue about." Reaching back to 480 BCE's second Persian War, White moves chronologically through history to this century's war in the Congo and devotes chapters to each event, where he surrounds hard facts (time and place) and succinct takeaways (who usually gets the blame?) with lively military, social, and political histories. With the eye of a seasoned statistician, White assigns each entry a ranking based on body count, and in doing so he gives voice to the suffering of ordinary people that, inexorably, has defined every historical epoch. By turns droll, insightful, matter-of-fact, and ultimately sympathetic to those who died, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things gives readers a chance to reach their own conclusions while offering a stark reminder of the darkness of the human heart.
Download or read book One Bloody Thing After Another written by Jacob F. Field and published by Michael O'Mara Books. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever wondered why Tsar Ivan was the dubbed 'the Terrible' or how King Henri II of France perished in a jousting incident? Grisly and gruesome, this book details the vile history of bloodthirsty kings and queens, savage battles, torture and punishment, as well as deathly locations from the days of the ancients to the late nineteenth century. A bloodstained tour through ages of torment, One Bloody Thing After Another explores the blood and guts of yesteryear, from the Crusades and medieval dungeons to the Reign of Terror and witch trials. Find out who bathed in the blood of young women to retain her youth and what really happened at the Massacre of the Festival of Toxcatl, all the while uncovering the most painful torture methods ever used. This is a fascinating account of terror, torture and power in all its repulsive guises... the most gut-spilling history book you'll read this year.
Download or read book Batavia s Graveyard written by Mike Dash and published by Crown. This book was released on 2002-03-05 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Tulipomania comes Batavia’s Graveyard, the spellbinding true story of mutiny, shipwreck, murder, and survival. It was the autumn of 1628, and the Batavia, the Dutch East India Company’s flagship, was loaded with a king’s ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java. The Batavia was the pride of the Company’s fleet, a tangible symbol of the world’s richest and most powerful commercial monopoly. She set sail with great fanfare, but the Batavia and her gold would never reach Java, for the Company had also sent along a new employee, Jeronimus Corneliszoon, a bankrupt and disgraced man who possessed disarming charisma and dangerously heretical ideas. With the help of a few disgruntled sailors, Jeronimus soon sparked a mutiny that seemed certain to succeed—but for one unplanned event: In the dark morning hours of June 3, the Batavia smashed through a coral reef and ran aground on a small chain of islands near Australia. The commander of the ship and the skipper evaded the mutineers by escaping in a tiny lifeboat and setting a course for Java—some 1,800 miles north—to summon help. Nearly all of the passengers survived the wreck and found themselves trapped on a bleak coral island without water, food, or shelter. Leaderless, unarmed, and unaware of Jeronimus’s treachery, they were at the mercy of the mutineers. Jeronimus took control almost immediately, preaching his own twisted version of heresy he’d learned in Holland’s secret Anabaptist societies. More than 100 people died at his command in the months that followed. Before long, an all-out war erupted between the mutineers and a small group of soldiers led by Wiebbe Hayes, the one man brave enough to challenge Jeronimus’s band of butchers. Unluckily for the mutineers, the Batavia’s commander had raised the alarm in Java, and at the height of the violence the Company’s gunboats sailed over the horizon. Jeronimus and his mutineers would meet an end almost as gruesome as that of the innocents whose blood had run on the small island they called Batavia’s Graveyard. Impeccably researched and beautifully written, Batavia’s Graveyard is the next classic of narrative nonfiction, the book that secures Mike Dash’s place as one of the finest writers of the genre.
Download or read book Summer s Bloodiest Days written by Jennifer L. Weber and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of the Battle of Gettysburg from both sides.
Download or read book Bloody Okinawa written by Joseph Wheelan and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stirring narrative of World War II's final major battle—the Pacific war's largest, bloodiest, most savagely fought campaign—the last of its kind. On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, more than 184,000 US troops began landing on the only Japanese home soil invaded during the Pacific war. Just 350 miles from mainland Japan, Okinawa was to serve as a forward base for Japan's invasion in the fall of 1945. Nearly 140,000 Japanese and auxiliary soldiers fought with suicidal tenacity from hollowed-out, fortified hills and ridges. Under constant fire and in the rain and mud, the Americans battered the defenders with artillery, aerial bombing, naval gunfire, and every infantry tool. Waves of Japanese kamikaze and conventional warplanes sank 36 warships, damaged 368 others, and killed nearly 5,000 US seamen. When the slugfest ended after 82 days, more than 125,000 enemy soldiers lay dead—along with 7,500 US ground troops. Tragically, more than 100,000 Okinawa civilians perished while trapped between the armies. The brutal campaign persuaded US leaders to drop the atomic bomb instead of invading Japan. Utilizing accounts by US combatants and Japanese sources, author Joseph Wheelan endows this riveting story of the war's last great battle with a compelling human dimension.
Download or read book The War of the World written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 945 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world at the beginning of the 20th century seemed for most of its inhabitants stable and relatively benign. Globalizing, booming economies married to technological breakthroughs seemed to promise a better world for most people. Instead, the 20th century proved to be overwhelmingly the most violent, frightening and brutalized in history with fanatical, often genocidal warfare engulfing most societies between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War. What went wrong? How did we do this to ourselves? The War of the World comes up with compelling, fascinating answers. It is Niall Ferguson’s masterpiece.
Download or read book Barbarossa written by Stewart Binns and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on remarkable and never-before-seen material, the extraordinary story of one of the most horrific and devastating encounters of the Second World War. On June 22nd, 1941 the largest military invasion in human history was launched - an attack on the Soviet Union by almost four million men of Nazi Germany's brutal war machine. Operation Barbarossa led to the bloodiest military campaign mankind has ever known. The statistics of death and destruction are almost impossible to believe. The cruelty, suffering and destitution it wrought are unimaginable . . . over forty million people lost their lives. Yet, the real story of the Eastern Front is still not truly understood outside of Germany and Eastern Europe. Little is known of those who suffered in the horror of Hitler's 'War of Annihilation' - the soldiers and civilians of Eastern Europe who fought and died trying to save their homelands and their loved ones. In Barbarossa, Stewart Binns tells the story of how they lived and survived, and how, once the tide had turned, they exacted an appalling revenge on the Nazi aggressors. This is the story of the bloodiest war in history. Stewart Binns draws on Russian archives to paint a uniquely intimate picture of the war from the Soviet side of this terrible conflict - presenting this dark moment in history in panoramic detail, matching sweeping accounts of tactical manoeuvres with harrowing personal stories of civilian hardship and bravery. 'A masterful narrative, deeply enriched by extraordinary research and a profound analysis of the soul of Russia.' - Nick Hewer
Download or read book Uncommon Valor on Iwo Jima written by James H Hallas and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-06-14 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic Battle of Iwo Jima is recounted through the stories of twenty-eight American soldiers who showed uncommon valor during one of WWII’s most bitter conflicts. When the smoke cleared on Iwo Jima in March of 1945, nineteen-thousand American Marines had been wounded and seven-thousand were dead, a casualty rate of nearly thirty-nine percent. Lasting over a month, Iwo was the Marines’ bloodiest battle of the Second World War and the only Pacific battle in which a U.S. landing force suffered more casualties than it inflicted. It was also the most highly decorated single engagement in Marine Corps history. This volume captures the bravery of those who fought in that epic battle through the stories of twenty-two Marines and five Navy personnel who received the Medal of Honor in recognition of their gallantry under fire.
Download or read book After Tet written by Ronald H. Spector and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military historian and ex-marine Ronald Spector marks the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Tet offensive which presaged the worst fighting that took place the year following. Detailing the deterioration of race relations, the growth of the drug culture, and even the experience of South Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, this comprehensive history may stand as one of the most important books about Vietnam.
Download or read book Damn Lucky written by Kevin Maurer and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Kevin Maurer—the #1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning coauthor of No Easy Day—comes the true story of a World War II bomber pilot who survived twenty-five missions in Damn Lucky, “an epic, thrillingly written, utterly immersive account of a very lucky, incredible survivor of the war in the skies to defeat Hitler” (New York Times bestselling author Alex Kershaw). “We were young citizen-soldiers, terribly naive and gullible about what we would be confronted with in the air war over Europe and the profound effect it would have upon every fiber of our being for the rest of our lives. We were all afraid, but it was beyond our power to quit. We volunteered for the service and, once trained and overseas, felt we had no choice but to fulfill the mission assigned. My hope is that this book honors the men with whom I served by telling the truth about what it took to climb into the cold blue and fight for our lives over and over again.” —John “Lucky” Luckadoo, Major, USAF (Ret.) 100th Bomb Group (H) Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was a world away from John Luckadoo’s hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. But when the Japanese attacked the American naval base on December 7, 1941, he didn’t hesitate to join the military. Trained as a pilot with the United States Air Force, Second Lieutenant Luckadoo was assigned to the 100th Bomb Group stationed in Thorpe Abbotts, England. Between June and October 1943, he flew B-17 Flying Fortresses over France and Germany on bombing runs devised to destroy the Nazi war machine. With a shrapnel torn Bible in his flight jacket pocket and his girlfriend’s silk stocking around his neck like a scarf as talismans, Luckadoo piloted through Luftwaffe machine-gun fire and antiaircraft flak while enduring subzero temperatures to complete twenty-five missions and his combat service. The average bomber crew rarely survived after eight to twelve missions. Knowing far too many airmen who wouldn’t be returning home, Luckadoo closed off his emotions and focused on his tasks to finish his tour of duty one moment at a time, realizing his success was more about being lucky than being skilled. Drawn from Luckadoo’s firsthand accounts, acclaimed war correspondent Kevin Maurer shares his extraordinary tale from war to peacetime, uncovering astonishing feats of bravery during the bloodiest military campaign in aviation history, and presenting an incredible portrait of a young man’s coming-of-age during the world’s most devastating war.
Download or read book A Short History of the Vietnam War written by DK and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 931 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping and informative visual guide to one of the bloodiest conflicts in US and world history Journey through the Vietnam War; exploring detailed accounts of the men and women that were there. Explore their stories of struggle, sacrifice, and bravery through the iconic events that defined this conflict. This visual guide is the perfect read for any military history enthusiast. Inside the pages of this retelling of America’s bloodiest conflict, you’ll discover: • A vivid, moving, and informative read, written in an engaging style • Offers a clear and compelling account of the conflict, in short, self-contained events from the Battle of Ia Drang to the Tet Offensive and The Khmer Rouge • Biography spreads highlight major military and political figures • Features on everyday life in the war offering additional context • Stunning image spreads display weapons, spy gear, and other equipment that defined the war • Maps and feature boxes provide additional information on major events during the conflict A carefully constructed, in-depth guide to Vietnam This definitive history of the Vietnam War was written in conjunction with the Smithsonian. SI A Short History of the Vietnam War showcases every aspect of the fighting and the wider political landscape from both the side of the Viet Cong and the US military. Compelling text, diagrams, and maps show exactly how decisive moments and battles unfolded to help the reader to visualize the conflict. Eyewitness accounts and iconic photographs bring events to life - from the creation of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Operation Passage to Freedom and the evacuation of the US embassy in Saigon. From weapons and aircraft to armored vehicles and spy gear, explore the machinery used in the war through breathtaking photography. Lastly, biographical entries give a fuller insight into the minds of key figures and the decisions they made and include Henry Kissinger, President Nixon, Pol Pot, and more. More in the series Combining expert historical insight, eyewitness accounts, and archive photography, A Short History series seeks to summarise key historical events and provide a wider context to what was happening around these events. Titles include SI A Short History of World War II, SI A Short History of the American Civil War, and SI A Short History of Flying and are the perfect addition to any history enthusiast’s library.
Download or read book Figuring Out the Past written by Peter Turchin and published by The Economist. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the world records that define our history and jump headfirst into the past using scientific data that reveals accurate and insightful answers to life’s biggest questions. What was history's biggest empire? Or the tallest building of the ancient world? What was the plumbing like in medieval Byzantium? The average wage in the Mughal Empire? Where did scientific writing first emerge? What was the bloodiest ever ritual human sacrifice? We are used to thinking about history in terms of stories. Yet we understand our own world through data: cast arrays of statistics that reveal the workings of our societies. In Figuring Out the Past, radical historians Peter Turchin and Dan Hoyer dive into the numbers that reveal the true shape of the past, drawing on their own Seshat project, a staggeringly ambitious attempt to log every data point that can be gathered for every society that has ever existed. This book does more than tell the story of humanity: it shows you the big picture, by the numbers.
Download or read book Operation Tidal Wave written by Vincent dePaul Lupiano and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Operation Tidal Wave tells the story of the bloodiest air battle in the history of war. It is about 1700 airmen who set out to bomb the oil refineries surrounding the city of Ploesti, Romania, on August 1, 1943. Success, they thought, would be a force in ending the war. Success instead was extremely limited and 500 airmen were killed, wounded, captured, or interned. Negligible damage resulted at the Ploesti refineries, and a few months later they were operating at one-hundred percent capacity. To show the asperity of the raid, five Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded, two posthumously.
