Defeat

Author : Philippe-Paul de Segur
Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1590172825
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Defeat written by Philippe-Paul de Segur and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2008-10-21 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1812 Napoleon gathered his fearsome Grande Armée, more than half a million strong, on the banks of the Niemen River. He was about to undertake the most daring of all his many campaigns: the invasion of Russia. Meeting only sporadic opposition and defeating it easily along the way, the huge army moved forward, advancing ineluctably on Moscow through the long hot days of summer. On September 14, Napoleon entered the Russian capital, fully anticipating the Czar’s surrender. Instead he encountered an eerily deserted city—and silence. The French army sacked the city, and by October, with Moscow in ruins and his supply lines overextended, and with the Russian winter upon him, Napoleon had no choice but to turn back. One of the greatest military debacles of all time had only just begun. In this famous memoir, Philippe-Paul de Ségur, a young aide-de-camp to Napoleon, tells the story of the unfolding disaster with the keen eye of a crack reporter and an astute grasp of human character. His book, a fundamental inspiration for Tolstoy’s War and Peace, is a masterpiece of military history that teaches an all-too-timely lesson about imperial hubris and its risks.

Author : Ned Beauman
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0385353006
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Madness Is Better Than Defeat written by Ned Beauman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1938, two rival expeditions descend on an ancient temple recently discovered in the jungles of Honduras, one intending to shoot a huge Hollywood production on location there, the other to disassemble the temple and ship it back to New York. A seemingly endless stalemate ensues. Twenty years later, a rogue CIA agent sets out to exploit the temple for his own ends, unaware that it is a locus of conspiracies far grander than anyone could ever have guessed. Shot through with intrigue, ingenuity, and adventure, and showcasing Beauman’s riotous humor, spectacular imagination, and riveting prose, Madness Is Better Than Defeat is a novel without parallel: inventive, anarchic, and delightfully insane.

Author : Marc Bloch
Publisher : Rare Treasure Editions
ISBN 13 : 1774643901
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Strange Defeat written by Marc Bloch and published by Rare Treasure Editions. This book was released on 2021-11-09T16:36:00Z with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned historian and Resistance fighter - later executed by the Nazis - analyzes at first hand why France fell in 1940. Marc Bloch wrote Strange Defeat during the three months following the fall of France, after he returned home from military service. In the midst of his anguish, he nevertheless "brought to his study of the crisis all the critical faculty and all the penetrating analysis of a first-rate historian" (Christian Science Monitor). Bloch takes a close look at the military failures he witnessed, examining why France was unable to respond to attack quickly and effectively. He gives a personal account of the battle of France, followed by a biting analysis of the generation between the wars. His harsh conclusion is that the immediate cause of the disaster was the utter incompetence of the High Command, but his analysis ranges broadly, appraising all the factors, social as well as military, which since 1870 had undermined French national solidarity. "Much has been, and will be, written in explanation of the defeat of France in 1940, but it seems unlikely that the truth of the matter will ever be more accurately and more vividly presented than in this statement of evidence." - New York Times Book Review. "The most wisdom-packed commentary on the problem set [before] all intelligent and patriotic Frenchmen by the events of 1940." - Spectator.

Author : Jonathan Laurence
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691219788
Total Pages : 606 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Coping with Defeat written by Jonathan Laurence and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The surprising similarities in the rise and fall of the Sunni Islamic and Roman Catholic empires in the face of the modern state Coping with Defeat presents a historical panorama of the Islamic and Catholic political-religious empires and exposes striking parallels in their relationship with the modern state. Drawing on interviews, site visits, and archival research in Turkey, North Africa, and Western Europe, Jonathan Laurence demonstrates how, over hundreds of years, both Sunni and Catholic authorities experienced three major shocks and displacements—religious reformation, the rise of the nation-state, and mass migration. As a result, Catholic institutions eventually accepted the state’s political jurisdiction and embraced transnational spiritual leadership as their central mission. Laurence reveals an analogous process unfolding across the Sunni Muslim world in the twenty-first century. Identifying institutional patterns before and after political collapse, Laurence shows how centralized religious communities relinquish power at different rates and times. Whereas early Christianity and Islam were characterized by missionary expansion, religious institutions forged in the modern era are primarily defensive in nature. They respond to the simple but overlooked imperative to adapt to political defeat while fighting off ideological challenges to their spiritual authority. Among Laurence’s findings is that the disestablishment of Islam—the doing away with Islamic affairs ministries in the Muslim world—would harm, not help with, reconciliation to the rule of law. Examining upheavals in geography, politics, and demography, Coping with Defeat considers how centralized religions make peace with the loss of prestige.

Author : Wolfgang Schivelbusch
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
ISBN 13 : 1466851171
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Culture of Defeat written by Wolfgang Schivelbusch and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating look at history's losers-the myths they create to cope with defeat and the steps they take never to be vanquished again History may be written by the victors, Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues in his brilliant and provocative book, but the losers often have the final word. Focusing on three seminal cases of modern warfare-the South after the Civil War, France in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany following World War I-Schivelbusch reveals the complex psychological and cultural reactions of vanquished nations to the experience of military defeat. Drawing on responses from every level of society, Schivelbusch shows how conquered societies question the foundations of their identities and strive to emulate the victors: the South to become a "better North," the French to militarize their schools on the Prussian model, the Germans to adopt all things American. He charts the losers' paradoxical equation of military failure with cultural superiority as they generate myths to glorify their pasts and explain their losses: the nostalgic "plantation legend" after the fall of the Confederacy; the cult of Joan of Arc in vanquished France; the fiction of the stab in the back by "foreign" elements in postwar Germany. From cathartic epidemics of "dance madness" to the revolutions that so often follow battlefield humiliation, Schivelbusch finds remarkable similarities across cultures. Eloquently and vibrantly told, The Culture of Defeat is a tour de force that opens new territory for historical inquiry.

Author : Akiko Hashimoto
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190239158
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Long Defeat written by Akiko Hashimoto and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Long Defeat, Akiko Hashimoto explores the stakes of war memory in Japan after its catastrophic defeat in World War II, showing how and why defeat has become an indelible part of national collective life, especially in recent decades. Divisive war memories lie at the root of the contentious politics surrounding Japan's pacifist constitution and remilitarization, and fuel the escalating frictions in East Asia known collectively as Japan's "history problem." Drawing on ethnography, interviews, and a wealth of popular memory data, this book identifies three preoccupations - national belonging, healing, and justice - in Japan's discourses of defeat. Hashimoto uncovers the key war memory narratives that are shaping Japan's choices - nationalism, pacifism, or reconciliation - for addressing the rising international tensions and finally overcoming its dark history.

Author : Bryant Simon
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807864494
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Fabric of Defeat written by Bryant Simon and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Bryant Simon brings to life the politics of white South Carolina millhands during the first half of the twentieth century. His revealing and moving account explores how this group of southern laborers thought about and participated in politics and public power. Taking a broad view of politics, Simon looks at laborers as they engaged in political activity in many venues--at the polling station, on front porches, and on the shop floor--and examines their political involvement at the local, state, and national levels. He describes the campaign styles and rhetoric of such politicians as Coleman Blease and Olin Johnston (himself a former millhand), who eagerly sought the workers' votes. He draws a detailed picture of mill workers casting ballots, carrying placards, marching on the state capital, writing to lawmakers, and picketing factories. These millhands' politics reflected their public and private thoughts about whiteness and blackness, war and the New Deal, democracy and justice, gender and sexuality, class relations and consumption. Ultimately, the people depicted here are neither romanticized nor dismissed as the stereotypically racist and uneducated "rednecks" found in many accounts of southern politics. Southern workers understood the political and social forces that shaped their lives, argues Simon, and they developed complex political strategies to deal with those forces.

Author : Christopher Hill
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1784786713
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Experience of Defeat written by Christopher Hill and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happened to the radicals when the English Revolution failed? The Restoration, which re-established Charles II as king of England in 1660, marked the end of “God’s cause”—a struggle for liberty and republican freedom. While most accounts of this period concentrate on the court, Christopher Hill focuses on those who mourned the passing of the most radical era in English history. The radical protestant clergy, as well as republican intellectuals and writers generally, had to explain why providence had forsaken the agents of God’s work. In The Experience of Defeat, Christopher Hill explores the writings and lives of the Levellers, the Ranters and the Diggers, as well as the work of George Fox and other important early Quakers. Some of them were pursued by the new regime, forced into hiding or exile; others compelled to recant. In particular Hill examines John Milton’s late work, arguing that it came directly out of a painful reassessment of man and society that impelled him to “justify the ways of God to Man.”

Author : Ed Morawski
Publisher : Lulu.com
ISBN 13 : 1430315393
Total Pages : 102 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How to Defeat Burglar Alarms-Not! written by Ed Morawski and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2007-03-01 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fun guide dispelling Hollywood myths about burglar alarms and security while explaining how to protect yourself from burglars. Everything about alarms, CCTV, Card Access, Monitoring stations, and guards.

Author : Ariane M. Tabatabai
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197566928
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book No Conquest, No Defeat written by Ariane M. Tabatabai and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early 2019, the Islamic Republic of Iran marked its fortieth anniversary, despite decades of isolation, political pressure, sanctions and war. Observers of its security policies continue to try and make sense of this unlikely endurance. Some view the regime as a purely rational actor, whose national security decisions and military affairs are shaped by the same considerations as in other states. Others believe that it is ideology driving Tehran's strategy. Either way, virtually everyone agrees that the mullahs' policies are fundamentally different from those pursued by their monarchical predecessors. No Conquest, No Defeat offers a historically grounded overview of Iranian national security. Tabatabai argues that the Islamic Republic is neither completely rational nor purely ideological. Rather, its national security policy today is largely shaped by its strategic culture, a product of the country's historical experiences of war and peace. As a result, Iranian strategic thinking is perhaps best characterized by its dynamic yet resilient nature, one that is continually evolving. As the Islamic Republic enters its fifth decade, this book sheds new light on Iran's controversial nuclear and missile programs and its involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.