Misfortunes Of War

Why do competent armies fail? • Why did the American-led coalition in Iraq fail to wage a classic counter-insurgency campaign for so long after the fall of Baghdad? • Why was the sophisticated Israeli intelligence service so thoroughly surprised by the onslaught of combined Arab armies during the Yom Kippur War of 1973? • How did a dozen German U-boats manage to humiliate the U.S. Navy for nine months in 1942 -- sinking an average of 650,000 tons of shipping monthly? • What made the 1915 British-led invasion of Gallipoli one of the bloodiest catastrophes of the First World War? Since it was first published in 1990, Military Misfortunes has become the classic analysis of the unexpected catastrophes that befall competent militaries. Now with a new Afterword discussing America's missteps in Iraq, Somalia, and the War on Terror, Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch's gripping battlefield narratives and groundbreaking explanations of the hidden factors that undermine armies are brought thoroughly up to date. As recent events prove, Military Misfortunes will be required reading for as long as armies go to war.

This monograph, part of a larger study of ways to reduce collateral damage undertaken for the U.S. Air Force, analyzes press, public, and leadership reactions to civilian casualty incidents and how these incidents affect media reporting or public support for military operations. It analyzes U.S. and foreign media and public responses to the 1991 Al Firdos bunker bombing, the 1999 Djakovica convoy and Chinese embassy attacks, the 2002 Afghan wedding party attack, and the 2003 Baghdad marketplace explosion.

Where inherited wealth and family intersect--not always for the good.Explores one of American society¿s endlessly fascinating scenarios. Best of all, the story is true. The author takes the reader on a journey beginning with Revolutionary War heroes down through succeeding generations of Civil War notables, industrial titans, an improbable love story with an eleven-year courtship, a couple besotted and befuddled by all that is given them, and finally, a son who not only survives but thrives.The family tree is populated with such historical families as the Shields, Crittendens, Olivers, Nevilles, and Craigs; military, political, and industrial leaders of their time.The story is one of east and west, north and south: Western Pennsylvania, land of opportunity in the Republic¿s early years and later a seat of eastern high society; California immediately after World War II as the new land of opportunity; dreams of railroads and then an airline to open up vast territories of Mexico; brother-against-brother in war. El Chepe and Ramsa; exotic adventures and improbable schemes; lives fulfilled and lives wasted, it portrays the schizophrenia of people ricocheting between vast opportunity and the inability to make a life in the shadow of great wealth.The story is accompanied by astonishing first hand accounts and documentation kept by the author¿s family. Photographs, diaries, and letters give credence to accounts and give voice to the people who wrote them. These are not far-away characters in a fairy tale but real flesh-and-blood human beings speaking through the generations.

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an unconventional book appeared in Germany which ignited a firestorm of cultural debate. Syberberg's "On the Fortunes & Misfortunes of Art in Post-War Germany" is one of the most profound meditations on the culture, society and politics of modern Germany and the West.

Many books have been written about strategy, tactics, and great commanders. This is the first book to deal exclusively with the nature of command itself, and to trace its development over two thousand years from ancient Greece to Vietnam. It treats historically the whole variety of problems involved in commanding armies, including staff organization and administration, communications methods and technologies, weaponry, and logistics. And it analyzes the relationship between these problems and military strategy. In vivid descriptions of key battles and campaigns—among others, Napoleon at Jena, Moltke’s Königgrätz campaign, the Arab–Israeli war of 1973, and the Americans in Vietnam—Martin van Creveld focuses on the means of command and shows how those means worked in practice. He finds that technological advances such as the railroad, breech-loading rifles, the telegraph and later the radio, tanks, and helicopters all brought commanders not only new tactical possibilities but also new limitations. Although vast changes have occurred in military thinking and technology, the one constant has been an endless search for certainty—certainty about the state and intentions of the enemy’s forces; certainty about the manifold factors that together constitute the environment in which war is fought, from the weather and terrain to radioactivity and the presence of chemical warfare agents; and certainty about the state, intentions, and activities of one’s own forces. The book concludes that progress in command has usually been achieved less by employing more advanced technologies than by finding ways to transcend the limitations of existing ones.

Known for his black humor and expertise in military aviation, Derek Robinson is best renowned for his novels on the Royal Flying Corps. The Goshawk Squadron was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. World War One pilots were the knights of the sky, and the press and public idolised them as gallant young heroes. At just twenty-three, Major Stanley Woolley is the old man and commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron. He abhors any notion of chivalry in the clouds and is determined to obliterate the decent, gentlemanly outlook of his young, public school-educated pilots--for their own good. But as the war goes on he is forced to thrown greener and greener pilots into the meat grinder. Goshawk Squadron finds its gallows humor and black camaraderie no defense against a Spandau bullet to the back of the head.

Poetry. Korea continues to grapple with the shared memory of its Japanese and US occupations. The poems in ORDINARY MISFORTUNES incorporate actual testimony about cruelty against vulnerable bodies--including the wianbu, euphemistically known as "comfort women"--as the poet seeks to find places where brutality is overcome through true human connections. Emily Jungmin Yoon asks, Why do we write poems amid such violence? What can I, and what can poetry, do? Her response to those tough questions is a sequence of reverberating poems that blend documentary precision with impassioned witness, bringing to bear both scholarship and artistry.