Russian Retaken

Four extraordinary outlaws go head-to-head with a powerful Russian crime lord in a valiant effort to terminate a viable human trafficking operation. The notorious quartet pursues all available options to liberate the existing abducted young girls and to prevent further kidnappings. Opposing forces collide resulting in explosive action and violent confrontations. Betrayal leads to capture. Tenacity prevails. The final showdown takes place at a remote location.

This revised and expanded edition is an invaluable source of information about the contributions of Blacks to world civilization, from ancient to modern times. Among the topics discussed are the ancient Black Hebrews, the Black Moors who invaded and occupied parts of Europe for centuries, great Blacks like Hannibal and Jesus Christ, and the forgotten Black civilizations of Europe, Egypt, Asia, and the Americas.

Arranged in five sections, one for each year of the War, this superbly illustrated book covers the fluid fighting that took place on the Russian Front from August 1914. The author describes how each year saw dramatic developments, notably actions in Poland, Tannenberg, the Carpathian passes in 1914, the 1915 operations in Galicia and the Baltic and the 1916 Brinsilov offensive. 1917 saw the collapse of the German army leading to the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and continued fighting along the Baltic and in the Ukraine. The informative text is complemented by over 200 mainly previously unpublished photographs. The Central Powers on the Russian Front 1914 1918 with its emphasis on the German Army's actions against Russia but covering operations on many fronts makes it especially valuable to those who seek greater insight into the wider conduct of The Great War away from the Western Front.

This book is the result of over a year's work in 2016 and 2017 photographing the military campaign to reclaim Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, from ISIS. Working exclusively for the New York Times, Irish-born photographer Ivor Prickett (born 1983) was often embedded within Iraqi special forces troops as he documented both the fighting and its toll on the civilian population and urban landscape. The operation lasted nearly nine months, resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and ruined vast tracts of the city. Involving some of the most brutal urban combat since World War II, the fall of Mosul was key to the downfall of the Islamic State: soon after, the remains of the so-called "Caliphate" quickly collapsed. Prickett focuses on the human struggles of conflict. Taken on the frontline, his pictures legitimately and compellingly record the experience of being "caught in the crossfire," whether as a soldier or noncombatant. He furthermore captures postwar reality while attempting to reconstruct the final weeks of combat: the devastated city, including abandoned corpses of ISIS fighters, and, months later, families searching for missing loved ones and civilians returning to reclaim their homes and lives.

The catastrophe of the First World War, and the destruction, revolution, and enduring hostilities it wrought, make the issue of its origins a perennial puzzle. Since World War II, Germany has been viewed as the primary culprit. Now, in a major reinterpretation of the conflict, Sean McMeekin rejects the standard notions of the war’s beginning as either a Germano-Austrian preemptive strike or a “tragedy of miscalculation.” Instead, he proposes that the key to the outbreak of violence lies in St. Petersburg. It was Russian statesmen who unleashed the war through conscious policy decisions based on imperial ambitions in the Near East. Unlike their civilian counterparts in Berlin, who would have preferred to localize the Austro-Serbian conflict, Russian leaders desired a more general war so long as British participation was assured. The war of 1914 was launched at a propitious moment for harnessing the might of Britain and France to neutralize the German threat to Russia’s goal: partitioning the Ottoman Empire to ensure control of the Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Nearly a century has passed since the guns fell silent on the western front. But in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, World War I smolders still. Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Jews, and other regional antagonists continue fighting over the last scraps of the Ottoman inheritance. As we seek to make sense of these conflicts, McMeekin’s powerful exposé of Russia’s aims in the First World War will illuminate our understanding of the twentieth century.

Lives Interrupted portrays life in a country at war, through compiling the Facebook posts of long-term American missionaries to Ukraine, Mark & Rhonda Blessing. Insight is given into Russia's war on Ukraine, how it affected the lives of Ukrainians, and how it impacted their ministry as missionaries. Stories are told of displaced Ukrainians, Ukrainian soldiers, and international volunteers. There are real-time portrayals of what it felt like in the moment to have missiles hitting your city. Through it all, the thread is woven of how standing on the firm foundation of Jesus Christ carries us through the darkest moments.

The French Army corps during the Napoleonic era was a combined arms organization, designed as a self-sustaining combat unit which could operate independently from the rest of the army. One corps was designated as the advanced guard to the French army’s main body and acted as the unit which would make first contact with the enemy’s army. This corps developed the situation while other corps would attempt to maneuver to the rear of the enemy force and consequently fight a major battle under Napoleon’s control. The advanced guard corps which made first contact, would fight an opening battle which could last many hours until reinforcements arrived. The corps under Marshal Lannes in 1806 to 1807 fought three opening battles. During each battle the corps conducted their security and reconnaissance while moving towards the enemy, seized their initial positions on the impending battlefield and fought as a combined arms organization for the duration of the opening battle. This study shows how each of the branches; artillery, infantry, and cavalry, interacted in the opening battle. This study also reveals how Marshal Lannes established a combined arms advanced guard element within his corps each time he moved the corps as the advanced guard for the French Army. Although this advanced guard element was not a doctrinal organization for the French Army, the elements mission was strikingly similar to the larger corps acting as an advanced guard, but on a reduced scale.