Imperial War

Written by two of the world's leading authorities on the subject, Imperial Germany and War, 1871-1918 examines the most essential components of the imperial German military system, with an emphasis on such foundational areas as theory, doctrine, institutional structures, training, and the officer corps. In the period between 1871 and 1918, rapid technological development demanded considerable adaptation and change in military doctrine and planning.

As one of the most potent turning points in the country's modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today's China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to "open" China even as China's imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country's decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China's advantage.

The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was the third most powerful navy in the world at the start of World War II and came to dominate the Pacific in the early months of the war. This was a remarkable turnaround for a navy that only began to modernize in 1868. The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War details the Japanese ships which fought in the Pacific and examines the principles on which they were designed, how they were armed, when and where they were deployed, and how effective they were in battle.

In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Roosevelt's glamorous 21 year old daughter Alice served as mistress of the cruise, which included senators and congressmen. On this trip, Taft concluded secret agreements in Roosevelt's name.

She was a monster, sleek and gleaming, designed to strike without warning like the dreaded shark. She was the USS Mako, as fearless and bold as any submarine that ever prowled the blue Pacific. Her mission: seek out and destroy the hitherto invincible ships of the Japanese Imperial Navy - and revenge the earlier defeats of a long and dirty war. Here is the story of the men who pitted their lives against impossible odds in the most dangerous branch of the American armed services.

They were an astonishing group: glamorous, gutsy, and irreverent to the bone. As cub reporters in the 1920s, they roamed across a war-ravaged world, sometimes perched atop mules on wooden saddles, sometimes gliding through countries in the splendor of a first-class sleeper car. While empires collapsed and fledgling democracies faltered, they chased deposed empresses, international financiers, and Balkan gun-runners, and then knocked back doubles late into the night.

Inside a dystopian school in the Singularity, the 12-year-old girl known as One Twenty-Four struggles to survive. Failure to conform means death at the hands of her teacher. Assuming her clone sisters don't kill her first. The Terran Empire has tasked Imperial Marine Lieutenant Grace Tolliver to lead her platoon into the Singularity as a privateer. Her mission: to tear a great bloody strip off their enemies and to take anything that isn't nailed down. The collision of this unlikely pair will change the humanity in ways that no one could predict. If they survive.

Japan's Holocaust combines research conducted in over eighteen research facilities in five nations to explore Imperial Japan's atrocities from 1927 to 1945 during its military expansions and reckless campaigns throughout Asia and the Pacific. This book brings together the most recent scholarship and new primary research to ascertain that Japan claimed a minimum of thirty million lives, slaughtering more than Hitler's Nazi Germany. Japan's Holocaust shows that Emperor Hirohito not only knew about the atrocities his legions committed, but actually ordered them.

A thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential periods in 20th century history - the Arab Revolt and the secret “great game” to control the Middle East. Lawrence in Arabia definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed. Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.

As the ‘Funeral Bride,’ Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt marries Tsar Nicholas II only a week after the premature death of his father, Tsar Alexander III. Already dismissed out of hand by the court, Alexandra has to further contend with the continuing ambition of her mother-in-law, the Dowager-Empress Minnie, who has no intention of ceding imperial precedence to the new Empress or of giving up one inch of her power and influence over her emotionally-dependent son, the new Tsar. Nevertheless, Empress Alexandra is determined to stamp her authority on Russia as a whole and on Nicholas in ...

The Solar League, humanity's empire, has existed since mankind reached for the stars. While the humans considered it the pinnacle of human achievement, for the subjugated alien races it seemed only to endorse humanity's worst impulses. But the worst of humanity pales in comparison to an alien onslaught that is on the verge of bringing mankind down into death and subjugation.

When the rebels took the Crown Prince…they set the dominoes in motion. Will one young Ironside be able to change fate? Eric was a space marine assigned to a special unit. Their job was to protect the prince and his job was as a body double. How did the raiders know he wasn’t the real prince? How would they get him back? Then it got complicated. Miranda’s world just imploded. They killed her family because they knew the deadly secret. Now a colonial orphan, she has no choice. She must get revenge. Will Eric’s plan and Miranda’s destiny align?

The attack of the US Pearl Harbor Naval Base changed the entire progress of World War II, and as a result, it was a very formative event both for the United States and Japan. Though the two nations seemed unlikely enemies at the onset of the Second Great War, bloodshed between them would be greater than anyone could have imagined. The future of the world at large was changed on December 7, 1941, when the Empire of Japan chose to make a preemptive strike on its most feared Pacific neighbor, the United States of America.

Miranda’s done. Five years of missions in the same unit has hollowed her out. When news that her sister is alive she races to reconnect with her last living relative. The boys can’t help but invite themselves along. When their ship breaks down the team must survive one last mission together or die.

Escaped Imperial officer Dirk doesn't care his crew are runaways, revolutionaries, and alleged criminals, as long as they're adequately competent and don't kill each other too often. When a smuggling job goes badly wrong and they improvise, he'll trade competency for just non-suicidal. If one crime causes problems, a second should fix it. But after a botched heist lands them in the freezing woods of a frozen planet, they need a new plan.

Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition. Prince Potemkin was the love of her life and her co-ruler. Together they seized Ukraine and Crimea, territories that define the Russian sphere of influence to this day. Their affair was so tumultuous that they negotiated an arrangement to share power, leaving each of them free to take younger lovers. But these “twin souls” never stopped loving each other.

The Washington Post's former Baghdad bureau chief, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, takes us into the Green Zone, headquarters for the American occupation in Iraq. In this bubble separated from wartime realities, the task of reconstructing Iraq is in the hands of 20-somethings chosen for their Republican Party loyalty. They pursue irrelevant neoconservative solutions and pie-in-the-sky policies instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity, angering the locals and fueling the insurgency.

The monumental struggle fought against Imperial Japan in the Asia/Pacific theater during World War II is primarily viewed as an American affair. While the United States did play a dominant role, the British and Commonwealth forces also made major contributions. It was a difficult and often desperate conflict fought against a skilled and ruthless enemy that initially saw the British suffer the worst series of defeats ever to befall their armed forces.

Grand Duchess Olga Romanov comes of age amid a shifting tide for the great dynasties of Europe. But even as unrest simmers in the capital, Olga is content to live within the confines of the sheltered life her parents have built for her and her three sisters: hiding from the world on account of their mother’s ill health, their brother Alexei’s secret affliction, and rising controversy over Father Grigori Rasputin, the priest on whom the tsarina has come to rely.

In this important program of interviews conducted by award-winning radio journalist David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky discusses America's policies in the increasingly unstable world. With his famous insight, lucidity, and redoubtable grasp of history, Chomsky offers his views on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the doctrine of "preemptive" strikes against so-called rogue states, and the prospects of the second Bush administration, warning of the growing threat to international peace posed by the U.S. drive for domination.