Лоуренс Фридман0.0 It is in the Middle East that the U.S. has been made to confront its attitudes on the use of force, the role of allies, and international law. The history of the U.S. in the Middle East, then, becomes an especially revealing mirror on America's view of its role in the wider world. In this wise, objective, and illuminating history, Lawrence Freedman shows how three key events in 1978–79 helped establish the foundations for U.S. involvement in the Middle East that would last for thirty years, without offering any straightforward or bloodless exit options: the Camp David summit leading to the Israel-Egypt Treaty; the Iranian Islamic revolution leading to the Shah's departure followed by the hostage crisis; and the socialist revolution in Afghanistan, resulting in the doomed Soviet intervention.
Freedman makes clear how America's strategic choices in those and subsequent crises led us to where we are today. A Choice of Enemies is essential reading for anyone concerned with the complex politics of the region or with the future of American foreign policy.
Jeremy Black0.0 Since 1990 in which war have there been the most casualties? If you ask this question in Britain or the USA the answer usually given is Iraq yet casualty figures in both Zaire/Congo and Sudan have been considerably higher. Too often in accounts of warfare, non-conventional and non-Western conflicts are ignored. War Since 1990 redresses this balance and offers a deeply researched and rounded history of warfare in all its forms since the end of the Cold War. Jeremy Black argues that the failure to understand non-Western warfare is dangerous, because the effectiveness, indeed sometimes the very survival, of Western forces requires such an understanding. War Since 1990 is an important contribution to both education about the military and education for the military.
Билл Эммотт0.0 The former editor in chief of the Economist returns to the territory of his best-selling book The Sun Also Sets to lay out an entirely fresh analysis of the growing rivalry between China, India, and Japan and what it will mean for America, the global economy, and the twenty-first-century world. Though books such as The World Is Flat and China Shakes the World consider them only as individual actors, Emmott argues that these three political and economic giants are closely intertwined by their fierce competition for influence, markets, resources, and strategic advantage. Rivals explains and explores the ways in which this sometimes bitter rivalry will play out over the next decade—in business, global politics, military competition, and the environment—and reveals the efforts of the United States to manipulate and benefit from this rivalry. Identifying the biggest risks born of these struggles, Rivals also outlines the ways these risks can and should be managed by all of us.
Ниал Фергюсон4.0 Деньги присутствуют в жизни каждого человека и мало кого оставляют равнодушным. Деньги притягивают и вызывают отвращение. Они определяют исходы войн и помогают создавать прекрасные произведения искусства. Тем удивительнее, что люди в массе своей знают о деньгах очень мало. Знаменитый британский историк Найл Фергюсон взялся восполнить этот пробел и с блеском выполнил задачу. В своей новой книге "Восхождение денег", увидевшей свет в самый разгар всемирного экономического кризиса, он восстанавливает путь, пройденный деньгами от древности до наших дней, просто и ясно разъясняет смысл сложных финансовых понятий и терминов, расправляется с наиболее укоренившимися заблуждениями. И разумеется подробнейшим образом разбирает причины нынешнего кризиса. Сегодня все больше и больше людей становятся частью мировой финансовой системы - и знакомство с финансовой историей мира важно как никогда прежде.
Andrew Roberts3.0 Andrew Roberts's Masters and Commanders: The Military Geniuses who led the West to Victory in WWII tells the story of how four great leaders fought each other over how best to fight Hitler.
During the Second World War the master strategy of the West was shaped by four titanic figures: Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, and their respective military commanders - General Sir Alan Brooke and General George C. Marshall. Each man was tough-willed and strong minded. And each was certain he knew best how to achieve victory.
Drawing on previously unpublished material, including for the first time verbatim reports of Churchill's War Cabinet meetings, Andrew Roberts's acclaimed history recreates with vivid immediacy the fiery debates and political maneuverings, the rebuffs and the charm, the explosive rows and dramatic reconciliations, as the masters and commanders of the Western Alliance fought each other over the best way to fight Adolf Hitler.
Ричард Холмс0.0 Bestselling military historian Richard Holmes delivers an expertly written and exhilarating account of the life of John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough and Britain's finest soldier, who rose from genteel poverty to lead his country to glory, cementing its position as a major player on the European stage and saviour of the Holy Roman Empire.
John Churchill is, by any reasonable analysis, Britain’s greatest-ever soldier. He mastered strategy, tactics and logistics. His big four battles, Blenheim (which saved the Holy Roman Empire), Ramilies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet were events at the very centre of the European stage. He captured Lille, France’s second city, overran Bavaria and beat a succession of French marshals so badly that one, the squat and energetic Bofflers, was rewarded by Louis XIV for only losing moderately.
A coalition manager long before the phrase was invented, he commanded a huge polyglot army with centrifugal political tendencies and bending it to his will by sheer force of personality.
Yet John Churchill was also deeply controversial. He accepted a pension from one of Charles II’s mistresses for services vigorously rendered. He owed his rise and his peerage to James II yet, determined to be on the winning side, he deserted him in his hour of need in 1688. He maintained regular correspondence with the Jacobites while serving William and Mary and with the French while fighting Louis XIV. He made money on a prodigious scale, but was notoriously tight-fisted, long regretting an annuity given to a secretary whose quick-wittedness saved him from capture. But in the age when commissions were bought and sold, and commanders often owed their position to the hue of their blood, he never lost his soldier’s confidence.
