Most Civil War generals were graduates of West Point, and many of them helped transform the U.S. Army from what was little better than an armed mob that performed poorly during the War of 1812 into the competent fighting force that won the Mexican War. Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh offers an insightful and original portrait of the American army from 1814 to the end of the Civil War.

Hsieh demonstrates how the "old army" transformed itself into a professional military force after 1814, and, more important, how "old army" methods profoundly shaped the conduct of the Civil War. The dominance of both armies by West Point-trained generals prevented either side from gaining a marked superiority in military competence. Moreover, the long, grinding war, with heavy casualties on both sides, had unforeseen political implications--for instance, the war's great length strengthened the hand of the abolitionists, which would not have been the case if the North had won a quick and decisive victory.

The first book to show how the antebellum U.S. Army, and especially West Point graduates, affected the course of the Civil War, this volume makes a unique contribution to the history of America's greatest cataclysm.

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Stuart B. Schwartz - Tropical Babylons, Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1680 (2003).jpg

The idea that sugar, plantations, slavery, and capitalism were all present at the birth of the Atlantic world has long dominated scholarly thinking. In nine original essays by a multinational group of top scholars, Tropical Babylons re-evaluates this so-called "sugar revolution." The most comprehensive comparative study to date of early Atlantic sugar economies, this collection presents a revisionist examination of the origins of society and economy in the Atlantic world.
Focusing on areas colonized by Spain and Portugal (before the emergence of the Caribbean sugar colonies of England, France, and Holland), these essays show that despite reliance on common knowledge and technology, there were considerable variations in the way sugar was produced. With studies of Iberia, Madeira and the Canary Islands, Hispaniola, Cuba, Brazil, and Barbados, this volume demonstrates the similarities and differences between the plantation colonies, questions the very idea of a sugar revolution, and shows how the specific conditions in each colony influenced the way sugar was produced and the impact of that crop on the formation of "tropical Babylons"--multiracial societies of great oppression.

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Stuart B. Schwartz - Tropical Babylons, Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1680 (2003).pdf

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Graham Russell, Gao Hodges - David Ruggles, A Rad ical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railro ad in New York City (2010).jpg

USA Books - Graham Russell, Gao Hodges - David Ruggles, A Radical...st and the Underground Railroad in New York City 2010.jpg

David Ruggles (1810-1849) was of one of the most heroic--and has been one of the most often overlooked--figures of the early abolitionist movement in America. Graham Russell Gao Hodges provides the first biography of this African American activist, writer, publisher, and hydrotherapist who secured liberty for more than six hundred former bond people, the most famous of whom was Frederick Douglass. A forceful, courageous voice for black freedom, Ruggles mentored Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and William Cooper Nell in the skills of antislavery activism. As a founder of the New York Committee of Vigilance, he advocated a "practical abolitionism" that included civil disobedience and self-defense in order to preserve the rights of self-emancipated enslaved people and to protect free blacks from kidnappers who would sell them into slavery in the South.

Hodges's narrative places Ruggles in the fractious politics and society of New York, where he moved among the highest ranks of state leaders and spoke up for common black New Yorkers. His work on the Committee of Vigilance inspired many upstate New York and New England whites, who allied with him to form a network that became the Underground Railroad.

Hodges's portrait of David Ruggles establishes the abolitionist as an essential link between disparate groups--male and female, black and white, clerical and secular, elite and rank-and-file--recasting the history of antebellum abolitionism as a more integrated and cohesive movement than is often portrayed.

David Ruggles (1810-1849) was of one of the most heroic--and has been one of the most often overlooked--figures of the early abolitionist movement in America. Graham Russell Gao Hodges provides the first biography of this African American activist, writer, publisher, and hydrotherapist who secured liberty for more than six hundred former bond people, the most famous of whom was Frederick Douglass. A forceful, courageous voice for black freedom, Ruggles mentored Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and William Cooper Nell in the skills of antislavery activism. As a founder of the New York Committee of Vigilance, he advocated a "practical abolitionism" that included civil disobedience and self-defense in order to preserve the rights of self-emancipated enslaved people and to protect free blacks from kidnappers who would sell them into slavery in the South.

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7,2 MB
6 mar 13 5:36

Graham Russell, Gao Hodges - David Ruggles, A Rad ical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railro ad in New York City (2010).pdf

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Robert S. McElvaine - Down and Out in the Great De pression, Letters from the Forgotten Man (2007).jpg

Down and Out in the Great Depression is a moving, revealing collection of letters by the forgotten men, women, and children who suffered through one of the greatest periods of hardship in American history. Sifting through some 15,000 letters from government and private sources, Robert McElvaine has culled nearly 200 communications that best show the problems, thoughts, and emotions of ordinary people during this time.
Unlike views of Depression life "from the bottom up" that rely on recollections recorded several decades later, this book captures the daily anguish of people during the thirties. It puts the reader in direct contact with Depression victims, evoking a feeling of what it was like to live through this disaster.
Following Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration, both the number of letters received by the White House and the percentage of them coming from the poor were unprecedented. The average number of daily communications jumped to between 5,000 and 8,000, a trend that continued throughout the Rosevelt administration. The White House staff for answering such letters—most of which were directed to FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, or Harry Hopkins—quickly grew from one person to fifty.
Mainly because of his radio talks, many felt they knew the president personally and could confide in him. They viewed the Roosevelts as parent figures, offering solace, help, and protection. Roosevelt himself valued the letters, perceiving them as a way to gauge public sentiment. The writers came from a number of different groups—middle-class people, blacks, rural residents, the elderly, and children. Their letters display emotional reactions to the Depression—despair, cynicism, and anger—and attitudes toward relief.
In his extensive introduction, McElvaine sets the stage for the letters, discussing their significance and some of the themes that emerge from them. By preserving their original spelling, syntax, grammar, and capitalization, he conveys their full flavor.
The Depression was far more than an economic collapse. It was the major personal event in the lives of tens of millions of Americans. McElvaine shows that, contrary to popular belief, many sufferers were not passive victims of history. Rather, he says, they were "also actors and, to an extent, playwrights, producers, and directors as well," taking an active role in trying to deal with their plight and solve their problems.

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David A. Chang - The Color of the Land, Race, Nat ion, and the Politics of Landownership in Oklahoma , 1832-1929 (2010).jpg

USA Books - David A. Chang - The Color of the Land, Race, Nation,...Politics of Landownership in Oklahoma, 1832-1929 2010.jpg

The Color of the Land brings the histories of Creek Indians, African Americans, and whites in Oklahoma together into one story that explores the way races and nations were made and remade in conflicts over who would own land, who would farm it, and who would rule it. This story disrupts expected narratives of the American past, revealing how identities--race, nation, and class--took new forms in struggles over the creation of different systems of property.

Conflicts were unleashed by a series of sweeping changes: the forced "removal" of the Creeks from their homeland to Oklahoma in the 1830s, the transformation of the Creeks' enslaved black population into landed black Creek citizens after the Civil War, the imposition of statehood and private landownership at the turn of the twentieth century, and the entrenchment of a sharecropping economy and white supremacy in the following decades. In struggles over land, wealth, and power, Oklahomans actively defined and redefined what it meant to be Native American, African American, or white. By telling this story, David Chang contributes to the history of racial construction and nationalism as well as to southern, western, and Native American history.

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David A. Chang - The Color of the Land, Race, Nati on, and the Politics of Landownership in Oklahoma, 1832-1929 (2010).pdf

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Thomas Davis - John Calvin's American Legacy (201 0).jpg

Though his influence on American society has often been forgotten or misunderstood, John Calvin played a formative role in the traditions of almost every sector of American life. This wide-ranging study, comprising twelve essays, shows for the first time the extraordinary extent to which Calvinist thoughts and practices are woven into the fabric of American society, theology, and letters, from the colonial period to the twenty-first century.

John Calvin's American Legacy examines the economics of the Colonial period, Calvin's effect on American identity, and the evidence for Calvin's influence on American democracy. The book next addresses Calvin's critical role in American theology, inspecting the relationship between Jonathan Edwards's and Calvin's church practices, the diverse views on the Calvinist theological tradition in the nineteenth century, the ways in which Calvin was understood in the historiography of Williston Walker and Perry Miller, and Calvin's influence on twentieth-century theologies. Finally, the book explores Calvinism's influence on American literature, examining the work of such writers as Samson Occom, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Max Weber, Mark Twain, John Updike, and Marilynne Robinson.

This important book is the first to introduces readers to the breadth and depth of Calvin's influence along the spectrum of American thought and society, from the 18th century to modern times.

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Thomas Davis - John Calvin's American Legacy (2010 ).pdf

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Lawrence W. Baker, Sarah Hermsen - U-X-L Encyclope dia of U.S. History (2008).jpg

This is an eight-volume encyclopedia of US history that was compiled with guidance from the National Council for the Social Studies Curicculum Standards for Social Studies--Middle School, adopted in 2002.The NCSS standards cover the European discovery of the New World through to the present. The encyclopedia contains some 700 alphabetical, cross-referenced entries geared towards a Middle School audience that describe the historical significance of individuals, organizations and movements, legislative acts, places, events, and issues and concepts. Examples of topics discussed include the abolition movement, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Articles of Confederation, the Battle of Iwo Jima, the Black Panther Party, George W. Bush, Willa Cather, coal mining, the Confederate States of America, Miles Davis, the Dust Bowl, the Enola Gay, the Free Soil Party, French and Dutch immigration, The Grapes of Wrath, William Randolph Hearst, indentured servitude, the Internet revolution, Henry Kissinger, the Ku Klux Klan, Malcolm X, muckraking, the My Lai Massacre, the Potsdam Conference, Students for a Democratic Society, the telegraph, weapons of mass destruction, and Brigham Young.. All 50 states receive their own entries, as do all American presidents, including the incoming president, Barack Obama. The encyclopedia supplements the text with some 400 images and maps. A general bibliography and a comprehensive cumulative subject index are included in each volume.

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Aero 38 - Donald J. Porter - McDonnell Douglas OH -6A Helicopter (1990).jpg

The 0H-6A helicopter, developed in the early 1960s, set the stage for a smorgasboard of armed helicopters the U.S. Army would procure during the decades to follow. The origin of the lightweight observation helicopter dates to the Korean War. Finding wide application as airborne ambulances, small H-13 and H-23 piston-powered machines were later used to augment fixed-wing spotter and observation aircraft operations.
By the late 1950s, the Army sought a turbine-powered replacement for its aging observation helicopter fleet. It needed a "Jeep of the air"—a machine needing little maintenance, and having higher performance than the machines it was to replace.
Now having passed its 30th year in the air, the 0H-6A and its modern-day variants continue to set high standards of performance. Spawned by the original OH-6A, the evolutionary chain of follow-on helicopters includes the present-day McDonnell Douglas MD 500E and MD 530MG.
On a personal level, for a few of my early years in the aviation industry, I served as a field service technical representative for the former Aircraft Division of the Hughes Tool Company, now McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Company. Assigned to advise the U.S. Army on its OH-6A technical support operations in Vietnam almost 20 years ago, I still vividly remember the merits of this high-performance machine. During its heyday as a wartime Army aircraft, the OH-6A's performance and crashworthi-ness forever established the type as legendary in the annals of U.S. Army aviation history.
This, then, is the seldom-told story of a remarkable machine that contributed much to the Army's Vietnam helicopter war effort. As someone who lived with the OH-6A during its design phase and then deployment in Vietnam, it is my pleasure to unravel the OH-6A's legendary—and sometimes controversial—history.

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Aero 38 - Donald J. Porter - McDonnell Douglas OH -6A Helicopter (1990).djvu

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Kristine M. Carber, Peter Cieply, Karen Misuraca, Richard Sterling - D.K. eGuide, San Francisco (200 7).jpg

Don't want to travel like a tourist! Discover the coolest things to do and the hippest places to be in this new travel guide series that brings DK knowledge and style to a web savvy audience.

Building on the success of the Eyewitness Travel Guides and Top 10 Travel Guides , DK has created e>>guides, the perfect travel companions for the hip, style-conscious traveler. Highlighting the best places to eat and shop, and the coolest local hangouts, each guide has its own regularly updated website, ideal for accessing the very latest each destination has to offer.

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Paul Karr - Frommer's Vermont, New Hampshire & Mai ne, 5th Edition (2006).jpg

You'll never fall into the tourist traps when you travel with Frommer's. It's like having a friend show you around, taking you to the places locals like best. Our expert authors have already gone everywhere you might go--they've done the legwork for you, and they're not afraid to tell it like it is, saving you time and money. No other series offers candid reviews of so many hotels and restaurants in all price ranges. Every Frommer's Travel Guide is up-to-date, with exact prices for everything, dozens of color maps, and exciting coverage of sports, shopping, and nightlife. You'd be lost without us!

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Frommer's Vermont, New Hampshire & Maine is packed with honest, personal reviews of the best country inns and restaurants, antique shops, skiing, hiking, biking, and other outdoor adventures. Let Frommer's take you off the beaten track and away from the tour buses to discover the best small towns and outdoor pleasures that northern New England has to offer. You'll discover lobster pounds, farmstands, scenic trails, fly fishing, outlet shopping, and more, plus full coverage of gorgeous Acadia National Park. Don't leave home without it!

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Daniel B. Botkin - Beyond the Stony Mountains, Nat ure in the American West from Lewis and Clark to T oday (2004).jpg

USA Books - Daniel B. Botkin - Beyond the Stony Mountains, Nature ...n the American West from Lewis and Clark to Today 2004.jpg

America's great epic of exploration--the journey of Lewis and Clark--was also one of the most successful scientific expeditions in history. In notebooks filled with vivid and remarkably accurate descriptions of rivers, prairies, forests, mountains, native Americans, and wildlife, Lewis and Clark gave the world an image of wild country that has rarely been equaled. In this richly illustrated volume, which features more than one hundred photographs and maps, most in full color, noted ecologist and writer Daniel Botkin traces the footsteps of the two explorers as they journeyed from St. Louis, through the breathtaking vistas of the tall-grass prairie and Big Sky country, over the arduous Bitterroot Mountains on the ancient Lolo Trail, to arrive finally at the Pacific coast and its the rugged, rainy, and darkly wooded landscape. As we travel westward, Botkin introduces us to the natural wonders recorded by Lewis and Clark--still fresh portraits of a pristine land--and recounts their many dangerous, challenging, and sometimes strange adventures. Then in his own words he describes the same sites today, providing unique insights about our nation's changes to the land. For instance, the author recounts Lewis and Clark's travels through the great tall-grass prairie, vast plains that stretched to the horizon in every direction, stunningly beautiful land that, adds Botkin, with the eye of a concerned ecologist, has virtually disappeared today beneath the steel plow. This is only one of the key problems that are addressed on the trail we follow through this wonderful book. Others, such as the endangered grizzly bear and the vanishing California Condor, are brought to the reader's attention in prose both compelling and poignant. By the last page of this chronicle, we are filled with admiration for the natural beauty of the American West, a beauty that is slowly vanishing. An exquisitely illustrated and expertly written account of the western landscape, as it was seen by Lewis and Clark, Beyond the Stony Mountain recounts one of the great adventures of the American past while powerfully relating it to the American present.

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Daniel B. Botkin - Beyond the Stony Mountains, Nat ure in the American West from Lewis and Clark to T oday (2004) [PDF].rar

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Andrew Hurley - Environmental Inequalities, Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945-1980 (1995).jpg

USA Books - Andrew Hurley - Environmental Inequalities, Class, Rac...Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945-1980 1995.jpg

By examining environmental change through the lens of conflicting social agendas, Andrew Hurley uncovers the historical roots of environmental inequality in contemporary urban America. Hurley's study focuses on the steel mill community of Gary, Indiana, a city that was sacrificed, like a thousand other American places, to industrial priorities in the decades following World War II. Although this period witnessed the emergence of a powerful environmental crusade and a resilient quest for equality and social justice among blue-collar workers and African Americans, such efforts often conflicted with the needs of industry. To secure their own interests, manufacturers and affluent white suburbanites exploited divisions of race and class, and the poor frequently found themselves trapped in deteriorating neighborhoods and exposed to dangerous levels of industrial pollution.
In telling the story of Gary, Hurley reveals liberal capitalism's difficulties in reconciling concerns about social justice and quality of life with the imperatives of economic growth. He also shows that the power to mold the urban landscape was intertwined with the ability to govern social relations.

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Andrew Hurley - Environmental Inequalities, Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945-1980 (1995).pdf

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Thomas Pinney - A History of Wine in America, From Prohibition to the Present (2005).jpg

A History of Wine in America is the definitive account of winemaking in the United States, first as it was carried out under Prohibition, and then as it developed and spread to all fifty states after the repeal of Prohibition. Engagingly written, exhaustively researched, and rich in detail, this book describes how Prohibition devastated the wine industry, the conditions of renewal after Repeal, the various New Deal measures that affected wine, and the early markets and methods. Thomas Pinney goes on to examine the effects of World War II and how the troubled postwar years led to the great wine boom of the late 1960s, the spread of winegrowing to almost every state, and its continued expansion to the present day.
The history of wine in America is, in many ways, the history of America and of American enterprise in microcosm. Pinney's sweeping narrative comprises a lively cast of characters that includes politicians, bootleggers, entrepreneurs, growers, scientists, and visionaries. Pinney relates the development of winemaking in states such as New York and Ohio; its extension to Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, and other states; and its notable successes in California, Washington, and Oregon. He is the first to tell the complete and connected story of the rebirth of the wine industry in California, now one of the most successful winemaking regions in the world.

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Judith Walzer Leavitt - Brought to Bed, Childbeari ng in America, 1750-1950 (1988).jpg

Based on personal accounts by birthing women and their medical attendants, Brought to Bed reveals how childbirth has changed from colonial times to the present.
Judith Walzer Leavitt's study focuses on the traditional woman-centered home-birthing practices, their replacement by male doctors, and the movement from the home to the hospital. She explains that childbearing women and their physicians gradually changed birth places because they believed the increased medicalization would make giving birth safer and more comfortable. Ironically, because of infection, infant and maternal mortality did not immediately decline. She concludes that birthing women held considerable power in determining labor and delivery events as long as childbirth remained in the home. The move to the hospital in the twentieth century gave the medical profession the upper hand. Leavitt also discusses recent events in American obstetrics that illustrate how women have attempted to retrieve some of the traditional women--and family--centered aspects of childbirth.

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Judith Walzer Leavitt - Brought to Bed, Childbeari ng in America, 1750-1950 (1988).pdf

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Alexander DeConde - Encyclopedia of American Forei gn Policy (2001).jpg

Of the original essays, 33 have been revised by new scholars and 43 have been revised by the original contributors. General category coverage includes concepts and doctrines, policymaking, commerce and science, human rights and arms control, with specific articles on topics ranging from anti-imperialism to environmental diplomacy, from refugee policies to terrorism and countermeasures.

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Rob McLaughlin - United Nations Naval Peace Operat ions in the Territorial Sea (2009).jpg

Drawing on the operational experience of United Nations naval peace operations, this book examines issues of authority for such operations as they relate to and impact upon the Territorial Sea.

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Rob McLaughlin - United Nations Naval Peace Operat ions in the Territorial Sea (2009).pdf

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Saul Brenner, Joseph M. Whitmeyer - Strategy on th e United States Supreme Court (2009).jpg

To what extent do the justices on the Supreme Court behave strategically? In Strategy on the United States Supreme Court, Saul Brenner and Joseph M. Whitmeyer investigate the answers to this question and reveal that justices are substantially less strategic than many Supreme Court scholars believe. By examining the research to date on each of the justice's important activities, Brenner and Whitmeyer's work shows that the justices often do not cast their certiorari votes in accord with the outcome-prediction strategy, that the other members of the conference coalition bargain successfully with the majority opinion writer in less than 6 percent of the situations, and that most of the fluidity in voting on the Court is nonstrategic. This work is essential to understanding how strategic behavior - or its absence - influences the decisions of the Supreme Court and, as a result, American politics and society.

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Michael O. Woodburne - Late Cretaceous and Cenozoi c Mammals of North America, Biostratigraphy and Ge ochronology (2004).jpg

USA Books - Michael O. Woodburne - Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic Ma...North America, Biostratigraphy and Geochronology 2004.jpg

This book places into modern context the information by which North American mammalian paleontologists recognize, divide, calibrate, and discuss intervals of mammalian evolution known as North American Land Mammal Ages. It incorporates new information on the systematic biology of the fossil record and utilizes the many recent advances in geochronologic methods and their results. The book describes the increasingly highly resolved stratigraphy into which all available temporally significant data and applications are integrated. Extensive temporal coverage includes the Lancian part of the Late Cretaceous, and geographical coverage includes information from Mexico, an integral part of the North American fauna, past and present.

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William A. Owens, Ed Offley - Lifting the Fog of W ar (2000).jpg

Is the United States an exhausted superpower? Recent military operations in Iraq, Somalia, and Kosovo have resulted in defeat or stalemate. America's key weaponry is fast becoming obsolete, and its men and women in uniform are disenchanted. Yet the U.S. remains committed to a wide variety of conflicts around the world and is increasingly confronted by threats against which traditional military power will be ineffective.

As Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Clinton administration, Admiral Bill Owens saw the challenges facing the U.S. military firsthand. In this trenchant, fascinating, and forward-looking book, Owens explains the full extent of the military crisis and proposes bold new solutions to revolutionize the armed services. Instead of spending trillions of dollars to update obsolete weapons systems, he argues, the Department of Defense should take advantage of recent advances in computing, communications, and satellite technology and bring our military into the Information Age. These changes—collectively known in defense circles as the Revolution in Military Affairs or RMA—would transform the way that America wages war, bringing about a smaller, stronger, and more flexible military better able to monitor enemy forces in real time and thereby counter the "fog of war" that has bedeviled commanders throughout history. Lifting the Fog of War offers both an insider's account of today's armed forces and a vital blueprint for a more effective and affordable military tomorrow. For the paperback edition, the author has written a new preface about the Bush administration's attitudes toward military reform.

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