Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by just a few "bad apples." But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."
Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called "a My Lai a month." Devastating and definitive,
finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.

The publication of The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road in 1972 marked the birth of the 'new military history', which emphasized military organization - mobilization, pay, supply, morale and, above all, logistics - rather than military 'events' such as sieges and battles. Geoffrey Parker studied one of the great logistical feats of early modern Europe: how Habsburg Spain managed to maintain and mobilize the largest army in Europe in an 80-year effort to suppress the Dutch Revolt, at 700 miles' distance. Using a unique combination of surviving records, he presented strikingly the logistical problems of fighting wars in early modern Europe, and demonstrated why Spain failed to suppress the Dutch Revolt. The book has been constantly cited since its first publication in English (with translations into Spanish and Dutch). This revised second edition includes some new sources and updates some references but otherwise remains faithful to the original version.

A navy is a state's main instrument of maritime force. What it should do, what doctrine it holds, what ships it deploys, and how it fights are determined by practical political and military choices in relation to national needs. Choices are made according to the state's goals, perceived threat, maritime opportunity, technological capabilities, practical experience, and, not the least, the way the sea service defines itself and its way of war. This book is a history of the modern U.S. Navy. It explains how the Navy, in the century after 1890, was formed and reformed in the interaction of purpose, experience, and doctrine.

This book is a history of firearms across the world from the 1100s up to the 1700s, from their invention in China to the time when European firearms had become clearly superior. It asks why it was the Europeans who perfected firearms when it was the Chinese who had invented them, and answers this question by looking at how firearms were used throughout the world. Early firearms were restricted to infantry and siege warfare, limiting their use outside of Europe and Japan. Steppe and desert nomads imposed a different style of warfare on the Middle East, India, and China - a style with which firearms were incompatible. By the time that better firearms allowed these regions to turn the tables on the nomads, Japan's self-imposed isolation left Europe with no rival in firearms design, production, or use, with consequences that are still with us today.

This is a new edition of Geoffrey Parker's much-admired illustrated account of how the West, so small and so deficient in natural resources in 1500, had by 1800 come to control over one-third of the world. Parker argues that the rapid development of military practice in the West constituted a 'military revolution' which gave Westerners an insurmountable advantage over the peoples of other continents. This edition incorporates new material, including a substantial 'Afterword' which summarises the debate which developed after the book's first publication.

Pulling back the curtain on the secretive world of the global arms trade, Andrew Feinstein reveals the corruption and the cover-ups behind weapons deals ranging from the largest in history - between the British and Saudi governments - to BAE's controversial transactions in South Africa, Tanzania and eastern Europe, and the revolving-door relationships that characterise the US Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex. He exposes in forensic detail both the formal government-to-government trade in arms and the shadow world of illicit weapons dealing - and lays bare the shocking and inextricable links between the two. "The Shadow World" places us in the midst of the arms trade's dramatic wheeling and dealing, ranging from corporate boardrooms to seedy out-of-the-way hotels via far-flung offshore havens, and reveals the profound danger this network represents to all of us.

The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839–42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind?
Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, as Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s—much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China—like Europe—was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world’s great military powers.
By showing that China’s military dynamism was deeper, longer lasting, and more quickly recovered than previously understood, The Gunpowder Age challenges long-standing explanations of the so-called Great Divergence between the West and Asia.

《太白阴经》十卷，唐代兵书，作者为李筌。明以后有题作《神机制敌太白阴经》的。《新唐书·艺文志》、《宋史·艺文志》皆有著录。清代编辑的《四库全书总目提要》在谈及此书时说：“杜佑《通典·兵类》取通论二家，一则李靖兵法，一即此经。”认为“佑之采用此书与李靖之书，无异其必有取之矣”。清代以后论兵者，也都对《太白阴经》一书相当重视。

《司马法(图文版)》亦名《司马兵法》《司马穰苴兵法》，是中国古代的一部著名兵书，宋代将其列为《武经七书》之一，成为武学策试的必读之书。现在一般认为，《司马法》是春秋时期齐国的田穰苴所作，但从《史记•司马穰苴列传》记载的情况来看，《司马法》一书当不是司马穰苴一人所著。
《司马法》一书的军事思想极其丰富，涉及的内容也极为广泛，涵盖了军事的各个方面，如用兵原则、作战计谋、将士关系、军队治理等，又包括出师礼仪、兵器、徽章、赏罚等方面的要求。同时，书中还重视战争中精神力量与物质力量之间的转化以及轻与重之间辩证统一关系。

《尉缭子(图文版)》是中国古代著名兵书之一。对它的作者和成书年代，历来就有各种不同的说法。一说《尉缭子》的作者是战国梁惠王时的尉缭，一说疑为秦始皇时尉缭所作，甚至有人认为是后人伪托，直到1972年山东临沂银雀山汉墓出土《尉缭子》残简后，才充分证明其并非伪书。据现有资料推断，《尉缭子》成书于战国中期的说法较为可信。

Far Flung Lines shows how the British Empire used its maritime supremacy to construct and maintain a worldwide defence system that would protect its vital imperial interests. By combining a number of different historical threads - particularly imperial history, naval history and military history - Neilson and Kennedy rebut the idea that British defence policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was primarily concerned with maintaining the balance of power in Europe.