War Conflicts

The Second World Wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. The Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory.

Noted journalist Yardena Schwartz draws on her extensive research and wide-ranging interviews with both sides to tell a timely, eye-opening story. She expertly weaves the war between Israel and Hamas into a historical framework, demonstrating how the conflict today cannot be understood without the context of ground zero of this century-old war, which began long before the occupation, the settlements, or the state of Israel ever existed.

Conflict is both a sweeping history of the evolution of warfare up to Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, and a penetrating analysis of what we must learn from the past—and anticipate in the future—in order to navigate an increasingly perilous world. In this deep and incisive study, General David Petraeus, who commanded the US-led coalitions in both Iraq and Afghanistan and former CIA director, and the prize-winning historian Andrew Roberts, explore over 70 years of conflict, drawing significant lessons and insights from their fresh analysis of the past.

Learn about the history of the Irish Republican Army with iMinds insightful knowledge series. Much like the history of its homeland, the Irish Republican Army, or IRA, is complex and contested. Formed as a resistance movement during World War One, the IRA has since undergone several splits and reinventions. There are no fewer than five groups who identify themselves as the IRA, all of which can trace their beginnings to the original resistance movement.

Can Donald Trump really build that wall? What does Brexit mean for Ireland's border? And what would happen if Elon Musk declared himself president of the Moon? In Border Wars, Professor Klaus Dodds takes us on a journey into the geopolitical conflict of tomorrow in an eye-opening tour of the world's best-known, most dangerous and most unexpected border conflicts from the Gaza Strip to the space race. Along the way, we'll discover just what borders truly mean in the modern world.

War Transformed provides insights for those involved in the design of military strategy, and the forces that must execute that strategy. Emphasizing the impacts of technology, strategic competition, demography, and climate change, Mick Ryan uses historical and contemporary anecdotes to highlight key challenges faced by nations in a new era of great power rivalry. Just as previous industrial revolutions have advanced societies, the nascent fourth industrial revolution will have a similar impact on how humans fight, compete, and build military power in the twenty-first century.

The relationship between the US and China, the world’s two superpowers, is peculiarly volatile. Their militaries play a dangerous game of chicken, corporations steal intellectual property, intelligence satellites peer, and AI technicians plot. The capacity for either country to cross a fatal line grows daily. Kevin Rudd, a former Australian prime minister who has studied, lived in, and worked with China for more than forty years, is one of the very few people who can offer real insight into the mindsets of the leadership whose judgment will determine if a war will be fought.

33 Strategies of War is a comprehensive guide to the subtle social game of everyday life, informed by the most ingenious and effective military principles in war. It's the I-Ching of conflict, the contemporary companion to Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and is abundantly illustrated with examples from history, including the folly and genius of everyone from Napoleon to Margaret Thatcher, Hannibal to Ulysses S. Grant, movie moguls to samurai swordsmen.

From the author of When America Stopped Being Great, an insightful and urgent reassessment of America’s past, present and future – as a country which is forever at war with itself. Nick Bryant explains how the hate, divisiveness and paranoia we see today are in fact a core part of America’s story. Combining brilliant storytelling, historical research and first-hand reportage, Bryant argues that insurrections, massacres and civil disturbances should sadly not be seen as abnormalities; they are a part of the fabric of the history of America.

By the end of the nineteenth century, India was described as the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, but how did such a small island come to dominate one of the richest lands in the world? Without doubt the toughest opponents to British control was led by the Sikhs. Ranjit Singh, the brilliant "Lion of Punjab" who ruled the Sikh Empire, had revolutionized his army by employing French officers from Napoleon's Grand Army to train his artillery and infantry on the European model.

Lysaer's unstable integrity lies under threat of total downfall, and as his determined protector, Daliana will face the most frightening decision of her young life. Arithon, Master of Shadow, is marked for death and still hunted, when his critical quest to recover his obscured past entangles him in a web of deep intrigue and ancient perils beyond his imagining.

In June 1950 Communist forces poured across the 38th Parallel (the arbitrary, militarily indefensible line of latitude separating the Communist North from the independent Republic of Korea) to unite the country by force. Three bloody, bitter years of fighting ensued during which the seesawing fortunes of this frustrating war thwarted North Korea's ambitions while treating the ill-equipped, overconfident UN peacekeeping forces, mostly Americans, no less harshly.

The twentieth century for Palestine and the Palestinians has been a century of denial: denial of statehood, denial of nationhood and denial of history. The Hundred Years War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi's powerful response. Drawing on his family archives, he reclaims the fundamental right of any people: to narrate their history on their own terms. Beginning in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, Khalidi reveals nascent Palestinian nationalism and the broad recognition by the early Zionists of the colonial nature of their project.

This classic work on the rules of sex - updated for a new generation - is still as provocative as the day it was published, providing simple explanations for any and all questions about what happens in the bedroom.

There can be few more important but also more contentious issues than attempting to understand the human propensity for conflict. Our history is inextricably tangled in wave after wave of inter-human fighting from as far back as we have records. Repeatedly humans have foresworn war, have understood its appalling risks and have wished to create more pacific, productive societies. And yet almost inevitably circumstances emerge under which war once more seems inevitable or even desirable.

Born in war-torn Afghanistan, Waheed Arian's earliest memories are of bombs. Fleeing the conflict with his family, he spent much of his childhood in refugee camps in Pakistan, living sometimes 10 to a room without basic sanitation or access to education. After he contracted tuberculosis, his first-hand experience of the power of medicine inspired Waheed to dedicate his life to healing others. But how does a boy with nothing hope to become a doctor?

Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline. In The Book at War, acclaimed historian Andrew Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture - from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank - has shaped, and been shaped, by the conflicts of the modern age.

We were outnumbered, outfought. Mankind was about to fall to the alien Flock. Our only chance was a desperate gamble, transforming Tier One SpecOps agents into deadly super soldiers. In the end, we won the war, but we lost the peace. The Flock surrendered and spent the next two hundred years making reparations, indentured to humanity, doing everything humans did not want to do. And the evolved super soldiers were consigned to an endless sleep. Ready if ever needed, but in time they became myths. Abandoned and forgotten.

What goes through the mind of a mother who must send her child to school across a minefield or the men who belong to groups of volunteer body collectors? In Ukraine, such questions have been part of the daily calculus of life. Greta Uehling engages with the lives of ordinary people living in and around the armed conflict over Donbas that began in 2014 and shows how conventional understandings of war are incomplete. Everyday War considers where peace can be cultivated at an everyday level.

On 11th September 2006 - five years after the attacks on the Twin Towers - a modern day Rorke's Drift was played out in the town of Garmsir, known as the Taliban gateway to Helmand Province. 40-year-old Capt. Doug Beattie of the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment was charged with the mission to help retake Garmsir from the Taliban. His commanders said it would take two days; it actually took two weeks of exhausting, bloody conflict. For his repeated bravery Doug Beattie was decorated with the Military Cross.