African Wars

Anyone living in Rhodesia during the 1960s and 1970s would have had a father, husband, brother, or son called up in the defense of the war-torn, landlocked little country. A few of these brave men would have been members of the elite and secretive unit that struck terror into the hearts of the ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas infiltrating the country at that time - the Selous Scouts.

At the heart of Africa is Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal and unstaunchable war in which millions have died. And yet, despite its epic proportions, it has received little sustained media attention. In this deeply reported book, Jason K. Stearns vividly tells the story of this misunderstood conflict through the experiences of those who engineered and perpetrated it.

The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson shows why no modern learner can understand the ultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the great drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. That first year of the Allied war was a pivotal point in American history, the moment when the United States began to act like a great power.

It is difficult to find another soldier's story to equal Captain Darrell Watt's in terms of time spent on the field of battle and challenges faced. Even by the lofty standards of the SAS and Special Forces, one has to look far to find anyone who can match his record of resilience and valor in the face of such daunting odds and with resources so paltry. In the fight, he showed himself to be a military maestro. After 12 years in the cauldron of war, his cause slipped from beneath him, and Rhodesia gave way to Zimbabwe.

In a sweeping account, Atlantic Wars explores how warfare shaped the experiences of the peoples living in the watershed of the Atlantic Ocean between the late Middle Ages and the Age of Revolution.

By tracing the long and turbulent history of the Zulus from their arrival in South Africa and the establishment of Zululand, The Zulus at War is an important and readable addition to this popular subject area. It describes the violent rise of King Shaka and his colorful successors under whose leadership the warrior nation built a fearsome fighting reputation without equal among the native tribes of South Africa.

Ranged against two powerful communist terrorist armies, the small, under-equipped army of Rhodesia defied all military convention by not only resisting the onslaught, but taking the fight to the very heart of the ZIPRA and ZANLA terrorist machines. The efforts of the Rhodesian army and air force shocked the world; how could such a small force of men repel the hordes of Russian and Chinese backed communist terrorists who threatened to overwhelm them? At the very heart of the Rhodesian war effort lay the RLI. The Rhodesian light infantry Commandos were second to none. Brave, tough, ...

In this definitive history of the modern Arab world, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan draws extensively on Arab sources and texts to place the Arab experience in its crucial historical context for the first time. Tracing five centuries of Arab history, Rogan reveals that there was an age when the Arabs set the rules for the rest of the world. Today, however, the Arab world's sense of subjection to external powers carries vast consequences for both the region and Westerners who attempt to control it.

Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial.

The Rhodesian SAS was one of the world’s leading Special Forces units. Highly trained and motivated, they took the fight to the very heart of the two communist terrorist armies who were waging war on Rhodesia. Time and again, from the air, overland, and by boat across the great lakes and rivers, the SAS struck ZANLA and ZIPRA, causing massive losses and grievous damage to both organisations then disappearing to re-emerge where they were least expected. While all SAS missions defied the odds, some were truly breath-taking in terms of both their audacity and success. ‘The Rhodesian SAS at...

If Cotton Could Talk," is a civil war era historical fiction novel about 19th-century slave life in the South. You will be introduced to a cast of characters; Black mothers and fathers who are fearless, smart, and devoted to family and justice. Heroes and heroines whose leadership gave enslaved people hope. But before freedom comes, they must survive other slaves who prove to be untrustworthy. At the same time ruthless, hostile, hateful men are determined to keep the status quo. Pre-Civil War, 1850, enslaved people could sense that their lives were going to change. Slaves reasoned that they...

Surprisingly neglected in accounts of Allied wartime triumphs, in 1941 British and Commonwealth forces completed a stunning and important victory in East Africa against an overwhelmingly superior Italian opponent. A hastily formed British-led force, never larger than 70,000 strong, advanced along two fronts to defeat nearly 300,000 Italian and colonial troops.

This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha.

They say all is fair in love and war, but how do you fight when you don't know the enemy is the one you love? Will the Hoover gang be able to reign supreme, or will they fall at the hands of the women who are supposed to have their backs? The infamous Hoover gang - Babyface, Blaze, Quick, and Shadow - have taken Chicago by storm. These four are not your average street thugs. Bank robbers by day and club owners by night, they have held on to their place at the top by never trusting anyone enough to allow them in their circle. The moment they do, all hell breaks loose.

Mayme and Katie have become friends, which is unusual given that their friendship has spouted at the end of the Civil War and that Mayme is a former slave, while Katie is the daughter of a plantation owner. Both girls have been orphaned by the war, left alone on Katie's family plantation. The land is the one thing they still share, and they don't want to leave it. But if anyone finds out the two of them live there alone, they will be forced to move.

What was it like to fly a MiG or Mirage in combat over Angola? Most books on the Angolan Bush War, especially those in English, present the South African perspective of events. Now a former MiG-23 Squadron Commander of the Cuban Air Force has collaborated with an ex-SAAF pilot to paint a remarkable new picture of the aerial conflict over Angola in the 1980s. In The MiG Diaries the recollections of Lt-Col Eduardo González Sarría are blended by Lionel Reid with those of air combatants from the Angolan, Cuban and South African air forces. Many are being published for the first time. Using ...

Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe's dehumanizing engagement with the "dark" continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe's yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies in the heart of West Africa.

Andre Scheepers grew up on a farm in Rhodesia, learning about the bush from his African childhood friends, before joining the army. A quiet, introspective thinker, Andre started out as a trooper in the SAS before being commissioned into the Rhodesian Light Infantry Commandos, where he was engaged in fireforce combat operations. He then rejoined the SAS. Andre writes vividly about his experiences, his emotions, and his state of mind during the war, and reflects candidly on what he learned and how war has shaped his life since.

After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War. Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Red Summer is the first narrative history about this epic encounter.

Ya'll, let me tell you my story!Glad you could find your way here, and I welcome you to the Sellers Plantation here in the deep south of Mobile, Alabama. I'm anxious to get started with my story tellin,' so, I'm sharin' a little bout the story that I be tellin' to ya'll down below. When I wuz born, I be given the name Gertrude Ida Rollins, but as I be growin' folks just be callin' me Ms. Gertie. I wuz born in Mobile, Alabama in the year eighteen and eighty-eight. Yes, that be a long time ago for most of ya'll, but I thinks it be good to be learnin' bout the history that be comin' before you...