Militærhistorie: konflikter efter anden verdenskrig

Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter was met with both critical and commercial success upon its release in 1978. However, it was also highly controversial and came to be seen as a powerful statement on the human cost of America's longest war and as a colonialist glorification of anti-Asian violence. Brad Prager's study of the film considers its significance as a war movie and contextualizes its critical reception. Drawing on an archive of contemporaneous materials, as well as an in-depth analysis of the film's lighting, mise-en-scène, multiple cameras and shifting depths of field, Prager examines how the film simultaneously presents itself as a work of cinematic realism, while problematically blurring the lines between fact and fiction. While Cimino felt he had no responsibility to historical truth, depicting a highly stylized version of his own fantasies about the Vietnam War, Prager argues that The Deer Hunter's formal elements were used to bolster his troubling depictions of war and race.Finally, comparing the film with later depictions of US-led intervention such as Albert and Allen Hughes's Dead Presidents (1995) and Spike Lee's Da Five Bloods (2020), Prager illuminates The Deer Hunter's major presumptions, blind spots and omissions, while also presenting a case for its classic status.

Feeling life is slipping him by, an American agriculturalist heads to Vietnam to try and make a difference in the lives of the people as part of President Johnson's 'Hearts and Minds' campaign. There's just one big problem - there's a war going on!Eddie joins a small group of civilian advisors chosen to work with local farmers to help make Vietnam once again self-sufficient in rice. He is drawn to the adventure, the challenge, and the opportunity to make a difference, but he may also be leaving some problems behind.His story moves through the ups and downs of cultural and tropical agriculture training in Washington DC and the Philippines, and then his assignment in the Gia Dinh province just outside Saigon. The stakes increase as the war intensifies and Eddie's connections in the country deepen, providing the backdrop for the cultural, political and personal struggles that unfold.Although this is historical fiction, the late author's words are a nod to the memoir genre as his experiences in life overlap the place and time of the novel. Don't Break My Rice Bowl shines a light on a relatively unknown part of Vietnam War history as elements of Asian history and culture, Philippine and Vietnamese agriculture and rice farming, including the introduction of 'miracle rice', are woven into the challenges of being a civilian trying to work - and live - in a war zone. One might also wonder, was Robert Dodd ahead of his time? The novel hints at things to come as ecology, conservation and biodiversity have become increasingly important topics.With the help of his daughter, granddaughter and second wife, his manuscript has been brought to life in 2022. The fragility of life was the late author's parting lesson; however, these words left behind were his ultimate gift. The additions of a poignant Foreword and Afterword, a rich Appendix, including book club questions, and the beautiful cover and 24 hand-painted chapter illustrations make this book something that will stir the emotions, giving you plenty to ponder or talk and even laugh about, leaving you with words and art to treasure.The perfect read for a book club or to give as a gift; see and feel one man's story play out amid great outer and inner turmoil at a turbulent time in history. Buy this book to walk in another person's shoes.

On Valentine's Day 1968, Kilo Company 3/9 left Ca Lu Combat in Vietnam on a combat patrol mission. Suddenly, as the Marines scaled the ridge in search of the enemy, chaos erupted. During a ferocious fiery attack from the North Vietnamese Army, ten Marines and Senior Corpsman HM2 Larry Jo Goss were killed. Two more Marines died later. While Larry's body lay in the humid jungle for twenty-one days, his young wife, Marty, was only told that her husband was "MIA" and possibly taken by hostile forces. Desperately hoping and praying that Larry was still alive. Marty waited in agony with their six-month-old daughter, Lori Jo, for the good news that would never come.As she grew into adulthood, Lori Goss began a decades-long search for her father's comrades and the truth about her father's death. It would take her two trips to Vietnam and many long conversations with veterans of the battle to finally piece together the puzzle she had been aching to complete her whole life.

"The untold story of the unique fifty-year friendship between two American icons: John Glenn, the unassailable pioneer of space exploration and Ted Williams, indisputably the greatest hitter in baseball history"--

This book examines British and Argentine media output in the prelude to and during the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas Conflict and acknowledges the aftermath and legacies of the media response.

SELECTED BY THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND DAUNTS BOOKS AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023WINNER OF THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024ONE OF PROSPECT'S POLITICS & REPORTAGE BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2023'Exquisite . . . A genuine, melancholy masterpiece' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE'A journalistic marvel' JAMES MEEK'A powerful, unforgettable book' NADIFA MOHAMMEDFrom Orwell Prize winning journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad comes a searing and nuanced biography of a lost IraqThis is the story of a people who once lived under the rule of a megalomaniac leader who shaped the state in his own image. Then one day, after yet another war, a foreign army invaded, toppled the leader, destroyed the state, and proceeded to invent a new country. This is the story of a people who watched with horror as their world fragmented into a hundred different cities, as walls rose between them and bodies piled in the streets.From the American invasion to the Arab Spring, ISIS and beyond, A Stranger in Your Own City offers a remarkable de-centring of the West in the history and contemporary situation of the region. What comes to the fore is the effect on the ground: the human cost, the shifting allegiances, the generational change.'Shatters western assumptions . . . and offers cautious hope' The Observer'Haunting' Financial Times

The battle for Fallujah in April 2004 in the words of the Marines who fought it.

Told through the eyes of witnesses to the fall of Kabul, Walkley award-winning journalist Andrew Quilty's debut book offers a remarkable record of this historic moment. As night fell on 15 August 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. After a 20-year conflict with the United States, its Western allies and a proxy Afghan government, the Islamic militant group once aligned with al Qaeda was about to bury yet another foreign foe in the graveyard of empires. And for the US, world superpower, this was yet another foreign disaster. As cities and towns fell to the Taliban in rapid succession, Western troops and embassy staff scrambled to flee a country of which its government had lost control. August in Kabul is the story of how America's longest mission came to an abrupt and humiliating end, told through the eyes of Afghans whose lives have been turned upside down: a young woman who harbours dreams of a university education; a presidential staffer who works desperately to hold things together as the government collapses around him; a prisoner in the notorious Bagram Prison who suddenly finds himself free when prison guards abandon their post. Andrew Quilty was one of only a handful of Western journalists who stayed in Kabul as the city fell. This is his first-hand account of those dramatic final days.

'The extraordinary writers in this volume articulate the taste, the terror, and the dialect of war; they command their powers of description to face a shameless empire intent on annihilating them' Ellena SavageA selection of Ukraine's leading writers convey the reality of life within Ukraine during the first year of the invasionOn 24 February 2022, the lives of Ukrainians were devastatingly altered. Since that day, many of Ukraine's writers have attempted to fathom what is happening to them and to their country. This anthology brings together writing from inside Ukraine, by Ukrainians, available in English for the first time. Here they document everyday life, ponder the role of culture amid conflict, denounce Russian imperialism and revisit their relations with the world, especially Europe and its ideals, as they try to comprehend the horrors of war.From tearing-downs of Russia's use of culture as justification of the war to moving descriptions of nights spent sheltering in corridors, poignant snatched moments with a husband on his single night away from the army, to descriptions of the eerie weather in the months leading up to the invasion, as if nature was trying to warn Ukraine, these essays reveal the texture, rawness and reality of life in Ukraine under war as never before.

The Pashtuns are perhaps the largest ethnic group in the world without a country of their own. They inhabit a continuous stretch of land from the Hindu Kush to the Indus, across Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan used the Pashtun-dominated areas in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) as a launching pad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and later during the US-led War on Terror. In the process FATA was kept in a constitutional and informational black hole. The discontent finally burst in 2018 when the extra-judicial killing of a Pashtun youth led to widespread protests. This book by veteran analyst Tilak Devasher fulfils a gap in the geopolitical understanding of South Asia, given the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the shifting power equations in the region.

American military advisors in South Vietnam came to know their allies personally--as few American soldiers could. In addition to fighting the Viet Cong, advisors engaged in community building projects and local government initiatives. They dealt firsthand with corrupt American and South Vietnamese bureaucracies. Not many advisors would have been surprised to learn that 105mm artillery shells were being sold on the black market to the Viet Cong. Not many were surprised by the North Vietnamese victory in 1975. This memoir of a U.S. Army intelligence officer focuses on the province advisors who worked with local militias that were often disparaged by American units. The author describes his year (1969-1970) as a U.S. advisor to the South Vietnamese Regional and Popular Forces in the Mekong Delta.

The final volume of Target Saigon examines the final campaigns of the conflict in Vietnam, in which the Communist forces engaged in a highly mechanized war of maneuver.

The exciting narrative account--based on interviews, first-person accounts, and official documents--of a group of Marine reservists during 1991's Operation Desert Shield/Storm.