This book was one of the most pleasant surprises I have had in a while. I won this book and another entitled God and Uncle Sam: Religion and America’s Armed Forces in World War II, (which I will be reviewing this summer) in a contest I had forgot I had even entered! Being a History nut,…
Category: Historical Study
American History: The Plains of Abraham and American Independence
“The French presence in Canada stood between the American colonies and any thought of independence. ” BEST KNOWN AS a clash between French and British armies, the Plains of Abraham was also an American battle. One in every three soldiers in the British army at Quebec had been recruited in the American colonies. Hundreds more Americans…
Brush-Up On Your History: Top 10 Forgotten Foreign Attacks on United States Territories
Citizens of the United States take pride in the fact that—other than events like 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the War of 1812—their country has remained relatively unscathed by wars that have ravaged the rest of the planet. However, the United States is not as invincible as it believes, and it has actually come under attack…
Obscure World War Two History: Faking Sick Sometimes Saves Lives
How a Fake Typhus Epidemic Saved a Polish City From the Nazis During World War II, a man went to the doctor in Rozwadów, Poland with a unique complaint. He was one of thousands of Poles forced by the Nazi occupiers to work in German labor camps. The man had been granted a 14-day leave…
Brush-Up On Your History: The Real Story Behind Nagorno-Karabakh
Last Thursday US Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden met separately with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian while the South Caucasus adversaries attended a 50-nation nuclear summit in Washington boycotted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. But no sooner did Kerry pronounce “an ultimate resolution” to the ongoing…
Cold War Files: What If Japan Had Built an Atomic Bomb?
During the Cold War, the United States supported selective nuclear proliferation as a means of deterring a Soviet invasion of Europe. The Russians might not believe that the United States would trade Berlin for New York, but they might find a British or French threat more credible. Washington did not pursue the same strategy in…
Sweet Mother Russia: Putin’s “Gangster Rules”
Looking at some of the recent headlines in the news, you might almost feel as if you stepped back into a surreal time when the Cold War was not over and we lived with the constant threat that a war full of icy rhetoric could become hot with bullets and bombs. Putin, that lovable New/Old…
Examining Terrorist Tactics: Are Dirty Drones a Realistic Threat?
ISIS is planning to kill thousands of people by sending drones delivering radioactive material over Western cities—or so British Prime Minister David Cameron warned last week at a summit on nuclear terrorism in Washington. Rather than carrying a “dirty bomb” to disperse material with explosives, the drones would work like toxic crop sprayers—”dirty drones” perhaps—and…
Military History: The 30 Years War
Thirty Years By John Farnam Protestant King Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, the “Lion of the North,” the “Snow King,” led a lean, efficient, and highly-mobile army that was able to move faster and hit harder than any thrown against it. He was ahead of his time and nearly unbeatable. His greatest fear was territorial encroachment…
Ancient History: The Unknown Battle of 1250 B.C.
A battlefield of 3,250 years ago in Germany is yielding remains of wounded warriors, wooden clubs, spear points, flint and bronze arrowheads and bronze knives and swords. The gruesome scene, frozen in time by peat, is unlike anything else from the Bronze Age in Northern Europe, where, researchers thought, large-scale warfare didn’t begin until later….