The combined British Expeditionary Force and American II Corps successfully pierced the Hindenburg Line during the Hundred Days Campaign of World War I, an offensive that hastened the war’s end. Yet despite the importance of this effort, the training and operation of II Corps has received scant attention from historians. Mitchell A. Yockelson delivers a comprehensive study of the first time American and British soldiers fought together as a coalition force—more than twenty years before D-Day. He follows the two divisions that constituted II Corps, the 27th and 30th, from the training camps of South Carolina to the bloody battlefields of Europe. Despite cultural differences, General Pershing’s misgivings, and the contrast between American eagerness and British exhaustion, the untested Yanks benefited from the experience of battle-toughened Tommies. Their combined forces contributed much to the Allied victory. Yockelson plumbs new archival sources, including letters and diaries of American, Australian, and British soldiers to examine how two forces of differing organization and attitude merged command relationships and operations. Emphasizing tactical cooperation and training, he details II Corps’ performance in Flanders during the Ypres-Lys offensive, the assault on the Hindenburg Line, and the decisive battle of the Selle. Featuring thirty-nine evocative photographs and nine maps, this account shows how the British and American military relationship evolved both strategically and politically. A case study of coalition warfare, Borrowed Soldiers adds significantly to our understanding of the Great War.

A blistering critique of the gulf between America's soldiers and the society that sends them off to war. As war has become normalized, armed conflict has become an "abstraction" and military service "something for other people to do." Bacevich takes stock of a nation with an abiding appetite for war waged at enormous expense by a standing army demonstrably unable to achieve victory.

"Secret Solders" reveals how an extraordinary group of American artists, designers, and engineering wizards became America's unsung heroes of the Second World War. Photo inserts.

Normal0falsefalsefalseEN-USX-NONEX-NONE Winner of two Communicator Awards for Cover (overall) and Cover (design), 2013. They Called Them Soldier Boys offers an in-depth study of soldiers of the Texas National Guard's Seventh Texas Infantry Regiment in World War I, through their recruitment, training, journey to France, combat, and their return home. Gregory W. Ball focuses on the fourteen counties in North, Northwest, and West Texas where officers recruited the regiment's soldiers in the summer of 1917, and how those counties compared with the rest of the state in terms of political, social, and economic attitudes. In September 1917 the "Soldier Boys" trained at Camp Bowie, near Fort Worth, Texas, until the War Department combined the Seventh Texas with the First Oklahoma Infantry to form the 142d Infantry Regiment of the 36th Division. In early October 1918, the 142d Infantry, including more than 600 original members of the Seventh Texas, was assigned to the French Fourth Army in the Champagne region and went into combat for the first time on October 6. Ball explores the combat experiences of those Texas soldiers in detail up through the armistice of November 11, 1918.

An eminent historian offers a sweeping look at Europes tumultuous 20th century, showing how the rejection of violence after World War II transformed a continent.

A leading scholar of early Christian art and worship shows how images, language, architectural space, and symbolic actions convey the theological meaning of baptism.