5 History / Military English eBooks

Pacific Thunder: The US Navy's Central Pacific Campaign, August 1943–October 1944 by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver
TSR2: Britain's lost Cold War strike jet (X-Planes) by Andrew Brookes
Franklin M. Garrett, "Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events: Vol. 2: 1880s-1930s"
Emmanuelle Saada, "Empire's Children: Race, Filiation, And Citizenship In The French Colonies"
The Barefoot Navigator: Wayfinding with the Skills of the Ancients by Jack Lagan

*Pacific Thunder: The US Navy's Central Pacific Campaign, August 1943–October 1944 by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

English | 19 Oct. 2017 | ISBN: 147282184X | ASIN: B06X9HRRPG | 330 Pages | AZW3 | 7.54 MB
On 27 October 1942, four "Long Lance†? torpedoes fired by the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo exploded in the hull of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8). Minutes later, the ship that had launched the Doolitte Raid six months earlier slipped beneath the waves of the Coral Sea. Of the pre-war carrier fleet the Navy had struggled to build over 15 years, only three were left: Enterprise, that had been badly damaged in the battle of Santa Cruz; USS Saratoga (CV-3) which lay in dry dock, victim of a Japanese submarine torpedo; and the USS Ranger (CV-4), which was in mid-Atlantic on her way to support Operation Torch.
For the American naval aviators licking their wounds in the aftermath of this defeat, it would be difficult to imagine that within 24 months of this event, Zuikaku, the last survivor of the carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor, would lie at the bottom of the sea. Alongside it lay the other surviving Japanese carriers, sacrificed as lures in a failed attempt to block the American invasion of the Philippines, leaving the United States to reign supreme on the world's largest ocean.
This is the fascinating account of the Central Pacific campaign, one of the most stunning comebacks in naval history as in 14 months the US Navy went from the jaws of defeat to the brink of victory in the Pacific.

*TSR2: Britain's lost Cold War strike jet (X-Planes) by Andrew Brookes

English | 19 Oct. 2017 | ISBN: 147282248X | ASIN: B06X9FFL76 | 83 Pages | AZW3 | 7.32 MB
The TSR2 is one of the greatest 'what-if' aircraft of the Cold War, whose cancellation still generates anger and controversy among aviation fans. It was a magnificent, cutting-edge aircraft, one of the most striking of the Cold War, but fell victim to cost overruns, overambitious requirements, and politics. Its scrapping marked the point when Britain's aerospace industry could no longer build world-class aircraft independently. After the demise of TSR2 the RAF's future jets would be modified US aircraft like the Phantom and pan-European collaborations like Tornado and Typhoon.
In this book the eminent air power analyst and ex-Vulcan bomber pilot Andrew Brookes takes a fresh, hard-headed look at the TSR2 project, telling the story of its development, short career and cancellation, and evaluating how it would have performed in Cold War strike roles as well as in the recent wars in the Middle East.

*Franklin M. Garrett, "Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events: Vol. 2: 1880s-1930s"

2011 | ISBN-10: 0820339040, 0820339059 | 1082 pages | PDF | 77 MB
Atlanta and Environs is, in every way, an exhaustive history of the Atlanta Area from the time of its settlement in the 1820s through the 1970s. Volumes I and II, together more than two thousand pages in length, represent a quarter century of research by their author, Franklin M. Garrett-a man called "a walking encyclopedia on Atlanta history" by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. With the publication of Volume III, by Harold H. Martin, this chronicle of the South's most vibrant city incorporates the spectacular growth and enterprise that have characterized Atlanta in recent decades.The work is arranged chronologically, with a section devoted to each decade, a chapter to each year. Volume I covers the history of Atlanta and its people up to 1880-ranging from the city's founding as "Terminus" through its Civil War destruction and subsequent phoenixlike rebirth. Volume II details Atlanta's development from 1880 through the 1930s-including occurrences of such diversity as the development of the Coca-Cola Company and the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind. Taking up the city's fortunes in the 1940s, Volume III spans the years of Atlanta's greatest growth. Tracing the rise of new building on the downtown skyline and the construction of Hartsfield International Airport on the city's perimeter, covering the politics at City Hall and the box scores of Atlanta's new baseball team, recounting the changing terms of race relations and the city's growing support of the arts, the last volume of Atlanta and Environs documents the maturation of the South's preeminent city.

*Emmanuelle Saada, "Empire's Children: Race, Filiation, And Citizenship In The French Colonies"

2012 | ISBN-10: 0226733084, 0226733076 | 356 pages | PDF | 1 MB
Europe's imperial projects were often predicated on a series of legal and scientific distinctions that were frequently challenged by the reality of social and sexual interactions between the colonized and the colonizers. When Emmanuelle Saada discovered a 1928 decree defining the status of persons of mixed parentage born in French Indochina - the metis - she found not only a remarkable artifact of colonial rule, but a legal bombshell that introduced race into French law for the first time. The decree was the culmination of a decades-long effort to resolve the "metis question": the educational, social, and civil issues surrounding the mixed population. Operating at the intersection of history, anthropology, and law, "Empire's Children" reveals the unacknowledged but central role of race in the definition of French nationality. Through extensive archival work in both France and Vietnam, and a close reading of primary and secondary material from the Pacific islands and sub-Saharan and North Africa, Saada has created in "Empire's Children" an original and compelling perspective on colonialism, law, race, and culture from the end of the nineteenth century until decolonization.

*The Barefoot Navigator: Wayfinding with the Skills of the Ancients by Jack Lagan

English | September 7, 2017 | ISBN: 1472944771 | EPUB | 304 pages | 13.3 MB
'Navigation with sextant and almanac is as user-friendly as a corneredrat.'
The Barefoot Navigator introduces the navigation skills of the ancients–methods using the sun, sea, wind, and stars, and even the flight patterns of ocean birds. The Barefoot Navigator also shows today's sailors how to apply these methods to augment–and in the case of emergency, replace-their modern navigation systems. And it not just for emergencies–sometimes it is just plain fun to create a simple astrolabe or polar stick and confirm what your GPS tells you.
Polynesians managed to populate an area of ocean larger than North America simply by analyzing clouds, currents, and wind direction–how did they do it? In the first portion of The Barefoot Navigator Lagan introduces these ancient seafarers and their powerful, accurate–and seemingly simple–navigation techniques. We also learn that the Vikings routinely traveled on the notorious stretches of water between Iceland, Greenland, and Scandinavia–no charts, no GPS; it seems mind-boggling but Lagan shows us how. The second section of The Barefoot Navigator teaches how to combine these ancient techniques–and even construct the simple devices if we desire-with today's modern navigational devices, especially in emergency situations (loss of power, loss of signal), to ensure a constant grasp on your vessel's location–no matter what.
Interlacing fascinating history with useful advice and enjoyable writing, The Barefoot Navigator is unlike every other navigation reference out there.