5 History / Military eBooks

The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Story of Exodus By Barbara J. Sivertsen
Robert Dankoff, "An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliya Celebi"
Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire by David J. Mattingly
Mark Owen und Kevin Maurer, "Mission erfüllt: Navy Seals im Einsatz: Wie wir Osama bin Laden aufspürten und zur Strecke brachten"
Christopher Clark - The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Story of Exodus By Barbara J. Sivertsen
2009 | 264 Pages | ISBN: 0691137706 | PDF | 8 MB
For more than four decades, biblical experts have tried to place the story of Exodus into historical context--without success. What could explain the Nile turning to blood, insects swarming the land, and the sky falling to darkness? Integrating biblical accounts with substantive archaeological evidence, The Parting of the Sea looks at how natural phenomena shaped the stories of Exodus, the Sojourn in the Wilderness, and the Israelite conquest of Canaan. Barbara Sivertsen demonstrates that the Exodus was in fact two separate exoduses both triggered by volcanic eruptions--and provides scientific explanations for the ten plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. Over time, Israelite oral tradition combined these events into the Exodus narrative known today. Skillfully unifying textual and archaeological records with details of ancient geological events, Sivertsen shows how the first exodus followed a 1628 B.C.E Minoan eruption that produced all but one of the first nine plagues. The second exodus followed an eruption of a volcano off the Aegean island of Yali almost two centuries later, creating the tenth plague of darkness and a series of tsunamis that "parted the sea" and drowned the pursuing Egyptian army. Sivertsen's brilliant account explains inconsistencies in the biblical story, fits chronologically with the conquest of Jericho, and confirms that the Israelites were in Canaan before the end of the sixteenth century B.C.E. In examining oral traditions and how these practices absorb and process geological details through storytelling, The Parting of the Sea reveals how powerful historical narratives are transformed into myth.

Robert Dankoff, "An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels of Evliya Celebi"
2011 | pages: 492 | ISBN: 1906011583 | PDF | 4,4 mb
Evliya Çelebi is the greatest travel writer of the Ottoman Empire. Born in Istanbul in 1611, he started travelling in 1640 and continued for over forty years, stopping eventually in Cairo where he died in about 1685. He collected his lively and eclectic observations into a ten-volume manuscript the Seyahatname, or Book of Travels. For the first time in English, this selection gives a taste of the breadth of Evliya's interests: from architecture to natural history, through religion, politics, linguistics, music, science and the supernatural. While he made over a thousand complete recitations of the Koran in his lifetime, he also wrote with curiosity about Christianity, about his own impotence, about the antics at a world convention of trapeze artists and the feats of a Kurdish sorcerer who conjured a horse from a log pile.

Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire by David J. Mattingly
English | 2011 | ISBN: 0691146055 | 366 pages | PDF | 6,3 MB
Despite what history has taught us about imperialism's destructive effects on colonial societies, many classicists continue to emphasize disproportionately the civilizing and assimilative nature of the Roman Empire and to hold a generally favorable view of Rome's impact on its subject peoples.
Imperialism, Power, and Identity boldly challenges this view using insights from postcolonial studies of modern empires to offer a more nuanced understanding of Roman imperialism.
Rejecting outdated notions about Romanization, David Mattingly focuses instead on the concept of identity to reveal a Roman society made up of far-flung populations whose experience of empire varied enormously. He examines the nature of power in Rome and the means by which the Roman state exploited the natural, mercantile, and human resources within its frontiers. Mattingly draws on his own archaeological work in Britain, Jordan, and North Africa and covers a broad range of topics, including sexual relations and violence; census-taking and taxation; mining and pollution; land and labor; and art and iconography. He shows how the lives of those under Rome's dominion were challenged, enhanced, or destroyed by the empire's power, and in doing so he redefines the meaning and significance of Rome in today's debates about globalization, power, and empire.
Imperialism, Power, and Identity advances a new agenda for classical studies, one that views Roman rule from the perspective of the ruled and not just the rulers.

Mark Owen und Kevin Maurer, "Mission erfüllt: Navy Seals im Einsatz: Wie wir Osama bin Laden aufspürten und zur Strecke brachten"
German | ISBN: 3453200381 | 2012 | EPUB | 304 pages | 7 MB
Die Wahrheit über die Jagd auf Osama bin Laden
Die Welt kennt nur die Bilder aus dem Lagezentrum des Weißen Hauses: Präsident Barack Obama und sein Stab beobachten am Monitor den Zugriff der Navy Seals. Mit aufgerissenen Augen verfolgt Außenministerin Hillary Clinton das Geschehen. Erschrocken schlägt sie die Hand vor den Mund. Es ist der Moment, als Osama bin Laden, der Drahtzieher des globalen Terrors, von einer Kugel in den Kopf getroffen wird.
Was genau der US-Präsident und seine Berater sahen, ist ein streng gehütetes Geheimnis. Einzig und allein die Männer, die den Auftrag ausführten, wissen, was in Pakistan wirklich geschah. Mark Owen ist einer von ihnen.
Der authentische Bericht über die tatsächlichen Umstände des Todes von Osama bin Laden – die wahre Geschichte über die wohl spektakulärste Mission der Navy Seals.

Christopher Clark - The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
Published: 2013-03-19 | ISBN: 006114665X, 0061146668 | EPUB + MOBI | 736 pages | 8 MB
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 is historian Christopher Clark’s riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I.
Drawing on new scholarship, Clark offers a fresh look at World War I, focusing not on the battles and atrocities of the war itself, but on the complex events and relationships that led a group of well-meaning leaders into brutal conflict.
Clark traces the paths to war in a minute-by-minute, action-packed narrative that cuts between the key decision centers in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, and Belgrade, and examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914 and details the mutual misunderstandings and unintended signals that drove the crisis forward in a few short weeks.
Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers is a dramatic and authoritative chronicle of Europe’s descent into a war that tore the world apart.