Product Description: Few pivotal years in history are less understood than that of 1918. It was a momentous period, which began with Germany's desperate gamble to win the Great War through a sequence of offensives on the Western Front. Ian Passingham's graphic new study draws on a wide range of original German, British and French sources, and it features previously unpublished eyewitness accounts and photographs...read more

In war, do mass and materiel matter most? Will states with the largest, best equipped, information-technology-rich militaries invariably win? The prevailing answer today among both scholars and policymakers is yes. But this is to overlook force employment, or the doctrine and tactics by which materiel is actually used. In a landmark reconception of battle and war, this book provides a systematic account of how force employment interacts with materiel to produce real combat outcomes. Stephen Biddle argues that force employment is central to modern war, becoming increasingly important since 1900 as the key to surviving ever more lethal weaponry. Technological change produces opposite effects depending on how forces are employed; to focus only on materiel is thus to risk major error--with serious consequences for both policy and scholarship. In clear, fluent prose, Biddle provides a systematic account of force employment's role and shows how this account holds up under rigorous, multimethod testing. The results challenge a wide variety of standard views, from current expectations for a revolution in military affairs to mainstream scholarship in international relations and orthodox interpretations of modern military history. Military Power will have a resounding impact on both scholarship in the field and on policy debates over the future of warfare, the size of the military, and the makeup of the defense budget.

Product Description: The importance of military factors in international relations may seem obvious, but the causal linkages are often difficult to define. Surveying a long sweep of history, and the ins and outs of offensive weaponry, George H. Quester offers an overview of how military technology has shaped our international system...read more