- Table View
- List View
Artifactual: Forensic and Documentary Knowing (Experimental Futures)
by Elizabeth Anne DavisIn Artifactual, Elizabeth Anne Davis explores how Cypriot researchers, scientists, activists, and artists process and reckon with civil and state violence that led to the enduring division of the island, using forensic and documentary materials to retell and recontextualize conflicts between and within the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities. Davis follows forensic archaeologists and anthropologists who attempt to locate, identify, and return to relatives the remains of Cypriots killed in those conflicts. She turns to filmmakers who use archival photographs and footage to come to terms with political violence and its legacies. In both forensic science and documentary filmmaking, the dynamics of secrecy and revelation shape how material remains such as bones and archival images are given meaning. Throughout, Davis demonstrates how Cypriots navigate the tension between an ethics of knowledge, which valorizes truth as a prerequisite for recovery and reconciliation, and the politics of knowledge, which renders evidence as irremediably partial and perpetually falsifiable.
Artifice
by Sharon CameronA dramatic story of duplicity and resistance, betrayal and loyalty, set against the backdrop of World War II, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Light in Hidden Places.Isa de Smit was raised in the vibrant, glittering world of her parents’ small art gallery in Amsterdam, a hub of beauty, creativity, and expression, until the Nazi occupation wiped the color from her city’s palette. The “degenerate” art of the Gallery de Smit is confiscated, the artists in hiding or deported, her best friend, Truus, fled to join the shadowy Dutch resistance. And masterpiece by masterpiece, the Nazis are buying and stealing her country’s heritage, feeding the Third Reich’s ravenous appetite for culture and art.So when the unpaid taxes threaten her beloved but empty gallery, Isa decides to make the Nazis pay. She sells them a fake—a Rembrandt copy drawn by her talented father—a sale that sets Isa perilously close to the second most hated class of people in Amsterdam: the collaborators. Isa sells her beautiful forgery to none other than Hitler himself, and on the way to the auction, discovers that Truus is part of a resistance ring to smuggle Jewish babies out of Amsterdam.But Truus cannot save more children without money. A lot of money. And Isa thinks she knows how to get it. One more forgery, a copy of an exquisite Vermeer, and the Nazis will pay for the rescue of the very children they are trying annihilate. To make the sale, though, Isa will need to learn the art of a master forger, before the children can be deported, and before she can be outed as a collaborator. And she finds an unlikely source to help her do it: the young Nazi soldier, a blackmailer and thief of Dutch art, who now says he wants to desert the German army.Yet, worth is not always seen from the surface, and a fake can be difficult to spot. Both in art, and in people. Based on the true stories of Han Van Meegeren, a master art forger who sold fakes to Hermann Goering, and Johann van Hulst, credited with saving 600 Jewish children from death in Amsterdam, Sharon Cameron weaves a gorgeously evocative thriller, simmering with twists, that looks for the forgotten color of beauty, even in an ugly world.Praise for Artifice“War, resistance, and art are Cameron’s canvas; her palette is a balance of trust and perfidy, beauty and defiance, new life and old. Artifice is a vibrantly-hued and many-layered story, exploring our very human inability to spot a fake when we long to believe that the object of all our desire is the real thing.” -- Elizabeth Wein, New York Times bestselling author of Code Name Verity* "Painterly prose...filled with rich intrigue depicts constantly shifting issues of trust in this complex, absorbing tale." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review
Artificial Generation: Photogenic French Literature and the Prehistory of Cinematic Modernity
by Christina Parker-FlynnArtificial Generation: Photogenic French Literature and the Prehistory of Cinematic Modernity investigates the intersection of film theory and nineteenth-century literature, arguing that the depth of amalgamation that occurred within literary representation during this era aims to replicate an illusion of life and its sensations, in ways directly related to broader transitions into our modern cinematic age. A key part of this evolution in representation relies on the continual re-emergence of the artificial woman as longstanding expression of masculine artistic subjectivity, which, by the later nineteenth century, becomes a photographic and filmic drive. Moving through the beginning of film history, from Georges Méliès and other “silent” filmmakers in the 1890s, into more contemporary movies, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), the book analyzes how films are often structured around the prior century’s mythic and literary principles, which now serve as foundation for film as medium—a phantom form for life’s re-presentation. Artificial Generation provides a crucial reassessment of the longstanding, mutual exchange between cinematic and literary reproduction, offering an innovative perspective on the proto-cinematic imperative of simulation within nineteenth-century literary symbolism.
Artificial Hearts: The Allure and Ambivalence of a Controversial Medical Technology
by Shelley McKellarA comprehensive history of the development of artificial hearts in the United States.Artificial hearts are seductive devices. Their promissory nature as a cure for heart failure aligned neatly with the twentieth-century American medical community’s view of the body as an entity of replacement parts. In Artificial Hearts, Shelley McKellar traces the controversial history of this imperfect technology beginning in the 1950s and leading up to the present day. McKellar profiles generations of researchers and devices as she traces the heart’s development and clinical use. She situates the events of Dr. Michael DeBakey and Dr. Denton Cooley’s professional fall-out after the first artificial heart implant case in 1969, as well as the 1982–83 Jarvik-7 heart implant case of Barney Clark, within a larger historical trajectory. She explores how some individuals—like former US Vice President Dick Cheney—affected the public profile of this technology by choosing to be implanted with artificial hearts. Finally, she explains the varied physical experiences, both negative and positive, of numerous artificial heart recipients. McKellar argues that desirability—rather than the feasibility or practicality of artificial hearts—drove the invention of the device. Technical challenges and unsettling clinical experiences produced an ambivalence toward its continued development by many researchers, clinicians, politicians, bioethicists, and the public. But the potential and promise of the artificial heart offset this ambivalence, influencing how success was characterized and by whom. Packed with larger-than-life characters—from dedicated and ardent scientists to feuding Texas surgeons and brave patients—this book is a fascinating case study that speaks to questions of expectations, limitations, and uncertainty in a high-technology medical world.
Artificial Intelligence and Its Discontents: Critiques from the Social Sciences and Humanities (Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI)
by Ariane HanemaayerOn what basis can we challenge Artificial Intelligence (AI) - its infusion, investment, and implementation across the globe? This book answers this question by drawing on a range of critical approaches from the social sciences and humanities, including posthumanism, ethics and human values, surveillance studies, Black feminism, and other strategies for social and political resistance. The authors analyse timely topics, including bias and language processing, responsibility and machine learning, COVID-19 and AI in health technologies, bio-AI and nanotechnology, digital ethics, AI and the gig economy, representations of AI in literature and culture, and many more. This book is for those who are currently working in the field of AI critique and disruption as well as in AI development and programming. It is also for those who want to learn more about how to doubt, question, challenge, reject, reform and otherwise reprise AI as it been practiced and promoted.
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics: Ten Short Lessons (Pocket Einstein Series)
by Peter J. BentleyAn expert introduction to the fascinating world of robotics, artificial intelligence, and how machines learn.In Artificial Intelligence and Robotics: Ten Short Lessons, leading expert Peter J. Bentley breaks down the fast-moving world of computers into ten pivotal lessons, presenting the reader with the essential information they need to get to understand our most powerful technology and its remarkable implications for our species.From the origins and motivation behind the birth of AI and robotics to using smart algorithms that allow us to build good robots, from the technologies that enable computers to understand a huge range of sensory information, including language and communication, to the challenges of emotional intelligence, unpredictable environments, and imagination in artificial intelligence, this is a cutting-edge, expert-led guide for curious minds. Packed full of easy-to-understand diagrams, pictures, and fact boxes, these ten lessons cover all the basics, as well as the latest understanding and developments, to enlighten the nonscientist.About the series: The Pocket Einstein series is a collection of essential pocket-sized guides for anyone looking to understand a little more about some of the most important and fascinating areas of science in the twenty-first century. Broken down into ten simple lessons and written by leading experts in their field, the books reveal the ten most important takeaways from those areas of science you've always wanted to know more about.
Artificial Intelligence in Brain and Mental Health: Philosophical, Ethical & Policy Issues (Advances in Neuroethics)
by Fabrice Jotterand Marcello IencaThis volume provides an interdisciplinary collection of essays from leaders in various fields addressing the current and future challenges arising from the implementation of AI in brain and mental health. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform health care and improve biomedical research. While the potential of AI in brain and mental health is tremendous, its ethical, regulatory and social impacts have not been assessed in a comprehensive and systemic way. The volume is structured according to three main sections, each of them focusing on different types of AI technologies. Part 1, Big Data and Automated Learning: Scientific and Ethical Considerations, specifically addresses issues arising from the use of AI software, especially machine learning, in the clinical context or for therapeutic applications. Part 2, AI for Digital Mental Health and Assistive Robotics: Philosophical and Regulatory Challenges, examines philosophical, ethical and regulatory issues arising from the use of an array of technologies beyond the clinical context. In the final section of the volume, Part 3 entitled AI in Neuroscience and Neurotechnology: Ethical, Social and Policy Issues, contributions examine some of the implications of AI in neuroscience and neurotechnology and the regulatory gaps or ambiguities that could potentially hamper the responsible development and implementation of AI solutions in brain and mental health. In light of its comprehensiveness and multi-disciplinary character, this book marks an important milestone in the public understanding of the ethics of AI in brain and mental health and provides a useful resource for any future investigation in this crucial and rapidly evolving area of AI application. The book is of interest to a wide audience in neuroethics, robotics, computer science, neuroscience, psychiatry and mental health.
Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction
by Jack CopelandPresupposing no familiarity with the technical concepts of either philosophy or computing, this clear introduction reviews the progress made in AI since the inception of the field in 1956. Copeland goes on to analyze what those working in AI must achieve before they can claim to have built a thinking machine and appraises their prospects of succeeding. There are clear introductions to connectionism and to the language of thought hypothesis which weave together material from philosophy, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. John Searle's attacks on AI and cognitive science are countered and close attention is given to foundational issues, including the nature of computation, Turing Machines, the Church-Turing Thesis and the difference between classical symbol processing and parallel distributed processing. The book also explores the possibility of machines having free will and consciousness and concludes with a discussion of in what sense the human brain may be a computer.
Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction
by Jack CopelandPresupposing no familiarity with the technical concepts of either philosophy or computing, this clear introduction reviews the progress made in AI since the inception of the field in 1956. Copeland goes on to analyze what those working in AI must achieve before they can claim to have built a thinking machine and appraises their prospects of succeeding. There are clear introductions to connectionism and to the language of thought hypothesis which weave together material from philosophy, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. John Searle's attacks on AI and cognitive science are countered and close attention is given to foundational issues, including the nature of computation, Turing Machines, the Church-Turing Thesis and the difference between classical symbol processing and parallel distributed processing. The book also explores the possibility of machines having free will and consciousness and concludes with a discussion of in what sense the human brain may be a computer.
Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction for the Inquisitive Reader
by Robert H. Chen Chelsea C. ChenArtificial Intelligence: An Introduction for the Inquisitive Reader guides readers through the history and development of AI, from its early mathematical beginnings through to the exciting possibilities of its potential future applications. To make this journey as accessible as possible, the authors build their narrative around accounts of some of the more popular and well-known demonstrations of artificial intelligence including Deep Blue, AlphaGo and even Texas Hold’em, followed by their historical background, so that AI can be seen as a natural development of mathematics and computer science. As the book moves forward, more technical descriptions are presented at a pace that should be suitable for all levels of readers, gradually building a broad and reasonably deep understanding and appreciation for the basic mathematics, physics, and computer science that is rapidly developing artificial intelligence as it is today. Features Only mathematical prerequisite is an elementary knowledge of calculus Accessible to anyone with an interest in AI and its mathematics and computer science Suitable as a supplementary reading for a course in AI or the History of Mathematics and Computer Science in regard to artificial intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction to the Big Ideas and their Development (Chapman & Hall/CRC Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence Series)
by Robert H. Chen Chelsea ChenArtificial Intelligence: An Introduction to Big Ideas and their Development, Second Edition guides readers through the history and development of artificial intelligence (AI), from its early mathematical beginnings through to the exciting possibilities of its potential future applications. To make this journey as accessible as possible, the authors build their narrative around accounts of some of the more popular and well-known demonstrations of artificial intelligence, including Deep Blue, AlphaGo and even Texas Hold’em, followed by their historical background, so that AI can be seen as a natural development of the mathematics and computer science of AI. As the book proceeds, more technical descriptions are presented at a pace that should be suitable for all levels of readers, gradually building a broad and reasonably deep understanding and appreciation for the basic mathematics, physics, and computer science that is rapidly developing artificial intelligence as it is today. Features Only mathematical prerequisite is an elementary knowledge of calculus. Accessible to anyone with an interest in AI and its mathematics and computer science. Suitable as a supplementary reading for a course in AI or the History of Mathematics and Computer Science in regard to artificial intelligence. New to the Second Edition Fully revised and corrected throughout to bring the material up-to-date. Greater technical detail and exploration of basic mathematical concepts, while retaining the simplicity of explanation of the first edition. Entirely new chapters on large language models (LLMs), ChatGPT, and quantum computing.
Artificial Intelligence: From Medieval Robots to Neural Networks (Union Square & Co. Illustrated Histories)
by Clifford A. Pickover“This is an addictive stroll through the annals of artificial intelligence, highlighting almost 100 innovations developed between 1300 BCE and 2018” (Booklist).From medieval robots and Boolean algebra to facial recognition, artificial neural networks, and adversarial patches, this fascinating history takes readers on a lively tour through the world of artificial intelligence. Award–winning author Clifford A. Pickover (The Math Book, The Physics Book, Death & the Afterlife) explores the historic and current applications of AI in such diverse fields as computing, medicine, popular culture, mythology, and philosophy, and considers the enduring threat to humanity should AI grow out of control. Across 100 illustrated entries, Pickover provides an entertaining and informative look into when artificial intelligence began, how it developed, where it’s going, and what it means for the future of human-machine interaction.“An enjoyable diversion to read cover to cover, follow along common strands, or dip into for random bits.” —Booklist
Artificial Intelligence: From Medieval Robots to Neural Networks (Union Square & Co. Illustrated Histories)
by Clifford A. PickoverA History of the Future that's Happening Right NowArtificial Intelligence: An Illustrated History explores the historic origins and current applications of AI in such diverse fields as computing, medicine, popular culture, mythology, and philosophy. Through more than 100 entries, award-winning author Clifford A. Pickover, offers a granular, yet accessible, glimpse into the world of AI—from medieval robots and Boolean algebra to facial recognition, and artificial neural networks. First released in 2019, this updated paperback edition brings readers up to speed with coverage of technologies such as DALL-E and ChatGPT, and it explores the very real fear that AI will alter the course of humanity—forever.
Artificial Islands: Adventures in the Dominions
by Owen HatherleyShould Britain form a new union with its old 'Dominions' in Canada, Australia and New Zealand? Are they really our closest allies and relations? And is there any reason why they should want to unite again with us?Great Britain has just left one Union, after years of bitter argument and divisive posturing. But what if the island's future lies in another Union altogether, with some of its former colonial &“kith and kin&” across the seas? Why be in a Union with your immediate neighbours, when you could instead be in a trans-oceanic super-state with our old friends in Canada, Australia and New Zealand? Welcome to the strange world of the 'CANZUK Union', the name for a quixotic but apparently serious plan to reunify the white-majority 'Dominions' of the British Empire under the flag of low taxes, strong borders and climate change denialism.Artificial Islands tests the idea that Britain's natural allies and closest relations are in these three countries in North America and the Antipodes, through a good look at the histories, townscapes and spaces of several cities across the settler zones of the British Empire. These are some of the most purely artificial and modern landscapes in the world, British-designed cities that were built with extreme rapidity in forcibly seized territories on the other side of the world from Britain. Were these places really no more than just a reproduction of British Values planted in unlikely corners of the globe? How are people in Auckland, Melbourne, Montreal, Ottawa and Wellington re-imagining their own history, or their countries' role in the British Empire and their complicity in its crimes? And do they have any interest in a union with us?
Artificial Love: A Story of Machines and Architecture (The\mit Press Ser.)
by Paul ShepheardA vision of architecture that includes sculpture, machines, and technology and encapsulates the history of the human species.According to Paul Shepheard, architecture is the rearranging of the world for human purposes. Sculpture, machines, and landscapes are all architecture-every bit as much as buildings are. In his writings, Shepheard examines old assumptions about architecture and replaces the critical theory of the academic with the active theory of the architect-citizen enamored of the world around him.Artificial Love weaves together three stories about architecture into one. The first, about machines as architecture, leads to speculations about technology and the human condition and to the assertion that machines are the sculptures of today. The second story is about the ways that architecture reflects the tribal and personal desires of those who make it. In the West, ideas of community, multiculturalism, and globalization compete furiously, leaving architecture to exist as it always has, as the past in the present. The third story features individual people experiencing their lives in the context of architecture. Here, Shepheard borrows the rhetorical device of Shakespeare's seven ages of man to propose that each person's life imitates the accumulating history of the human species. Shepheard's version of the history of humans is a technological one, in which machines become sculpture and sculpture becomes architecture. For Shepheard, our machines do not separate us from nature. Rather, our technology is our nature, and we cannot but be in harmony with nature. The change that we have wrought in the world, he says, is a wonderful and powerful thing.
Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics
by Katherine Ott David Serlin Stephen MihmThese essays are valuable first forays into the history of prosthetics. From the wooden teeth of George Washington to the Bly prosthesis, popular in the 1860s and boasting easy uniform motions of the limb, to today's lifelike approximations, prosthetic devices reveal the extent to which the evolution and design of technologies of the body are intertwined with both the practical and subjective needs of human beings. The peculiar history of prosthetic devices sheds light on the relationship between technological change and the civilizing process of modernity, and analyzes the concrete materials of prosthetics which carry with them ideologies of body, ideals, body politics, and culture. Simultaneously critiquing, historicizing, and theorizing prosthetics, Artificial Parts, Practical Lives lays out a balanced and complex picture of its subject, neither vilifying nor celebrating the merger of flesh and machine.
Artificial Women: Sex Dolls, Robot Caregivers, and More Facsimile Females
by Julie WoskWhat distinguishes humanity from artificial beings? What do constructed creatures tell us about ourselves? From sex dolls to Siri, talking Barbies to robotic mothers, Artificial Women explores the ways in which today's simulated females—both real and fictional—reflect and expose our own ideas about gender and female identity. Join Julie Wosk as she probes the realm of compliant sex workers, nurturing caretakers, genial servants, and rebellious creations in film, television, literature, art, photography, and current developments in robotics. These modern-day Galateas must embrace their own synthetic nature while also striving for authenticity and autonomy, all the while foregrounding gender stereotypes and changing perceptions of women and their roles. They embody the paradoxes and tensions that continue to arise in our increasingly simulated world, where the lines between the real and the virtual only continue to blur. As these "artificial women" become ever more lifelike, so too do the questions they raise become more provocative, and more illuminating of our own conceptions and conventions. Artificial Women pushes the boundaries of gender, sexuality, and culture studies to consider new digital technologies, artificial intelligences, and burgeoning simulations.
Artigas
by Pacho O'DonnellLa versión popular de la Revolución de Mayo. Pacho O'Donnell nos devuelve la real dimensión histórica de Artigas y recupera la plena vigencia de su pensamiento, en tiempos en que la unidad latinoamericana es más que una esperanza. El doloroso exilio del caudillo rioplatense parece, por fin, estar terminando. Aunque la historiografía liberal insiste en recordar a José Gervasio de Artigas como el artífice de la independencia de la República Oriental del Uruguay, lo cierto es que, en realidad, el caudillo fue el representante más vigoroso de un proyecto de organización federal, popular y latinoamericanista para las Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata, que en tiempos de Mayo incluían los actuales territorios de la Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia y Paraguay. Su inflexible convicción lo enfrentó con el elitista y extranjerizante unitarismo porteño que abogaba por la hegemonía del puerto sobre las provincias. Férreo defensor del su-fragio universal cuando ninguna sociedad del planeta practicaba el voto popular, llevó a cabo la primera reforma agraria de toda Latinoamérica. La historia ha denominado "revolución" a las jornadas de mayo de 1810, aunque no fueron en verdad una revolución porque les faltó el protagonismo del pueblo. Este irrumpe en 1811, conmovido, turbulento, junto a José Gervasio de Artigas, el primer revolucionario del Plata. Obligado a combatir sin apoyo ni medios contra los colonialistas españoles y contra la invasión portuguesa desde el Brasil alentada por Gran Bretaña, debió defenderse, al mismo tiempo, de las tropas enviadas desde Buenos Aires y de las intrigas urdidas por triunviros y directores supremos, que no dudaron en poner precio a su cabeza. Exiliado en Paraguay, el "Protector de los Pueblos Libres" murió pobre, acallado su ideario por el centralismo triunfante, pero respetado por San Martín y los caudillos provinciales y recordado siempre por su pueblo. Para los historiadores argentinos, ocuparnos de Artigas es una forma de estar en la ruta de la Patria Grande, de romper los tabiques de la trágica disgregación americana, de recuperar la dimensión rioplatense y continental del "Protector de los Pueblos Libres". Pacho O'Donnell
Artillery Employment At The Battle Of Gettysburg [Illustrated Edition]
by Major Mark R. GilmoreIncludes Civil War Map and Illustrations Pack - 224 battle plans, campaign maps and detailed analyses of actions spanning the entire period of hostilities.This book is an historical analysis of the Union artillery at the Battle of Gettysburg. It examines the significance of the Union artillery's contribution to the Federal victory. This study explores all aspects of the tactical employment of the Union artillery on the first and last days of the battle. A brief description of the evolution of artillery organization in the Army of the Potomac prior to the battle of Gettysburg is included. This is followed by the chronological presentation of the tactical employment of artillery during the battle. First its employment in the meeting engagement on 1 July is examined, followed by a study of its use on the final and decisive third day when Union forces fought a set-piece defensive battle. Among the conclusions arrived at during the course of this study are these: that the Army of the Potomac's corps artillery brigades and army artillery reserve proved to be responsive and efficient organizations in fulfilling their fire support mission, and when coupled with the skillful use of artillery and aggressive leadership by the army's Chief-of-Artillery, Brigadier-General Hunt, were crucial to the successful employment of the Union artillery forces. This study concludes that the Union artillery under the command of Brigadier General Henry Hunt had a decided and positive influence on the Federal victory by successfully employing its corps artillery brigades and army artillery reserve as part of a combined arms force.
Artillery In Korea: Massing Fires And Reinventing The Wheel [Illustrated Edition]
by D. M. Giangreco[Includes 10 photos illustrations]The first 9 months of the Korean War saw U.S. Army field artillery units destroy or abandon their own guns on nearly a dozen occasions. North Korean and Chinese forces infiltrated thinly held American lines to ambush units on the move or assault battery positions from the flanks or rear with, all too often, the same disastrous results. Trained to fight a linear war in Europe against conventional Soviet forces, field artillery units were unprepared for combat in Korea, which called for all-around defense of mutually supporting battery positions, and high-angle fire. Ironically, these same lessons had been learned the hard way during recent fighting against the Japanese in a 1944 action on Saipan, not Korea, aptly demonstrates. Pacific theater artillery tactics were discarded as an aberration after War World II, but Red Legs soon found that they "frequently [have] to fight as doughboys" and "must be able to handle the situation themselves if their gun positions are attacked." A second problem with artillery in Korea was felt most keenly by the soldiers that the artillery was supposed to support -- the infantry. Commanders at all levels had come to expect that in any future war, they would conduct operations with fire that equaled or even surpassed the lavish support they had recently enjoyed in northwest Europe. It was clear almost from the beginning, however, that this was not going to happen in Korea because there was a shortage not only of artillery units but also of the basic hardware of the cannoneers craft: guns and munitions. Until the front settled down into a war of attrition in the fall of 1951 (which facilitated the surveying of reference points and positioning of "an elaborate grid of batteries, fire direction centers, [and] fire support coordination centers"), massed fires were achieved by shooting at unprecedented speed.
Artillery Scout: The Story of a Forward Observer with the U.S. Field Artillery in World War I
by James G. Bilder“Moves quickly; it entertains and provides a decent overview of the life of an American Doughboy” on the Western Front during the Great War (San Francisco Book Review).The American Doughboys of World War I are often referred to as the “Lost Generation”; however, in this book, we are able to gain an intimate look at their experiences after being thrust into the center of Europe’s “Great War” and enduring some of the most grueling battles in US history.Len Fairfield, the author’s grandfather, was an Artillery Scout, or Forward Observer, for the US Army and was a firsthand witness to the war’s carnage as he endured its countless hardships, all of which are revealed here in vivid detail. His story takes the reader from a hard life in Chicago, through conscription, rigorous training in America and France, and finally to the battles which have become synonymous with the US effort in France—St. Mihiel and the Argonne Forest, the latter claiming 26,000 American lives, more than any other US battle.The American Expeditionary Forces endured a rare close-quarters visit to hell until it was sensed that the Germans were finally giving way, though fighting tooth-and-nail up to the very minute of the Armistice. This action-filled work brings the reader straight to the center of America’s costly battles in World War I, reminding us once again how great-power status often has to be earned with blood on battlefields.“All in all, this book is a bit of a gem. It is a well paced easy read and you will find yourself rooting for our hero.” —War in History
Artillery Warfare, 1939–1945
by Simon Forty Jonathan Forty“From mountain warfare with guns on mules to V2 rockets and everything between makes it well worth a place on anyone’s reference shelf.” —Clash of SteelIt is said that artillery won the Second World War for the Allies—that Soviet guns wore down German forces on the Eastern Front, negating their superior tactics and fighting ability, and that the accuracy and intensity of the British and American artillery was a major reason for the success of Allied forces in North Africa from El Alamein, in Italy and Normandy, and played a vital role in the battles of 1944 and 1945. Yet the range of weapons used is often overlooked or taken for granted—which is why this highly illustrated history by Simon and Jonathan Forty is of such value. They stress the importance of artillery on every front and analyze how artillery equipment, training and tactical techniques developed during the conflict.The selection of wartime photographs—many from east European sources—and the extensive quotations from contemporary documents give a graphic impression of how the guns were used on all sides. The photographs emphasize the wide range of pieces employed as field, antiaircraft and antitank artillery without forgetting self-propelled guns, coastal and other heavyweights and the development of rockets. The authors offer a fascinating insight into the weapons that served in the artillery over seventy years ago.“Superbly illustrated, this is testament to the courage and skills of extraordinary men in the execution of their duty. An amazing book.” —Books Monthly
Artillery at Anzac: Adaptation, Innovation and Education
by Chris Roberts Paul StevensA Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.
Artillery in the Great War
by Paul Strong Sanders MarbleA year-by-year examination of key WWI battles and how the ongoing advances in artillery shaped strategy, tactics, and oprations; includes battlefield maps! World War I is often said to have been an artillery war, yet the decisive role artillery played in shaping military decisions—and therefor the war itself—has rarely been examined. Artillery in the Great War traces the development of this all-important technology, the differing approaches to its use, the many innovations it underwent on both sides, and how those approaches and innovations in turn effected key battles such as the Battle of the Somme. This highly readable and informative history is perfect for any reader interested in understanding the legacy of World War I, or the evolution of modern warfare.
Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (The United States in the World)
by Ussama MakdisiThe complex relationship between America and the Arab world goes back further than most people realize. In Artillery of Heaven, Ussama Makdisi presents a foundational American encounter with the Arab world that occurred in the nineteenth century, shortly after the arrival of the first American Protestant missionaries in the Middle East. He tells the dramatic tale of the conversion and death of As'ad Shidyaq, the earliest Arab convert to American Protestantism. The struggle over this man's body and soul—and over how his story might be told—changed the actors and cultures on both sides. In the unfamiliar, multireligious landscape of the Middle East, American missionaries at first conflated Arabs with Native Americans and American culture with an uncompromising evangelical Christianity. In turn, their Christian and Muslim opponents in the Ottoman Empire condemned the missionaries as malevolent intruders. Yet during the ensuing confrontation within and across cultures an unanticipated spirit of toleration was born that cannot be credited to either Americans or Arabs alone. Makdisi provides a genuinely transnational narrative for this new, liberal awakening in the Middle East, and the challenges that beset it.By exploring missed opportunities for cultural understanding, by retrieving unused historical evidence, and by juxtaposing for the first time Arab perspectives and archives with American ones, this book counters a notion of an inevitable clash of civilizations and thus reshapes our view of the history of America in the Arab world.