In 'Demobilization: our industrial and military demobilization after the armistice, 1918-1920', the intricacies of the interwar period are meticulously unraveled through a tapestry of literary narratives and analytical expositions. This collection captures the turbulence and metamorphosis inherent in the demobilization period, providing readers with an insightful glimpse into the complex transition from wartime to peacetime economies and societies. Within this anthology, readers will encou...

At a few minutes past ten o’clock of the morning of November 11, 1918, the Secretary of War in Washington received from General Pershing a communication informing the Government that eleven o’clock a.m. that day, French time, an armistice with Germany had gone into effect. No message more momentous had ever come to the American War Department. The World War was at an end. It was peace. It was victory.Over there on that American front which had penetrated the supposedly impregnable A...

A thriller and love story set in 10th-century Japan.Lady Shonagon is an imperial courtesan, living at the court of the Japanese Emperor in the 10th century. When a series of disturbing thefts within the palace walls throws the court into confusion and unrest, Shonagon is appointed guide and assistant to Lieutenant Yukinari as he investigates.Together, Shonagon and Yukinari must solve the mysteries and escalating crimes that plague the Japanese court, and their romance bloss...

In 1933 the man who subverted American democracy pronounced, “The fact is, the English are soft. Britain is like a frightened, flabby old woman. The whole empire is just rotted through and through. Kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will collapse.” He would soon drag America into a two ocean war, with Canada as the prize.Sticking as closely as possible to the real history of the period, making no radical leaps in terms of behavior, logic, or technology, the author pain...

War Is a Racket is a speech and a 1935 short book, by Smedley D. Butler, a retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient. Based on his career military experience, Butler frankly discusses how business interests commercially benefit (including war profiteering) from warfare. He had been appointed commanding officer of the Gendarmerie during the United States occupation of Haiti, which lasted from 1915 to 1934.

General Smedley Butler’s frank book shows how American war efforts were animated by big-business interests. This extraordinary argument against war by an unexpected proponent is relevant now more than ever.Originally printed in 1935, War Is a Racket is General Smedley Butler’s frank speech describing his role as a soldier as nothing more than serving as a puppet for big-business interests. In addition to photos from the notorious 1932 anti-war book The Horror of It by Fred...

War Is a Racket is written by the most decorated American soldier in U.S. history, Major General Smedley D. Butler. Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests commercially start and benefit from warfare. After his retirement from the Marine Corps, Gen. Butler made a nationwide tour giving his speech "War is a Racket". The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as this small book with the same title which helped popul...

Since the 2008 financial crisis the price of gold has sky-rocketed, from around $800 an ounce in August of that year to a peak of around $1700 an ounce. Fortunes have been made, and this has kicked off an unprecedented gold-mining and prospective boom around the world. In this book Matthew Hart takes readers on a journey around the world and through history to tell the story of how gold became the world's most precious commodity, the highlights of its dramatic, tempestuous history, and the...

War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired US Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley Darlington Butler. In these works, Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests commercially benefit from warfare. After his retirement from the Marine Corps, Gen. Butler made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech, “War Is a Racket.” The speech was so well recei...

US Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler collected an award cabinet full of medals for his battlefield bravery. But perhaps his bravest act of all was to declare, after his retirement in the early 1930s, who was really winning (and losing) during the bloody clashes.It was business interests, he revealed, who commercially benefited from warfare. War Is a Racket is the title of the influential speech Butler delivered on a tour across the United States, as well the expanded versio...

In the 1970s, during the ruinous 30-year dictatorship of General Mobutu, periodic rebellions led to the hasty insertion once again of Belgian and French paratroops to save European lives.From the mid-1990s the country split again, becoming the battleground for the largest African war in history, as armies and rebel groups from Rwanda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Namibia and other countries crossed into the Congo to support one side or the other, or simply to loot the...

The story of the United States Army is always growing and changing. Historians constantly seek to reinterpret the past while accumulating new facts as America's Army continues to be challenged on new foreign battlefields. Nor does the Army, as an institution, ever stand still. It necessarily changes its organization, materiel, doctrine, and composition to cope with an ever-changing world of current conflict and potential danger. American Military History provides a comprehensive but brief ...