Book Review of Shadow Flights: America’s Secret Air War against the Soviet Union

Fascinating study of early Cold War spy flights.

International History

Curtis Peebles. Shadow Flights: America’s Secret Air War against the Soviet Union. Novato, California: Presidio Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-891-41700-2. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. Pp. vi, 322.

Slowly but surely information has been coming forward about United States and American-sponsored reconnaissance missions against the Soviet Union and China during the early years of the Cold War.  In this study, Curtis Peebles, a freelance aerospace historian, examines the American reconnaissance effort from the late 1940s to Operation Grand Slam in 1960.  The author is well-known for his studies including The Moby Dick Project: Reconnaissance Balloons over Russia (1991), The Corona Project: America’s First Spy Satellites (1997), and Twilight Warriors: Covert Air Operations against the USSR (2005).

Peebles depicts the rise of Cold War reconnaissance from the first U.S. Far East Air Forces RF-80 covert overflight of the Soviet Far East during the Berlin Crisis (1948-1949) to the Soviet shootdown of a Central Intelligence Agency U-2 mission in…

View original post 488 more words

Book Review of The Great Elector

Interesting study about Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia, and his involvement in seventeenth-century wars.

International History

Derek McKay. The Great Elector. Profiles in Power series. Harlow, England: Longman, 2001. ISBN 978-0-582-49482-4. Notes. Maps. Tables. Chronology. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiii, 286. £16.99 (paperback).

Dr Derek McKay, retired Senior Lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, provides an outstanding biography of Frederick William of Hohenzollern.  McKay is known for his published doctoral thesis Allies of Convenience: Diplomatic Relations between Great Britain and Austria, 1714-1719 (1986), important studies Prince Eugene of Savoy (1977) and The Rise of the Great Powers, 1648-1815 (co-authored with Hamish M. Scott) (1983),  along with journal articles on diplomatic history in the early eighteenth century.

Frederick William ruled over Brandenburg-Prussia for forty-eight years.  At his accession in 1640, Frederick William became the Margrave and Elector over the scattered Hohenzollern lands that were devastated in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) and occupied by Swedish forces.  He immediately negotiated an armistice with Sweden, and…

View original post 319 more words

Book Review of Poltava 1709: The Battle and the Myth

International History

Serhii Plokhy, editor. Poltava 1709: The Battle and the Myth. Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies series. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Harvard University, 2012. ISBN 978-1-932650-09-9. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Pp. xxv, 703. $29.95 (paperback).

The battle of Poltava (1709) fought in the Ukraine between the forces of Peter I of Russia (ruled 1682-1725) and Charles XII of Sweden (ruled 1697-1718) is viewed as a decisive event in the Great Northern War (1700-1721).  Charles XII had temporarily defeated a coalition of Denmark, Russia, and Poland-Saxony at the start of this long conflict.  However, after mopping up in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Swedish monarch turned his attention once again towards Russia.  The Swedish invasion was stopped by the Russians at Poltava in 1709, and Charles XII was forced to retreat with the remnants of his army into Ottoman territory.  Russia would be recognized as a Great Power in the Baltic Region.  The…

View original post 987 more words

Book Review of Strategy in the American War of Independence: A Global Approach

International History

Donald Stoker, Kenneth J. Hagan, and Michael T. McMaster, editors. Strategy in the American War of Independence: A Global Approach. Cass Military Studies series. Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2010. ISBN 978-0-415-36734-9. Notes. Tables. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvii, 244. $145.00 (hardcover).

The international aspect of the American War of Independence (1775-1783) has traditionally been downplayed by American historians.  Important exceptions would be Samuel Flagg Bemis’ The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (1957)  and Jonathan R. Dull’s A Diplomatic History of the Revolution (1985).  In Strategy in the American War of Independence: A Global Approach, an international group of experts contribute essays that show the global and multilateral angles of the conflict from a strategic perspective.  The authors demonstrate that the American struggle for independence “was inescapably enmeshed in the military and diplomatic affairs of the rest of the world” (p.xvii).  The American War of Independence was a very complex global conflict.

American strategy was…

View original post 1,612 more words

Europe in the Age of Louis XIV (1661-1715): A Bibliography of Diplomatic and Military Studies

Useful list of books, journal articles, essays in English about European warfare and diplomacy during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

International History

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND WARFARE IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES AND EARLY MODERN EUROPE

A Bibliography of Diplomatic and Military Studies

by William Young

Chapter 6 – Europe in the Age of Louis XIV (1661-1715)

Europe in the Age of Louis XIV (1661-1715): A Bibliography (pdf)

View original post