The creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922 was one of the defining events of the 20th century. This new federation, created to embody the ideals of communism and the notion of rule by the people, was intended to be different from any other nation in the world. This utopian vision inspired people around the world, and soon, communism became an international movement. However, the history of the Soviet Union did not develop in the way its originators envisaged.

World War I, or the Great War, was believed to be "the war to end all wars". Because of the incredible extent of destruction and the staggering number of wounded and dead, even those who lived through it could scarcely comprehend its horror. Beginning in 1914, alliances between powerful nations soon plunged the world into a global conflict. Fighting - including miserable trench warfare - broke out in practically every corner of Europe and spread around the world to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

The Spanish Empire was the first truly global empire and the first to be described as one on which “the sun never sets.” It rapidly grew to become one of the largest and most powerful empires in the history of the world and brought us goods such as potatoes, chocolate, and chewing gum.

The British Empire comprised a bewildering collection of colonies, dominions, protectorates, and mandated possessions that spanned the planet. This was the largest empire in world history, at its peak ruling over more than 400 million people and covering almost one-quarter of the total land mass of the Earth.

Many of us dream of finding instant wealth. Just imagine if you were able to go to a place where you could simply gather from the ground gold worth many thousands of dollars. Now imagine that at a time when the average wage for an unskilled worker was barely ten dollars per month.

Alan Turing had a radical and ingenious mind. He is considered one of the fathers of artificial intelligence, and his theories on this matter range from purely mechanical to almost spiritual. During World War II, his decryption of the Nazis’ Enigma codes proved vital for the Allied victory over the Axis powers. Turing’s fingerprints are everywhere, and yet his own country for quite some time failed to acknowledge it.

Discover the remarkable history of the Inca Empire...In the space of less than one hundred years, the Inca people expanded from being a small kingdom in the highlands of Peru to becoming one of the largest and most powerful empires in the Americas. At the height of its power, the Inca Empire stretched for more than one thousand miles down the Andes Mountains and the west coast of South America. It incorporated more than two hundred distinct ethnic groups and somewhere around fourteen million people were ruled by a much smaller number of Incas.

Discover the remarkable history of the Falklands War...The Falklands War, which erupted in 1982, was a conflict between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Argentina over sovereignty of the Falklands, a group of largely uninhabited islands in the South Atlantic. The islands had under two thousand inhabitants and little particular strategic or commercial importance when they became the object of the war. Still, disputes over whether these islands belonged to Great Britain or Argentina had been underway for many years.

Violent confrontation between armed groups over the supply of illegal narcotics is something we commonly associate with criminal gangs in modern cities, but in the mid-19th century Great Britain went to war with Imperial China in order to continue to supply Chinese addicts with opium. The two wars that followed have become known as the Opium Wars, and they led to the utter defeat of China, the establishment of a British colony in Hong Kong, and the continuation of a narcotics trade that was worth millions of pounds each year to the British.

The Second World War was one of the most traumatic events in human history. Across the world, existing conflicts became connected, entangling nations in a vast web of violence. It was fought on land, sea, and air, touching every inhabited continent. Over 55 million people died, some of them combatants, some civilians caught up in the violence, and some murdered by their own governments.

On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, monumental forces were shaken. In less than a month, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculation sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. As crowds cheered their armies on, no one could guess what lay ahead in the First World War.

Explore how the Second World War began, the aftermath, and the events in between, while also getting an in-depth look into the extraordinary military operation called D-Day. The Second World War was one of the most traumatic events in human history. Across the world, existing conflicts became connected, entangling nations in a vast web of violence. D-Day was one of the most extraordinary achievements not only of the Second World War but in the whole of military history.

This book is a stimulating and entirely plausible insight into how Hitler and his generals might have defeated the Allies, and a convincing sideways look at the Third Reich's bid at world domination in World War II. What would have happened if, for example, the Germans captured the whole of the BEF at Dunkirk? Or if the RAF had been defeated in the Battle of Britain?

Stuart Goldman convincingly argues that a little-known, but intense, Soviet-Japanese conflict along the Manchurian- Mongolian frontier at Nomonhan influenced the outbreak of World War II and shaped the course of the war. The author draws on Japanese, Soviet, and western sources to put the seemingly obscure conflict - actually a small undeclared war - into its proper global geo-strategic perspective.The book describes how the Soviets, in response to a border conflict provoked by Japan, launched an offensive in August 1939 that wiped out the Japanese forces at Nomonhan.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, one of the turning points of World War II. Within six months, the invasion bogged down on the outskirts of Moscow, and the Eastern Front proved to be the decisive theater in the defeat of the Third Reich. Ever since, most historians have agreed that this was Hitler's gravest mistake. In Hitler's Great Gamble, James Ellman argues that while Barbarossa was a gamble and perverted by genocidal Nazi ideology, it was not doomed from the start.

The Second World War was one of the most traumatic events in human history. Across the world, existing conflicts became connected, entangling nations in a vast web of violence. It was fought on land, sea, and air, touching every inhabited continent. Over 55 million people died, some of them combatants, some civilians caught up in the violence, and some murdered by their own governments.

This book is a stimulating and entirely plausible insight into how Hitler and his generals might have defeated the Allies, and a convincing sideways look at the Third Reich's bid at world domination in World War II. What would have happened if, for example, the Germans captured the whole of the BEF at Dunkirk? Or if the RAF had been defeated in the Battle of Britain?

Stuart Goldman convincingly argues that a little-known, but intense, Soviet-Japanese conflict along the Manchurian- Mongolian frontier at Nomonhan influenced the outbreak of World War II and shaped the course of the war. The author draws on Japanese, Soviet, and western sources to put the seemingly obscure conflict - actually a small undeclared war - into its proper global geo-strategic perspective.The book describes how the Soviets, in response to a border conflict provoked by Japan, launched an offensive in August 1939 that wiped out the Japanese forces at Nomonhan.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, one of the turning points of World War II. Within six months, the invasion bogged down on the outskirts of Moscow, and the Eastern Front proved to be the decisive theater in the defeat of the Third Reich. Ever since, most historians have agreed that this was Hitler's gravest mistake. In Hitler's Great Gamble, James Ellman argues that while Barbarossa was a gamble and perverted by genocidal Nazi ideology, it was not doomed from the start.

Immortal is the only single-volume English-language survey of Iran's military history. CIA analyst Steven R. Ward shows that Iran's soldiers, from the famed "Immortals" of ancient Persia to today's Revolutionary Guard, have demonstrated through the centuries that they should not be underestimated. This history also provides background on the nationalist, tribal, and religious heritages of the country to help listeners better understand Iran and its security outlook.

Explore how the Second World War began, the aftermath, and the events in between, while also getting an in-depth look into the extraordinary military operation called D-Day. The Second World War was one of the most traumatic events in human history. Across the world, existing conflicts became connected, entangling nations in a vast web of violence. D-Day was one of the most extraordinary achievements not only of the Second World War but in the whole of military history.

The new edition of The Cambridge History of Warfare, written and updated by a team of eight distinguished military historians, examines how war was waged by Western powers across a sweeping timeframe beginning with classical Greece and Rome, moving through the Middle Ages and the early modern period, down to the wars of the 21st century in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

Storm Clouds over the Pacific begins the story long before Pearl Harbor, showing how the war can only be understood if ancient hatreds and long-standing geopolitics are taken into account. Harmsen demonstrates how Japan and China's ancient enmity led to increased tensions in the 1930s, which, in turn, exploded into conflict in 1937.

War-organized violence against an enemy of the state-seems part and parcel of the American journey. Indeed, the United States was established by means of violence as ordinary citizens from New Hampshire to Georgia answered George Washington's call to arms. Since then, war has become a staple of American history. Counting the War for Independence, the United States has fought the armed forces of other nations at least twelve times, averaging a major conflict every twenty years.

The German invasion of Poland on 1 September, 1939, designated as Fall Weiss (Case White), was the event that sparked the outbreak of World War II in Europe. The campaign has widely been described as a textbook example of Blitzkrieg, but it was actually a fairly conventional campaign as the Wehrmacht was still learning how to use its new Panzers and dive-bombers. The Polish military is often misrepresented as hopelessly obsolete and outclassed by the Wehrmacht, yet in fact it was well-equipped with modern weapons and armor.

The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the 20th century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times - modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society - and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment.

On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, monumental forces were shaken. In less than a month, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculation sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. As crowds cheered their armies on, no one could guess what lay ahead in the First World War.

Imagine the impact on world history if Robert E. Lee had listened to General Longstreet at Gettysburg and withdrawn to higher ground instead of sending Pickett uphill against the entrenched Union line. Or if Napolon, at Waterloo, had avoided mistakes he'd never made before. The advice that would have changed the outcome of these crucial battles is found in a book on strategy written centuries before Christ was born.

Revised and updated to reflect recent Russian and Western scholarship on the subject, this new edition maintains the 1995 original's distinction as a crucial volume in the history of World War II and of the Soviet Union and the most informed and compelling perspective on one of the greatest military confrontations of all time.

A century has passed since the outbreak of World War I, yet as military historian Hew Strachan argues in this brilliant and authoritative new book, the legacy of the "war to end all wars" is with us still. The First World War was a truly global conflict from the start, with many of the most decisive battles fought in or directly affecting the Balkans, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. Even more than World War II, the First World War continues to shape the politics and international relations of our world.