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Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader/Adobe]
eBook by Victor Hanson
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eBook Category: History
eBook Description:  What defines a "watershed event," a moment in history that changes the world forever? Victor Davis Hanson tackles this intriguing question in Ripples of Battle, an eye-opening look at three great military encounters: Okinawa, Shiloh, and Delium, an obscure battle of the Peloponnesian War. A master of military detail, Hanson describes the strategies and tactics, and the terrible cost in human life, of each battle. These vivid accounts set the stage for a wider inquiry into the long-term, often unintended, consequences of war. Ripples of Battle begins with the most recent battle and works backward in time, starting with Okinawa (1945) and its legacy. While many have drawn comparisons between the 9/11 pilots and the Japanese kamikazes, Hanson argues that the real significance of the battle was the heightening of America's resolve to win the war at any cost. The failure of suicide tactics was also a vital catalyst in ending Japan's militarist leadership and setting the country on the path toward democracy. Next, Hanson explains how the death of Confederate Commander-in-Chief Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh (1862), long considered a turning point in the Civil War, gave birth to the myth of the Lost Cause--the belief that only a tragic accident of fate destroyed the South's noble dream. The stubborn devotion to this reactionary view would slow Southern progress for a century. Turning to the battle of Delium (424 B.C.), Hanson shows how the ripples of each battle spread and deepen with the passage of time. Little remembered today, the battle inspired a tragedy by Euripides, profoundly altered the direction of Western philosophy (Socrates was one of the few Athenians to survive), and virtually created Western infantry tactics. Employing the lens of the past to bring the present into focus, Ripples of Battle is a work of penetrating insight and profound understanding of the human cost and consequence of war.
eBook Publisher: Random House, Inc./Doubleday, Published: 2003
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2003
Available eBook Formats [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader/Adobe - What's this?]: SECURE MOBIPOCKET FORMAT [735 KB], SECURE MICROSOFT READER FORMAT [621 KB] - Requires Microsoft Reader 2.1.1 for PCs, or Microsoft Reader 2.2.2 on Pocket PC 2002 handheld devices. Some older Pocket PCs can be upgraded. Learn More., SECURE EREADER (RECOMMENDED) FORMAT [483 KB], SECURE ADOBE READER 7 FORMAT [1.1 MB]
Secure Adobe: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
MobiPocket Reader ISBN, eReader (recommended) ISBN: 9781400095322
Adobe Acrobat Reader ISBN: 1400095328
Microsoft Reader ISBN: 9780385511551
 
"Like any good classicist, Victor Davis Hanson accepts the primacy of military history in human affairs. In 'Ripples of Battle,' a sequel of sorts to his masterful 'Carnage and Culture,' he shows the fascinating repercussions of three lesser-known battles. You cannot fully understand Hiroshima, the bitterness of the Old South, or the Golden Age of Athens without reading this gem of a book."--Robert D. Kaplan
"Victor Davis Hanson is one of our leading military historians, and in 'Ripples of Battle' he does not disappoint. A far-reaching story of man, war, and history, it is, by turns, iconoclastic, touching, deeply learned, and endlessly fascinating. This slim book is a grand study."--Jay Winik, author of April 1865: The Month That Saved America "Victor Davis Hanson has earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the most interesting and innovative military historians in the world. In 'Ripples of Battle,' he shows once again why he's the best. He ranges far and wide, from World War II to the wars of ancient Greece. Along the way he combines a born storyteller's gift for rip-roaring battle narrative with a scholar's attention to the deeper meaning of conflict. Once again he manages to take what may seem familiar and to show it in an utterly new light. The "ripples" that he identifies--which include characters as disparate as Socrates and the author of Ben Hur--astonish and delight. This book is not only deeply enlightening but also a sheer pleasure to read. It is, in short, vintage Victor."--Max Boot, Olin senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power
The Wages of Suicide: Okinawa,
April 1-July 2, 1945 Recipe for a Holocaust Throughout the fall of 2001 and early 2002, the military referents in the West for the war against the Islamic fundamentalists were the fanatical kamikazes of Okinawa of the past--their letters published in newspapers, the Pacific war recounted by columnists, and veterans of the conflict interviewed on television. Suicide bombing by nature is at first horrifying, calling into doubt the notion of a shared human instinct for self-preservation. Suicide killers are purportedly of a creed not of this world, and thus instill despair that such enemies can ever be thwarted and that somehow theirs is a superior ideology by its singular ability to galvanize thousands to kill themselves for the cause. Yet Okinawa reminds us that there are plenty of far more frightening mechanisms to ensure that it fails. Contrary to our own popular doubts and fears, the horror of Okinawa entailed the frustration, not the success, of kamikazes. And with that result there ensued the lessons that suicide warriors are not always willing volunteers, much less superhuman, but themselves just as often unsure and full of doubt. Literature and culture were changed by Okinawa, but the ripples of that battle were also military; after September 11 they lap up as never before to remind us that there remains an array of tactics and long-term strategies by those who fight to live that will ensure failure to those trying to die. The forces arrayed for the American invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945--Operation Iceberg--were gargantuan. The greatest armada of combined naval and land power in the history of the Pacific war was prepared to storm an island not much more than sixty miles in length. In terms of initial troops to be landed, firepower arrayed, and tonnage to be used, the American invasion was larger than the one seen at Normandy nearly a year earlier. Indeed, Okinawa was perhaps the most impressive sea and ground assault since Xerxes' invasion of Greece in 480 b.c.--but then, both those earlier invasions had been directed against the continent of Europe, not an island in the Pacific. Nearly 1,600 ships carried over a half million Americans toward Okinawa. A quarter million soldiers--infantry, support troops, airmen, and sailors in various branches of the military--eventually hoped to occupy the island. Sixty thousand Marines and army infantrymen of the newly formed 10th Army would embark on the first day alone, supported by bombs from some 40 aircraft carriers of various types and shells from 18 battleships and 150 destroyers. Some 183,000 actual infantry combatants from the army and the Marines were ready to join the fight on the island during the ninety-day campaign. Over 12,000 combat aircraft on the American side could, in theory, be thrown into the fight. The campaign was planned as a textbook American exercise in overwhelming material and numerical power that would simply bury even the most courageous adversaries. Many of the invading Americans were hardened veterans of the bloodletting on Iwo Jima, Peleliu, Saipan, and Tarawa. If they were successful in capturing the linchpin of the Ryukyu Islands, the Japanese mainland would lie defenseless to American ships, troops, and planes, all to be based a mere 350 miles away. Indeed, after the battle and despite the horrific costs, the official military history of Okinawa declared that "the military value of Okinawa exceeded all hope" as a base for "an even more desperate struggle to come." But the Americans in their great confidence and careful preparation had also overlooked an essential but...
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