The typical military history presents a chronicle of battles and wars and the commanders and troops who fought them. This book takes a different approach. It presents battles and wars and people aplenty, but they are not its ultimate subjects. This book is about the turning points that not only make military history dynamic but crucial to the story of humanity and civilization. This book is about the decisions, acts, innovations, errors, ideas, successes, and failures that shaped the evolution of military art and science—strategy, tactics, and technology—and, in doing so, shaped the course of world history. Here are the 100 points—from the birth of warfare in the Battle of Megiddo, 1457 BC, to the ongoing evolution of military history on its newest battlefield, cyberspace—at which the path of the warrior decisively turned on its long journey to where we find ourselves today.

Arnold J. Toynbee, the most famous professional historian of the twentieth century, is widely quoted as having declared that “History is just one damn thing after another.” This book argues that history is not about “things” at all but is all about turning points—the decisions, acts, innovations, errors, ideas, successes, and failures on which the shape of a nation’s life—our lives—depends. It presents the 100 points at which America’s path decisively turned on its way to where we find ourselves today. ● Columbus arrives in the New World ● The first slaves arrive in America ● Independence is declared ● Female suffragists meet in Seneca Falls ● Fort Sumter falls ● A transcontinental railroad is completed ● Edison lights his first electric lamp ● FDR offers a “New Deal” ● The B-29 Enola Gay drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima ● Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon ● President Nixon creates the EPA ● 9/11 … Obama … Sandy Hook … Russian election “meddling” … the Age of Trump … These and many more are the crucial “plot points” in our grand national story, and best-selling historian Alan Axelrod presents them here.

Military historian William R. Weir looks at the key developments in armoury, men, and strategies that forever changed the evolution of war. Weir analyses the evolving interrelationships between these developments to give readers a thorough picture of this fascinating and important subject. Here are fifty turning points that radically changed the face of warfare and, ultimately, the course of history. From the development of basic weapons using wood or bronze to the advent of Smart Weapons, this is the definitve guide.

American Military History provides the United States Army-in particular, its young officers, NCOs, and cadets-with a comprehensive but brief account of its past. The Center of Military History first published this work in 1956 as a textbook for senior ROTC courses. Since then it has gone through a number of updates and revisions, but the primary intent has remained the same. Support for military history education has always been a principal mission of the Center, and this new edition of an invaluable history furthers that purpose. The history of an active organization tends to expand rapidly as the organization grows larger and more complex. The period since the Vietnam War, at which point the most recent edition ended, has been a significant one for the Army, a busy period of expanding roles and missions and of fundamental organizational changes. In particular, the explosion of missions and deployments since 11 September 2001 has necessitated the creation of additional, open-ended chapters in the story of the U.S. Army in action. This first volume covers the Army's history from its birth in 1775 to the eve of World War I. By 1917, the United States was already a world power. The Army had sent large expeditionary forces beyond the American hemisphere, and at the beginning of the new century Secretary of War Elihu Root had proposed changes and reforms that within a generation would shape the Army of the future. But world war-global war-was still to come. The second volume of this new edition will take up that story and extend it into the twenty-first century and the early years of the war on terrorism and includes an analysis of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq up to January 2009.

In this gripping new look at the 20th century's most crucial conflict, historian Bell analyzes 12 unique turning points that determined the character and the ultimate outcome of the Second World War.

Introduces one of the key battles in the Korean War of 1950 to 1953.

Provides detailed information on the events leading up to and taking place during the Tet Offensive, a turning point in the struggle for the control of Vietnam. Includes source notes and timeline.