"Art auctions have long captured the public imagination. They regularly make news headlines and have become synonymous with glamour, money and social distinction. The marketing of auction houses and the works they sell has resulted in firms attaining authoritative positions and the ability both to influence and reflect collecting tastes. Pedigree and panache is the first comprehensive history of the art auction in Australia. In this fascinating work, Shireen Huda investigates the construction of the glamorous reputation of art auctions and art auction houses. Featuring absorbing case studies of key art auctions and major art auction houses in Australia (including Christies, Sothebys and Deutscher-Menzies) the work provides an overview of the origin and international development of art auctions. The development of the Australian marketplace is then explored, detailing colonial inception and continuing until Christies' withdrawal of its saleroom presence in 2006."--Provided by publisher.

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.