A century has now gone by, yet the Gallipoli campaign of 1915-16 is still infamous as arguably the most ill conceived, badly led and pointless campaign of the entire First World War. The brainchild of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, following Turkey's entry into the war on the German side, its ultimate objective was to capture the Gallipoli peninsula in western Turkey, thus allowing the Allies to take control of the eastern Mediterranean and increase pressure on the Central Powers to drain manpower from the vital Western Front. From the very beginning of the first landings, however, the campaign went awry, and countless casualties. The Allied commanders were ignorant of the terrain, and seriously underestimated the Turkish army which had been bolstered by their German allies. Thus the Allies found their campaign staled from the off and their troops hopelessly entrenched on the hillsides for long agonising months, through the burning summer and bitter winter, in appalling, dysentery-ridden conditions. By January 1916, the death toll stood at 21,000 British troops, 11,000 Australian and New Zealand, and 87,000 Turkish and the decision was made to withdraw, which in itself, ironically, was deemed to be a success. First published in 1956, when it won the inaugural Duff Cooper Prize, Alan Moorehead's book is still regarded as the definitive work on this tragic episode of the Great War. One could argue he was the first writer to capture the true turmoil that occurred in this campaign with his colourful, analytical and compelling style of prose. Sir Max Hastings himself says in this new introduction that he was inspired as a young man by Moorehead's books to become a reporter himself. With in-depth analysis of the campaign, the objectives both sides set themselves, and with character sketches of the main players, it brings the complex operation to life, showing how and why it went so terribly wrong and a century on, remains a by word for the loss of human life.

Point Pleasant’s Silver Bridge, the first eyebar suspension bridge in the United States, was an engineering marvel when it was constructed in 1927 and 1928. Located on US Highway 35, the bridge spanned the Ohio River and linked Point Pleasant, West Virginia, with the towns of Kanauga and Gallipolis, Ohio. For almost 40 years, the structure provided dependable service for travelers in the region. On December 15, 1967, this service came to a dramatic and disastrous end. At 4:58 p.m., during the height of rush hour, the bridge suddenly collapsed. Rescue and recovery operations started immediately but were hampered by poor weather conditions and freezing rain. The cause of the collapse was linked to the bridge’s innovative design. Undetected corrosion stress cracks caused an eyebar on the Ohio side to fracture; because the eyebars were linked together in a chain, the failure of one led to the catastrophic collapse of the entire bridge. In total, 46 lives were lost in the disaster.

The New Zealand Wars of the 1840s and 1860s, other nineteenth-century military encounters, the South African War, the First and Second World Wars, Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, the Gulf War, modern-day peacekeeping . . . The Penguin Book of New Zealanders at War contains the best, widest range of published and non-published written material on our people in warfare. This is a soldier's book - thus letters, diaries, journalists' reports, memoirs. The focus is on actual experience and on human responses to war. A vast array of personal experiences is covered, including POWs, the home front, medical/nursing efforts, as well as coverage of conscientious objectors.

Official records produced by the armies of the United States and the Confederacy, and the executive branches of their respective governments, concerning the military operations of the Civil War, and prisoners of war or prisoners of state. Also annual reports of military departments, calls for troops, correspondence between national and state governments, correspondence between Union and Confederate officials. The final volume includes a synopsis, general index, special index for various military divisions, and background information on how these documents were collected and published. Accompanied by an atlas.