After training at St John's Wood in London and in Exeter, Alexander Douglas Thorburn was posted to the BEF in France, joining the 2/22nd London (Howitzer) Battery, Royal Field Artillery as a subaltern officer. After service in the Vimy Ridge sector, with his division, the 60th (2/2nd London) Division, he crossed the Mediterranean to join the British Army in Salonika. Following a further move in mid-1917, Thorburn arrived in Palestine where he saw service with the 74th (Yeomanry) Division during the advance on Jerusalem. A final move in 1918 took the now Captain Thorburn back to the Western Front to take part in the Advance to Victory during the closing months of the war. ??After the war, Thorburn wrote an account of his military service between 1916 and 1918, recording his experiences in France, Greece and Palestine as well as his initial training in England. He also wrote a series of observations on life as a gunner during the First World War. Both the account and observations were published as a book, Amateur Gunners, in 1933 by William Potter of Liverpool. Today, the book is out of print. ??In addition to the book, of which a small number of copies still exist of course, there are an extensive series of private letters written by Thorburn while on active service to his mother, father and other relatives. The letters are in the possession of Thorburn's only grandson. ??Together, the book and letters offer a fascinating insight into the life of a First World War artillery officer. Lucidly written in a candid style, Thorburn shows excellent observation, description and narration skills. While Amateur Gunners itself is worthy of reprint, when combined with Thorburn's private letters and historical context from author Ian Ronayne, this book offers a unique look at a gunner's experience during the Great War.

A history of the Gunners told through in-depth biographies of the team’s key players on and off the pitch, from its late 19th century beginnings to today. Arsenal: The Story of a Football Club in 101 Lives tells the history of the team through the biographies of key individuals associated with the club from its formation in the gas-lit days of Victorian Britain through to the present day. From David Danskin, the Scottish mechanical engineer and footballer who was the driving force behind the team raised at Dial Square, a workshop at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, to Arsene Wenger, the longest-serving and most successful manager in Arsenal’s history. The in-depth stories of the characters—players, managers, chairmen—here paint a fascinating picture of how the club—indeed, the game of football itself—has developed from workers playing for fun to today’s multi-million-pound business.

A fascinating look at how a commercial market for birds in the late nineteenth century set the stage for conservation and its legislation. Between the end of the Civil War and the 1920s, the United States witnessed the creation, rapid expansion, and then disappearance of a commercial market for hunted wild animals. The bulk of commercial wildlife sales in the last part of the nineteenth century were of wildfowl, who were prized not only for their eggs and meat but also for their beautiful feathers. Wild birds were brought to cities in those years to be sold as food for customers' tables, decorations for ladies' hats, treasured pets, and specimens for collectors' cabinets. Though relatively short-lived, this market in birds was broadly influential, its rise and fall coinciding with the birth of the Progressive Era conservation movement. In The Market in Birds, historian Andrea L. Smalley and wildlife biologist Henry M. Reeves illuminate this crucial chapter in American environmental history. Touching on ecology, economics, law, and culture, the authors reveal how commercial hunting set the terms for wildlife conservation and the first federal wildlife legislation at the turn of the twentieth century. Smalley and Reeves delve into the ground-level interactions among market hunters, game dealers, consumers, sportsmen, conservationists, and the wild birds they all wanted. Ultimately, they argue, wildfowl commercialization represented a revolutionary shift in wildlife use, turning what had been a mostly limited, local, and seasonal trade into an interstate industrial-capitalist enterprise. In the process, it provoked a critical public debate over the value of wildlife in a modern consumer culture. By the turn of the twentieth century, the authors reveal, it was clear that wild bird populations were declining precipitously all over North America. The looming possibility of a future without birds sparked intense debate nationwide and eventually culminated in the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Scholars, environmentalists, wildlife professionals, and anyone concerned about wildlife will find this new perspective on conservation history enlightening reading.

The first full-length study of the experience and memory of British and Dominion soldiers in the Middle East and Macedonia during WWI.