This latest Images of War series book examines the controversial development of the Allied campaign in Normandy in the weeks after the D-Day landings. After overcoming Rommel’s beach obstacles and ‘Atlantic Wall’ fortifications, a secure Allied lodgment of the five beaches developed along the Caen-Bayeux-Carentan axis with a period of consolidation while reinforcements and supplies were built up. The early arrival of 12th SS Hitlerjugend, 21st Panzer and the Panzer Lehr Divisions delayed Montgomery’s Anglo-Canadian capture of Caen until mid-July and prevented an early breakout into the countryside inland from Gold, Juno and Sword which was suitable for armored combat. An early American goal was to cut the Cotentin Peninsula in two at its southern base to prevent the Germans from supplying and strengthening the deep-water port of Cherbourg, which U.S. VII Corps captured on 26 June. Inland from Omaha and Utah, the close ‘bocage’ country proved advantageous to the German defenders. The Allied breakout occurred at the end of July with Bradley’s Operation COBRA near St. Lo followed by the entire Allied front first moving to close the Falaise Gap before heading southward and then pivoting to the east for the capture of the Seine River crossings. These crucial and testing weeks for the Allies are described in graphic contemporary images with full captions and authoritative text.

An important rethinking of the Normandy war narrative Beyond the Beach examines the Allied air war against France in 1944. During this period, General Dwight David Eisenhower, as Supreme Allied Commander, took control of all American, British, and Canadian air units and employed them for tactical and operational purposes over France rather than as a strategic force to attack targets deep in Germany. Using bombers as his long-range artillery, he directed the destruction of bridges, rail centers, ports, military installations, and even French towns with the intent of preventing German reinforcements from interfering with Operation Neptune, the Allied landings on the Normandy beaches. Ultimately, this air offensive resulted in the death of over 60,000 French civilians and an immense amount of damage to towns, churches, buildings, and works of art. This intense bombing operation, conducted against a friendly occupied state, resulted in a swath of physical and human destruction across northwest France that is rarely discussed as part of the D-Day landings. This book explores the relationship between ground and air operations and its effects on the French population. It examines the three broad groups that the air operations involved, the doctrine and equipment used by Allied air force leaders to implement Eisenhower’s plans, and each of the eight major operations, called lines of effort, that coordinated the employment of the thousands of fighters, medium bombers, and heavy bombers that prowled the French skies that spring and summer of 1944. Each of these sections discusses the operation's purpose, conduct, and effects upon both the military and the civilian targets. Finally, the book explores the short and long-term effects of these operations and argues that this ignored narrative should be part of any history of the D-Day landings.

Expanded edition with a new chapter on the final battles of the Normandy campaign.

The story of our separate and unequal America in the making, and one man's fight against it During the long, hot summers of the late 1960s and 1970s, one man began a campaign to open some of America's most exclusive beaches to minorities and the urban poor. That man was anti-poverty activist and one‑time presidential candidate Ned Coll of Connecticut, a state that permitted public access to a mere seven miles of its 253‑mile shoreline. Nearly all of the state's coast was held privately, for the most part by white, wealthy residents. This book is the first to tell the story of the controversial protester who gathered a band of determined African American mothers and children and challenged the racist, exclusionary tactics of homeowners in a state synonymous with liberalism. Coll's legacy of remarkable successes--and failures--illuminates how our nation's fragile coasts have not only become more exclusive in subsequent decades but also have suffered greater environmental destruction and erosion as a result of that private ownership.

Havana is Cuba's soul: a mix of Third World, First World, and Other World. After over a decade of visits as a teacher, researcher, and friend, Karen Dubinsky looks past political slogans and tourist postcards to the streets, neighbourhoods, and personalities of a complicated and contradictory city. Her affectionate, humorous vignettes illustrate how Havana's residents--old Communist ladies, their sceptical offspring, musicians, underground vendors, entrepreneurial landlords, and poverty-stricken professors--go about their daily lives. As Cuba undergoes dramatic change, there is much to appreciate, and learn from, in the unlikely world Cubans have collectively built for themselves. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the Queen's University Student Overseas Travel Fund--The Sonia Enjamio Fund, which funds Cuban/Canadian student exchange.

Beyond the Blood, the Beach and the Banana emphasises the significance of the Caribbean in an increasingly globalised social world and draws attention to the contribution that scholarship in Caribbean Studies makes in coming to terms with a multi-cultural heritage. The compilation deliberately ranges in focus across periods, geographies, linguistic divisions and subject matter to present the fruition of significant research projects by 25 researchers from the Caribbean, North America and Europe. Contributors on the Hispanic, Dutch, African, Indian and Anglophone Caribbean juxtaposed with work on the Caribbean diasporas of the USA, UK, Canada and the Netherlands enrich the text with multiple perspectives.

A human and global take on a beloved vacation spot. The crash of surf, smell of salted air, wet whorls of sand underfoot. These are the sensations of the beach, that environment that has drawn humans to its life-sustaining shores for millennia. And while the gull’s cry and the cove’s splendor have remained constant throughout time, our relationship with the beach has been as fluid as the runnels left behind by the tide’s turning. The Lure of the Beach is a chronicle of humanity's history with the coast, taking us from the seaside pleasure palaces of Roman elites and the aquatic rituals of medieval pilgrims, to the venues of modern resort towns and beyond. Robert C. Ritchie traces the contours of the material and social economies of the beach throughout time, covering changes in the social status of beach goers, the technology of transport, and the development of fashion (from nudity to Victorianism and back again), as well as the geographic spread of modern beach-going from England to France, across the Mediterranean, and from nineteenth-century America to the world. And as climate change and rising sea levels erode the familiar faces of our coasts, we are poised for a contemporary reckoning with our relationship—and responsibilities—to our beaches and their ecosystems. The Lure of the Beach demonstrates that whether as a commodified pastoral destination, a site of ecological resplendency, or a flashpoint between private ownership and public access, the history of the beach is a human one that deserves to be told now more than ever before.