At many points in the 20th century, failures in command or political direction have resulted in military campaigns and operations failing to achieve their objectives. This text explores a selection of such instances including Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs, the Falklands and Serbia in 1999.

Using original research from archives, interviews with MPs and party officials, and first hand testimonies from grass roots activists, the authors go behind the scenes to name names, record the votes, and lay bare the machinations of those who led the Labour Party to electoral defeat in 1992.

Includes chapters on slang, jargon, and neologisms.

How do people decide which country came out ahead in a war or a crisis? Why, for instance, was the Mayaguez Incident in May 1975--where 41 U.S. soldiers were killed and dozens more wounded in a botched hostage rescue mission--perceived as a triumph and the 1992-94 U.S. humanitarian intervention in Somalia, which saved thousands of lives, viewed as a disaster? In Failing to Win, Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney dissect the psychological factors that predispose leaders, media, and the public to perceive outcomes as victories or defeats--often creating wide gaps between perceptions and reality. To make their case, Johnson and Tierney employ two frameworks: "Scorekeeping," which focuses on actual material gains and losses; and "Match-fixing," where evaluations become skewed by mindsets, symbolic events, and media and elite spin. In case studies ranging from the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the current War on Terror, the authors show that much of what we accept about international politics and world history is not what it seems--and why, in a time when citizens offer or withdraw support based on an imagined view of the outcome rather than the result on the ground, perceptions of success or failure can shape the results of wars, the fate of leaders, and the "lessons" we draw from history.

From the Jaws of Victory:The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement is the most comprehensive history ever written on the meteoric rise and precipitous decline of the United Farm Workers, the most successful farm labor union in United States history. Based on little-known sources and one-of-a-kind oral histories with many veterans of the farm worker movement, this book revises much of what we know about the UFW. Matt Garcia’s gripping account of the expansion of the union’s grape boycott reveals how the boycott, which UFW leader Cesar Chavez initially resisted, became the defining feature of the movement and drove the growers to sign labor contracts in 1970. Garcia vividly relates how, as the union expanded and the boycott spread across the United States, Canada, and Europe, Chavez found it more difficult to organize workers and fend off rival unions. Ultimately, the union was a victim of its own success and Chavez’s growing instability. From the Jaws of Victory delves deeply into Chavez’s attitudes and beliefs, and how they changed over time. Garcia also presents in-depth studies of other leaders in the UFW, including Gilbert Padilla, Marshall Ganz, Dolores Huerta, and Jerry Cohen. He introduces figures such as the co-coordinator of the boycott, Jerry Brown; the undisputed leader of the international boycott, Elaine Elinson; and Harry Kubo, the Japanese American farmer who led a successful campaign against the UFW in the mid-1970s.

Winner of the 2019 Brigadier General James L. Collins Jr. Prize In To Win and Lose a Medieval Battle: Nájera (April 3, 1367). A Pyrrhic Victory for the Black Prince, L.J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay provide a full treatment of one of the major battles of the Hundred Years War, which, perhaps because it was fought in Spain, is lesser known to scholars and general readers. Drawing information from contemporary European chronicles and the massive documentary collections of Spanish and French archives, the authors have painstakingly investigated the Iberian and European background events to Nájera and have in minute detail laid out how the army of Enrique II of Castile (assisted by Bertand de Guesclin) and that of his half-brother, Pedro I of Castile (assisted by Edward, the Black Prince), clashed at Nájera on April 3, 1367. Winner of the 2019 Brigadier General James L. Collins Jr. Prize, awarded by the U.S. Commission on Military History for the best book on military history published in 2017 or 2018. The awarding committee praised the volume as ‘a genuinely original scholarly contribution... comprehensive, balanced, and insightful... this 600-page magnum opus will significantly enhance our understanding of military history during a seminal period of human development.’ See inside the book.

"A history of the character, causes and consequences of military stupidity, from Crassus to Johnson and Westmoreland"--Jacket