Awesome Artillery Album and Music Offers

Whether playing at defending their own castle or simply chucking pumpkins over a fence, wannabe marauders and tinkerers will become fast acquainted with Ludgar, the War Wolf, Ill Neighbor, Cabulus, and the Wild Donkey-ancient artillery devices known commonly as catapults. Re-creating these simple yet sophisticated machines introduces fundamentals of math and physics using levers, force, torsion, tension, and traction. Instructions and diagrams illustrate how to build seven authentic working model catapults, including an early Greek ballista, a Roman onager, and the apex of catapult technology, the English trebuchet. Additional projects include learning how to lash and make rope and how to construct and use a hand sling and a staff sling. The colorful history of siege warfare is explored through the stories of Alexander the Great and his battle of Tyre; Saladin, Richard the Lionheart, and the Third Crusade; pirate-turned-soldier John Crabbe and his ship-mounted catapults; and Edward I of England and his battle against the Scots at Stirling Castle..
Price: $9.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Strange sounds resembling the remote rumble of distant thunder were audible Everybody understood: it was the echo of the battle for Stalingrad . . . A heavy rain began falling

Stalingrad's outskirts provided Isaak Kobylyanskiy, a 19-year-old Jew from Ukraine, with his first exposure to combat and initiated his long odyssey in the Great Patriotic War against Germany. It would be more than three years before he was finally reunited with his family and his sweetheart, Vera, the schoolmate he had promised to marry.

Kobylyanskiy started the war as a 76-mm infantry support gun crew commander for the 300th Rifle Division (and its later incarnations) and celebrated V-E Day as a battery commander. His combat journey was a long process of exhausting marches punctuated by harrowing moments of intense combat. From the liberation of Sevastopol, through Lithuania's countryside, to the final storming of Königsberg's heavy fortifications, Kobylyanskiy's memoir sweeps across the great expanses of the Eastern Front. His narrative is packed with dramatic details and insights into the daily life of the Soviet army: the relentless marches to locate and engage the enemy, the prejudicial treatment of female soldiers, and the plight of Soviet civilians.

Kobylyanskiy also discusses the role of military political officers (and his own conflicted views on communism), clarifies the place of Jews in the Red Army and discusses how his reaction to anti-Semitic utterances added a sense of responsibility to his fighting, and frames his account with personal glimpses into the stifling repression of Stalinist society, including the brutal collectivization program and resulting famine in Ukraine. But he balances such memories with warm recollections of some of his comrades and especially with an affecting portrait of his courtship of Vera, and concludes with an emotional coda: their wedding ceremony in a war-ravaged but recovering Kiev.

By turns vivid, reflective, intense, and entertaining, Kobylyanskiy's narrative charts one warrior's epic journey and joins a select group of memoirs that deepen our understanding of what it was like for Russian soldiers on the Eastern Front.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series..
Price: $13.66 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Impressive in terms of scale and structure, the Fire Support Base became a dominant element in ground maneuver during the Vietnam War. Initially a mobile base, it soon evolved into a semi-permanent and more sophisticated fortress as a result of enemy counterattacks and bombardments.

As a consequence, the majority of US and other allied troops found themselves pinned down in defensive or support roles, rather than being free to conduct 'search and destroy' or other mobile missions. Thus, the first and foremost function of the Fire Support Base was defensive. Troops, machine guns, mortars, artillery, surveillance radars, and command centers all had to be dug into bunkers and fire trenches by nightfall of the first day. Around these positions there would be deep belts of barbed wire, generously scattered with several different types of mines and even, in a few cases after 1967, with a brand new series of electronic sensors to detect and locate the enemy at a distance.

With the benefit of the on-site howitzers, the FSB could also deliver offensive high volume fire, reaching as far as 14,600m and eliminating enemy firing sites, supporting friendly infantry operations, or simply participating in fire missions where exact targets were not known. In fact, the fort offered such a degree of support and protection that ground maneuver was eventually hampered by the troop's reluctance to leave the comfort and safety of the FSB.

With a description of the design, development and operational history of the Fire Support Base, this book provides the key to understanding one of the main assets of US battle strategy in the Vietnam War..
Price: $7.85 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Determined to learn from the lessons of World War I where it was unprepared and heavily reliant on British and French guns, the US Army developed a whole new generation of field artillery weapons and tactics during the 1930s. Consequently, in World War II it was the clear leader in field artillery.

Providing a thorough examination of the many critical innovations and doctrines, and the impact they had on performance in combat, this book demonstrates why US field artillery was so effective in World War II. Innovations featured include the motorization of artillery, which increased mobility; fire direction centers, which enhanced their firepower; aerial observation; and radio communications.

Exploring, in their entirety, the weapons that formed the backbone of the US artillery arsenal in World War II, this book reveals a wealth of detail not readily available elsewhere.

.
Price: $7.44 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Both the cavalry and the artillery played critical roles in the Civil War. The uniforms of horsemen and cannoneers resembled those of the infantry but differed in key respects, such as the bright yellow trim that distinguished the cavalry and the crossed-cannon insignia of the artillery. The artwork in this volume gives a flavour of how these specialised troops were outfitted..
Price: $3.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

History: Fiction or Science? is the most explosive tractate on history ever written - however, every theory it contains, no matter how unorthodox, is backed by solid scientific data. The book is well-illustrated, contains over 446 graphs and illustrations, copies of ancient manuscripts, and countless facts attesting to the falsity of the chronology used nowadays, which never cease to amaze the reader. Eminent mathematician proves that: Jesus Christ was born in 1153 and crucified in 1186 The Old Testament refers to mediaeval events. Apocalypse was written after 1486. Does this sound uncanny? This version of events is substantiated by hard facts and logic - validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources - to a greater extent than everything you may have read and heard about history before. The dominating historical discourse in its current state was essentially crafted in the XVI century from a rather contradictory jumble of sources such as innumerable copies of ancient Latin and Greek manuscripts whose originals had vanished in the Dark Ages and the allegedly irrefutable proof offered by late mediaeval astronomers, resting upon the power of ecclesial authorities. Nearly all of its components are blatantly untrue! For some of us, it shall possibly be quite disturbing to see the magnificent edifice of classical history to turn into an ominous simulacrum brooding over the snake pit of mediaeval politics. Twice so, in fact: the first seeing the legendary millenarian dust on the ancient marble turn into a mere layer of dirt - one that meticulous unprejudiced research can eventually remove. The second, and greater, attack of unease comes with the awareness of just how many areas of human knowledge still trust the three elephants of the consensual chronology to support them. Nothing can remedy that except for an individual chronological revolution happening in the minds of a large enough number of people..
Price: $14.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

.
Price: $25.05 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The book is based on the official unit history of the 319th Glider Field Artillery Battalion, one of two field artillery battalions attached to the famous 82nd Airborne Division. The men of the 319th made two glider assaults during WWII, the first on D Day in Normandy (where almost 20% of the men were killed or injured in the multiple glider crashes behind enemy lines) and the second during the invasion of Holland. Gliders were used by both Allied and Axis armies in Europe to bring large numbers of fighting men, artillery and heavier weapons onto the battlefields as part of several large scale Airborne invasions. The gliders were towed by powered aircraft such as the DC-3 or various bombers (in the case of the British and German glider troops) and then were released behind enemy lines to float silently to the battlefield with no offensive weapons, no armored plating to ward off anti-aircraft or machine gun fire and no effective landing gear or steering mechanisms to avoid crash landing.Of the 16 million service men and women, who served the United States during WW II, less than 1% were required to ride into battle aboard these powerless, unarmed aircraft, in what the History Channel has described as "Suicide Missions" of WW II. However, because the helicopter had not yet been perfected, the men of the 319th provided sorely needed artillery support to the paratroops of the 82nd and fought alongside the men of the 504th, 505th, 507th, 508th and glider troops of the 325th regiments (82nd Airborne) in every major battle of the ETO. In this thrilling saga, follow the men of the 319th from N. Africa to Italy, then on to the British Isles, where they prepared for the Normandy Invasion on June 6th, 1944. In Normandy the 319th Glider artillerymen, along with the paratroops of the 82nd Airborne, set a record for 33 days of continual combat without relief. Then it was back to England for several months of training before embarking on Operation Market-Garden, the invasion of Holland. When the British First Airborne surrendered to the Germans in Arnhem, the 319th went fought defensive action for over 40 days supporting the British forces until relieved and sent to France for a much needed rest and retraining. This respite from combat did not last long however as the 82nd Div (including the 319th was called up to the front lines in December of 1944 to stem the German Ardennes Offensive. In January of 1945, the 319th was part of the attack on the Siegfried Line, the last western defense of Nazi Germany. Later the 319th liberated Cologne,Germany and was sent on a mad rush in April of 1945 to keep the Russians from coming too far West and possibly capturing Denmark. The 319th is one of the most highly decorated units among all of the U.S. Airborne forces, winning two Presidential Unit citations in WWII and then their third and fourth Presidential Unit citations for combat valor in Vietnam. During WWII,the men of the 319th fired over 88,000 high explosive shells against the enemy in five separate campaigns from Italy to the Siegfried Line, unleashing the equivalent destructive power of 3,345,786 pounds of TNT against German soldiers, troop vehicles, German artillery positions, Tiger tanks, 88 gun positions and pill boxes with devastating effectiveness..
Price: $19.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The complex relationship between America and the Arab world goes back further than most Americans or Arabs realize. In Artillery of Heaven, Ussama Makdisi presents a foundational American encounter with the Arab world that occurred in the nineteenth century, shortly after the arrival of the first American Protestant missionaries in the Middle East. He tells the dramatic tale of the conversion and death of As'ad Shidyaq, the earliest Arab convert to American Protestantism. The struggle over this man's body and soul--and over how his story might be told--changed the actors and cultures on both sides.

In the unfamiliar, multireligious landscape of the Middle East, American missionaries at first conflated Arabs with Native Americans and American culture with an uncompromising evangelical Christianity. In turn, their Christian and Muslim opponents in the Ottoman Empire condemned the missionaries as malevolent intruders. Yet during the ensuing confrontation within and across cultures an unanticipated spirit of toleration was born that cannot be credited to either Americans or Arabs alone. Makdisi provides a genuinely transnational narrative for this new, liberal awakening in the Middle East, and the challenges that beset it.

By exploring missed opportunities for cultural understanding, by retrieving unused historical evidence, and by juxtaposing for the first time Arab perspectives and archives with American ones, this book counters a notion of an inevitable clash of civilizations and thus reshapes our view of the history of America in the Arab world..
Price: $20.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]