Author:
Boot, Max, 1968-
Edition Statement:1st ed.
Imprint:New York : Liveright Pub. Corp., c2013.
Descriptionxxix, 750 p., [14] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 25 cm.
Note:Prologue: Baghdad patrol, April 9, 2007 -- I. Barbarians at the gate : the origins of guerrilla warfare. Ambush at Beth-Horon : Romans vs. Jews, AD 66 -- Classical conflicts : the Peloponnesian War, Alexander the Great in Central Asia, the Maccabees, and the Bar Kokhba Revolt, 426 BC-AD -- Uncivilized warfare : tribal wars of mass destruction -- Akkad and the origins Of insurgency : Mesopotamia, 2334-2005 BC -- Catch me if you can : Persians vs. Scythians, 512 BC -- "Create a desert" : the origins of counterinsurgency in Assyria and Rome, 1100 BC-AD 212 -- Rome's downfall : the Barbarian invasions, AD 370-476 -- An Eastern way of war? Ancient Chinese warfare beyond Sun Tzu -- Nomads and mandarins : Xiongnu vs. Han, 200 BC-AD 48 -- The guerrilla paradox : why the weak beat the strong -- The tartan rebellions : Scotland vs. England, 1296-1746 -- War by the book : the counterinsurgents' advantage -- II. Liberty or death : the rise of the liberal revolutionaries. Irregulars in the age of reason : hussars, pandours, and rangers, 1648-1775 -- The American hornets : the revolution against Britain, 1775-1783 -- War to the knife : the Peninsular War, 1808-1814 -- Black Spartacus : the Haitian War of Independence, 1791-1804 -- Greeks and their lovers : the Greek War of Independence, 1821-1832 -- Hero of two worlds : Giuseppe Garibaldi and the struggle for Italian unification, 1833-1872 -- Revolutionary consequences : the liberal achievement -- III. The spreading oil ssot : the wars of empire. The wars that weren't : why did so few guerrillas resist the European advance? -- The skulking way of war : the "forest wars" in eastern North America, 1622-1842 -- The winning of the West : braves vs. Bluecoats, 1848-1890 -- The winning of the East : the holy war against Russia in Chechnya and Dagestan, 1829-1859 -- Dark defiles : the First Anglo-Afghan War, 1838-1842 -- Northwest Frontier : Britain and the Pashtuns, 1897-1947 -- Mission civilisatrice : Lyautey in Morocco, 1912-1925 -- Commandos : Britain's near-defeat in South Africa, 1899-1902 -- High noon for empire : why imperialism carried the seeds of its own destruction -- IV. The bomb throwers : the first age of international terrorism. Suicide knifers : the Assassins, AD 1090-1256 -- John Brown's body : the terrorist who helped start the Civil War, 1856-1859 -- The destruction of Reconstruction : Ku Kluxers and the war against civil rights, 1866-1876 -- Propaganda by the deed : Anarchists, ca, 1880-ca. 1939 -- Hunting the Tsar : the Nihilists on the trail of Alexander II, 1879-1881 -- 'An uncontrollable explosion" : socialist revolutionaries in Russia, 1902-1917 -- Shinners and Peelers : the Irish War of Independence, 1919-1921 -- The terrorist mind : sinners or saints? -- V. The sideshows : guerrillas and commandos in the World Wars. The Thirty Years' War : blood Brothers and Brownshirts, 1914-1945 -- The evolution of an archaeologist : "Lawrence of Arabia," 1916-1935 -- The regular irregulars : the birth of the special Forces in World War II -- Wingate's wars : a "wayward genius" in Palestine, Abyssinia, and Burma, 1936-1944 -- Resistance and collaboration : Yugoslavia, 1941-1945, and the limits of scorched-earth counterinsurgency -- Assessing the "supersoldiers" : did commandos make a difference? -- VI. The end of empire : the wars of "national liberation". The world after the war : the slipping European grip -- The rise of the red emperor : Mao Zedong's long march to power, 1921-1949 -- Adieu at Dien Bien Phu : the Indochina War, 1945-1954 -- "Convince or coerce" : the Algerian War of Independence, 1954-1962 -- A man and a plan : Briggs, Templer, and the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960 -- "A distinctly British approach"? Why the British succeeded, at least sometimes -- VII. Radical chic : the romance of the leftist revolutionaries. Two sides of the coin : the guerrilla mystique in the 1960's-1970's -- The quiet American : Edward Lansdale and the Huk Rebellion, 1945-1954 -- Creating South Vietnam : Lansdale and Diem, 1954-1956 -- The other war : the limitations of firepower in Vietnam, 1960-1973 -- M-26-7 : Castro's improbable comeback, 1952-1959 -- Foco or loco? Che's quixotic quest, 1965-1967 -- The children of '68, and '48 : the raid on Entebbe and the terrorism of the 1970's -- Arafat's odyssey : what terrorism did and did not achieve for the Palestinians -- Left out, or rebels without a cause : the end of the (Marxist) affair in the 1980's -- VIII. God's killers : the rise of radical Islam. Fifty days that shook the world : Tehran, Mecca, Islamabad, and Kabul, November 4-December 24, 1979 -- Russia's Vietnam : the Red Army vs. the Mujahideen, 1980-1989 -- The A team : the "party of God" in Lebanon, 1982-2006 -- The terrorist Internationale : Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, 1988-2011 -- Carnage In Mesopotamia : Al Qaeda in Iraq since 2003 -- Counterinsurgency rediscovered : David Petraeus and the Surge, 2007-2008 -- Down and out? The failures and successes of the global Islamist insurgency -- Epilogue: Meeting in Marjah, October 23, 2011 -- Implications : twelve articles, or the lessons of five thousand years -- Appendix: The Invisible Armies database.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (p. [643]-707) and index.
