Pearl Harbor . . . Midway . . . Guadalcanal . . . The Marianas . . . Leyte Gulf . . . Iwo Jima . . . Okinawa. These are just seven of the twenty battles that the USS Enterprise took part in during World War II. No other American ship came close to matching her record. Enterprise is the epic, heroic story of this legendary aircraft carrier-nicknamed "the fightingest ship" in the U.S. Navy-and of the men who fought and died on her.

America's most decorated warship, Enterprise was constantly engaged against the Japanese Empire from December 1941 until May 1945. Her career was eventful, vital, and short. She was commissioned in 1938, and her bombers sank a submarine just three days after the Pearl Harbor attack, claiming the first seagoing Japanese vessel lost in the war. It was the auspicious beginning of an odyssey that Tillman captures brilliantly, from escorting sister carrier Hornet as it launched the Doolittle Raiders against Tokyo in 1942, to playing leading roles in the pivotal battles of Midway and Guadalcanal, to undergoing the shattering nightmare of kamikaze strikes just three months before the end of the war.

Barrett Tillman has been called "the man who owns naval aviation history." He's mined official records and oral histories as well as his own interviews with the last surviving veterans who served on Enterprise to give us not only a stunning portrait of the ship's unique contribution to winning the Pacific war, but also unforgettable portraits of the men who flew from her deck and worked behind the scenes to make success possible. Enterprise is credited with sinking or wrecking 71 Japanese ships and destroying 911 enemy aircraft. She sank two of the four Japanese carriers lost at Midway and contributed to sinking the third. Additionally, 41 men who served in Enterprise had ships named after them.

As with Whirlwind, Tillman's book on the air war against Japan, Enterprise focuses on the lower ranks-the men who did the actual fighting. He puts us in the shoes of the teenage sailors and their captains and executive officers who ran the ship day-to-day. He puts us in the cockpits of dive bombers and other planes as they careen off Enterprise's flight deck to attack enemy ships and defend her against Japanese attackers. We witness their numerous triumphs and many tragedies along the way. However, Tillman does not neglect the top brass-he takes us into the ward rooms and headquarters where larger-than-life flag officers such as Chester Nimitz and William Halsey set the broad strategy for each campaign.

But the main character in the book is the ship itself. "The Big E" was at once a warship and a human institution, vitally unique to her time and place. In this last-minute grab at a quickly fading history, Barrett Tillman preserves the Enterprise story even as her fliers and sailors are departing the scene.

This book examines the Canadian battles in Northern France during the First and Second World Wars. The Great War battlefields of the Somme, Beaumont-Hamel, Vimy and Arras, and the last Hundred Days campaign are examined in great detail with many never-before-published photographs and detailed maps. The Second World War section contains a chapter on the ill-fated Dieppe raid of August 1942 as well as the 1944 Pursuit to the Seine and Channel Ports battles.

Published by the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies and distributed by Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Contemporary Debates on Terrorismis an innovative new textbook, addressing a number of key issues in contemporary terrorism studies from both ''traditional'' and ''critical'' perspectives.

In recent years the terrorism studies field has grown significantly, with an increasing number of scholars beginning to debate the complex dynamics underlying this category of violence. Within the broader field, there are many identifiable controversies and issues which divide scholarly opinion, a number of which are discussed in this text:

• Theoretical issues, such as the definition of terrorism and state terrorism;
• Substantive issues, including the threat posed by al Qaeda and the utility of different responses to terrorism;
• Ethical issues, encompassing the torture of terrorist suspects and targeted assassination

The format of the volume involves a leading scholar taking a particular position on the controversy, followed by an opposing or alternative viewpoint written by another contributor. In addition to the pedagogic value of allowing students to read opposing arguments in one place, the volume will also be important for providing an overview of the state of the field and its key lines of debate.

Contemporary Debates on Terrorismwill be essential reading for all students of terrorism and political violence, critical terrorism studies, critical security studies, security studies and IR in general.

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, lives on in popular memory as the "Invincible General," loved by his men, admired by his peers, formidable to his opponents. This incisive book revises such a portrait, offering an accurate-and controversial-new analysis of Wellington''s remarkable military career. Unlike his nemesis Napoleon, Wellington was by no means a man of innate military talent, Huw J. Davies argues. Instead, the key to Wellington''s military success was an exceptionally keen understanding of the relationship between politics and war.

Drawing on extensive primary research, Davies discusses Wellington''s military apprenticeship in India, where he learned through mistakes as well as successes how to plan campaigns, organize and use intelligence, and negotiate with allies. In India Wellington encountered the constant political machinations of indigenous powers, and it was there that he apprenticed in the crucial skill of balancing conflicting political priorities. In later campaigns and battles, including the Peninsular War and Waterloo, Wellington''s genius for strategy, operations, and tactics emerged. For his success in the art of war, he came to rely on his art as a politician and tactician. This strikingly original book shows how Wellington made even unlikely victories possible-with a well-honed political brilliance that underpinned all of his military achievements.

At the center of this investigation is the great modernization effort of a West German state, Bavaria, in the 1970s and 1980s, by means of a reform of the smaller units of local government. The reforms were meant to abolish all autonomous local governments serving populations of fewer than 3000, thereby reducing the number of local governments in Bavaria from more than 7,000 to less than 2,000. Based on interviews, surveys, and statistical research, this study chronicles fifteen communities and their challenges, developments, and social changes from post-1945 up to the present.While this book explores the decline of the iconic village community, it also reveals the survival of medieval towns in a contemporary world, and despite the modern desire for comprehensive and well-integrated services, there remains a seemingly perennial appeal of small town and village life.

Joel Barlow was the early republic''s most tenacious diplomat, a cheerful volunteer for difficult missions. His hard-won treaties with Algiers,Tunis, and Tripoli ended, at least briefly, the attacks of Barbary pirates on American shipping in the Mediterranean. And on the eve of the War of 1812,Madison sent him to France where he subsequently won important wartime concessions from Napoleon. Young Barlow wrote The Vision of Columbus, his would-be epic poem, while serving as an army chaplain fresh out of Yale University. He later sold western lands to French emigres, ran for a seat in the French National Assembly, escaped the Terror, and ultimately made his fortune as a cargo broker. His ties with the Jeffersonian elite and long-time familiarity with the Paris political scene made him President Madison''s logical choice to keep the peace by trying to win enough concessions from France to demand the same of Britain. Peter Hill''s fast-paced biography, while closing in on the intricacies of Barlow''s diplomatic career, also portrays his subject as a conscious nation builder, a visionary who foresaw his country''s worldwide role in spreading democratic institutions, committing itself to free trade, and involving its federal government in the cause of public education. Hill brings to life a true Enlightenment man whose love of country, democracy, and learning reveals the soul of an age.

On 25 May 1944 800 men of the 500th SS Parachute battalion descended on Drvar, a town behind enemy lines in north-western Bosnia; their aim was to kill or capture Tito, a major leader of the Yugoslavian partisan movement. The Abwehr had discovered his location there. SS Major Otto Skorzeny had even pinpointed his personal quarters to a cave on the ridge that overlooked the village, but because of inter-agency rivalry between the SS and Abwehr this information was not exploited. Nevertheless a plan was developed to land the battalion by glider and parachute in two waves, which would be relieved the next day by a ground assault. Tito knew an attack was imminent but dismissed the idea of an airborne assault. He set up an alternative nighttime location but on the evening before the attack decided to stay in Drvar to celebrate his birthday.

At 0800 600 men landed by glider and parachute. The fiercest combat centred on the Communist Party HQ, which was demolished by satchel charges. Captain Rybka, the unit commanding officer, then redirected his forces on the ridge, correctly suspecting Tito was located there. Conscious of the prize that awaited them the German paratroopers were relentless but two companies of Tito''s bodyguard battalion succeeded in repelling them. By the time the second wave landed and another attack could be mounted Tito had escaped through the woods. The paratroopers were forced to withdraw to a cemetery and endured successive attacks throughout the night, before relief arrived the following day.
The attempt to eliminate Tito was a colossal failure. The elite battalion had been decimated with only 200 men fit for duty the next day. The Germans had failed to exploit HUMINT about Tito''s precise location and adopted a plan that did not take into account intelligence limitations. Rybka''s failure to redirect the second wave onto the ridge above the cave ended all hope of mission success.

A.D. Lee explores the processes which resulted in such a massive shift, and the often unforeseen events which led to the establishment of an empire and a dynasty.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of the exercise of political power and justice in the Middle East from ancient Mesopotamia through into the 20^thcentury, through a detailed examination of "the Circle of Justice". An indigenous concept of justice which has underpinned the exercise of power in the Middle East to the current day, the Circle of Justice depicts graphically how a government''s justice toward the population generates political power, military strength, prosperity, and good administration.

The book traces this set of relationships from its earliest appearance in the political writings of the Sumerians through four millennia of Middle Eastern culture. It explores how people conceptualized and acted upon this powerful insight, how they portrayed it in symbol, painting, and story, and how they transmitted it from one regime to the next. Moving towards the modern day, the author shows how although the Circle of Justice was largely dropped from political discourse, it did not disappear from people''s political culture and expectations of government. The book demonstrates the Circle''s relevance to the Iranian Revolution and the rise of Islamist movements all over the Middle East, and suggests how the concept remains relevant in an age of capitalism.

A "must read" for students, policymakers, and ordinary citizens, this book will be an important contribution to the areas of political history, political theory, Middle East studies and Orientalism.

From the author of the bestselling London: The Biography, a poetic and powerful urban history of life and legend beneath London.

This is a wonderful, atmospheric, historical, imaginative, oozing little study of verything that goes on under London, from original springs and streams and Roman amphitheatres to Victorian sewers and gang hide-outs. The depth below is hot, much warmer than the surface and this book tunnels down through the geological layers, meeting the creatures that dwell in darkness, real and fictional -- rats and eels, monsters and ghosts.

There is a bronze-age trackway under the Isle of Dogs, Wren found Anglo-Saxon graves under St Paul''s, and the monastery of Whitefriars lies beneath Fleet Street. In Kensal Green cemetery there was a hydraulic device to lower bodies into the catacombs below -- "Welcome to the lower depths". A door in the plinth of statue of Boadicea on Westminster Bridge leads to a huge tunnel, packed with cables -- gas, water, telephone. When the Metropolitan Line was opened in 1864 the guards asked for permission to grow beards to protect themselves against the sulphurous fumes, and called their engines by the names of tyrants -- Czar, Kaiser, Mogul -- and even Pluto, god of the underworld.

Going under London is to penetrate history, to enter a hidden world. "The vastness of the space, a second earth,"
 writes Peter Ackroyd, "elicits sensations of wonder and of terror. It partakes of myth and dream in equal measure."


From the Hardcover edition.