First published in 1953, Freedom and Fate: An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson is widely recognized to be the most illuminating of commentaries on Emerson’s thought. “EMERSON enjoyed, as he wished, an original relation to the universe, one which, like all living relationships, developed and altered with time. Throughout his life he followed the advice of the poet who speaks at the end of Nature: ‘Build therefore your own world.’ His different insights are so many rays of organization thrown out by the exploring soul, in the words of Bacon he cited so often, to conform the shows of things to the desires of the mind. “As his mind was complex and many-sided, so was the world it built. His greatest gift was his ability to endure the push and pull of contrary directions in his thought without a premature reaching out after conclusions that would do violence to his whole nature. Typically, he came to terms with conflicts as they developed among his truths by dramatizing them, by giving their opposition full play on the stage of his work. Consequently, his writings, and particularly his journals, record a genuine drama of ideas, a still little-known story that adds a new dimension of interest to his thought. This book is intended to ‘produce’ that drama. It traces Emerson’s surprisingly eventful voyage in the world of the mind.”
An account of the last American bombardments that took place over North Vietnam while peace talks struggled in Paris. Includes maps and photos. On March 30, 1972, some thirty thousand North Vietnamese troops, along with tanks and heavy artillery, surged across the demilitarized zone into South Vietnam in the opening round of Hanoi’s Easter Offensive. By early May, South Vietnamese forces were on the ropes and faltering. Without the support of U.S. combat troops—who were in their final stage of withdrawing from the country—the Saigon government was in danger of total collapse and with it any American hope of a negotiated settlement to the war. In response, President Richard Nixon called for an aggressive, sustained bombardment of North Vietnam. Code-named Operation Linebacker I, the interdiction effort sought to stem the flow of men and materiel southward, as well as sever all outside supply lines in the first new bombing of the North Vietnamese heartland in nearly four years. To meet the American air armada, North Vietnamese MiG fighters took to the skies and surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft fire filled the air from May to October over Hanoi and Haiphong. With the failure of its Easter Offensive to achieve military victory, Hanoi reluctantly returned to the negotiating table in Paris. However, as the peace talks teetered on the edge of collapse in December 1972, Nixon played his trump card: Operation Linebacker II. The resulting twelve-day Christmas bombing campaign unleashed the full wrath of American air power. This book tells the story of these decisive campaigns and how they led, finally, to a ceasefire agreement.
When I wrote this book, over a period of about 5 years, I wanted to communicate something of my experience to the reader. Most importantly, I wanted to convey a view of English that the reader may not be familiar with, that it can be an object of play. In writing the book, I forced myself, stretched myself, to play with English, to expand its potential. I took something of an inspiration from Shakespeare, that one can smith words into English to allow it to breathe more freely, and more jocularly. I find myself deeply attracted to the succinctness and clarity of Old English. In extensive use of alliteration, I tried to draw from the oldest poetic source of English.
By the end of 1971, in what Hanoi called the American War and at the height of the Cold War, the fighting had dragged on for eight years with neither side gaining a decisive advantage on the battlefield and talks in Paris to the end the war were going nowhere. While the United States was steadily drawing down its ground forces in South Vietnam, Washington was also engaging in a grand effort to build up and strengthen Saigon’s armed forces to the point of self-sufficiency. Not only had the ranks of Saigon’s forces swelled in recent years, but they were now being equipped and trained to use the latest American military equipment. Perhaps now was the time for Hanoi to take one last gamble before it was too late. With the rumble of men and mechanized equipment breaking the early morning silence, some 40,000 North Vietnamese troops advanced across the demilitarized zone into South Vietnam on March 30, 1972 in what would become the largest conventional attack of the war. Ill-prepared and poorly led, South Vietnamese troops in the far north were quickly routed in the face of the ensuing onslaught. Likewise, coordinated attacks across the Cambodian border northwest of Saigon and into the central highlands in the coming weeks gained steam and in due course as many as 200,000 men along with T-54/55 main battle tanks, 130mm towed artillery, ZSU-57 self-propelled ant-aircraft guns, and hundreds of trucks and armored personnel carriers were engaged across three battlefronts. Soon Saigon’s beleaguered forces were being pushed to the brink of defeat in what appeared to be the end for the Thieu government. Ultimately, however, the timely and massive intervention by U.S. and South Vietnamese air power, along with the bravery of some South Vietnamese commanders and their American advisers saved the day. Hanoi’s gamble had failed and in its wake lay up to 100,000 dead and South Vietnamese roads littered with the smoldering wrecks of North Vietnamese military equipment. Moreover, it would be another three years before the North had recovered enough to try again.
How superpower interests and Cold War politics exacerbated a war in Africa that left millions dead or displaced. As the Cold War raged on in the 1970s and 1980s, much of southern Africa, from Angola to Mozambique, became caught up in the superpower competition as local and regional proxies for both Moscow and Washington fought it out on the battlefield. Thus, the struggle to determine the future of a newly independent Mozambique was shaped by multiple factors beyond the control of its people in the course of its sixteen-year conflict from 1977–1992. The longevity and ferocity of the Mozambican war would leave an estimated one million dead, millions more displaced and homeless, and a country in ruins. From the rise of the Resistência Nacional Moçambicana, or Renamo, in 1977 as a Rhodesian weapon against Zimbabwean nationalist guerrillas operating in Mozambique, through South African patronage in the 1980s and to Renamo’s evolution as a self-sufficient insurgency, the forces of Mozambican nationalism became inexorably intertwined with the geopolitics of the region and the international manifestations of the Cold War. Thus, both government and rebel forces found themselves repeatedly beholden to external interests—be it American, Soviet, Cuban, South African, or Rhodesian—as each sought to advance its own agenda and future vision of the country. However, it would be Mozambicans themselves who spilled their blood in a clash of men and arms that spanned the length and breadth of the country—and ultimately this is their story of sacrifice and triumph. Includes maps, photos, and a glossary
A Transcendental Journey is the thoughtful and often funny account of playwright and author Stephen Evans' journey across America, exploring America and American Transcendental Philosophy.
This book explores and analyses the evolving African security paradigm in light of the multitude of diverse threats and challenges facing the continent and the international community. It challenges current thinking and traditional security constructs as woefully inadequate to meet the real security needs of African governments and their 1 billion plus citizens in an increasingly globalised and interdependent world. Through the lens of human security the authors’ examine the continent’s most pressing security challenges—from identity conflict and failing states to terrorism, disease, and environmental degradation—and in doing so provide a comprehensive look at the complexities of building peace and stability in modern-day Africa. Not only does the book critically assess the state of progress in addressing security challenges, but it presents new strategies and tools for more effectively engaging Africans and the global community in their common search for solutions.
A history of the “secret war” in Southeast Asia in which nearly three million tons of bombs decimated a newly independent nation. By 1959 the newly independent Kingdom of Laos was transforming into a Cold War battleground for global superpower competition, having been born out of the chaos following the French military defeat and withdrawal from Indochina in 1954. The country was soon engulfed in a rapidly evolving civil war as rival forces jockeyed for power and swelling foreign intervention intensified the fighting. Adding even more fuel to the fire, “neutral” Laos’s geographic entanglement in the war in neighboring South Vietnam deepened in the early 1960s as Hanoi’s reliance on the Ho Chi Minh Trail for moving men and matériel through the southern Laotian panhandle grew exponentially, making it a priority target of American interdiction efforts. For almost twenty years, the fighting between the Western-supported Royal Lao government and the communist-supported Pathet Lao would rage across the plains, jungles, and mountaintops largely unseen by most of the world. Thousands on each side would die and many more would be displaced as the conflict on the ground ebbed and flowed from season to season and year to year. And in the skies above, American and Royal Laotian aircraft would rain down their deadly payloads, decimating large swaths of the countryside in pursuit of victory. Nearly three million tons of bombs would be dropped on Laotian territory between 1965 and 1973, leaving a legacy of unexploded ordnance that lingers to this day. The battle for Laos is a tale of entire communities and generations caught up in a war seemingly without end, one that pitted competing foreign interests and their proxies against each other and was forever tied to Washington’s pursuit of victory in Vietnam. This book tells the story of this so-called “secret war.”
This Dover edition, first published in 2011, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Outing Publishing Co., New York, in 1907 under the title and subtitle: The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western Desperado.
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