William Nester, PhD, is a Professor of Government and Politics whose prolific writing explores the multifaceted dimensions and subjects of international relations and power. His extensive body of work, comprising twenty-five books, delves deeply into the dynamics of global politics and the history of power structures. Nester's scholarship offers a profound examination of the complexities within the international arena and the historical contexts that shape the rise and fall of dominant forces. His writings provide readers with insightful perspectives on the intricate workings of geopolitical influence and historical trajectories of power.
World of War is an epic journey through America’s array of wars for diverse reasons with diverse results over the course of its existence. It reveals the crucial effects of brilliant, mediocre, and dismal military and civilian leaders; the dynamic among America’s expanding economic power, changing technologies, and the types and settings of its wars; and the human, financial, and moral costs to the nation, its allies, and its enemies. Nester explores the violent conflicts of the United States—on land, at sea, and in the air—with meticulous scholarship, thought-provoking analysis, and vivid prose.
No previous book has explored deeper or broader into Napoleon's seething
labyrinth of a mind and revealed more of its complex, fascinating,
provocative, and paradoxical dimensions. This is Napoleon as has never been
seen before.
"A century and a half before the Kennedys and the Clintons, the Fremonts and the Custers were American power couples. Indeed, John and Jessie Fremont, and George and Libbie Custer pioneered the phenomenon. So what made the Fremonts and Custers so famous? In popular culture, the husbands became all-American if tarnished heroes. Fremont was renowned as "the Pathfinder" who mapped swaths of the West in five expeditions and helped lead America's conquest of California from Mexico. His fame and anti-slavery views got him nominated as the newborn Republican Party's presidential candidate in the 1856 election. During the Civil War, Custer was celebrated as the "boy-general" who led cavalry charges that routed rebel forces in a score or more combats. He achieved immortality for the "last stand" of him and 262 of his men against thousands of Indian warriors during the battle of the Bighorn, an epic defeat nearly as culturally powerful as America's Thermopylae, the Alamo. Fremont and Custer epitomized the themes and lived their own adventurous versions of the Odyssey and Iliad, respectively. But above all they helped spearhead "Manifest Destiny," the belief that Americans have a God-given right to expand their nation across the continent and even beyond to the ends of the earth. Then there were their wives. Although little known today, Jessie and Libbie were nearly as famous as their husbands. Each served as her husband's political muse, offering candid advice and spurring him to ever higher ambitions. Both were beautiful, vivacious women who loved entertaining and being the center of attention. They knew how to appropriately wield their charms so that they inspired admiration rather than unwanted advances from men or jealousy from women. They were courageous women who followed their husbands to war, the frontier, and even into the wilderness where they endured extremes of bone-numbing cold, stifling heat, deluges, and swarms of mosquitoes; resided in drafty tents or cabins; and at times feared being victims of violence. The Fremonts and Custers were powerhouses as literary as well as political couples. All four authored books and articles, although overall the ladies were better writers. Proudly backed by their wives, Fremont and Custer committed epic acts in epic times that brought them enormous fame. Yet eventually each self-destructed, Fremont with an accumulating series of disastrous decisions as an explorer, general, politician, and businessman; Custer spectacularly at the Little Bighorn. The reason was simple--serious character flaws made each man his own worst enemy. Had Shakespeare been born three centuries later, his plays on the Fremonts and Custers would likely rank with Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, Richard III, or Julius Caesar. Hubris was the Achilles heel of both men. Becoming adored heroes at an early age warped each to believe that he could get away with anything. Once extolled as symbolizing America's greatest traits of courage, decisiveness, and ingenuity, with time John Fremont, George Custer, and, by extension their "enabling wives," have increasingly been reviled for representing imperialism, racism, and genocide. It is long past due for a critical reappraisal. As usual the truth shifts mostly far from the extremes. The Old West's First Power Couples neither celebrates nor demonizes John and Jessie Fremont, and George and Libbie Custer. Instead each is explored as an extraordinary, gifted, flawed, unique individual who was half of a unique couple that made history and advanced America's Manifest Destiny"-- Provided by publisher
Explores all of Britain's key land and sea campaigns and the dynamic relation
among them during the Age of Revolution and Napoleon. Reveals how two military
geniuses were the reason why Britain and its allies vanquished France when and
how they did.
Many indeed, are the biographies of Winston Churchill, one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. But what was that influence and how did he use it in the furtherance of his and his country's ambitions? For the first time, Professor William Nestor has delved into the life and actions of Churchill to examine just how skillfully he manipulated events to placed him in positions of power. His thirst for power stirred political controversy wherever he intruded. Those who had to deal directly with him either loved or hated him. His enemies condemned him for being an egoist, publicity hound, double-dealer, and Machiavellian, accusations that his friends and even he himself could not deny. He could only serve Britain as a statesman and a reformer because he was a wily politician who won sixteen of twenty-one elections that he contested between 1899 and 1955. The House of Commons was Churchill's political temple where he exalted in the speeches and harangues on the floor and the backroom horse-trading and camaraderie. Most of his life he was a Cassandra, warning against the threats of Communism, Nazism, and nuclear Armageddon. With his ability to think beyond mental boxes and connect far-flung dots, he clearly foretold events to which virtually everyone else was oblivious. Yet he was certainly not always right and was at times spectacularly wrong. This is the first book that explores how Churchill understood and asserted the art of power, mostly through hundreds of his own insights expressed through his speeches and writings
This study comprehensively and systematically explores how Theodore Roosevelt
understood, massed, and wielded power to pursue his vision for an America that
was the world's most prosperous, just, and influential nation. číst celé
This book analyzes America's crusade against Jihadism. It addresses the
successes and failures of Washington's counter-Jihadist strategy before and
after September 11, and explores whether the United States should stay the
course or cut its losses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. číst celé
