Books by Geoffrey Wawro

University of North Texas  :   History   :   Geoffrey Wawro

The Lusitania's Last Voyage: Being a Narrative of the Torpedoing and Sinking of the RMS Lusitania by a German Submarine off the Irish Coast May 7, 1915

Author(s): Charles E. Lauriat Jr.
Publication date: 2016-09-06
ISBN: 1510708677, ISBN-13: 9781510708679

A first-hand account of the Lusitania’s doomed final voyage.

On May 7, 1915, the German U-boat U-20 fired a torpedo into the side of the passenger liner R.M.S. Lusitania as it passed the Old Head of Kinsale in Ireland on its way to Liverpool, England. This act of war had a terrible toll—of the 1,962 passengers and crew, 1,191 lost their lives, many of them women and children.

One of the passengers on the ship was Charles E. Lauriat, Jr., a rare book dealer who traveled regularly to London for business. When the German embassy placed a warning notice in several New York papers stating that any ships of Great Britain and her allies would be considered fair targets, Lauriat, along with most of the other passengers, dismissed the notion that a civilian liner would actually be attacked.

Lauriat’s memoir of the journey recreates the torpedo attack—describing the listing ship as it filled with water and people scrambled for lifeboats, too often finding them inaccessible or unusable—and details the rescue that came too late for most of his fellow passengers. Lauriat then points out the many faults of the official inquiry, telling the true story of that tragic day.
With a new foreword and photos of the ship, The Lusitania’s Last Voyage is a gripping account of one of history’s greatest naval disasters.

Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire

Author(s): Geoffrey Wawro
Publication date: 2015-04-28
ISBN: 0465057950, ISBN-13: 9780465057955

The Austro-Hungarian army that marched east and south to confront the Russians and Serbs in the opening campaigns of World War I had a glorious past but a pitiful present. Speaking a mystifying array of languages and lugging outdated weapons, the Austrian troops were hopelessly unprepared for the industrialized warfare that would shortly consume Europe.

As prizewinning historian Geoffrey Wawro explains in A Mad Catastrophe, the doomed Austrian conscripts were an unfortunate microcosm of the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself—both equally ripe for destruction. After the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, Germany goaded the Empire into a war with Russia and Serbia. With the Germans massing their forces in the west to engage the French and the British, everything—the course of the war and the fate of empires and alliances from Constantinople to London—hinged on the Habsburgs’ ability to crush Serbia and keep the Russians at bay. However, Austria-Hungary had been rotting from within for years, hollowed out by repression, cynicism, and corruption at the highest levels. Commanded by a dying emperor, Franz Joseph I, and a querulous celebrity general, Conrad von Hötzendorf, the Austro-Hungarians managed to bungle everything: their ultimatum to the Serbs, their declarations of war, their mobilization, and the pivotal battles in Galicia and Serbia. By the end of 1914, the Habsburg army lay in ruins and the outcome of the war seemed all but decided.

Drawing on deep archival research, Wawro charts the decline of the Empire before the war and reconstructs the great battles in the east and the Balkans in thrilling and tragic detail. A Mad Catastrophe is a riveting account of a neglected face of World War I, revealing how a once-mighty empire collapsed in the trenches of Serbia and the Eastern Front, changing the course of European history.

Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Power in the Middle East

Author(s): Geoffrey Wawro
Publication date: 2011-02-16
ISBN: 0143118838, ISBN-13: 9780143118831

An unprecedented history of American involvement in the Middle East.

In this definitive and revelatory work, noted historian Geoffrey Wawro approaches America's role in the Middle East in a fundamentally new way-by encompassing the last century of the entire region rather than focusing narrowly on a particular country or era. With verve and authority, he offers piercing analysis of the region's iconic events over the past one hundred years-from the birth of Israel to the rise of Al Qaeda. Throughout, he draws telling parallels between America's past mistakes and its current dilemmas, proving that we're in today's muddle not just because of our old errors but because we keep repeating those errors.

The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871

Author(s): Geoffrey Wawro
Publication date: 2005-02-21
ISBN: 052161743X, ISBN-13: 9780521617437

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 violently changed the course of European History. Alarmed by Bismarck's territorial ambitions and the Prussian army's crushing defeats of Denmark in 1864 and Austria in 1866, French Emperor Napoleon III vowed to bring Prussia to heel. Digging into many European and American archives for the first time, Geoffrey Wawro's Franco-Prussian War describes the war that followed in thrilling detail. While the armies mobilized in July 1870, the conflict appeared "too close to call." Prussia and its German allies had twice as many troops as the French. But Marshal Achille Bazaine's grognards ("old grumblers") were the stuff of legend, the most resourceful, battle-hardened, sharp-shooting troops in Europe, and they carried the best rifle in the world. From the political intrigues that began and ended the war to the bloody battles at Gravelotte and Sedan and the last murderous fights on the Loire and in Paris, this is the definitive history of the Franco-Prussian War. Dr. Geoffrey Wawro is Professor of Strategic Studies at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Wawro has published two books: The Austro-Prussian War (Cambridge, 1996) and Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792-1914 (Routledge, 2000). He has published articles in The Journal of Military History, War in History, The International History Review, The Naval War College Review, American Scholar, and the European History Quarterly, and op-eds in the Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Miami Herald, Hartford Courant, and Providence Journal. Wawro has won several academic prizes including the Austrian Cultural Institute Prize and the Society for Military History Moncado Prize for Excellence in the Writing of Military History. He has lectured widely on military innovation and international security in Europe, the U.S., and Canada and is host of the History Channel program Hardcover History--a weekly book show with leading historians, pundits, critics, statesmen and journalists.

Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792-1914 (Warfare and History)

Author(s): Geoffrey Wawro
Publication date: 2000-02-10
ISBN: 0415214459, ISBN-13: 9780415214452

Combining original research with the latest scholarship Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792 - 1914 examines war and its aftermath from Napoleonic times to the outbreak of the First World War. Throughout, this fine book treats warfare as a social and political phenomenon no less than a military and technologial one, and includes discussions on:

* The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars
* Napoleon III and the militarization of Europe
* Bismark, Molkte, and the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71
* new technologies and weapons
* seapower, imperialism and naval warfare
* the origins and outbreak of the First World War.

For anyone studying, or with in interest in European warfare, this book details the evolution of land and naval warfare and highlights the swirling interplay of society, politics and military decision making.

The Austro-Prussian War: Austria's War with Prussia and Italy in 1866

Author(s): Geoffrey Wawro
Publication date: 1997-09-13
ISBN: 0521629519, ISBN-13: 9780521629515

This is a new history of the Austro-Prussian-Italian War of 1866, which paved the way for German and Italian unification. Geoffrey Wawro describes Prussia's successful invasion of Habsburg Bohemia, and the wretched collapse of the Austrian army in July 1866. Blending military and social history, he describes the panic that overtook Austria's regiments in each clash with the Prussians. He reveals the blundering of the Austrian commandant who fumbled away key strategic advantages and ultimately lost a war--crucial to the fortunes of the Habsburg Monarchy--that most European pundits had predicted they would win.

Historical Atlas: A Comprehensive History of the World

Author(s): Geoffrey Wawro
Publication date: 0000-00-00
ISBN: 1921209712, ISBN-13: 9781921209710

Book Historical Atlas

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