{"title":"William Nester","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into meticulously researched historical narratives with William Nester. Explore a diverse collection spanning military history, political biographies, and insightful analyses of global conflicts. Discover your next fascinating read.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"putin-s-virtual-war-book-william-nester-9781526771186","title":"Putin's Virtual War","description":"With his elfin poker face, receding short golden hair, diminutive but muscular body, and stiff clipped gait, Vladimir Putin is among the world's most recognizable leaders. He has tightly ruled Russia since 31 December 1999, and will firmly assert power from the Kremlin for the foreseeable future. Many fear and loath him for his brutality, for ordering opponents imprisoned on trumped up charges and even murdered. Yet most Russians adore him for rebuilding the economy, state authority, and national pride.  What drives Putin? Much more than greed for money and power animates him. He is a zealous nationalist deadset to make Russia great again. He mourns the Soviet Union's breakup as  the greatest political catastrophe of the twentieth century.' Putin's nostalgia is understandable. The Russian empire peaked in territory, population, military power, and prestige when it was called the Soviet Union.  Putin has mastered the art of power. Depending on what is at stake, that involves the deft wielding of appropriate or  smart' ingredients of  hard' physical power like armoured divisions, multinational corporations, and assassins, and  soft' psychological power like diplomats, honey-traps, cyber-trolls, and fake news factories to defeat threats and seize opportunities. Russian hackers penetrated the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton's campaign organization, extracted tens of thousands of potentially embarrassing emails, and posted them on WikiLeaks.  As the Kremlin's latest ruler Putin, like most of his predecessors, is as realistic as he is ruthless. He knows the limits of Russian hard and soft power while constantly trying to expand them. He is doing whatever he can to advance Russian national interests as he interprets them. In Putin's mind, Russia can rise only as far as the West can fall. And on multiple fronts he is methodically advancing to those ends. Putin's Virtual War reveals just how and why he does so, and the dire consequences for America, Europe, and the world beyond.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49524994605329,"sku":"GOR010215131","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50454960734481,"sku":"GOR013959116","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1526771187.jpg?v=1750860868"},{"product_id":"napoleon-and-the-art-of-leadership-book-william-nester-9781526782779","title":"Napoleon and the Art of Leadership","description":"No one in history has provoked more controversy than Napoleon Bonaparte. Was he an enlightened ruler or brutal tyrant? Was he an insatiable warmonger or a defender of France against the aggression of the other great powers. Was he kind or cruel, farsighted or blinkered, a sophisticate or a philistine, a builder or a destroyer? Napoleon was at once all that his partisans laud, his enemies condemn, and much more. He remains fascinating, both because he so dramatically changed the course of history and had such a complex, paradoxical character.  One thing is certain, if the art of leadership is about getting what one wants, then Napoleon was among history's greatest masters. He understood and asserted the dynamic relationship among military, economic, diplomatic, technological, cultural, psychological, and thus political power. War was the medium through which he was able to demonstrate his innate skills, leading his armies to victories across Europe. He overthrew France's corrupt republican government in a coup then asserted near dictatorial powers. Those powers were then wielded with great dexterity in transforming France from feudalism to modernity with a new law code, canals, roads, ports, schools, factories, national bank, currency, and standard weights and measures. With those successes, he convinced the Senate to proclaim him France's emperor and even got the pope to preside over his coronation. He reorganized swaths of Europe into new states and placed his brothers and sisters on the thrones.  This is Napoleon as has never been seen before. No previous book has explored deeper or broader into his seething labyrinth of a mind and revealed more of its complex, fascinating, provocative, and paradoxical dimensions. Napoleon has never before spoken so thoroughly about his life and times through the pages of a book, nor has an author so deftly examined the veracity or mendacity of his words. Within are dimensions of Napoleon that may charm, appall, or perplex, many buried for two centuries and brought to light for the first time.  _Napoleon and the Art of Leadership_ is a psychologically penetrating study of the man who had such a profound effect on the world around him that the entire era still bears his name.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49738387063057,"sku":"NGR9781526782779","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50513727455505,"sku":"GOR013479992","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52969664512273,"sku":"GOR014673393","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1526782774.jpg?v=1751453403"},{"product_id":"britain-s-rise-to-global-superpower-in-the-age-of-napoleon-book-william-nester-9781526775436","title":"Britain's Rise to Global Superpower in the Age of Napoleon","description":"The art of power consists of getting what one wants. That is never more challenging than when a nation is at war. Britain fought a nearly non-stop war against first revolutionary then Napoleonic France from 1793 to 1815\\. During those twenty-two years, the British government formed, financed, and led seven coalitions against France. The French inflicted humiliating defeats on the first five coalitions. Eventually Britain and its allies prevailed, not once but twice by vanquishing Napoleon temporarily in 1814 and definitively in 1815.  French revolutionaries had created and a new form of warfare, which Napoleon perfected. Never before had a government mobilized so much of a realm's manpower, industry, finance, and patriotism, nor, under Napoleon, wielded it more effectively and ruthlessly to pulverize and conquer one's enemies.  Britain struggled up a blood-soaked learning curve to master this new form of warfare. With time the British made the most of their natural strategic and economic advantages. Britons were relatively secure and prosperous in their island realm. British merchants, manufacturers, and financiers dominated global markets. The Royal Navy not only ruled the waves that lapped against the nation's shores but those ploughed by international commerce around the world. Yet even with those assets victory was not inevitable. Two military geniuses are the most vital reasons why Britain and its allies vanquished France when and how they did. General Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington and Admiral Horatio Nelson respectively mastered warfare on land and at sea.  This is the first book of its kind. Of the hundreds of books on the era, none before has explored all of Britain's land and sea campaigns from the first in 1793 to the last in 1815\\. In this vividly written and meticulously researched book, readers will experience each level of war from the debates over grand strategy in London to the horrors of combat engulfing soldiers and sailors in distant lands and seas. Haunting voices of participants echo from two centuries ago, culled from speeches, diaries, and letters. _Britain's Rise to Global Superpower in the Age of Napoleon_ reveals how decisively or disastrously the British army and navy wielded the art of military power during the Age of Revolution and Napoleon.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49738591731985,"sku":"NGR9781526775436","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50925644054801,"sku":"CIN1526775433VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51323510653201,"sku":"CIN1526775433G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52697829933329,"sku":"GOR012083716","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1526775433.jpg?v=1750718394"},{"product_id":"america-s-unending-civil-war-book-william-nester-9781399081184","title":"America's Unending Civil War","description":"The Civil War fascinates Americans like no other war in their history. Many Americans are still fighting some of the war's issues in an Odyssey that stretches back to the first settlement and will persist until the end of time. The war itself was an Iliad of brilliant generals like Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan for the Union, or Lee, Jackson, and Forrest for the Confederacy; epic battles like Gettysburg and Chickamauga; epic sieges like Vicksburg and Petersburg; and epic naval combats such as Monitor versus Merrimack, or Kearsarge versus Alabama.  It was America's most horrific war, with more dead than all others combined. Around 625,000 soldiers and 125,000 civilians died from various causes, bringing the total to 750,000 people. Of 31 million Americans, 2.1 million northerners and 880,000 southerners donned uniforms.  Why did eleven states eventually ban together to rebel against the United States? President Jefferson Davis began an answer when he said:  If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone, Died of a Theory.' That theory justified the enslavement of blacks by whites as a natural right and duty of a superior race over an inferior race; a theory, it was believed, that morally and economically elevated both races. Although slavery was the Civil War's core cause, there were related chronic conflicts over the nature of government, citizenship, liberty, property, equality, wealth, race, identity, justice, crime, voting, power, and history - some of which issues have never entirely gone away.  America's Unending Civil War is unique among thousands of books on the subject. 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But British leaders had a long history of forging alliances to counter their rivals and when revolution ravaged France in 1793 and a lev e en masse raised a huge patriotic army, it was through a coalition of monarchies that French ambitions were restrained - a coalition made possible by British gold and British industry.  When Napoleon seized the reins of power in France, he too introduced conscription and, once again, it was a succession of British led and funded coalitions which eventually brought Napoleon to his knees. During the years 1793 to 1815, the British Government formed and underwrote seven coalitions that cost Britain  1,657,854,518 as the national debt tripled from  290,000,000 to  860,000,00\\. Of that, British subsidies to around thirty allies amounted to  65,830,228, along with staggering amounts of war supplies mass produced by British factories and shipped to allies.  Britain's leading role in Europe did not end with Waterloo. Immediately following the Sixth Coalition, and amidst the Seventh Coalition, Britain constructed, with the other great powers, a security system of cooperation and consultation called the  Concert of Europe' that prevented a serious war among them for two generations.  Britain's power to underwrite those coalitions came from a related series of revolutions - agrarian, mercantile, financial, technological, manufacturing, cultural, and political that developed over the proceeding century. For many reasons that happened in Britain and not elsewhere. Of them, cultural values may be most crucial. Constraints were fewer and incentives greater for enterprising Britons to invest, invent, buy, and sell in ways that enriched themselves and their nation more than elsewhere. During the eighteenth century, Britain's leaders mastered a virtuous power cycle of victorious wars, expanding production, captured territories and markets, and more income.  During a speech before Congress in December 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called on Americans to be an  arsenal of democracy' to aid Britain and other countries threatened by the imperialistic fascist powers. Britain played exactly the same role during the Napoleonic era. The Coalitions Against Napoleon explores how Britain developed and asserted the financial, manufacturing, and military power to achieve that goal.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49743227289873,"sku":"NGR9781399043021","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1399043021.jpg?v=1751436799"},{"product_id":"land-of-war-book-william-nester-9780811772488","title":"Land of War","description":"War in Europe began with the first human migrants. Rival bands fought for thousands of years before the Greeks and Romans began writing about their military history, first as legend—for instance, the hero Achilles battling the Trojans—and then as fact. War developed from sticks and stones to bronze, iron, and steel, including armor and edged weapons. Then came gunpowder, guns, and cannons, which eventually replaced edged weapons. Finally, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, technology exploded: railroads, steamships, telegraphs, machine guns, automobiles, airplanes, and tanks enabled European states to muster, equip, arm, transport, and command more men than ever before, with more firepower than ever before. In the past seventy-five years, atomic weapons changed the military landscape of Europe—as have the internet and cyber warfare.   In this colorful new telling of European warfare—and indeed European history through the continent’s all too numerous wars and conflicts—William Nester describes millennia of armed conflict. He covers the “greatest hits” of military history both ancient and current: Thermopylae, the Peloponnesian War, the wars of the Roman Empire across the continent, the Battle of Hastings, the Crusades, Agincourt, Waterloo, Napoleon and Wellington, the Somme, the Spanish Civil War, Stalingrad and Normandy, Churchill, Hitler, and Stalin, Bosnia, and up through Putin’s attempts to redraw the map of Europe. Nester highlights how warfare has been deeply entwined with European statesmanship and undergirds modern institutions such as NATO and the European Union. Europe’s sense of itself is bound up in its military history.   Land of War is an epic odyssey from Europe’s mythic origins through its latest violent conflicts.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ -","offer_id":49747217776913,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0811772489.jpg?v=1718890209"},{"product_id":"land-of-war-book-william-nester-9780811772489","title":"Land of War","description":"War in Europe began with the first human migrants. Rival bands fought for thousands of years before the Greeks and Romans began writing about their military history, first as legend—for instance, the hero Achilles battling the Trojans—and then as fact. War developed from sticks and stones to bronze, iron, and steel, including armor and edged weapons. Then came gunpowder, guns, and cannons, which eventually replaced edged weapons. 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He covers the “greatest hits” of military history both ancient and current: Thermopylae, the Peloponnesian War, the wars of the Roman Empire across the continent, the Battle of Hastings, the Crusades, Agincourt, Waterloo, Napoleon and Wellington, the Somme, the Spanish Civil War, Stalingrad and Normandy, Churchill, Hitler, and Stalin, Bosnia, and up through Putin’s attempts to redraw the map of Europe. Nester highlights how warfare has been deeply entwined with European statesmanship and undergirds modern institutions such as NATO and the European Union. Europe’s sense of itself is bound up in its military history.   Land of War is an epic odyssey from Europe’s mythic origins through its latest violent conflicts.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49747221872913,"sku":"NGR9780811772488","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52670588158225,"sku":"NLS9780811772488","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0811772489_99877234-374b-41bb-b961-f8b3d9356ce2.jpg?v=1751138321"},{"product_id":"world-of-war-book-william-nester-9780811773782","title":"World of War","description":"\u003ci\u003eWorld of War\u003c\/i\u003e is an epic journey through America's array of wars for diverse reasons with diverse results over the course of its existence. 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Roosevelt and the Art of Leadership","description":"After their independence and civil wars, Americans never faced a greater threat than the sixteen years of global depression followed by global war from 1929 to 1945\\. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the president for the last dozen of those years, during which he led the nation first to alleviate the Great Depression then led an international alliance that vanquished the fascist powers during the Second World War. Along the way, he established the modern presidency with centralized powers to make and implement domestic and foreign policies. He was naturally a master politician who eventually, through daunting trials and errors, became an accomplished statesman.  For all that, historians regularly rank Roosevelt among the top three presidents. Yet, most historians and countless others criticize Roosevelt for an array of things that he did or failed to do. Conservatives lambast him for creating a welfare state and trying to pack federal courts with liberal judges while liberals condemn him for interning 120,000 Japanese-Americans during the war and doing little to advance civil rights for African Americans. Critics blister war commander Roosevelt for caving into strategies demanded by powerful leaders that squandered countless lives and treasure in literal and figurative dead ends. These include Prime Minister Churchill’s push to invade the Italian peninsula and General MacArthur’s determination to recapture the Philippines.  At times, his policies violated his principles. Like President Wilson during the Second World War, Roosevelt championed self-determination but not for every nation. He badgered Churchill to break up Britain’s empire while bowing to Stalin’s brutal communist conquest of eastern Europe. And those are just the opening barrages against Roosevelt. Although he won four presidential elections with overwhelming majorities, nearly as many people reviled him as they adored him.  _Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Art of Leadership_ explores the dynamic among Roosevelt’s character, personality, and presidential power with which he asserted policies that overcame first the Great Depression and then the Axis powers during the Second World War. Along the way, the book raises and answers key questions. What were Roosevelt’s leadership skills and how did he develop them over time? Which New Deal policies succeeded, which failed, and what explains those results? Which war strategies succeeded, which failed, and what explains those results? What policies rooted in Roosevelt’s instincts proved to be superior to alternatives grounded in thick official reports advocated by his advisors? 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To prevail in those struggles the Founders had to tap and eventually master two powerful historic forces—nationalism and liberalism.National leadership is about mastering the dynamic among a country’s interests, power, and policies. Although military battles were relatively infrequent during the leisurely pace of eighteenth-century warfare, political battles were incessant. Those who championed the United States of America triumphed during the sweltering, seemingly endless months at Philadelphia from May to September 1787, when the delegates hammered out the Constitution.With the Constitution’s ratification, the Revolution came to a symbolic and substantive end. Ever since, Americans have debated, and at times shed blood over, just what the Founders intended and how to realize those ideals. 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Such leaders build systems of loyalists and subservient institutions, enabling unchecked authority.Joseph Stalin exemplifies this tyranny. As Soviet leader from 1929 to 1953, he implemented totalitarian policies, nationalizing industry and agriculture, controlling economic production through five-year plans, and eliminating dissent through imprisonment, forced labour, or execution. His brutal regime caused an estimated 20 million deaths.Despite this grim legacy, Stalin's reputation remains divisive. In Western democracies, he is remembered as a genocidal dictator, but in Russia he often ranks among the most admired historical figures, illustrating the paradox of his influence.Stalinism served as a model for Communist regimes in China, Vietnam, and Cuba, shaping their governance. While many of these nations transitioned toward democracy, countries like Russia, China, and North Korea continue to echo Stalinist practices. 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The new conflict, now commonly known as the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763, was a direct continuation of the last French and Indian War. This study explores the North American campaigns in relation to events elsewhere in the world, from the ministries of Whitehall and Versailles to the land and sea battles in Europe, Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean.  Few wars have had a more decisive effect on international relations and national development. The French and Indian War resulted in France's expulsion from almost all of the Western Hemisphere, except for some tiny islands in the Caribbean and St. Lawrence. Britain emerged as the world's dominant sea power and would remain so for two centuries. 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The last French and Indian War, from 1754 to 1760, would dwarf all previous conflicts in the number of troops, expense, geographical expanse, and total casualties. Placing the French and Indian War in a broad historical context, this study examines the struggle for North America during the two preceding centuries and includes not only the conflict between France and Britain, but also the parts played by various Indian tribes and the other European powers.  The last French and Indian War makes for colorful reading with its array of inept and daring commanders, epic heroism among the troops, far-flung battles and sieges, and creaking fleets of warships. 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Through exceptional will and luck Hitler struggled up through the ranks of political power until he became Germany’s master. He then sought to dominate Europe. Determined to unite all German-speaking peoples in one nation, he embarked on a series of aggressions that culminated in a war that engulfed and devastated most of Europe and North Africa, and left tens of millions of people dead, maimed, or homeless. Along with his political opponents, he condemned Jews and other ‘inferior peoples’ as Germany’s enemies, and eventually had around six million of them arrested and systematically slaughtered.  Adolf Hitler and the Art of Tyranny answers with depth and clarity three core questions. What made Hitler who he was; why did he do what he did; and what were the results? Many other questions radiate from these. For instance, how did Hitler get tyrannical power? Or why was the Third Reich destroyed after just a dozen years? Many more crucial questions and arrays of answers follow.  Hitler, of course, did not act alone. He enthroned himself atop power pyramids that included the Nazi Party, government, military, secret police, industrial associations, religious institutions, and other social organizations. He commanded countless ‘willing executioners’ of his plans and orders. To a rational, knowledgeable person, Hitler’s mass appeal is puzzling. 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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 comradery. 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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52983680860433,"sku":"GOR011953780","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781526781246.jpg?v=1767175851"},{"product_id":"benito-mussolini-and-the-art-of-tyranny-book-william-nester-9781036147716","title":"Benito Mussolini and the Art of Tyranny","description":"The art of tyranny involves aspirants taking and keeping uninhibited, arbitrary power over others. Benito Mussolini is among the world's most recognizable tyrants with his scowl, jutting jaw, bald dome, booming voice, chopping fists, squat body, and wide stance. He founded the Fascist movement dedicated to transforming Italy's liberal democracy into a regime that mingled authoritarianism, nationalism, populism, corporatism, vigilantism, and imperialism with himself the all-powerful 'Duce' or leader.By threatening to march on Rome with his Blackshirt militia, Mussolini bullied King Victor Emmanuel III into naming him prime minister. He ruled Italy from 30 October 1922 until 25 July 1943, achieving supreme power just thirteen months after taking power. With an overwhelming legislative majority, he issued decrees and had laws approved that granted him dictatorial powers, outlawed all political parties except for his Fascist Party, and jailed or drove into exile most of his opponents. Yet Mussolini's dictatorship was limited as the king remained the head of state with the latent power to dismiss him as prime minister backed by the need and courage to do so. That time eventually came.Until the war years, most Italians enthusiastically embraced Mussolini's dictatorship because his economic and nationalist policies boosted their living standards, hope, and pride. Mussolini oversaw a corporatist economy where the state partnered with industrial, agrarian, labour, and energy groups to expand production, productivity, wages, and quality of life. Yet, Mussolini ultimately failed catastrophically as a tyrant when he tried to fulfil his promise to make Italy as great a modern imperial nation as the ancient Roman empire. The series of military disasters that Italy's military suffered eventually turned even his closest supporters against him. On 25 July 1943, the Fascist National Council voted 19 to 8 with 1 abstention that he resign. 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