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Series in Korean War

Books in Korean War

Battleground Korea

Battleground Korea

Here well known military historian Charles Whiting provides a vivid account of the Korean War, described as the nastiest little war and the last major one of the 20th century. In June 1950 the Cold War suddenly became hot when Communist-backed North Korean forces invaded the US-protected South Korea. Anti-war dissent at home and threats to use the Atom bomb added to the danger of the situation, threatening a Third World War. US General MacArthur launched a surprise amphibious assault at Inchon behind North Korean lines, but victory was snatched from the combined US/British forces by the entry of 600,000 Chinese troops on the side of North Korea. Atrocities were committed on both sides, but for the next two years Allied POWs became the biggest pawns in the great peace talks. If they broke and confessed that it had been an Imperialist War, as their captors fervently wanted them to, it would have been a great propaganda victory for the enemy. Thus the fina! l round of the Korean War was for the hearts and minds of the prisoners, only a few of who broke. Battleground Korea provides a vivid account of the Korean War, inparticular British involvement, and Charles Whiting's compelling narrative is strongly supported with graphic eyewitness accounts.

Conflict: The History Of The Korean War, 1950-1953

Conflict: The History Of The Korean War, 1950-1953

In June 1950 Communist forces poured across the 38th Parallel (the arbitrary, militarily indefensible line of latitude separating the Communist North from the independent Republic of Korea) to unite the country by force. Three bloody, bitter years of fighting ensued during which the seesawing fortunes of this frustrating war thwarted North Korea's ambitions while treating the ill-equipped, overconfident UN peacekeeping forces, mostly Americans, no less harshly. Conflict examines the war in all its military, political, and human dimensions: the battles at Pusan Perimeter, at Inchon, at Chosin Reservoir, at Heartbreak Ridge; significant figures like Syngman Rhee, Kim Il Sung, Ridgway, MacArthur, and Truman; controversies like MacArthur's dismissal, the difficulties of P.O.W. exchanges, and charges of brainwashing and germ warfare; as well as penetrating analyses of the performance of the American soldier, and the war's effect on the U.S. military and our national psyche. As such, Conflict stands as an unsurpassed, vivid contribution to history.

The Korean War

The Korean War

A BRACING ACCOUNT OF A WAR THAT IS EITHER MISUNDERSTOOD, FORGOTTEN, OR WILLFULLY IGNORED. For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953. But for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long struggle that still haunts contemporary events. With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Bruce Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought. He describes its origin as a civil war, preordained long before the first shots were fired in June 1950 by lingering fury over Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Cumings then shares the neglected history of America’s post–World War II occupation of Korea, reveals untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, and tells of the United States officially entering the action on the side of the South, exposing as never before the appalling massacres and atrocities committed on all sides. Elegantly written and blisteringly honest, The Korean War is, like the war it illuminates, brief, devastating, and essential. Praise for The Korean War “A powerful revisionist history . . . a sobering corrective.” — The New York Times “Worth reading . . . This work raises the question of what Korea can tell us about the outlook for Iraq and Afghanistan.” — Financial Times “Well-sourced [and] elegantly presented.” — The Wall Street Journal