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Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Johnathan Parshall, Tony Tully

11/23/2020

March 18, 2021

Discussion led by Jim Schaefer

Many consider the Battle of Midway to have turned the tide of the Pacific War. It is without question one of the most famous battles in history. Now, for the first time since Gordon W. Prange’s bestselling Miracle at Midway, Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully offer a new interpretation of this great naval engagement. Unlike previous accounts, Shattered Sword makes extensive use of Japanese primary sources. It also corrects the many errors of Mitsuo Fuchida’s Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, an uncritical reliance upon which has tainted every previous Western account. It thus forces a major, potentially controversial reevaluation of the great battle. The authors examine the battle in detail and effortlessly place it within the context of the Imperial Navy’s doctrine and technology. With a foreword by leading WWII naval historian John Lundstrom, Shattered Sword will become an indispensable part of any military buff’s library. Winner of the 2005 John Lyman Book Award for the "Best Book in U.S. Naval History" and cited by Proceedings as one of its "Notable Naval Books" for 2005.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23vL8AvqbDc

https://www.strategypage.com/bookreviews/372.asp
http://www.shatteredswordbook.com/

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The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

11/15/2020

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February 18, 2021

Discussion led by Karen O'Donnell

A groundbreaking history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of slaves

Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution -- the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy.

Told through intimate slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers, and the words of politicians, entrepreneurs, and escaped slaves, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/books/review/the-half-has-never-been-told-by-edward-e-baptist.html

https://www.douglasdecelle.net/the-half-has-never-been-told-summary-and-notes/

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History Study Group (HSG)

Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Johnathan Parshall, Tony Tully

March 18, 2021

Discussion led by Jim Schaefer

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Group Leader: Alan Rubin

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