Paddlewheel riverboat, showboat, sternwheeler, steamboat: call it what you will, but the steamboat revolutionized travel in the 1800s, an era in which young boys dreamed of becoming river pilots and M
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on American military bases in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Masterfully planned and executed, the attack devastated the US Pacific Fleet; in l
While the coming of the railways to Britain's towns and cities in the nineteenth century transformed their fortunes and gave urban dwellers new opportunities to travel across the country, the effect o
Republished on its 70th anniversary, this authentic facsimile edition of 1943’s ‘Discover New York’ is a fascinating guided tour of the Golden Age of New York City. This was the Big Apple of service m
These four hand-colored maps of London in the Victorian age show all of London, including the surrounding countryside and outlying villages such as Hampstead, Stratford, Merton and Beckenham. Perfect
The Special Boat Squadron (SBS) was Britain's most exclusive Special Forces unit, similar to US Navy SEALS. Highly trained, highly secretive and utterly ruthless, the SBS was established as an entity
Secret Weapons charts the race in technology between the Allied and Axis powers, with examples of their use in battle, along with those that remained experimental or remained the stuff of science fict
This beautiful color view of London looks from the perspective of an aerial balloon, looking southwards from Hampstead. Printed in 1851, it shows the brand new Crystal Palace - erected to house the Gr
The Book of Ninja, the ultimate ninjutsu manual, was penned in 1676 by a ninja known as Fujibayashi. Born in the post-civil war era of Japan, Fujibayashi collected and combined information from the ni
The dawn of the twentieth century was the height of the British Empire and this map is a beautiful visual history of the 11 million square miles which was home to 400 million citizens of the crown. Th
The capital city c.1520 during the reign of Henry VIII showing major streets, lanes, churches, great houses, monasteries and public buildings. This map reveals medieval London at its most impressive,
Although they have existed in Britain for over a thousand years, it was not until the nineteenth century that prisons became the cornerstone of the penal system. This was a period when great interest
During the Napoleonic era, Russia possessed a vast force of cavalry, forming a greater percentage than that of most European armies. This stemmed partly from their service against the Turks, who had h
In 1948 with post-war Britain’s sense “dulled by traffic and by bombs”, this pocket-sized book was a clarion call for readers to rediscover the beauties of the idyllic English countryside. Published b
The 17th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was almost as varied as modern America. Alongside Slavs lived Lithuanians and other Balts, Germans, Tatars, Armenian merchants, Jewish traders, and even
The elite forces of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies in the mid-1980s were undoubtedly the largest in the world, and among the least known. The Soviet elite formations alone had a total str
Trench warfare, advances in weaponry and disastrous military planning led to horrific types of injuries and an unprecedented scale of mass casualties during World War I. This is the amazing and little
Osprey's Campaign title for the first battle of the desert war, Operation Compass, which was originally envisaged as a spoiling attack, combined with a reconnaissance in force to disrupt the Italian f
Covering four air forces, three theaters, and ten iconic fighters, this book is the complete story of head to head aerial combat in World War II.Matching up ten aerial rivals - including Spitfires, M
In the Middle East, not only were the 12th and 13th centuries punctuated by European Crusades but, even more significantly, the mid-11th century saw the invasion of the Saljuq Turks and the mid-13th c
