"Winged Couriers: Avian Espionage and the Siege of Paris" delves into one of the most remarkable and desperate communication networks in military history. During the devastating Prussian siege of Paris, the city was entirely cut off from the outside world, prompting a sudden and urgent need for a new method of transferring information. This book uncovers the hidden mechanics of how the French postal service turned to homing pigeons and cutting-edge micro-photography to bypass enemy lines. ...

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 introduced new military technologies, transformed the organization of armies, and upset the continental balance of power, promulgating new regimented ideas of nationhood and conflict resolution more widely. However, the mass armies that became a new standard required mass mobilization and the arming of working people, who exercised a new power through both a German social democracy and popular insurgent French movements. As in the Russian Revolution of 19...

The Rise of Empires: European History, 1870–1919 surveys one of the most volatile epochs in modern European history, from the consolidation of nation-states after 1870 to the imperial rivalries and ideological tensions that culminated in the First World War and its aftermath. Written in a lucid, expository style characteristic of early twentieth-century historical scholarship, the book situates diplomacy, militarism, nationalism, and colonial expansion within a broad narrative of political...