Struggle for Vicksburg : the battles and siege that decided the Civil War -- Custer's Civil War -- "Just dumb luck" : American entry into World War II -- SIGINT : Deception and the liberation of western Europe -- D-Day revisited -- Victory in Europe : May 1945 -- The atomic bomb and its consequences -- General MacArthur : a profile -- A fateful friendship : Eisenhower and Patton -- The war on the homefront -- My Lai : atrocities in historical perspective -- The Christmas bombing -- Eisenhower and NATO -- The cold war in perspective -- War in the twenty-first century.