An account from the front lines of the Afghan civil war describes the men, women, and children affected by the conflict

The Russian Civil War (1918-1924) in Asiatic Russia was like the American Wild West as one regime after another tried to establish its rule over the freedom-loving peasants and miners of the West Siberian plains and mountains. A key role in this struggle was played by the partisan armies put together by anarchists, which fought first against the Whites, then against the Reds. Like the better known Ukrainian peasant movement led by Nestor Makhno- known as the Makhnovshchina - the Siberian anarchists aimed to establish free federations of rural communes and worker-managed industrial enterprises. Long ignored or stigmatized as bandits by Soviet historians and their nationalist successors, the Siberian anarchist-partisans are rescued from oblivion in this pioneering study.

Twice in the 20th century, a British Expeditionary Force has taken the field in Northern France to fight beside the French Army. Twice, the Expeditionary Force has survived threat of complete destruction. But the differences between the Retreat to Dunkirk in 1940 and the first encounter with the enemy at Mons in 1914 are significant.

At 9.30am on 21 March 1918, the last great battle of World War I commenced when three german armies struck a massive blow against the weak divisions of the British Third and Fifth armies. It was the first day of what the Germans called the kaiserschlact (the kaiser's battle), the series of attacks that were planned to break the deadlock on the western front, knock the British Army out of the war and finally bring victory to imperial Germany. Through first-hand accounts by survivors of the battle, Martin Middlebrook discusses the battle.

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.' Sir Edward Grey, British foreign secretary, 3 August 1914. Drawing on a wealth of material from the Guardian archives 'When the lamps went out' presents a surprising, immediate, sometimes bleakly humorous, sometimes horrifying insight into life during the Great War. We see Boy Scouts patrolling the British coasts, David Lloyd George addressing women war workers, Charlie Chaplin impersonators on the Euston Road and Vesta Tilley at the Ardwick Empire. We see suffragist nurses on the Western Front and Bolsheviks in Glasgow, Pathan soldiers in Flanders and Anglo-Japanese armies in China. Small countries are saved - and aliens persecuted. New technologies - from picture houses to the first reports of gas weapons - are reported upon, as well as movie stars and John Buchan's bestsellers. The bloody battles, defeats, and victories are all here but this book focuses on the women, men and children who lived, loved, defied, perished and survived in the war to end all wars.

Het leven van soldaat en burger in Vlaanderen tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog.