Search results

In the weeks following the 9/11 attacks, the mainstream political elite in Washington, DC acquiesced to every major decision taken by George W. Bush's administration while partisan politics in Congress ceased. As a nation and its representatives rallied around their leader, the diversity of opinions and the role of political opposition seemed suddenly less vital. A similar unity materialized in the aftermath of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, as millions marched across Paris and th...

'Combines elements of In Cold Blood and Black Hawk Down with Apocalypse Now as it builds towards its terrible climax...Extraordinary' New York Times Iraq's 'Triangle of Death', 2005. A platoon of young soldiers from a U.S. regiment known as 'the Black Heart Brigade' is deployed to a lawless and hyperviolent area just south of Baghdad. Almost immediately, the attacks begin: every day another roadside bomb, another colleague blown to pieces. As the daily violence chips away, and chips away at th...

The Early Modern era was a transformative period in the history of warfare. Armies became larger and increasingly professionalized, while gunpowder weaponry changed warfare forever with new firearms and artillery. The Early Modern Wars 1500-1775 - the third volume in the Encyclopedia of Warfare Series - charts this explosive era of invasion, revolt and civil war. A chronological guide to conflict on every continent, including the wars of the Ottoman Empire, the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) that...

The French Foreign Legion remains one of the world's most enigmatic military forces. Created in France in 1831 and immediately posted to the scorching deserts of Algeria, it went on to become a unit renowned for its cruel training regime and its absolute disregard for death in battle. Unlike any other military unit in the world, its ranks are open to foreigners, and traditionally it has received many troubled or criminal individuals fleeing from problems back home. Today much has changed. The Le...

A primer on the policies and candidacy of the Democratic senator from New Jersey, who has made social and racial justice his foundation. Is he the right Democrat to take on Trump? Cory Booker, New Jersey senator and former mayor of Newark, has a voting record measured a third most liberal in his time in the Senate. Meet the Candidates 2020: Cory Booker: A Voter's Guide helps you understand exactly how liberal Booker is, where on the spectrum Booker sits among Democratic contenders for the presi...

"Military Politics and Democracy in the Andes" challenges conventional theories regarding military behavior in post-transition democracies. Through a deeply researched comparative analysis of the Ecuadorian and Peruvian armies, Maiah Jaskoski argues that militaries are concerned more with the predictability of their missions than with sovereignty objectives set by democratically elected leaders. Jaskoski gathers data from interviews with public officials, private sector representatives, journali...

This book, first published in 1981, examines the broader aspects of international strategic relations, and analyses Cold War developments within particular nations, fields of warfare and areas of political-military interaction. The role of force in international society changed as the nuclear deadlock between the superpowers continued, with military forces being deployed for political purposes in situations only just short of war. The balance between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces also changed as A...

Military technology is highly advanced in terms of technology being used in the field, computer applications, artificial intelligence, and software applications. These high-performance technologies range from weapons to communications technology to automation in vehicles and weaponry. These technologies must be both secure and reliable in harsh environments. Research is being focused specifically on that, including how military and defense applications operate, what modern technologies are being...

Now Generation Kill tells the soldiers' story in their own words. The narrative focuses on a platoon of 23 marines, many of them vetrans of Afghanistan, whose elite reconnaissance unit spearheaded the blitzkrieg on Iraq. This is the story of young men that have been trained to become ruthless killers. It's about surviving death. It's about taking part in a war many questioned before it even began. Evan Wright was the only reporter with Frist Recon, which operated well ahead of most other forces,...

Winner of The Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Award for Excellence in U.S. Army History Writing – Journals, memoirs and letters, June 2008 Shortly after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the war in Iraq became the most confusing in U.S. history, the high command not knowing who to fight, who was attacking Coalition troops, and who among the different Iraqi groups were fighting each other. Yet there were a few astute officers like Lt. Col. Christopher Hughes, commanding...

A groundbreaking reexamination of U.S. and global security, certain to be one of the most talked about books of the year. Since the end of the Cold War, America's national security establishment has been searching for a new operating theory to explain how this seemingly "chaotic" world actually works. Gone is the clash of blocs, but replaced by what? Thomas Barnett has the answers. A senior military analyst with the U.S. Naval War College, he has given a constant stream of briefings over the p...

Carl von Clausewitz has long been interpreted as the paradigmatic thinker of major interstate war. This book challenges this assumption by showing that Clausewitz was an ardent analyst of small war and integrated many aspects of his early writings on partisan warfare and people's war into his magnum opus, On War. It reconstructs Clausewitz's intellectual development by placing it in the context of his engagement with the political and philosophical currents of his own times - German Idealism, R...

As US imperialism continues to dictate foreign policy, Deadly Contradictions is a compelling account of the American empire. Stephen P. Reyna argues that contemporary forms of violence exercised by American elites in the colonies, client state, and regions of interest have deferred imperial problems, but not without raising their own set of deadly contradictions. This book can be read many ways: as a polemic against geopolitics, as a classic social anthropological text, or as a seminal analysi...

In any military operation throughout history, few 24-hour periods have been as crucial as that of 6th June 1944. With the aid of specially commissioned maps, D-Day: The First 24 Hours series gives the dramatic history of the first 24 hours of the Normandy landings, and explains in detail the events that occurred in each landing zone. In this first volume of the series, the book describes the build-up to the landings themselves, the German preparations for defending the French coastline, and the...

A timely and searing account of the American war in Afghanistan In Bravo Company, journalist and combat veteran Ben Kesling tells the story of the war in Afghanistan through the eyes of the men of one unit, part of a combat-hardened parachute infantry regiment in the 82nd Airborne Division. A decade ago, the soldiers of Bravo Company deployed to Afghanistan for a tour in Kandahar’s notorious Arghandab Valley. By the time they made it home, three soldiers had been killed in action, a dozen more...

Most writing today by activists and opponents of foreign policy is rooted in the 1960s. Underpinning many of these books is the unquestioned assumption that contemporary British imperialism is an adjunct to American foreign policy. Wherever the United States invades and bombs, Great Britain lays out the carpet and obediently follows. This subservience is jubilantly referred to as a "special relationship" by its supporters; by its detractors it is disparagingly depicted as "America's poodle". Thi...