Military Doctrine

What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war from 1500 onward. Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans had no general military superiority in the early modern era. Sharman shows instead that European expansion is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default.

In Mortal Republic, prize-winning historian Edward J. Watts offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy. For centuries, even as Rome grew into the Mediterranean's premier military and political power, its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise. By the 130s BC, however, Rome's leaders increasingly used these same tools to cynically pursue individual gain and obstruct their opponents.

T. R. Fehrenbach brilliantly delineates the contrasts and conflicts between the many Mexicos, unraveling the history while weaving a fascinating tapestry of beauty and brutality: the Amerindians, who wrought from the vulnerable land a great indigenous Meso-American civilization by the first millennium BC; the successive reigns of Olmec, Maya, Toltec, and Mexic masters, who ruled through an admirably efficient bureaucracy and the power of the priests, propitiating the capricious gods with human sacrifices; the Spanish conquistadors, and much more.

Les mémoires d'Albert Speer sont un document exceptionnel à plus d'un titre : témoignage d'un des plus hauts dignitaires nazis, il relate en détail le fonctionnement de l'appareil d'État vu de l'intérieur, avec le mélange de rationalité bureaucratique et de soumission à l'arbitraire du chef qui le caractérise. Mais c'est aussi l'itinéraire d'un homme brillant, architecte de talent, qui est rapidement séduit par Hitler et qui va progressivement mettre son intelligence et ses compétences au service de la machine de guerre nazie et d'une idéologie totalitaire.

Deep in an underground production facility, far away from prying eyes, President Yao Jintao stood and watched—row after row of machines busily working to build other machines that would fight and destroy their enemies. Killers were creating killers for as far as he could see. President Yao sensed they’d crossed a line. South Korean and American soldiers stared down their Chinese counterparts along the Yalu River, just like they had 75 years before. With winter on the way and both armies dug in, who might make the first move? Nobody was prepared for what came next.

WWIII wasn’t what any of the analysts expected. Across the globe, battles raged. Taiwan fell. Fighting continued in the Caribbean and South America. The Russian Far East had invaders, and nobody seemed able to stop this new Red Army. With the world in chaos, it was hard to unravel the pieces.

When she won the presidency, the world was in crisis. Would Blain be able to maintain her trust at this crucial hour? The Chinese were driven out of the Caribbean, but Blain knew it was at a terrible cost. There were those in the administration that had lost their nerve. The president was determined to slay the Jade Dragon, but would he be able to get her what she needs to win?

Adolf Hitler is one of the most studied men in history, and yet the most important things we think we know about him are wrong. As Brendan Simms' major new biography shows, Hitler's main preoccupation was not, as widely believed, the threat of Bolshevism but that of international capitalism and Anglo-America. These two fears drove both his anti-Semitism and his determination to secure the 'living space' necessary to survive in a world dominated by the British Empire and the United States.

In the decade before the onset of the Civil War, groups of Americans engaged in a series of longshot - and illegal - forays into Mexico, Cuba, and other Central American countries in hopes of taking them over. These efforts became known as filibustering, and their goal was to seize territory to create new independent fiefdoms, which would ultimately be annexed by the still-growing United States. Most failed miserably. William Walker was the outlier. Soft-spoken with no military background, in 1856 he managed to install himself as president of Nicaragua.

No nation is a stranger to war, but for Russians war is a central part of who they are. Their "motherland" has been the battlefield where some of the largest armies have clashed, the most savage battles have been fought, the highest death tolls paid. Having prevailed over Mongol hordes and vanquished Napoleon and Hitler, many Russians believe no other nation has sacrificed so much for the world.

The war in the Russian Far East has ground to a halt. US and Japanese Marines battle for control of the Yaeyama Islands. With spring around the corner, the fear is that China has one last gambit to play, and people are wondering if NATO and Russia are ready. The Allies have 750,000 soldiers and the US Eighth Army is planning wholesale destruction through China. But time isn’t on their side. The fate of the free world rests on two fronts: the battlefields and the political minefield back home.

The walls were closing in. Time was running out. The unthinkable had occurred. As defeats mounted, desperation took hold. Project Terracotta was complete. Jade Dragon now had a body—and an army. All that stood between certain defeat and potential victory was a final decision: one that would alter the course of humanity. Could the human mind outfox an AI? Had Jade Dragon truly become unstoppable?

Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan.

Blain serves at the pleasure of the president. Brought over from the last administration, there were few people more trusted. He knew the biggest threat was the deepfakes. China’s AI played war like a grand master. In what seemed like an instant, the cyberattacks crippled networks, and then the world lost faith in everything on the internet. Global financial markets were in turmoil as supply chains ceased to function. The greatest propaganda campaign ever tore apart the fabric of society. Could China’s expansionist goals be contained?

A report on how the greed of a privileged few, subsidized by public funding, creates substantial profits for themselves from mass human suffering.This was a speech given by General Butler during a nationwide tour in the early 1930's, but it applies even more today! Listen as he frankly discusses, from his experience as a career military officer, how business interests commercially benefit from warfare. He then suggests several practical solutions for reducing the pillage.

The American military is a tightly sealed community, and few outsiders have reason to know that a great many senior officers view the Iraq war with incredulity and dismay. But many officers have shared their anger with renowned military reporter Thomas E. Ricks, and in Fiasco, Ricks combines these astonishing on-the-record military accounts with his own extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to create a spellbinding account of an epic disaster.

The Chinese super-AI had achieved its master plan—an autonomous robotic army, air force, and navy. As President Yao and the People's Liberation Army faced defeat on the battlefield, full command of the PLA was handed over to Jade Dragon, which says it can slay the enemies of China to usher in a new dawn of global Chinese hegemony for the 21st century. The robots were coming… With the Terracotta Killers walking the land, Shadow Dragons and Dark Swords prowling the skies, and Sea Dragons roaming the Yellow Sea, a dystopian science fiction nightmare had become real.

In 2012, on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, an improvised explosive device left Dan Crenshaw's right eye destroyed and his left blinded. Only through the careful hand of his surgeons, and what doctors called a miracle, did Crenshaw's left eye recover partial vision. And yet, he persevered, completing two more deployments. Why? There are certain stories we tell ourselves about the hardships we face—we can become paralyzed by adversity or we can adapt and overcome. We can be fragile or we can find our fortitude. Crenshaw delivers a set of lessons to help you do just that.

Between 1939 and 1945, more than 70 Allied men and women were convicted - mostly in secret trials - of working to help Nazi Germany win the war. In the same period, hundreds of British Fascists were also interned without trial on specific and detailed evidence that they were spying for, or working on behalf of, Germany. Collectively, these men and women were part of a little-known Fifth Column: traitors who committed crimes including espionage, sabotage, communicating with enemy intelligence agents, and attempting to cause disaffection among Allied troops.

The basis for the film The Post, The Pentagon Papers are a series of articles, documents, and studies examining the Johnson Administration's lies to the public about the extent of US involvement in the Vietnam War, bringing to light shocking conclusions about America's true role in the conflict. With a brand-new foreword by James L. Greenfield, this edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story is sure to provoke discussion about free press and government deception.