Military Politics

From the earliest days of his dictatorship, Saddam Hussein had vowed to destroy Israel. So, when France sold Iraq a top-of-the-line nuclear reactor in 1975, the Israelis were justifiably concerned, especially when they discovered that Iraqi scientists had already formulated a secret program to extract weapon-grade plutonium from the reactor, a first critical step in creating an atomic bomb.

The Great War's East Africa campaign was, and remains, of huge importance. A 'small war', consisting of a few 'local affairs', was all that was expected in August 1914 as Britain moved to eliminate the threat to the high seas of German naval bases in Africa. But two weeks after the Armistice was signed in Europe, British and German troops were still fighting in Africa after four years of what one campaign historian described as 'a war of extermination and attrition without parallel in modern times'.

For fans of the Netflix series The Crown, a meticulously researched historical tour de force about the secret ties among Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, the Duke of Windsor, and Adolf Hitler before, during, and after World War II. Andrew Morton tells the story of the feckless Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, his American wife, Wallis Simpson, the bizarre wartime Nazi plot to make him a puppet king after the invasion of Britain, and the attempted cover-up by Churchill, General Eisenhower, and King George VI of the duke's relations with Hitler.

On a raw January afternoon, the Stuart king, Charles I, was executed for treason. Within weeks, the English monarchy had been abolished and the ‘useless and dangerous’ House of Lords discarded. The people, it was announced, were now the sovereign force in the land. What this meant, and where it would lead, no one knew. The Restless Republic is the story of the extraordinary decade that followed.

From June of 2019 until his firing by President Trump after the November 2020 election, Secretary Mark T. Esper led the Department of Defense through an unprecedented time in history—a period marked by growing threats and conflict abroad, a global pandemic unseen in a century, the greatest domestic unrest in two generations, and a White House seemingly bent on breaking accepted norms and conventions for political advantage. A Sacred Oath is Secretary Esper’s unvarnished and candid memoir of those extraordinary and dangerous times, and includes events and moments never before told.

Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the most highly paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all "negroes and Jews". Yet, instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight she went from performer to Resistance spy. In Agent Josephine best-selling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little known history of the famous singer's life.

The Special Boat Service (SBS) has long been the forgotten sibling of British Special Forces, but no longer. Duncan Falconer's grippingly personal memoir finally lifts the lid on life, loss, training and operations in the toughest unit of them all—the SBS. From joining up as a teenager, through SBS recruitment, training, and operational detachments, First into Action takes us on a journey through the SBS's history, operations and tactics seen through the lens of Duncan Falconer's remarkable story.

In Operation Red Dawn and the Siege of Europe, we see what happens when war arrives on the shores of the US. As Chinese and Russians attack the frontier of Alaska, American forces are stretched thin. With battles raging in Europe, the Islamic Republic, and on their own doorstep, what will President Stein decide to do?

Assigned to the Nuremberg war trials, special agent James Cronley, Jr., finds himself fighting several wars at once, in the dramatic new Clandestine Operations novel about the birth of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Cold War.

Ian Thomas is supposed to be dead. An international terrorist responsible for the bombing of the US Naval War College, he's been deceased for three years. But Don Riley, head of the CIA’s Emerging Threats Group, is staring at a social media post showing him to be very much alive and on the run in South America. The video of Thomas sparks a global hunt: The Americans want to bring him to justice. The Chinese want him to disappear. And the Russians want to kill him very, very slowly. But the world's most powerful nations aren't the only ones pursuing the most wanted man on the planet.

It is The Campus. Secretly created under the administration of President Jack Ryan, its sole purpose is to eliminate terrorists and those who protect them. Officially, it has no connection to the American government - a necessity in a time when those in power consider themselves above such arcane ideals as loyalty, justice, and right or wrong.

In this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose 63-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix describes what it was like to be trained from birth for a lone position at the apex of the nation's political hierarchy and as a revered symbol of divine status.

In America's new war, the first guns in the fight are special operations forces, including the Navy SEALs, specially trained warriors who operate with precision, swiftness, and lethal force. In the constantly shifting war on terror, SEAL units - small in number, flexible, stealthy, and efficient - are more vital than ever to America's security as they take the battle to an elusive enemy around the globe. This is essential listening for anyone who wants to know what goes into the making of America's best warriors.

Abraham Lincoln did not come out of nowhere. But if he was shaped by his times, he also managed at his life's fateful hour to shape them to an extent few could have foreseen. Ultimately, this is the great drama that astonishes us still, and that Abe brings to fresh and vivid life. The measure of that life will always be part of our American education.

The Washington Post's former Baghdad bureau chief, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, takes us into the Green Zone, headquarters for the American occupation in Iraq. In this bubble separated from wartime realities, the task of reconstructing Iraq is in the hands of 20-somethings chosen for their Republican Party loyalty. They pursue irrelevant neoconservative solutions and pie-in-the-sky policies instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity, angering the locals and fueling the insurgency.

Assassination has been dramatized by literature and politicized by infamous murders throughout history, and for Robert Baer, one of the most accomplished agents to ever work for the CIA, it's a source of endless fascination, speculation, and intrigue. Over several decades, Baer served as an operative, from Iraq to New Delhi and beyond; notably, his career was the model for the acclaimed movie Syriana.

Darlene and Mike fight not only the foreign enemy on United States soil but the foes within the populace of America in the exciting third book of this World War 3 apocalyptic tale. Faced with chaos and disorder all around them, the survivors must not only reach Osceola but make sure it stays outside of enemy hands in this epic thriller!

The Kremlin intrigues, the private worlds of the Soviet Empire's ruling class, Radzinsky thrillingly brings them to life. And the riddle of that most cold-blooded of leaders, a man for whom nothing was sacred in his pursuit of absolute might, and perhaps the greatest mass murderer in Western history, is solved.

Special agent Jericho Quinn is a wanted man. Suspected of murder and marked for death by a network of conspirators embedded in the White House, Quinn knows he has to get out of the country--fast--before a team of contract killers find him and his daughter. To set things right at home, he'll have to take a nonstop flight from Anchorage, Alaska, to Vladivostok, Russia, aboard a massive Airbus A380. But soon after takeoff, it becomes apparent that Quinn and his daughter picked the wrong plane.

These are entirely Napoleon Bonaparte's own words, written and spoken, and collected in journal form. A particular focus here has been put on Napoleon's writings that pertain to military and state matters. The dates in terms of the revolutionary calendar have been modernized, and names and titles of individuals mentioned have been maintained with no attempt at uniformity. This production was begun on the 250th year of Napoleon's birth.