Military Politics

From 1337 to 1453 England repeatedly invaded France on the pretext that her kings had a right to the French throne. Though it was a small, poor country, England for most of those "100 years" won the battles, sacked the towns and castles, and dominated the war. Desmond Seward's critically acclaimed account of the Hundred Years War brings to life all of the intrigue, beauty, and royal to-the-death-fighting of that legendary century-long conflict.

In this comprehensive biography, Jean Edward Smith reconciles conflicting assessments of Grant's life, arguing that Grant is greatly underrated as a president. Following the turmoil of Andrew Johnson's administration, Grant guided the nation through the post-Civil War era, overseeing Reconstruction of the South and enforcing the freedoms of new African-American citizens. His presidential accomplishments were as considerable as his military victories, for the same strength of character that made him successful on the battlefield also characterized his years in the White House.

In 2012, Hakeem al-Araibi was a promising young player on Bahrain's national football team when he was arrested for attacking a police station during the Arab Spring, despite television footage showing him playing soccer at the time of the alleged attack. After three months of torture and wrongful imprisonment, Hakeem was released. He fled the country and made his way to Australia, where he was granted refugee status. Hakeem made a life here and was playing for the suburban Pascoe Vale Football Club, in Melbourne. He thought he was safe.

He was one of America's most exciting and secretive generals - the man Franklin Roosevelt made his top spy in World War II. A mythic figure whose legacy is still intensely debated, "Wild Bill" Donovan was director of the Office of Strategic Services (the country's first national intelligence agency) and the father of today's CIA. Donovan introduced the nation to the dark arts of covert warfare on a scale it had never seen before.

W.E.B. Griffin always hits the target- right at the top of the best seller lists.... W.E.B. Griffin's explosive Presidential Agent novels have gained worldwide acclaim for "leaving satisfied thriller readers hankering for more." Now, in Griffin's number one New York Times best seller, the Russian bear is stirring after many years of hibernation - and it is hungry.

Former Army Ranger Pierce Hunt is second-guessing his decision to join a CIA hunter-killer team that will take him far away from his daughter. But when a new performance-enhancing drug kills four football players - including his daughter’s boyfriend - settling down becomes the last thing on Hunt’s mind.

When a military coup in Iran leads to a crackdown on religious jihadists, it seems as if a new era is dawning in the Middle East, especially when the new leader, General Buzhazi, seeks to normalize relations with both America and Israel. But the Iranians are not really interested in peace....In the guise of pursuing and destroying Islamic militants, Buzhazi is planting thousands of Iranian Pasdaran special-ops troops throughout the oil-rich Kurdish region of Northern Iraq and in a lightning-quick operation brutally occupies the territory.

In the summer of 1941, German troops surrounded the Russian city of Leningrad—now St. Petersburg—and began the longest blockade in recorded history, one that would ultimately claim the lives of nearly three-quarters of a million people. At the center of the besieged city stood a converted palace that housed the world’s largest collection of seeds—more than 250,000 samples hand-collected over two decades from all over the globe by world-famous explorer, geneticist, and dissident Nikolai Vavilov, who had recently been disappeared by the Soviet government.

Bob Pope, the director of an American secret intelligence antiterrorist program, loses contact with his most trusted operative, navy master chief Gil Shannon, fearing him dead when a mission to take out a Swiss banker who is channeling funds to Muslim extremists goes awry. But when an American politician and her convoy are assassinated in Mexico City by the Ghost Sniper - an American ex-military gunman for hire employed by Mexico's most ruthless drug cartel - Pope must turn to retired Navy SEAL Daniel Crosswhite and the newest Sniper Elite hero.

A landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, The Main Enemy is the inside story of the CIA-KGB spy wars, told through the actions of the men who fought them. Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War.

Since the Second World War, Arab armed forces have consistently punched below their weight. They have lost many wars that by all rights they should have won, and in their best performances only ever achieved quite modest accomplishments. Over time, soldiers, scholars, and military experts have offered various explanations for this pattern.

The navy created by the people of Athens in ancient Greece was one of the finest fighting forces in the history of the world and the model for all other national navies to come. The Athenian navy built a civilization, empowered the world's first democracy, and led a band of ordinary citizens on a voyage of discovery that altered the course of history.

In Jawbreaker, Gary Berntsen, until recently one of the CIA's most decorated officers, comes out from under cover for the first time to describe his no-holds-barred pursuit of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

This collection bundles the final three books of the action-packed John Stone adventure.

Based on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving aides and Roosevelt family members, Nigel Hamilton offers a definitive account of FDR’s masterful - and underappreciated - command of the Allied war effort. Hamilton takes listeners inside FDR’s White House Oval Study - his personal command center - and into the meetings where he battled with Churchill about strategy and tactics and overrode the near mutinies of his own generals and secretary of war.

Why has war been such a consistent presence throughout the human past? A leading historian explains, drawing on rich examples and keen insight. Richard Overy is not the first scholar to take up the title question. In 1931, at the request of the League of Nations, Albert Einstein asked Sigmund Freud to collaborate on a short work examining whether there was "a way of delivering mankind from the menace of war." Published the next year as a pamphlet entitled Why War?, it conveyed Freud's conclusion that the "death drive" made any deliverance impossible.

From master storyteller and historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II.

An explosive, behind-the-scenes look into the workings of the U.S. war in Afghanistan that lifts the curtain of the world stage to reveal the devastating greed, waste, and failure surrounding this unwinnable war.

A top negotiator in countless high-stakes missions to free Americans captured abroad and held in the world's scariest prisons takes listeners inside the dramatic and shadowy world of international hostage rescue.

La Sagesse intemporelle des samouraïs ! Lorsque vous comprendrez l’art de la stratégie, vous deviendrez invincible ! Publié pour la première fois en 1645, ce livre reste d’actualité pour les nouvelles générations. Le traité des cinq roues est considéré comme l'un des textes les plus perspicaces sur les arts subtils de l'affrontement et de la victoire à avoir vu le jour. Composé en XVII siècle par le célèbre duelliste et samouraï invaincu, Miyamoto Musashi, ce livre analyse le processus de lutte et de maîtrise des conflits qui sous-tend tous les niveaux d'interaction humaine.