Military Politics

When New York Times foreign correspondent J. B. Collins hears rumors that an al-Qaeda splinter cell has captured a cache of chemical weapons inside Syria, he knows this is a story he must pursue at all costs. Does the commander of the jihadist faction really have the weapons? If so, who is the intended target? The U.S.? Israel? Or could it be Jordan?

It is November 1942. War is raging in Europe. The invasion of North Africa has begun. In Washington, OSS chief William J. Donovan finds himself fighting a rear-guard battle against an unexpected enemy: the rival intelligence chiefs back home. In Morocco, Second Lieutenant Eric Fulmar waits in the desert for a car containing two top-level defectors - or will it be full of SS men instead? In England, Major Richard Canidy gets the mission of his life: to penetrate into the heart of Germany and bring out the man with the secret of the jet engine, before the Germans grab hold of him first.

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.

100 Deadly Skills contains proven self-defense skills, evasion tactics, and immobilizing maneuvers - modified from the world of black ops - to help you take action in numerous "worst case" scenarios from escaping a locked trunk to making an improvised Taser to tricking facial recognition software. With easy-to-understand instructions, Emerson outlines in detail many life-saving strategies and teaches you how to think and act like a member of the special forces.

So Others May Live: Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers: Saving Lives, Defying Death is the award-winning untold story of the US Coast Guard's quiet but resolute rescue swimmers. From deep ocean caves on the Oregon coast to the panicked and chaotic streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, here are their stunningly heroic stories.

In this fascinating book, investigative reporter Yasha Levine uncovers the secret origins of the Internet, tracing it back to a Pentagon counterinsurgency surveillance project. With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news - and the device on which you read it.

In combating terror, America can no longer depend on its conventional military superiority and the use of sophisticated technology. More than ever, we need men like those of the Army Special Forces---the legendary Green Berets. In Chosen Soldier, Dick Couch draws on nearly a year spent at Special Forces training facilities and offers an unprecedented view of the education of these men.

Former Marine Force Reconnaissance officer Logan West emerges from a blackout after drinking away the worries of his ruined marriage and PTSD, an all too familiar scene for the recovering alcoholic. But he wakes to more than a killer hangover: A professional mercenary has been sent to capture him. After an embattled showdown, Logan impulsively answers the dead man's ringing phone, triggering a hasty rescue of Logan's estranged wife and a global race against the clock to track down an unknown organization....

1972. The Munich Olympics. Palestinian members of the Black September group murder 11 Israeli athletes. Nine hundred million people watch the crisis unfold on television, witnessing a tragedy that inaugurates the modern age of terror.

Former FARC revolutionary Sofia Lozano has become the world’s most cunning assassin, and now she’s selling her services to the highest bidder. But when the CIA learns that Sofia’s newest client is an international terrorist syndicate with plans to kill countless civilians, her name is placed on David Rivers’ kill list. As David and his team track the elusive operative from Colombia’s triple canopy jungles to its Pacific mangrove swamps, his team stumbles onto a larger conspiracy: a narco-sub loaded with cocaine and evidence of a terrorist attack-in-progress.

For most of its history, the US avoided making political and military commitments that would entangle it in European-style power politics. Then, suddenly, it conceived a new role for itself as the world’s armed superpower and never looked back. In Tomorrow, the World, Wertheim traces America’s transformation to the crucible of World War II, especially in the months prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the Nazis conquered France, the architects of the nation’s new foreign policy came to believe that the US ought to achieve primacy in international affairs forevermore.

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.

A deadly betrayal is at the center of The Athens Solution. When a game-changing weapon falls into the wrong hands, the US ambassador to Greece must risk everything to recover it, even if it means participating in a ruse that costs his life. With the ambassador dead and the device still at large, covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath rushes to eliminate a terror cell about to sell the dangerous technology to Iran.

In this compelling biography, McPherson follows Abraham Lincoln from his early frontier days to his turbulent years in the White House. This concise yet comprehensive account reveals why Lincoln still remains a quintessential American icon.

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.

Taking us from the French Revolution to the Cold War, Andrew Roberts presents us with a bracingly honest and deeply insightful look at nine major figures in modern history: Napoleon Bonaparte, Horatio Nelson, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, George C. Marshall, Charles de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Margaret Thatcher. Each one of these leaders fundamentally shaped the outcome of the war in which their nation was embroiled.

The culminating volume in Richard Rhodes’s monumental and prizewinning history of nuclear weapons, offering the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in a post-Cold War age. The past 20 years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers - Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States - have struggled with new realities.

When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, the world seemed unmoved. Even Ferdinand’s own uncle, Franz Josef I, was notably ambivalent about the death of the Hapsburg heir, saying simply, "It is God’s will." Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that the episode would lead to conflictmuch less a world war of such massive and horrific proportions that it would fundamentally reshape the course of human events.

After a particularly long cruise, the USS United States is in port in Naples, and her crew is enjoying its first liberty in months. But something's not right. Several crew members have not reported back from their leave, and a beautiful American reporter who boarded the United States in Tangiers may not be a reporter, or even an American. When one of Jake's men, in a hotel in Naples, witnesses an assassination attempt led by this woman, Grafton realizes the situation is much more serious than he suspected.

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 had lost limbs, and an astonishing half of the company had Purple Hearts. In the decade since, two of the soldiers have died by suicide, more than a dozen have tried, and others admit they’ve considered it. Written with an insider’s eye and ear and drawing on extensive interviews and original reporting, Bravo Company follows the men from their initial enlistment on.