Military Politics

Returning home a hero, TOPGUN pilot Colt Bancroft is called on to resurrect a Vietnam-era light attack squadron. Once soaring high, he finds himself on the dark side of special operations in a conflict he never saw coming. At its front lines, NCIS Special Agent Emmy Punky King is confronted with the timeless question—is the enemy of her enemy her friend? As Colt and his band of Navy SEALs bring the Black Ponies of VAL-4 to the fight, Punky navigates the murky waters of international espionage and an uneasy alliance with a former adversary to uncover a new threat.

Andrew Lambert, author of The Challenge - winner of the prestigious Anderson Medal - turns his attention to Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic, and Britain, examining how their identities as "seapowers" informed their actions and enabled them to achieve success disproportionate to their size. Lambert demonstrates how creating maritime identities made these states more dynamic, open, and inclusive than their lumbering continental rivals. Only when they forgot this aspect of their identity did these nations begin to decline.

No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. The Nazis plotted to kill the city's Jews and to sabotage the nation's military installations: plans existed for hanging 20 prominent Hollywood figures such as Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, and Samuel Goldwyn; for driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning as many Jews as possible; and for blowing up defense installations and seizing munitions from National Guard armories along the Pacific Coast.

With the support of former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, investigative reporter Leslie Kean draws on her research to separate fact from fiction and to lift the veil on decades of U.S. government misinformation. Throughout, she presents irrefutable evidence that unknown flying objects - metallic, luminous, and seemingly able to maneuver in ways that defy the laws of physics - actually exist.

In German-occupied East Africa during World War I, British forces have arrived. In defiance of his orders, German military commander Paul von Lettow enlists soldiers, civilians, and African rebels to fight against the British, forming the first modern guerrilla uprising of the time. Amid his political battles, Lettow is embroiled in a romantic relationship with an American woman who loves him, but who objects to his war.

One of the most acclaimed books of our time - the definitive Vietnam War exposé and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. When he came to Vietnam in 1962, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann was the one clear-sighted participant in an enterprise riddled with arrogance and self-deception, a charismatic soldier who put his life and career on the line in an attempt to convince his superiors that the war should be fought another way. By the time he died in 1972, Vann had embraced the follies he once decried. He died believing that the war had been won.

The revised and updated edition of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's modern classic about the psychology of combat, hailed by the Washington Post as "an illuminating account of how soldiers learn to kill and how they live with the experiences of having killed". In World War II, only 15 to 20 percent of combat infantry were willing to fire their rifles. In Korea, about 50 percent. In Vietnam, the figure rose to more than 90 percent. The good news is that most soldiers are loath to kill.

Boarding an airplane strikes at least a small sense of fear into most people. Even though we all have heard that the odds of being struck by lightning are greater than the odds of perishing in a plane crash, it still doesn't feel that way. Airplane crashes might be rare, but they do happen, and they’re usually fatal. David Soucie insists that most of these deaths could be prevented. He’s worked as a pilot, a mechanic, an FAA inspector, and an aviation executive. He’s seen death up close and personal - deaths of colleagues and friends that might have been prevented if he had approved certain safety measures in the aircrafts they were handling.

British soldier Peter Lennox, a POW in an Italian prison camp, is still fighting his own war. An artist in civilian life, his hands bear the scars of wounds received during his capture at the fall of Tobruk, and he suspects he will never paint again. The only thing that sustains him is plotting his escapes, no matter how many times he is recaptured. But in September 1943 the Italians surrender to the Allies, and Lennox is free.

In 2013 Assata Shakur, founding member of the Black Liberation Army, former Black Panther and godmother of Tupac Shakur, became the first ever woman to make the FBI's most wanted list. Assata Shakur's trial and conviction for the murder of a white State Trooper in the spring of 1973 divided America. Her case quickly became emblematic of race relations and police brutality in the USA. While Assata's detractors continue to label her a ruthless killer, her defenders cite her as the victim of a systematic, racist campaign.

In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative élan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalin’s court from the time of his acclamation as “leader” in 1929, five years after Lenin’s death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of 73. Through the lens of personality - Stalin’s as well as those of his most notorious henchmen, Molotov, Beria and Yezhov among them - the author sheds new light on the oligarchy that attempted to create a new world by exterminating the old.

The enemy is invisible and moving fast. The body count is rising. And time is running out. Marcus Ryker has spent his entire career studying killers. One thing he knows for sure: a peace summit is the ultimate stage for an assassination. President Andrew Clarke is determined to announce his historic peace plan from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. But when senior American officials who support the plan begin violently dying, Clarke orders Ryker and his team of CIA operatives to hunt down those responsible and bring the killing spree to an end.

Two leading authorities—an acclaimed historian and the outstanding battlefield commander and strategist of our time—collaborate on a landmark examination of war since 1945. Conflict is both a sweeping history of the evolution of warfare up to Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, and a penetrating analysis of what we must learn from the past—and anticipate in the future—in order to navigate an increasingly perilous world.

In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: Its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now his talents were put to more devious use: He built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler's favorite, Reinhard Heydrich.

When a rogue military faction in China kidnaps a CIA case officer, global tensions ignite. Desperate to forestall the looming firestorm, the United States deploys an elite team of Navy SEALs to rescue the agent, protected by nothing but their training and a single pilot providing air cover from his FA-18E Super Hornet—normally, it wouldn’t be enough. But these aren’t normal times…and this is no ordinary pilot.

Recalling the classic warnings against militarism, from George Washington's farewell address to Dwight Eisenhower's denunciation of the military-industrial complex, Johnson explores the trend of militarism that is bankrupting the United States and creating conditions for a new century of virulent blowback.

For years, ex–Navy SEAL Maxwell Moore has worked across the Middle East and behind the scenes for the Special Activities Division of the CIA, making connections, extracting valuable intelligence, and facing off against America’s enemies at every turn. And then...news of a potentially devastating coalition: What if two of the greatest threats to the security of the United States were to form an unholy alliance?

Against all odds we have made it into the last half of the 1990s. The Cold War looks solved, Arabs and Jews are talking, confrontation is on the wane. In this new harmony, one discord - what becomes of unemployed terrorists? You can bet they aren't going to retire quietly. Shunned by the Soviets, isolated by Middle Eastern realignment, one cadre hits on a scheme to jump-start the war machine. It's brilliant in its simplicity. With a single act they bring the world to nuclear boil. Jack Ryan and Dan Murray sweat to defuse a cataclysmic response.

In this landmark work that will forever change your understanding of how and why America went to war in Vietnam, author Fredrik Logevall taps newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations and traces the path that led two Western nations to tragically lose their way in the jungles of Southeast Asia. He brings to life the bloodiest battles of France’s final years in Indochina - and describes how, from an early point, a succession of American leaders made disastrous policy choices that put America on its own collision course with history.

As an embedded journalist in Iraq, North got a soldier's-eye view, often while under fire, of what the mainstream media failed to report. A decorated combat veteran, North watched Operation Iraqi Freedom with trained eyes unmatched by other journalists. What he witnessed compelled him to challenge post-war critics of the operation for their uninformed and deceptive views.