Politics War

King George V predicted that his son, Edward VIII, would destroy himself within a year of succeeding to the throne. In December 1936 he was proved right, and the world’s press revealed the king was abandoning his throne to marry Wallis Simpson. A life spent in the shadow of his charismatic elder brother left the new king, George VI, magnificently unprepared for the demands of ruling the kingdom and empire. Drawing on personal accounts from the royal archives, Deborah Cadbury uncovers the very private conflict.

A legendary CIA spy and counterterrorism expert here tells the spellbinding story of his high-risk, action-packed career while illustrating the growing importance of America's intelligence officers and their secret missions. The Art of Intelligence draws from the full arc of Henry Crumpton's espionage and covert action exploits to explain what America's spies do and why their service is more valuable than ever.

When China launches a blitz attack on the island of Taiwan, the world order hangs in the balance, and the CIA must mobilize all forces to prevent the start of World War III. But in order to win, the US is forced to throw out the old playbook. What is required here is speed, audacity, and the application of the most advanced technology in the US arsenal. As the head of the CIA’s Emerging Threats Group, Don Riley has seen his share of crises, but nothing has prepared him for the choices ahead.

Ingrid Bettancourt tells the story of her captivity in the Colombian jungle, sharing powerful teachings of resilience, resistance, and faith. At the age of 32, she gave up a life of comfort and safety to return to Colombia to become a political leader in a country that was being slowly destroyed by terrorism, violence, fear. In 2002, while campaigning as a candidate in the Colombian presidential elections, she was abducted by the FARC. Nothing could have prepared her for what came next....

London, December 1943. As the Russian army repels German forces from Stalingrad, Maggie Hope takes a much-needed break from spying to defuse bombs in London. But Maggie herself is an explosion waiting to happen. Traumatized by her past, she finds herself living dangerously - taking huge risks, smoking, drinking, and speeding through the city streets on a motorbike. The last thing she wants is to get entangled in another crime.

Usama Bin Laden’s greatest fear was not capture or death, but the exposure of al-Qaeda’s secrets. At great risk to themselves and the entire mission, the US Special Operations Forces, who carried out the Abbottabad raid that killed Bin Laden, took an additional eighteen minutes to collect Bin Laden’s hard drives and thereby expose al-Qaeda’s secrets. In this ground-breaking book, Nelly Lahoud dives into Bin Laden’s files and meticulously distills the nearly six thousand pages of Arabic private communications.

John Boyd may be the most remarkable unsung hero in all of American military history. Some remember him as the greatest US fighter pilot ever - the man who, in simulated air-to-air combat, defeated every challenger in less than 40 seconds. Some recall him as the father of our country's most legendary fighter aircraft - the F-15 and F-16. Still, others think of Boyd as the most influential military theorist since Sun Tzu. They know only half the story.

Hezbollah is the most powerful Islamist group operating in the Middle East today, and no other Western journalist has penetrated as deeply inside this secretive organization as Nicholas Blanford. Now Blanford has written the first comprehensive inside account of Hezbollah and its enduring struggle against Israel.

October 1945: The Germans and Japanese have surrendered. For Cletus Frade and his colleagues in the OSS, it should be time to pack up - but they have far more important things to do. Chief among them is the protection of their assets, especially the human ones. In the closing months of the war, the United States made a secret deal with the head of German intelligence’s Soviet section. In exchange for a treasure trove of intelligence - in particular the identity of the Soviet spies in the U.S. atomic bomb program - his people would be spirited to safety in Argentina.

From Lt. General H.R. McMaster, US Army, ret., the former national security advisor and author of the best-selling classic Dereliction of Duty, comes a bold and provocative re-examination of the most critical foreign policy and national security challenges that face the United States, and an urgent call to compete to preserve America’s standing and security.

After finding the ruins of a Mayan temple - and saving the world from a terrorist attack - in One Rough Man, Pike Logan has been given the chance to rejoin the Taskforce, a top-secret counterterrorist organization that operates outside the bounds of US law. But before he becomes an operator again, he’s determined to get Jennifer Cahill into the Taskforce as well, though no one else seems willing to give a female civilian a shot.

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of "the Greatest Generation". In Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one: a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together and exchanging nearly 2,000 messages.

Jon Bennett is a top Wall Street strategist turned senior White House advisor. But nothing has prepared him for the terror that he will face. Saddam Hussein dispatches his top hit men to assassinate the President of the United States. Iraqi terrorists spread carnage throughout London, Paris, and Riyadh...and the Butcher of Baghdad has a nuclear ace in his hand that he has not yet played.

The audiobook provides unprecedented insight into leadership, management, strategy, and life-thinking that not only helped Rumsfeld lead the Pentagon in wartime, but earned him a reputation as one of America's toughest and most effective CEOs.

For five years, Jessica Stern interviewed extremist members of three religions around the world: Christians, Jews, and Muslims. She traveled extensively (to refugee camps in Lebanon, religious schools in Pakistan, prisons in Amman, Ashqelon, and Pensacola) and discovered that the Islamic jihadi in the mountains of Pakistan and the Christian fundamentalist bomber in Oklahoma have much in common.

Fueled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to listen to dissenting voices, Adolf Hitler seemed an unlikely leader, and yet he commanded enormous support and was able to exert a powerful influence over those who encountered him. How did Hitler become such an attractive figure to millions of people? That is the question at the core of Hitler's Charisma. Acclaimed historian and documentary filmmaker Laurence Rees examines the nature of Hitler's appeal and reveals the role his supposed "charisma" played in his success.

During the final three years of the Obama administration, Richard Stengel, the former editor of Time magazine and an Under Secretary of State, was the single person in government tasked with unpacking, disproving, and combating both ISIS's messaging and Russian disinformation. Then, in 2016, as the presidential election unfolded, Stengel watched as Donald Trump used disinformation himself, weaponizing the grievances of Americans who felt overlooked. In fact, Stengel quickly came to see how all three players had used the same playbook: ISIS sought to make Islam great again....

Who will defend Europe? The answer should be obvious: Europe should be able to defend itself. Yet, for decades, most of the continent enjoyed a defense holiday, outsourcing protection to the United States while banking an increasingly illusory 'peace dividend'. Now, after three decades of reducing armed forces and drawing down defense industries, Europe finds itself close to unprotected—while Russia is intent on continuing its war of expansion, and the United States is distracted and divided.

At the heart of Africa is Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal and unstaunchable war in which millions have died. And yet, despite its epic proportions, it has received little sustained media attention. In this deeply reported book, Jason K. Stearns vividly tells the story of this misunderstood conflict through the experiences of those who engineered and perpetrated it.

This is a love story like no other: Elinor Powell was an African-American nurse in the US military during World War II; Frederick Albert was a soldier in Hitler’s army, captured by the Allies and shipped to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Arizona desert. Like most other black nurses, Eleanor pulled a second-class assignment, in a dusty, sun-baked - and segregated - Western town. Brought together by unlikely circumstances and racist assumptions, Elinor and Frederick should have been bitter enemies; but instead, at the height of World War II, they fell in love.