Politics War

As he prepares to deliver the State of the Union address, the president of the United States is convinced the Islamic State is on the run, about to be crushed by American forces once and for all. But New York Times foreign correspondent J. B. Collins tells the president he's dead wrong. With the Middle East on fire, the Israeli prime minister dead, and Amman in ruins, Collins fears a catastrophic attack inside the American homeland is imminent.

On the eve of a top secret space mission, Captain Calli Chase detects a tripped alarm in the tunnels deep below a NASA research center. A NASA pilot, quantum physicist, and cybercrime investigator, Calli knows that a looming blizzard and government shutdown could provide the perfect cover for sabotage, with deadly consequences. As it turns out, the danger is worse than she thought. A spatter of dried blood, a missing security badge, a suspicious suicide—a series of disturbing clues point to Calli’s twin sister, Carme, who’s been MIA for days.

On 22 August 1485, Richard III was killed at Bosworth Field, the last king of England to die in battle. His victorious opponent, Henry Tudor (the future Henry VII), went on to found one of our most famous ruling dynasties. Richard's body was displayed in undignified fashion for two days in nearby Leicester and then hurriedly buried in the church of the Greyfriars. Fifty years later, at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, the king's grave was lost - its contents believed to be emptied into the river Soar - and Richard III's reputation buried under a mound of Tudor propaganda.

Tasked with finding common ground and building friendships between the world's two largest countries and arctic neighbors, a young Canadian diplomat finds himself on his first overseas assignment in Moscow, the Soviet capital. It's the early 1970s and a Cold War between communism and capitalism, the west and the east, is simmering-while the ice rink is just starting to heat up. Smith opts for sports diplomacy, throwing off his embassy black tie dress codes and donning the blue and white sweater of the Moscow Maple Leafs.

Free speech is the bedrock of all our liberties, and yet in recent years, it has come to be mistrusted. A new form of social justice activism, which perceives language as potentially violent, has prompted a national debate on where the limitations of acceptable speech should be drawn. Governments throughout Europe have enacted 'hate speech' legislation to curb the dissemination of objectionable ideas, Silicon Valley tech giants are collaborating to ensure that they control the limitations of public discourse, and campaigners in the US are calling for revisions to the First Amendment.

Elizabeth of York would have ruled England, but for the fact that she was a woman. One of the key figures of the Wars of the Roses, daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, she married Henry Tudor to bring peace to a war-torn England. In Elizabeth of York: The First Tudor Queen, Alison Weir builds a portrait of this beloved queen, placing her in the context of the magnificent, ceremonious, often brutal world she inhabited.

Five-star General Dwight D. Eisenhower was arguably the single most important military figure of World War II. Crusade in Europe tells the complete story of the war as he planned and executed it. Through Eisenhower's eyes the enormous scope and drama of the war—strategy, battles, moments of great decision—become fully illuminated in all their fateful glory. Penned before his Presidency, this account is deeply human and helped propel him to the highest office.

Former allies in the IRA, Sean Dillon and Martin Brosnan have chosen different paths. Now Dillon is a terrorist for hire, a master of disguise employed by Saddam Hussein. Brosnan is the one man who knows Dillon’s strengths and weaknesses…and brilliant mastery of espionage. Once friends, now enemies, they are playing the deadliest game of their careers. A game that culminates in a frightening - and true - event: Iraq’s attempted mortar attack on the British war cabinet at 10 Downing Street in February 1991.

The chilling and little-known story of Adolf Hitler's eight-year march to the pinnacle of German politics. On the night of January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler leaned out of a spotlit window of the Reich chancellery in Berlin, bursting with joy. The moment seemed unbelievable, even to Hitler. After an...

War Is a Racket is a 1935 book by Smedley D. Butler (1881 –1940), a retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient who became an outspoken critic of American wars and their consequences. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he took part in military actions in the Philippines, China, Central America, the Caribbean, and France. After his retirement from the US Marine Corps in 1931, he took his speech "War is a Racket" on a nationwide tour. Due to its popularity, he wrote a longer version for a booklet published in 1935.

This all-time classic is still perhaps the most prestigious and influential book of strategy in the world, as eagerly studied in Asia by modern politicians and executives as it has been by military leaders since ancient times. As a study of the anatomy of organizations in conflict, The Art of War applies to competition and conflict in general, on every level from the interpersonal to the international. Its aim is invincibility, victory without battle, and unassailable strength through understanding the physics, politics, and psychology of conflict.

The basis for the film The Post, The Pentagon Papers are a series of articles, documents, and studies examining the Johnson Administration's lies to the public about the extent of US involvement in the Vietnam War, bringing to light shocking conclusions about America's true role in the conflict. With a brand-new foreword by James L. Greenfield, this edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story is sure to provoke discussion about free press and government deception.

In a world where oil-rich states are more likely to start war than their oil-dependent counterparts, it's surprising how little attention is still paid to these so-called petrostates. These states' wealth props up the global arms trade, provides diplomatic leverage, and allows them to support violent and nonviolent proxies. In Oil, the State, and War, Emma Ashford explores the many potential links between domestic oil production and foreign policy behavior and how oil production influences global politics.

The massive armies of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies posed a huge threat to the nations of Western Europe. US military planners decided they needed a plan to slow the juggernaut they expected when and if a war began. The plan was Special Forces Berlin. Their mission, should hostilities commence, was to wreak havoc behind enemy lines and buy time for vastly outnumbered NATO forces to conduct a breakout from the city.

The Holocaust was perpetrated by the Germans, but it would not have been possible without the assistance of other countries. If we are to understand how and why the Holocaust happened, Götz Aly argues in this groundbreaking study, we must examine its prehistory throughout Europe. We must look at countries as far-flung as Romania and France, Russia and Greece, where, decades before the Nazis came to power, a deadly combination of envy, competition, nationalism, and social upheaval fueled a surge of anti-Semitism, creating the preconditions for the deportations and murder to come.

The definitive portrait of the powerful, corruption-ridden Teamsters union and its legendary president Jimmy Hoffa - organizer, gangster, convict, and conspirator - with a new afterword by the author.

1942: a German spy comes ashore on a desolate stretch of Lincolnshire beach. But he is hunted down by a young detective, Richard Prince. The secret services have need of a man like him.... In occupied Europe, Denmark is a hotbed of problems for British intelligence. Rumours of a war-ending weapon being developed by the Germans are rife. Sent to Copenhagen, Prince is soon caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Dodging Gestapo agents, SS muscle and the danger of betrayal, his survival - and the war effort - hangs in the balance.

Joe Wilderness is a World War II orphan, a condition that he thinks excuses him from common morality. Cat burglar, card sharp, and Cockney wide boy, the last thing he wants is to get drafted. But, in 1946, he finds himself in the Royal Air Force, facing a stretch in military prison...when along comes Lt Colonel Burne-Jones to tell him MI6 has better use for his talents. Posted to occupied Berlin, interrogating ex-Nazis, and burgling the odd apartment for MI6, Wilderness finds himself with time on his hands and the devil making work.

Berlin, 1979. When the CIA's most valuable spy is compromised, the Agency realizes it does not have the capability to bring him to safety. If he cannot evade the dreaded East German security service, the result will be chaos and a cascade of failures throughout the Agency's worldwide operations. Master Sergeant Kim Becker lived through the hell of Vietnam as a member of the elite Studies and Operations Group. When he lost one of his best men in a pointless operation, he began to question his mission. Now, he is serving with an even more secretive Army Special Forces unit based in Berlin.

The First World War hardly ended with the formal Armistice in Europe on November 11, 1918, amid the continuing violence of blockades and epidemics, amid numerous forms of reconstruction and revolution. For many at the time, the outbreak of what would become the First World War was an inevitability, the result of rising tensions over decades, whether due to the dynamics and systems of international politics within Europe, or a result of the competitive logic of imperial politics as practiced by Europe outside its borders, rebounding back upon it.