Social Military History

In 1999, 30-year-old Nada Bakos moved from her lifelong home in Montana to Washington, DC, to join the CIA. Quickly realizing her affinity for intelligence work, Nada was determined to rise through the ranks of the agency first as an analyst and then as a Targeting Officer, eventually finding herself on the frontline of America's War against Islamic extremists. In this role, Nada was charged with determining if Iraq had a relationship with 9/11 and Al-Qaida, and finding the mastermind behind this terrorist activity: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

What makes a country fall to a dictator? How are authoritarian leaders - strongmen - capable of killing millions acquire their power? How are they able to defeat the ideal of democracy? And what can we do to make sure it doesn't happen again? By profiling five of the most notoriously ruthless dictators in history - Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Saddam Hussein - Kenneth C. Davis seeks to answer these questions, examining the forces in these strongmen's personal lives and historical periods that shaped the leaders they'd become.

The most eagerly awaited presidential biography in years, Theodore Rex is a sequel to Edmund Morris’s classic bestseller The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. It begins by following the new President (still the youngest in American history) as he comes down from Mount Marcy, New York, to take his emergency oath of office in Buffalo, one hundred years ago.

Of all the Americans who became renowned for expeditions to the West, few were as famous - or infamous - as John Charles Fremont, whose work produced some of the region’s most detailed maps and propelled him to national fame. Among other things, he taught mathematics to midshipmen on a Navy warship on a long cruise off South America, served as governor of two states and a Senator for one, was court-martialed for insubordination, issued the first emancipation proclamation, and eloped with the daughter of a powerful U.S. Senator.

In The Cause of All Nations, distinguished historian Don H. Doyle explains that the Civil War was more than an internal American conflict; it was a struggle that spanned the Atlantic Ocean. This audiobook follows the agents of the North and South who went abroad to tell the world what they were fighting for, and the foreign politicians, journalists, and intellectuals who told America and the world what they thought this war was really about - or ought to be about.

From the front lines of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, a searing, unforgettable audiobook that captures the human essence of the greatest conflict of our time. Through the eyes of Dexter Filkins, the prize-winning New York Times correspondent, we witness the remarkable chain of events that began with the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, continued with the attacks of 9/11, and moved on to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A princess of White Russian descent, Marie Vassiltchikov was 23 years old when she was trapped in Berlin by the outbreak of World War II. In these secret diaries, she chronicles the glamorous rise and shattering fall of the Nazi Party, as seen from the vantage point of her desk at the Foreign Ministry. She also describes how she and her friends became involved in a desperate conspiracy to murder Hitler.

Carve Her Name with Pride is the inspiring story of the half-French Violette Szabo who was born in Paris in 1921 to an English motorcar dealer, and a French Mother. She met and married Etienne Szabo, a Captain in the French Foreign Legion in 1940. Shortly after the birth of her daughter, Tania, her husband died at El Alamein. She became a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and was recruited into the SOE and underwent secret agent training. Her first trip to France was completed successfully even though she was arrested and then released by the French Police.

As a conductor for the Underground Railroad - the covert resistance network created to aid and protect slaves seeking freedom - William Still helped as many as 800 people escape enslavement. He also meticulously collected the letters, biographical sketches, arrival memos, and ransom notes of the escapees. The Underground Railroad Records is an archive of primary documents that trace the narrative arc of the greatest, most successful campaign of civil disobedience in American history.

The Hundred Years War was a series of conflicts waged between England and France between 1337 and 1453. The war involved several generations of kings on both sides and was fought over a single issue: whether the English had the right to rule the kingdom of France. The Hundred Years War was an important element in the creation of modern Europe and in the definition of the national characters of both England and France. This audiobook tells the story of this long, complex, and fascinating conflict.

It is the world's most widely recognized weapon, the most profuse tool for killing ever made. More than fifty national armies carry the automatic Kalashnikov, as do an array of police, intelligence, and security agencies all over the world. In this tour de force, prizewinning New York Times reporter C. J. Chivers traces the invention of the assault rifle.

Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age - and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems, as much as with the enemy.

Preparing for the next war at an unknown date against an undetermined opponent is a difficult undertaking with extremely high stakes. Thus, outside of their own combat, militaries have studied foreign wars as a valuable source of battlefield information. Through a series of in-depth case studies of the US Army, Navy, and Air Force, Brent L. Sterling creates a better understanding of the dynamics of learning from "other people's wars", determining what types of knowledge can be gained from foreign wars, identifying common pitfalls, and proposing solutions.

This is the complete text of The Art of War, one of the oldest and most successful books on military strategy in the world. It has also been applied to business and managerial strategies. The translation, by Lionel Giles, is considered one of the best available. This unabridged edition of The Art of War includes only the most essential translator's notes so that the words and thoughts of Sun Tzu may be easily understood.

Although Christian believers agreed with one another that the Bible was authoritative and that it should be interpreted through commonsense principles, there was rampant disagreement about what Scripture taught about slavery. Furthermore, most Americans continued to believe that God ruled over the affairs of people and nations, but they were radically divided in their interpretations of what God was doing in and through the war.

Dive into action with the United States Armed Forces while listening to these thrilling and informative books. Uncover the history, tactics, and missions of forces like the Navy SEALs, Army, and Coast Guard.

L'opération Moolah était une tentative de la United States Air Force, pendant la guerre de Corée, d'obtenir par le biais de la défection un chasseur MiG-15 complet et opérationnel. Les forces communistes introduisirent le MiG-15 en Corée le 1er novembre 1950. Les pilotes de l'US Air Force rapportèrent que les performances de l'avion soviétique étaient supérieures à celles de tous les avions que pouvaient lui opposer les Nations unies, y compris la dernière acquisition en date de l'armée de l'air américaine, le F-86 Sabre.

America's World War II military was a force of unalloyed good. While saving the world from Nazism, it also managed to unify a famously fractious American people. At least that’s the story many Americans have long told themselves. Divisions offers a decidedly different view. Prizewinning historian Thomas A. Guglielmo draws together more than a decade of extensive research to tell sweeping yet personal stories of race and the military.

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.

The Annals, Part 2 picks up in the year A.D. 32 with the increasingly menacing and tyrannical behavior of Tiberius. With hundreds murdered or driven to suicide and many more in exile, Tiberius descends steadily into growing lust and debauchery on his private estate on the isle of Capri. Overseas, Rome is victorious in her struggle with Parthia, and as Tiberius is being smothered to death in A.D. 37 by Macro, peace at last comes to the eastern frontier.