Social Military History

Written over three centuries ago by a Samurai warrior, A Book of Five Rings has been hailed as a limitless source of psychological insight for businessmen or anyone who relies on strategy and tactics to outwit the competition.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Peter Maass went to the Balkans as a reporter at the height of the nightmarish war there, but this audiobook is not traditional war reportage. Maass examines how an ordinary Serb could wake up one morning and shoot his neighbor, once a friend - then rape that neighbor's wife. He conveys the desperation that makes a Muslim beg the United States to bomb his own city in order to end the misery.

Theodore Rex is the story—never fully told before—of Theodore Roosevelt’s two world-changing terms as President of the United States. A hundred years before the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, “TR” succeeded to power in the aftermath of an act of terrorism.

Widely heralded on publication as a “must-read” (Military Review) and “important window on America’s battle with al-Qaeda” (Washington Post), Ali Soufan’s revelatory account of the war on terror as seen from its front lines changed the way we understand al-Qaeda and how the United States prosecuted the war — and led to hard questions being asked of our leaders.

This is the true story of Ephraim Mattos, a former US Navy SEAL, and what he witnessed while volunteering as a frontline combat medic during the historic battle to retake Mosul from ISIS - the deadliest urban combat the world has seen since WWII.

Formed in 1940, Special Operations Executive was to coordinate Resistance work overseas. The organization's F section sent more than 400 agents into France, 39 of whom were women. But while some are widely known - Violette Szabo, Odette Sansom, Noor Inayat Khan - others have had their stories largely overlooked. Kate Vigurs interweaves for the first time the stories of all 39 female agents.

In the summer of 1941, German troops surrounded the Russian city of Leningrad—now St. Petersburg—and began the longest blockade in recorded history, one that would ultimately claim the lives of nearly three-quarters of a million people. At the center of the besieged city stood a converted palace that housed the world’s largest collection of seeds—more than 250,000 samples hand-collected over two decades from all over the globe by world-famous explorer, geneticist, and dissident Nikolai Vavilov, who had recently been disappeared by the Soviet government.

Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: Defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off-course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives.

From Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond, Scahill speaks to the CIA agents, mercenaries, and elite Special Operations Forces operators who populate the dark side of American war-fighting. He goes deep into al Qaeda-held territory in Yemen and walks the streets of Mogadishu with CIA-backed warlords. We also meet the survivors of US night raids and drone strikes - including families of US citizens targeted for assassination by their own government - who reveal the human consequences of the dirty wars the United States struggles to keep hidden.

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.

Les mémoires d'Albert Speer sont un document exceptionnel à plus d'un titre : témoignage d'un des plus hauts dignitaires nazis, il relate en détail le fonctionnement de l'appareil d'État vu de l'intérieur, avec le mélange de rationalité bureaucratique et de soumission à l'arbitraire du chef qui le caractérise. Mais c'est aussi l'itinéraire d'un homme brillant, architecte de talent, qui est rapidement séduit par Hitler et qui va progressivement mettre son intelligence et ses compétences au service de la machine de guerre nazie et d'une idéologie totalitaire.

The history of espionage is far older than any of today's intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. The codebreakers at Bletchley Park, the most successful World War II intelligence agency, were completely unaware that their predecessors in earlier moments of national crisis had broken the codes of Napoleon during the Napoleonic wars and those of Spain before the Spanish Armada.

In 1943, as the war against Nazi Germany raged abroad, President Franklin Roosevelt had a critical goal: a face-to-face sit-down with his allies Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. This first-ever meeting of the Big Three in Tehran, Iran, would decide some of the most crucial strategic details of the war. Yet when the Nazis found out about the meeting, their own secret plan took shape—an assassination plot that would’ve changed history.

In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat his powerful propaganda machine, crowing victory and smearing his enemies as liars and manipulators over his frequent radio speeches, blasted out on loudspeakers and into homes. British claims that Hitler was dangerous had little impact against this wave of disinformation. Except for the broadcasts of someone called Der Chef, a German who questioned Nazi doctrine, and most importantly, a character created by the British propagandist Thomas Sefton Delmer, a unique weapon in the war.

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.

10-year-old Johnny's toymaker father has volunteered for service in the British Army of World War I. At first, his spirits are high as he completes basic training, but his tone becomes grim once he reaches the front. To ease his son's worries, Johnny's dad carves him little figurines that reflect his experiences in the war. Comprised of letters from his father, followed by Johhny's feelings, Lord of the Nutcracker Men is a haunting and poignant tale.

We face a dilemma these days. We want to be honest about our history and the racism and oppression that Americans have both inflicted and endured. But we want to be proud of our country, too. In The Nation That Never Was, Roosevelt shows how we can do both those things by realizing we’re not the country we thought we were. Reconstruction, Roosevelt argues, was not a fulfillment of the ideals of the Founding but rather a repudiation: we modern Americans are not the heirs of the Founders but of the people who overthrew and destroyed that political order.

El Hagakure (que significa "a la sombra de las hojas" u "oculto en las hojas") es una obra literaria japonesa dictada por Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1719) a uno de sus aprendices entre 1710 y 1717, inspirada en el célebre código Bushido. Yamamoto Tsunetomo, fue un samurái que en el siglo XVIII se retiró a las montañas para escribir las reglas del bushidō, con la intención de que fueran útiles a las generaciones venideras.

"Regime change" did not begin with the administration of George W. Bush, but has been an integral part of U.S. foreign policy for more than one hundred years. Starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-American War and the Cold War and into our own time, the United States has not hesitated to overthrow governments that stood in the way of its political and economic goals.

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.