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Showing 1 - 20 of 19460 items
By Changiz Lahidji, Ralph Pezzullo. 2018
Over 100 combat missions, 24 years as a Green Beret—Full Battle Rattle tells the legend of a soldier who served…
America in every war since Vietnam.Master Sergeant Changiz Lahidji served on Special Forces A teams longer than anyone in history, completing over a hundred combat missions in Afghanistan. Changiz is a Special Forces legend. He also happens to be the first Muslim Green Beret. Changiz served this country starting with Operation Eagle Claw in 1980, when he entered Tehran on a one-man mission to spy on Iranian soldiers guarding the US Embassy where 52 US diplomats were being held hostage. Three years later, he was in Beirut, Lebanon when a suicide car bomb exploded in front of the US Embassy killing 83 people. Weeks after that, he was shot by Hezbollah terrorists on a night mission. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, he led a convoy that was ambushed on its way to Fallujah. He was clearing houses in Mogadishu, Somalia on October, 1993 when a US Black Hawk helicopter was shot down 50 feet away from him in the incident that inspired Black Hawk Down. In 2002, he dressed as a farmer and snuck into Eastern Afghanistan and located Osama Bin Laden for the CIA. Along the way, Changiz earned numerous commendations, including the Special Forces Legion of Merit, Purple Hearts, and many others. Last year he was nominated for induction in Military Intelligence Hall of Fame and cited as “the finest noncommissioned officer to ever serve in Special Forces.” His story is an amazing tale of perseverance and courage, of combat and one man’s love of his adopted country.By Gregory L. Vistica. 2003
The Education of Lieutenant Kerrey is an incredible story and a modern morality tale about a man of compassion and…
promise trapped by a horrible secret.On the night of February 25, 1969, an inexperienced, 25-year-old lieutenant, Bob Kerrey, led a commando raid on an isolated hamlet called Thanh Phong in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. While witnesses and official records give varying accounts, one thing is certain: around midnight, Kerrey and his men killed nearly two dozen unarmed women and children. What happened that night and why? It's a terrible secret that Kerrey has borne for more than thirty years. Kerrey went on to do heroic things in Vietnam and later as a politician. Since World War II, he is only Medal of Honor winner to sit as a member of Congress. In many ways, Kerrey's life following that tragic mission has been a struggle for redemption.So is Bob Kerrey a war hero or war criminal? Gregory L. Vistica, who uncovered the Thanh Phong atrocities in a widely-praised cover story for The New York Times Magazine, searches the entire span of Kerrey's life to answer that question.. From his rural boyhood in Nebraska, to his gut wrenching Navy SEAL training, to his aborted run for President, Kerrey's life will become a vehicle for understanding the Vietnam generation shaped in the 50s and sharpened by the tumultuous 60s.Operation Dark Heart tells the story of what really went on—and what went wrong—in Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer led…
a black-ops team on the forefront of the military efforts to block the Taliban's resurgence.For a moment he saw us winning the war. Then the military brass got involved. He witnessed firsthand the tipping point, when what seemed like certain victory turned into failure.This wasn't the first time he had seen bureaucracy stand in the way of national security. He had participated in Able Danger, the aborted intelligence operation that identified many of the future 9/11 terrorists but failed to pursue them. His attempt to reveal the truth to the 9/11 Commission would not go over well with the higher-ups.Operation Dark Heart made headlines when the Department of Defense bought the entire unredacted first printing. The book's revised second printing includes redactions, which, according to The New York Times, "offer a rare glimpse behind the bureaucratic veil that clocks information the government considers too important for public airing." But most importantly, Operation Dark Heart remains a stirring indictment against military bureaucracy and a culture of cover-ups.By Dominic Streatfeild. 2007
Vivid and disturbing, Brainwash is essential insight into the modern practice of interrogation and torture. With access to formerly classified…
documentation and interviews from the CIA, U.S. Army, MI5, MI6, and British Intelligence Corps, Dominic Streatfeild traces the evolution of mind control from its origins in the Cold War to the height of today's war on terror. Behind the front lines of every war in the world, prisoners are forced to sit for interrogation: manipulated, coerced, and sometimes tortured--often without ever being touched. Brainwash is a history of the methods intended to destroy and reconstruct the minds of captives, to extract information, convert dissidents, and lead peaceful men to kill and be killed.The New York Times bestseller Kill Bin Laden is an explosive first-hand account of a Delta Force commando's hunt for…
the world's most wanted man. The mission was to kill the most wanted man in the world—an operation of such magnitude that it couldn't be handled by just any military or intelligence force. The best America had to offer was needed. As such, the task was handed to roughly forty members of America's supersecret counterterrorist unit formally known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta; more popularly, the elite and mysterious unit Delta Force. Told by senior ranking military officer Dalton Fury, this is the real story of the operation, the first eyewitness account of the Battle of Tora Bora, and the first book to detail just how close Delta Force came to capturing bin Laden, how close U.S. bombers and fighter aircraft came to killing him, and exactly why he slipped through our fingers. Lastly, this is an extremely rare inside look at the shadowy world of Delta Force and a detailed account of these warriors in battle.By Richard M. Ketchum. 1974
Richard M. Ketchum recounts the early developments of the American Revolution in Decisive Day: The Battle for Bunker Hill.Boston, 1775:…
A town occupied by General Thomas Gage's redcoats and groaning with Tory refugees from the Massachusetts countryside. Besieged for two months by a rabble in arms, the British decided to break out of town. American spies discovered their plans, and on the night of June 16, 1775, a thousand rebels marched out onto Charlestown peninsula and began digging a redoubt (not on Bunker Hill, which they had been ordered to fortify, but on Breeds Hill, well within cannon shot of the British batteries and ships). At daybreak, HMS Lively began firing. It was the opening round of a battle that saw unbelievable heroism and tragic blunders on both sides (a battle that marked a point of no return for England and her colonies), the beginning of the Revolutionary War.By Alan B. Trabue. 2015
Alan Trabue chose a bizarre, dangerous way to make a living. In A Life of Lies and Spies, Trabue exposes…
the often perilous world of polygraphing foreign spies in support of CIA espionage programs. He recounts his incredible, true-life globe-trotting adventures, from his induction in the CIA in 1971 to directing the CIA's world-wide covert ops polygraph program.A Life of Lies and Spies brings readers into the high-stakes world of covert operations and the quest to uncover deceit, featuring a high-speed car chase, blown clandestine meetings, surreptitious room searches, tear-gassing by riot police, and confrontations with machine gun-armed soldiers. Liberally sprinkled with side anecdotes—such as debriefing an agent though a torturous swarm of mosquitoes in a jungle shack—Trabue's story highlights both the humor and the intrinsic danger of conducting CIA covert activities.Writing from a unique perspective framed by his uncommon longevity and broad experience, for which he was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal, Trabue's memoir unveils the CIA's use of polygraph and interrogation to validate recruited spies' bona fides and information obtained through their acts of espionage.The Central Intelligence Agency has not approved, endorsed or authorized this book or the use of the CIA seal, name or initials.By James Brady. 2005
A memoir from the New York Times bestselling author of Warning of War and Marines of Autumn, James Brady's The…
Scariest Place in the World. Half a century after he fought there as a young lieutenant of Marines, James Brady returns to the brooding Korean ridgelines and mountains to sound taps for a generation. It's been years since Brady first wrote of Korea in The Coldest War, drawing raves from Walter Cronkite and The New York Times, which called it "a superb personal memoir of the way it was." In the spring of 2003, Brady and Pulitzer Prize–winning combat photographer Eddie Adams flew in Black Hawk choppers and trekked the Demilitarized Zone where it meanders into North Korea, interviewing four-star generals and bunking in with tough U.S. recon troops, in Brady's words, "raw meat on the point of a sharpened stick." Brady recalls that first time on bloody Hill 749, the men who died there, what happened to the Marines who lived to make it home, and experiences yet again the emotional pull of a lifelong love affair with the Corps in which they all served. Brady summons up the past and illuminates the present, be it the Korea of "the forgotten war," the Yanks who fought there long ago, or today's soldiers standing wary sentinel over "the scariest place in the world." The result is uplifting, inspiring, often heartbreaking, and this Brady memoir proves as powerful as his first.By Gene Allen Smith. 2013
A sweeping and original look at American slavery in the early nineteenth century that reveals the gamble slaves had to…
take to surviveImages of American slavery conjure up cotton plantations and African American slaves locked in bondage until the Civil War. Yet early on in the nineteenth century the state of slavery was very different, and the political vicissitudes of the young nation offered diverse possibilities to slaves. In the century's first two decades, the nation waged war against Britain, Spain, and various Indian tribes. Slaves played a role in the military operations, and the different sides viewed them as a potential source of manpower. While surprising numbers did assist the Americans, the wars created opportunities for slaves to find freedom among the Redcoats, the Spaniards, or the Indians. Author Gene Allen Smith draws on a decade of original research and his curatorial work at the Fort Worth Museum in this fascinating and original narrative history. The way the young nation responded sealed the fate of slaves for the next half century until the Civil War. This drama sheds light on an extraordinary yet little known chapter in the dark saga of American history.By Gordon Cucullu, Chris Fontana. 2011
For the first time ever, author Gordon Cucullu gives readers an explosive inside look at modern military police units and…
their role in defending our freedom.America has been at war on several fronts since the 9/11 attack. While public attention has focused on Marines, conventional Army units, and Special Operations Forces, a lion's share of the war-fighting has been done, under media radar, by Military Police units. These squad and platoon-sized units patrol dangerous urban streets, build up local police units to improve neighborhood stability, and conduct civic action missions. On many occasions they have rushed into a vicious firefight to come to the assistance of infantry units in desperate straits. They keep villages Taliban-free, monitor balloting sites, and interdict drug shipments. In detention centers at Camp Bucha, Iraq, Bagram, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, Cuba they guard some of the most dangerous terrorists in history.The story is told by the soldiers themselves, recounting what they have seen and experienced, along with historical context and first-hand field observations by the author team who were provided with unique inside access. Warrior Police takes readers into the bloody streets of Iraq, the dangerous back-country of Afghanistan, and wherever our Military Police are needed.By Richard M. Ketchum. 1973
The Winter Soldiers is the story of a small band of men held together by George Washington in the face…
of disaster and hopelessness, desperately needing at least one victory to salvage both cause and country. In the fall of 1776 the British delivered a crushing blow to the Revolutionary War efforts. New York fell and the anguished retreat through New Jersey followed. Winter came with a vengeance, bringing what Thomas Paine called "the times that try men's souls."Richard M. Ketchum tells the tale of unimaginable hardship and suffering that culminated in the battles of Trenton and Princeton. Without these triumphs, the American Revolution that had begun so bravely could not have gone on.By James A. Warren. 2013
An in-depth look at the strategy and tactics of the visionary commander who beat the United States in the Vietnam…
War.General Vo Nguyen Giap was the commander in chief of the communist armed forces during two of his country's most difficult conflicts—the first against Vietnam's colonial masters, the French, and the second against the most powerful nation on earth, the United States. After long and bloody conflicts, he defeated both Western powers and their Vietnamese allies, forever changing modern warfare. In Giap, military historian James A. Warren dives deep into the conflict to bring to life a revolutionary general and reveal the groundbreaking strategies that defeated world powers against incredible odds. Synthesizing ideas and tactics from an extraordinary range of sources, Giap was one of the first to realize that war is more than a series of battles between two armies and that victory can be won through the strength of a society's social fabric. As America's wars in the Middle East rage on, this is an important and timely look at a man who was a master at defeating his enemies even as they thought they were winning.By August Scherneckau. 2007
August Scherneckau’s diary is the most important firsthand account of the Civil War by a Nebraska soldier that has yet…
come to light. A German immigrant, Scherneckau served with the First Nebraska Volunteers from 1862 through 1865. Depicting the unit’s service in Missouri, Arkansas, and Nebraska Territory, he offers detail, insight, and literary quality matched by few other accounts of the Civil War in the West. His observations provide new perspective on campaigns, military strategy, leadership, politics, ethnicity, emancipation, and a host of other topics. Scherneckau takes readers on the march as he and his comrades plod through mud and snow during a grueling winter campaign in the Missouri Ozarks. He served as a provost guard in St. Louis, where he helped save a former slave from kidnappers and observed the construction of Union gunboats. He describes the process of transforming a regiment from infantry to cavalry, and his account of First Nebraska’s pursuit of Freeman’s Partisans in Arkansas is an exciting portrayal of mountain fighting. An annotated edition that brings to bear the editors’ and translator’s respective expertise in both the Civil War and the German language, Scherneckau’s account is an important addition to primary material on the war’s forgotten theater. It will be a valued resource for historian and Civil War enthusiast alike.By Amber Smith. 2024
Our Woke Military Could Lose the Next WarWokeness used to be an annoying distraction in the U.S. military. Now it…
is a major threat to national security.Faster than most of us thought possible, our military has become a woke, dysfunctional bureaucracy focused not on winning wars but on identity politics, gender ideology, climate change, and other favored causes of the leftist elite.Don&’t think that China isn&’t watching. Don&’t think that Russia, Iran, and North Korea haven&’t noticed.But so has Amber Smith, a former U.S. Army combat helicopter pilot and Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense. In her riveting new book, Unfit to Fight, she sounds the alarm that our military and our nation are at grave risk.In Unfit to Fight, you&’ll learn:Why the military should not &“reflect American society,&” but be a select group of lethal professionalsHow the Pentagon rewards lowered standards for the sake of &“diversity&”Why failure often leads to promotion—if you have the right friendsWhy a return to combat merit, battlefield mission, and trust in leadership are essential—or we will lose our next warElections, as they say, have consequences, and catastrophic damage to national security is among the most important. Amber Smith&’s Unfit to Fight needs to be in the hands of everyone who cares about our military and our survival as a nation.By Sergio García-Magariño. 2024
This book offers a general theory of violent radicalization and uses case studies from a variety of different countries and…
groups to illustrate this.The first and fundamental objective of the book is to provide an explanatory framework to understand phenomena related to violent radicalization, deradicalization, the prevention of radicalization and to political violence; in particular, that inspired by religion. The second objective follows from the first. Understanding violent radicalization of religious inspiration implies delving into two key concepts: violent radicalization and religion. This second objective is indeed elusive, since, on the one hand, many liberal democracies have undergone processes of secularization or, at least, have lost interest in examining religion in public debates. Therefore, rigorously exploring social problems where religion seems to be involved, in one way or another, is complicated. Moreover, the notion of violent radicalization, in turn, is highly contested and confused with other ideas, such as polarization, extremism, terrorism or nonviolent radicalization. Finally, the book aims to bring theory into dialogue with empirical phenomena, and to test it against concrete cases related to violent radicalization and its prevention, on the one hand, and religion, on the other. The book’s originality comes from both its innovative, methodological approach and its breadth, with cases from several countries (Spain, the United States, Ireland, India, Israel, Russia and Colombia) and different ideological groups (revolutionary communists, nationalist movements, Jihadist groups, white and black supremacists).This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence, radicalization, sociology and international relations in general.By Daniel Greenfield. 2024
The secret history of the American Left.The Left is America&’s oldest enemy. It was here long before the 1960s, calling…
for the execution of George Washington, plotting to stop the ratification of the Constitution, and collaborating with foreign enemies. Stolen elections, fake news, race riots, globalism, and socialism aren&’t new problems; Americans faced them from the very beginning. Domestic Enemies reveals the true origins of the Democratic Party and its radicals, who—even two centuries ago—were calling for the redistribution of wealth, the end of marriage, and the use of schools for political indoctrination. From political battles to street fights, Domestic Enemies takes you into the heart of a century of forgotten struggles between America&’s greatest heroes—such as Washington, Hamilton, Davy Crockett, and Abraham Lincoln—and radical villains like Aaron Burr. This is a 1619 Project for the American Left: a history of the Democrats as you&’ve never heard it before, told through the political debates, naval battles, race riots, scandals, secret societies, and domestic terrorism that made the Left what it is today. Learn how the Founding Fathers defeated the Left before, and how we can beat it again.By Null Anna Brinkman. 2024
What is the relationship between seapower, law, and strategy? Anna Brinkman uses in-depth analysis of cases brought before the Court…
of Prize Appeal during the Seven Years' War to explore how Britain worked to shape maritime international law to its strategic advantage. Within the court, government officials and naval and legal minds came together to shape legal decisions from the perspectives of both legal philosophy and maritime strategic aims. As a result, neutrality and the negotiation of rights became critical to maritime warfare. Balancing Strategy unpicks a complex web of competing priorities: deals struck with the Dutch Republic and Spain; imperial rivalry; mercantilism; colonial trade; and the relationships between metropoles and colonies, trade, and the navy. Ultimately, influencing and shaping international law of the sea allows a nation to create the norms and rules that constrain or enable the use of seapower during war.By Katalin Petho-Kiss, Rohan Gunaratna. 2024
Petho-Kiss and Gunaratna understand the nature of the threat posed by the far right because of their findings and they…
propose effective provisions and mechanisms for detecting and countering it.The book undertakes a consistent procession and empirical examination of available information to arrive at the recognition that in order to dissolve the complexity of the associated threat, we need to scrutinize the functioning of far-right threat groups. In-depth and consistent analysis on their mode of operation and mindset enables us to identify ways to detect and counter their malicious efforts and activities. The theoretical framework for the analysis lies upon the concept of wave theory. The main question that this book examines is whether far-right terrorism constitutes a new wave of global terrorism. One question emerges from this statement that requires further elaboration. Is far-right terrorism a novel wave of terrorism? If yes, how is it novel and what are the novelties or developments in it?This book is for scholars as well as practitioners in the counter-terrorism (CT) and the prevention/countering violent extremism (PCVE) field. Through specific case studies students studying CT and/or PCVE could gain insight into the operational functionalities of far-right threat groups. This may help them to get a more accurate understanding of the threat posed by these entities. Examining the recruitment, funding, communication practices, and modus operandi of worrisome threat actors equips us to design the most effective countermeasures and identify the hiatuses in applicable legislative regimes.This book is an international history of the foundation of modern arms control, highlighting the fact that the instrument is…
varied, resilient, successful, and enduring.The narrative begins after the Napoleonic wars when newly arisen peace movements focused on arbitration as a path to “ending the war system.” It moves on to the international community’s embrace of “total and complete disarmament” and then to its acceptance of more limited measures by 1968, including the agreements that remain in force today. The book connects the past to the present of multiple negotiations, successful and failed, and underlines how the peace movement increasingly influenced the national policy of the major Western powers, especially the United States. It also highlights the increasing diversification of arms control players, including women and people of color as well as the countries they represented. Based on original research in multinational records and the latest scholarship, the book illustrates the reasons multilateral arms control remains a key instrument of international relations. The chapters are organized both chronologically and thematically, with the result that they cover different amounts of time in order to encompass a given issue and to capture the development of particular threads. The main narrative evolves into a decadeslong quest for a global treaty on “general and complete disarmament,” which otherwise paces the book and shapes its chapters.This book will be of much interest to students of arms control, global governance, peace studies, and International Relations.By Beth Bailey. 2023
By the late 1960s, what had been widely heralded as the best qualified, best-trained army in United States history was…
descending into crisis as the Vietnam War raged without end. Morale was tanking. AWOL rates were rising. And in August 1968, a group of Black soldiers seized control of the infamous Long Binh Jail, burned buildings, and beat a white inmate to death with a shovel. The days of "same mud, same blood" were over, and a new generation of Black GIs had decisively rejected the slights and institutional racism their forefathers had endured. As Black and white soldiers fought in barracks and bars, with violence spilling into surrounding towns within the United States and in West Germany, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan, army leaders grew convinced that the growing racial crisis undermined the army's ability to defend the nation. Acclaimed military historian Beth Bailey shows how the United States Army tried to solve that racial crisis (in army terms, "the problem of race"). Army leaders were surprisingly creative in confronting demands for racial justice, even willing to challenge fundamental army principles of discipline, order, hierarchy, and authority. Bailey traces a frustrating yet fascinating story, as a massive, conservative institution came to terms with demands for change