Military Government

History remembers the Soviets and the Nazis as bitter enemies and ideological rivals - the two opposing totalitarian regimes of World War II whose conflict would be the defining and deciding clash of the war. Yet for nearly a third of the conflict's entire timespan, Hitler and Stalin stood side by side as partners.

The U.S. government spends enormous resources each year on the gathering and analysis of intelligence, yet the history of American foreign policy is littered with missteps and misunderstandings that have resulted from intelligence failures. In Why Intelligence Fails, Robert Jervis examines the politics and psychology of two of the more spectacular intelligence failures in recent memory: the belief that the Shah in Iran was secure and stable in 1978, and the claim that Iraq had active WMD programs in 2002.

Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War examines how intoxicants have been put to the service of states, empires, and their armies throughout history. Since the beginning of organized combat, armed forces have prescribed drugs to their members for two general purposes: to enhance performance during combat and to counter the trauma of killing and witnessing violence after it is over.

The American Revolution was not simply a battle between independence-minded colonists and the oppressive British. As Thomas B. Allen reminds us, it was also a savage and often deeply personal civil war, in which conflicting visions of America pitted neighbor against neighbor and Patriot against Tory on the battlefield, the village green, and even in church.

When President Barack Obama ordered the surge of troops and aid to Afghanistan, Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran followed. He found the effort sabotaged not only by Afghan and Pakistani malfeasance, but by infighting and incompetence within the American government: a war cabinet arrested by vicious bickering among top national security aides; diplomats and aid workers who failed to deliver on their grand promises; and generals who dispatched troops to the wrong places.

The United States' approach to China since the Communist regime in Beijing that began the period of reform and opening in the 1980s was based on a promise that trade and engagement with China would result in a peaceful, democratic state. Forty years later, the hope of producing a benign People's Republic of China utterly failed. The Communist Party of China deceived the West into believing that its system and the Party-ruled People's Liberation Army were peaceful and posed no threat.

The American Revolution is replete with seminal moments that every American learns in school, from the "shot heard 'round the world" to the Declaration of Independence, but the events that led up to the fighting at Lexington and Concord were borne out of 10 years of division between the British and their American colonies over everything from colonial representation in governments to taxation, the nature of searches, and the quartering of British regulars in private houses.

Unmanned is an in-depth examination of why seemingly successful wars never seem to end. The problem centers on drones, now accumulated in the thousands, the front end of a spying and killing machine that is disconnected from either security or safety. Drones, however, are only part of the problem. William Arkin shows that security is actually undermined by an impulse to gather as much data as possible, the appetite and the theory both skewed toward the notion that no amount is too much.

Here is the epic story of Vietnam and the sixties told through the events of a few tumultuous days in October 1967. With meticulous and captivating detail, They Marched Into Sunlight brings that catastrophic time back to life while examining questions about the meaning of dissent and the official manipulation of truth, issues that are as relevant today as they were decades ago.

The first rule of perpetual war is to never stop, a fact which former NBC News analyst William M. Arkin knows better than anyone, having served in the Army and having covered all of America’s wars over the past three decades. He has spent his career investigating how the military throws around the word “war” to justify everything, from physical combat to today’s globe-straddling cyber and intelligence network. In The Generals Have No Clothes, Arkin traces how we got where we are—all without Congressional approval or public knowledge.

In the immediate term, World Peace shows how steps to strengthen compliance with international law, improve collective action like international peacekeeping and peace-building, better regulate the flow of arms, and hold individuals legally accountable for acts of aggression or atrocity crimes can make our world more peaceful. In the long term, it shows that building strong, legitimate states that protect the rights and secure the livelihoods of their people, gender equal societies, and protecting the right of individuals to opt-out of wars can potentially establish world peace.

The leafy Avenue de Foch, one of the most exclusive residential streets in Nazi-occupied France, was Paris' hotbed of daring spies, murderous secret police, amoral informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when American physician Sumner Jackson, who lived with his wife and young son, Phillip, at Number 11, found himself drawn into the Liberation network of the French resistance, he knew the stakes were impossibly high.

As an embedded journalist in Iraq, North got a soldier's-eye view, often while under fire, of what the mainstream media failed to report. A decorated combat veteran, North watched Operation Iraqi Freedom with trained eyes unmatched by other journalists. What he witnessed compelled him to challenge post-war critics of the operation for their uninformed and deceptive views.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, two of bin Laden’s key lieutenants: the masterminds behind the attacks of September 11. Based on the only interview these masterminds of terror ever gave to the media as well as extensive follow-up research, Capture or Kill may be the closest we will get to the full inside story of the plot.

To understand the significance of the parts played by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher in East-West relations in the second half of the 1980s, Brown addresses several specific questions: What were the values and assumptions of these leaders, and how did their perceptions evolve? What were the major influences on them? To what extent were they reflecting the views of their own political establishment or challenging them? How important for ending the East-West standoff were their interrelations?

America's fight against radical Islam could soon be over, and a top secret plan from the Cold War is the key to our victory. Dr. Sebastian Gorka, counterinsurgency expert and Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at Marine Corps University, explains how America can win the war on terror quickly and decisively by delegitimizing the enemy in the eyes of its followers - a strategy that won the Cold War and would end the era of Jihad forever.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove grew up in the Bible Belt in the American South as a faithful church-going Christian. But he gradually came to realize that the gospel his Christianity proclaimed was not good news for everybody. The same Christianity that sang, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound" also perpetuated racial injustice and white supremacy in the name of Jesus. His Christianity, he discovered, was the religion of the slaveholder. Just as Reconstruction after the Civil War worked to repair a desperately broken society, compromised Christianity requires a spiritual reconstruction.

America's Nuclear Wastelands presents an expert, yet straightforward overview of this complex topic, including nuclear weapons history and contamination issues. The author, a government consultant with a long career in Pacific Northwest nuclear waste issues, also explores the current institutional and political environment, demonstrating the critical role of public participation for past and future generations.

A definitive study on the decades-long run of high public confidence in the military and why it may rest on some shaky foundations.

Paul Struhsaker’s new book, How the Hell Did We Get Here? is a comprehensive guide to this emerging new Cold War and our need to rebuild deterrence. The book unpacks the players and politics that have brought us to the brink of world war and how deterrence, the application of soft and hard power, can restore peace. Deterrence is a complex subject. Historically, the subject of Cold War deterrence and resilience has been dealt with piecemeal, and a comprehensive overview of deterrence has not been available. The purpose of this book is to fill that void.