Military Politics

Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar: Each was a master of war. Each had to look beyond the battlefield to decide whom to fight and why; to know what victory was and when to end the war; to determine how to bring stability to the lands he conquered. Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar had to be not only generals but statesmen. And yet each was a battlefield commander, a strategist, a leader of men - in short, a warrior.

In the closing days of the 30-year Sri Lankan civil war, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, according to UN estimates, as government forces hemmed in the last remaining Tamil Tiger rebels on a tiny sand spit, dubbed "The Cage". Gordon Weiss, a journalist and UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka during the final years of the war, pulls back the curtain of government misinformation to tell the full story for the first time. Tracing the role of foreign influence as it converged with a history of radical Buddhism and ethnic conflict, The Cage is a harrowing portrait of an island paradise torn apart by war.

With Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat out of the way, a dazzling era of security and prosperity seems to have come to the Middle East. With the help of an American president trying to spread freedom and democracy, the Israelis and the Palestinians have signed a historic peace agreement. Violence is down. Their economies are booming. But a new evil looms on the horizon.

A biological agent is stolen from a biocontainment lab. Weaponized, it could kill millions, and a desperate national hunt ensues to catch the terrorists before it is too late. Luke Stone, head of an elite FBI department, with his own family still in jeopardy, has vowed to walk away - but when the new president, barely sworn in, calls him, he can't turn his back on her. Shocking devastation follows, winding its way all the way to the president, who finds her own family in jeopardy.

Andrew Marshall is a Pentagon legend. For more than four decades he has served as Director of the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's internal think tank, under 12 defense secretaries and eight administrations. Yet Marshall has been on the cutting edge of strategic thinking even longer than that. Covering some of the most pivotal episodes of the last half century and peopled with some of the era's most influential figures, The Last Warrior tells Marshall's story for the first time, in the process providing an unparalleled history of the evolution of the American defense establishment.

In combating terror, America can no longer depend on its conventional military superiority and the use of sophisticated technology. More than ever, we need men like those of the Army Special Forces---the legendary Green Berets. In Chosen Soldier, Dick Couch draws on nearly a year spent at Special Forces training facilities and offers an unprecedented view of the education of these men.

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.

On October 12, 2000, at 11:18 a.m., an 8,400-ton destroyer, the USS Cole, was rocked by an enormous explosion. The ship’s commander, Kirk Lippold, watched as tiles tumbled from the ceiling, mugs of coffee tumbled to the floor, and everything not bolted down seemed to float in midair. Lippold knew in a matter of moments that the Cole had been attacked. What he didn’t know was how much the world was changing around him.

David Kilcullen is one of the world's most influential experts on counterinsurgency and modern warfare. A senior counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, his vision of war dramatically influenced America's decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement "the surge."Now, in The Accidental Guerrilla, Kilcullen provides a remarkably fresh perspective on the War on Terror.

A belligerent Russia seeks to reunite the Soviet Union - starting with Lithuania. But as the US sends military support, Russia’s navy forces a dangerous face-off in the Atlantic. Meanwhile, two US submarines become ensnared in a perilous game of cat and mouse with a mysterious Russian craft. When the US president orders all vessels back to port, Commander Joe Glass and his fast attack submarines find a way to remain at sea to engage the enemy. But not all aboard the submarines are who they seem...and with a threatening storm bearing down, the consequences of betrayal could be deadly.

Supplemented with referential information and culled from more than a dozen interviews with Putin over a two-year period - spanning Stone's first trip to Moscow to meet with NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden to his most recent visit after the election of President Donald Trump - The Putin Interviews is based on what journalists, news organizations, and other world leaders have long coveted: extended, unprecedented access to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

When elite CIA operative David Rivers and his paramilitary team are dispatched to the heart of Africa, their mission is clear: eliminate the notorious terrorist warlord, Chijioke Mubenga, before he can unleash chaos upon the world. But fate has other plans. A streak of anti-aircraft fire lights up the night sky, turning a covert parachute jump into a nightmare descent. Stranded miles from their rendezvous point and deep within a hostile jungle, Rivers and his team are cut off, hunted, and desperate.

In this thoroughly researched book the author argues convincingly that Forester's model was Adm. James Gordon, a flesh-and-blood hero of Nelson's navy. Gordon entered the Royal Navy as a semi-literate eleven-year-old and rose to become Admiral of the Fleet. He took part in major sea battles, frigate actions, single-ship duels, and operations far behind enemy lines. It was the fire of Gordon's ships against Fort McHenry that inspired the American national anthem.

One fateful week in June 1967 redrew the map of the Middle East. Many scholars have documented how the Six-Day War unfolded, but little has been done to explain why the conflict happened at all. As we approach its 50th anniversary, Guy Laron refutes the widely accepted belief that the war was merely the result of regional friction, revealing the crucial roles played by American and Soviet policies in the face of an encroaching global economic crisis and restoring Syria's often overlooked centrality to events leading up to the hostilities.

The comprehensive and accurate edition of the Hagakure is a must-have for serious martial artists or fans of samurai and the Bushido code.

To mark the 75th anniversary of D-day, the stirring climax to Nigel Hamilton's three-part saga of FDR at war - proof that he was WWII's key strategist, even on his deathbed. Nigel Hamilton's celebrated trilogy culminates with a story of triumph and tragedy. Just as FDR was proven right by the D-day landings he had championed, so was he found to be mortally ill in the spring of 1944. He was the architect of a victorious peace that he would not live to witness.

The Allies are desperate to stop neutral Turkey supplying vital materials to the Nazis - materials which could help them win the war. But then a British agent makes a fatal mistake and disappears in Istanbul. In England, detective-turned-spy Richard Prince - back from a clandestine mission in Nazi-occupied Europe - is hunting for his lost son. Before long he is drawn into a dangerous follow-up operation, posing as a journalist in Turkey. The mission soon goes wrong.

In January 2003, 28-year-old GCHQ translator Katharine Gun received an email from the US National Security Agency that would turn her world upside down. The message requested Katharine’s assistance in co-ordinating an illegal US-UK spy operation which would secure UN authorisation for the Iraq invasion. Horrified, she decided to leak the information to the British press. Katharine’s decision would change her life forever, as she was arrested under the Official Secrets Act whilst becoming a cause célèbre for political activists.

Former FARC revolutionary Sofia Lozano has become the world’s most cunning assassin, and now she’s selling her services to the highest bidder. But when the CIA learns that Sofia’s newest client is an international terrorist syndicate with plans to kill countless civilians, her name is placed on David Rivers’ kill list. As David and his team track the elusive operative from Colombia’s triple canopy jungles to its Pacific mangrove swamps, his team stumbles onto a larger conspiracy: a narco-sub loaded with cocaine and evidence of a terrorist attack-in-progress.

El Libro de los Cinco Anillos (en japonés 五輪書 [Go-rin no sho]) es un tratado sobre el kentutsu escrito por Miyamoto Musashi en su vejez - durante su retiro de ermitaño en la cueva de Reignando en 1643 - y finalizado el 19 de mayo de 1645, pocas semanas antes de su muerte. El libro está dedicado a su pupilo Terao Magonojo Se considera un tratado clásico sobre la estrategia militar de Japón, en una línea semejante a El Arte de la Guerra, escrito por el estratega chino Sun Tzu.