Military Power

Based on newly available information, the son of famed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers presents the facts and dispels misinformation about the Cold War espionage program that turned his father into a Cold War icon. One of the most talked-about events of the Cold War was the downing of the American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960. The event was recently depicted in the Steven Spielberg movie Bridge of Spies.

The most iconic planes of WWII, the Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane, DeHavilland Mosquito and the Avro Lancaster, were all powered by one engine, the Rolls-Royce Merlin. The story of the Merlin is one of British ingenuity at its height, of artistry and problem-solving that resulted in a war-winning design.

The Coming Storm is a bracing, powerful book on the interventions necessary to prevent a cataclysm akin to the First World War, which left 40 million dead and wounded worldwide. As Westad writes, “If there are lessons from history, now is the time when we need to heed them, so that we do not end up in another Great Power war because of the fatal combinations of jingoism, fear, fatalism, and sheer stupidity that set off the first major war of the 20th century.”

The Irish soldier has never been a stranger to fighting the enemy with the odds stacked against him. The notion of charging into adversity has been a cherished part of Ireland's military history. In September 1961, another chapter should have been written into the annals, but it is a tale that lay shrouded in dust for years. The men of A Company, 35th Irish Infantry Battalion, arrived in the Congo as a United Nations contingent to help keep the peace. For many it would be their first trip outside their native shores.

In Night Hunters, air power historian William P. Head provides the first detailed study of the development and deployment of the AC-130 gunship. While other airframes and other types of close air support (CAS) and interdiction weapon systems preceded or flew with the AC-130s, this four-engine cargo airframe proved to be not only the longest serving fixed-wing gunship but also the most effective by far.

This audiobook examines the meteoric rise of Sweden as the pre-eminent military power in Europe during the Thirty Years War during the 1600s, and then follows its line of warrior kings into the next century until the Swedes finally meet their demise, in an overreach into the vastness of Russia. A small Scandinavian nation, with at most one and a half million people and scant internal resources of its own, there was small logic to how Sweden could become the dominant power on the Continent.

Winston Churchill had a longer and closer relationship with the Royal Navy than any British statesman in modern times, but his record as a naval strategist and custodian of the nation's sea power has been mired in controversy since the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign in 1915. Today, Churchill is regarded by many as an inept strategist who interfered in naval operations and often overrode his professional advisers - with inevitably disastrous results.

In Maritime Power and the Struggle for Freedom, Peter Padfield presents a superb description and analysis of naval campaigns conducted between 1788 and 1851 that shaped the modern world. Winner of the Mountbatten Maritime Prize, this is the second of Padfield's masterful trilogy that traces the impact of naval power on modern history, and the means by which it has been enacted.

In Lincoln and the Power of the Press, Harold Holzer shows us an activist Lincoln through journalists who covered him from his start to the night of his assassination. In a wholly original way, Holzer shows us politicized newspaper editors battling for power and a masterly president who used the press to speak directly to the people and shape the nation.

Völlig unvorbereitet wird Geheimagent Mitch Rapp vom amerikanischen Präsidenten ins mediale Rampenlicht gezerrt. Nach jahrelanger Arbeit im Schatten kennt plötzlich jeder Terrorist auf der Erde sein Gesicht und seinen Namen. Rapp zieht sich hinter die Kulissen zurück. Doch es dauert nicht lang, bis ein Team der Navy SEALs auf den Philippinen in einen tödlichen Hinterhalt gerät und er zur Rückkehr an die Krisenherde der Welt gezwungen ist. Ein Verräter in der eigenen Regierung führt die Welt an den Rand der Vernichtung.

The American Revolution was a naval war of immense scope and variety, including no less than 22 navies fighting on five oceans - to say nothing of rivers and lakes. In no other war were so many large-scale fleet battles fought, one of which was the most strategically significant naval battle in all of British, French, and American history.

One cycle has passed since the Siege of Clarion, and all of Rhea is supposedly at peace. But the alarming events that sparked the siege have not been forgotten—nor forgiven—and the inhabitants of the Great Houses face a host of challenges. To overcome such tribulations, each must confront old fears, enemies, and dilemmas. But with scylla attacks getting worse, and the Pax already starting to break down, do they have the strength to endure? Or will they stumble, plunging their Houses—and Rhea itself—into chaos once more?

I fight to stay away, hiding my feelings and knowing she deserves so much more. Then I see her with another man and my world explodes. Years of training taught me to never let my guard down, but I'm done holding back. She says it's too late, our time has passed. I'm prepared to prove her wrong. She's the chaos to my control. The calm to my storm. The light to my dark. The harder she fights to push me away, the more determined I become. Julianna Keller has no idea how far I'll go.

In All the Powers of Earth, Lincoln's incredible ascent to power in a world of chaos is newly revealed through the great biographer's extraordinary research and literary style. After a period of depression that he would ever find his way to greatness, Lincoln takes on the most powerful demagogue in the country, Stephen Douglas, in the debates for a Senate seat. He sidelines the front-runner William Seward, a former governor and senator for New York, to cinch the new Republican Party's nomination.

On a mission to Afghanistan to gather information about the opium trade, Rex Dalton stumbles across spine-chilling deceit and corruption reaching the highest hallways of power in Afghanistan, America, and Europe. His requests to his superiors to wipe out the drug stores, labs, and drug lords, fall on deaf ears.

Timothy W. Crawford's The Power to Divide examines the use of wedge strategies, a form of divisive statecraft designed to isolate adversaries from allies and potential supporters to gain key advantages. With a multidimensional argument about the power of accommodation in competition, and a survey of alliance diplomacy around both World Wars, The Power to Divide artfully analyzes the past and future performance of wedge strategy in great power politics.

Is America fated to decline as a great power? Can it recover? With absorbing insight and fresh perspective, foreign policy expert Andrew Imbrie provides a road map for bolstering American leadership in an era of turbulence abroad and deepening polarization at home. This is a book about choices: the tough policy trade-offs that political leaders need to make to reinvigorate American money, might, and clout. In the conventional telling, the United States is either destined for continued dominance or doomed to irreversible decline.

Xi Jinping has made his ambitions for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) perfectly clear, first, that China should become a "great maritime power" and secondly, that the PLA "become a world-class armed force by 2050." China as a Twenty-First-Century Naval Power focuses on China's navy and how it is being transformed to satisfy the "world class" goal.

When the hunt for the female assassin who killed his sister proves futile, King returns to MI5 where he is propositioned by a secretive organisation headed by a familiar face. King takes on both the Russian intelligence services and organised crime to halt them bypassing sanctions and flooding the UK market with forged sovereigns cast from seized Nazi gold in a bid to sink Britain's economy.

Just back from their honeymoon, Noah and Sarah, and the rest of Team Camelot, are called up for a new mission, but this one is different from anything they've done before. Noah will be infiltrating a domestic organized crime ring in the South, with Sarah as his wife and Neil as her computer nerd little brother. Marco will come in a little later, and it will be up to Noah to find a way to recruit him into the organization.