Military Technology

This sweeping history of the Civil War and the Confederacy is told through the lens of its most crucial army: the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by Robert E. Lee. General Lee's Army takes listeners across the Rebel landscape, from campfires to battlefields to their homes, as it portrays a world of life, death, healing, and hardship.

Between 1817 and 1898, New York City evolved from a vital Atlantic port of trade to the center of American commerce and culture. Although this important urban transformation is well documented, the critical role of select Union soldiers turned New York engineers has, until now, remained largely unexplored.

What is it really like to live inside a submerged steel tube for months at a time? Fascinating Facts About Submarine Crews: Life Under the Waves takes you deep into one of the most extreme, demanding, and remarkable environments on Earth—life aboard a military submarine. While submarines are often discussed in terms of stealth, strategy, and technological power, this compelling book focuses on the human story—on the men and women who inhabit these incredible machines and navigate their complexities every single day.

According to Winston Churchill, Alan Turing made the single biggest contribution to the Allied victory over Nazi Germany with his code-breaking machine. The world is also indebted to Turing's genius for the modern computer. It was clear that Turing had a remarkable mind from an early age. He taught himself to read in just three weeks. At his first school, the headmistress said, "I have had clever and hardworking boys, but Alan has genius."

Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars studies how the world‘s navies incorporated new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrine. It does this by examining six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new platforms (submarines and aircraft), new weapons (torpedoes and mines), and new tools (radar and radio).

Former Recon Marine Randall Munroe has been working as a hired gun for the Corporate Council for years, doing the dirty work of its Director, Andre Damiani, because he's had no choice - and because Andre is his uncle. But when Damiani gets his hands on incredibly dangerous alien technology, it's time to fight back. Munroe has seen the lost wonders of the ancient alien race, the Predecessors, who vanished tens of thousands of years ago after terraforming hundreds of planets and setting up a system of wormhole jumpgates to allow us access to them.

In the spring of 1940, the aspiring but unknown writer Albert Camus and budding scientist Jacques Monod were quietly pursuing ordinary, separate lives in Paris. After the German invasion and occupation of France, each joined the Resistance to help liberate the country from the Nazis and ascended to prominent, dangerous roles. After the war and through twists of circumstance, they became friends, and through their passionate determination and rare talent they emerged as leading voices of modern literature and biology, each receiving the Nobel Prize in their respective fields.

This is the story of how America's first women soldiers helped win World War I, earned the vote, and fought the US Army. In 1918 the US Army Signal Corps sent 223 women to France. They were masters of the latest technology: the telephone switchboard. General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, demanded female "wire experts" when he discovered that inexperienced doughboys were unable to keep him connected with troops under fire.

In the late 1930s, legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the 20th century at his state-of-the-art laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York. He established a top-secret defense laboratory at MIT and personally bankrolled pioneering research into new, high-powered radar detection systems that helped defeat the German Air Force and U-boats. With Ernest Lawrence, he pushed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fund research in nuclear fission, which led to the development of the atomic bomb.

Alan Turing was an extraordinary man who crammed into a life of only 42 years the careers of mathematician, codebreaker, computer scientist and biologist. He is widely regarded as a war hero grossly mistreated by his unappreciative country, and it has become hard to disentangle the real man from the story. It is easy to cast him as a misfit, the stereotypical professor.

Fresh from successful flights before royalty in Europe, and soon after thrilling hundreds of thousands of people by flying around the Statue of Liberty, in the fall of 1909 Wilbur and Orville Wright decided the time was right to begin manufacturing their airplanes for sale. Backed by Wall Street tycoons, including August Belmont, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and Andrew Freedman, the brothers formed the Wright Company.

GPS Declassified examines the development of GPS from its secret, cold war military roots to its emergence as a worldwide consumer industry. Drawing on previously unexplored documents, the authors examine how military rivalries influenced the creation of GPS and shaped public perceptions about its origin. Told by a son of a Navy insider and a science and technology journalist, the story chronicles the research and technological advances required for the development of GPS.

In 1954, the US Air Force launched an ambitious program known as WS-117L to develop the world's first reconnaissance satellite. The goal was to take photographic images from space and relay them back to Earth via radio. Because of technical issues and bureaucratic resistance, however, WS-117L was seriously behind schedule by the time Sputnik orbited Earth in 1957 and was eventually cancelled. Eyeing the Red Storm examines the birth of space-based reconnaissance from the perspective of WS-117L.

The history of the American gun is intricately entwined with the history of America itself, and the potential future developments in gun technology could change the world. However, the radical anti-gun lobby stands between innovation and the American people. Bestselling author Frank Miniter describes amazing breakthroughs waiting to happen in gun technology - and how gun grabbers threaten to stop progress in its tracks.

Soon after its debut at the time of the Civil War, the Gatling gun changed the nature of warfare and the course of world history. Discharging 200 shots per minute with alarming accuracy, the world's first machine gun became vitally important to protecting and expanding America's overseas interests.

Jerrell Hawkins has a plan. He’s going to marry Nadine Hartwell, study magic at University, and serve his kingdom in the ongoing war in the prestigious Orichalcum Company led by the hero of the realm. To do this, he needs to obtain a Class. When his plan to create a new, powerful spellcasting class fails, he fears all is lost. Then an enemy sleeper agent burns down his world and Nadine is infected with lycanthropy.

Ferrett Steinmetz’s high-octane cyberpunk romance Automatic Reload about a tortured mercenary and the genetically enginnered assassin he loves. Meet Mat, a tortured mercenary who has become the perfect shot, and Silvia, and idealistic woman geneticall engineered to murder you to death...

During the early and most dangerous years of the cold war, a handful of Americans, led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, revolutionized spying and warfare. In great secrecy and beyond the prying eyes of Congress and the press, they built exotic new machines that opened up the Soviet Union to surveillance and protected the United States from surprise nuclear attack. Secret Empire is the dramatic story of these men and their inventions, told in full for the first time.

Anthony Fokker: The Flying Dutchman Who Shaped American Aviation tells the larger-than-life true story of maverick pilot and aircraft manufacturer Anthony Fokker. Fokker came from an affluent Dutch family. Despite not receiving a traditional education, he stumbled his way into aviation as a young stunt pilot in Germany in 1910. He survived a series of spectacular crashes and rose to fame. A combination of industrial espionage, luck, and deception then propelled him to become Germany's leading WWI aircraft manufacturer. When the German Revolution swept the country, Fokker made a spectacular escape to the US.

At the onset of the American Revolution, the British expected to quell the rebellion quickly with a show of overwhelming force. In an experiment in asymmetric warfare, David Bushnell created the first submarine vessel designed specifically “for the destruction of vessels of war”. In Turtle, the authors provide new insight into Bushnell’s “engine of devastation”, tracing the history of undersea warfare before Bushnell and the origin of the many innovations Bushnell understood would be necessary for conducting a covert submarine attack.