Military Theory

In Elusive Victories, Polsky provides a fascinating study of six wartime presidents, drawing larger lessons about the limits of the power of the White House during armed conflict. He examines, in turn, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, showing how each gravely overestimated his power as commander-in-chief. In each case, these presidents' resources did not match the key challenges that recur from war to war.

For the first time in any modern language, a female scholar and translator reimagines The Art of War. Sun Tzu’s ancient book of strategy and psychology has as much to tell us today as when it was first written 2,500 years ago. In a world forever at odds, his rules for anticipating the motivations and strategies of our competitors never cease to inspire leaders of all kinds.

One by one, the top officials of US anti-drug agencies are targeted for murder. A cartel hit squad is running free in Washington, DC, and racking up a body count that sends shock waves through federal law enforcement. Team Reaper must stop the killings, but John Kane begins to suspect a web of corruption that extends to the highest levels of the government. The assignment against the cartel hit team is compromised from the start, and soon Team Reaper is under attack.

A fresh, engaging, and relentlessly paced story of a Vietnam veteran's personal experiences and exploits while serving two tours of duty, one as a Cobra gunship pilot, in war-torn Vietnam.

In their new book, Unfit for Command, John O'Neill and co-author Jerome Corsi bring together the words of more than 200 Navy veterans who served with John Kerry and who feel it their duty to tell why Kerry is unworthy of the presidency.

Best selling author Kenneth C. Davis sheds light on the most riveting details about America's greatest conflict in this fascinating program, providing listeners with everything they "need to know" about the Civil War.

On December 7, 1941, the nation of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and prompted the United States’ entry into the bloodiest war in human history. Americans have long debated the cause of the bombing; many have argued that the attack was a brilliant Japanese military coup or a failure of US intelligence agencies or even a conspiracy of the Roosevelt administration. But despite the attention historians have paid to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the truth about that fateful day has remained a mystery - until now.

When Reagan and Gorbachev sat down in Reykjavik in 1986, George Shultz said that it was “the poker game with the highest stakes ever played”. It was the last time the world had a chance to do away entirely with nuclear weapons. This is the behind-the-scenes story of this remarkable summit conference. An Impossible Dream is the first exploration of recently available archives of both sides - top-secret archives of the Kremlin, the personal papers of Gorbachev, as well as Reagan's archives.

In this riveting, informative, and entertaining book, Stelzer draws on previously untapped material, diaries of guests, and a wide variety of other sources to tell of some of the key dinners at which Churchill presided before, during, and after World War II.

The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history, and had the two sides realized it would last four years and inflict over a million casualties, it might not have been fought. Since it was, however, historians and history buffs alike have been studying and analyzing the biggest battles ever since. Americans have long been fascinated by the Civil War, marveling at the size of the battles, the leadership of the generals, and the courage of the soldiers.

The last days of the Korean War saw savage battles for control of important local terrain features, and in the trench warfare of the Chorwon Valley a young U.S. Army lieutenant was assigned to lead an infantry company charged with holding Outpost Harry against a determined Chinese assault. The battle devolved into hand-to-hand combat during a period of constant, intense fighting that lasted two days.

Following Abraham Lincoln's election, many Democratic newspapers across the North mistrusted Lincoln's claim that he would not abolish slavery, and their lukewarm support collapsed after Lincoln announced his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the fall of 1862. The advent of a national draft in the spring of 1863 only added fuel to the fire with anti-Lincoln Democrats, who argued that it was illegal to draft civilians.

In the 25 years after 1989, the world enjoyed the deepest peace in history. In The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth, the eminent foreign policy scholar Michael Mandelbaum examines that remarkable quarter century, describing how and why the peace was established and then fell apart. Mandelbaum argues that the widespread peace ended because three major countries put an end to it with aggressive nationalist policies aimed at overturning the prevailing political arrangements in their respective regions.

The secession of the South was one of the seminal events in American history, but it also remains one of the most controversial. The election of Abraham Lincoln was the impetus for secession, but that was merely one of many events that led up to the formation of the Confederacy and the start of the Civil War.

Combining impeccable scholarship and literary elegance, David Wetzel depicts the drama of machinations and passions that exploded in a war that forever changed the face of European history.

In spring of 1953, newly elected President Eisenhower sat down with his staff to discuss the state of American strategy in the Cold War. America, he insisted, needed a new approach to an urgent situation. From this meeting emerged Eisenhower's teams of "bright young fellows", charged with developing competing policies, each of which would come to shape global politics.

For the last two decades, Sidney Tarrow has explored "contentious politics" - disruptions of the settled political order caused by social movements. These disruptions range from strikes and street protests to riots and civil disobedience to revolution. In War, States, and Contention, Tarrow shows how such movements sometimes trigger, animate, and guide the course of war and how they sometimes rise during war and in war's wake to change regimes or even overthrow states.

Superheroes, Movies, and the State sets a new standard for exploring the government-Hollywood relationship as it persuasively documents the critical role different government agencies have played in shaping characters, stories, and even the ideas behind the hottest entertainment products.

Number six and trapped in her huge, devout family in 1963, desperate-for-attention Annie Shea creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the short list to be elected the first American pope. Driven to exaggeration and trying to elevate her family to be the holiest of holy rollers in the parish.

Nasty, brutish, and short. This is the way English philosopher Thomas Hobbes described the living conditions into which humans inevitably fall without a strong, central authority. However, Hobbes would agree that living under a brutal dictator could lead to the same conditions. This exciting new book from historian Michael Rank looks at the lives and times of the worst dictators in history.