Military Theory

These are personal reminiscences of Grant which allow us to peer back in time to see him through the eyes of those who knew him. Some of the anecdotes describe brief encounters with Grant, while others are from historically prominent men who knew Grant well. What they have in common are the intimate details that reveal the personality and character of General Grant.

Jack Braddock is a ghost, haunted by his past and on the verge of losing the only thing that matters: his daughter. When a reclusive billionaire bails him out of a holding cell, the offer is too good to refuse: a clean slate and a future for his child. The price? One last mission. Journey to the most hostile place on the planet—Antarctica—and rescue the billionaire’s missing son. But the Antarctic is guarding a secret far older and more terrifying than any storm. Leading a small team of outcasts into a UN-quarantined "forbidden zone," Braddock discovers that the official story is a ...

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.

In Mission Failure, Michael Mandelbaum, one of America's leading foreign policy thinkers, provides an original, provocative, and definitive account of the ambitious but deeply flawed post-Cold War efforts to promote American values and American institutions throughout the world.

While the Nazi party was being condemned by much of the world for burning books, they were already hard at work perpetrating an even greater literary crime. Through extensive new research that included records saved by the Monuments Men themselves, Anders Rydell tells the untold story of Nazi book theft, as he himself joins the effort to return the stolen books. When the Nazi soldiers ransacked Europe's libraries and bookshops, large and small, the books they stole were not burned. Instead, the Nazis began to compile a library of their own.

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.

An intriguing look behind the congenial facade of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, this work reveals how each leader jealously guarded knowledge from the other in pursuit of separate national interests.

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.

In 1929, Raymond Geist went to Berlin as a consul, and he handled visas for emigrants to the US. Geist expedited the exit of Albert Einstein just before Hitler came to power. Once the Nazis began to oppress Jews and others, Geist's role became vitally important. It was Geist who extricated Sigmund Freud from Vienna and Geist who understood the scale and urgency of the humanitarian crisis. Even while hiding his homosexual relationship with a German, Geist fearlessly challenged the Nazi police state whenever it abused Americans in Germany or threatened US interests.

When Emma Sky, an intrepid young British woman, volunteered to help rebuild Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, she had little idea what she was letting herself in for: a tour that would last over a decade, longer than that of any senior military or political official. As the only adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Kirkuk and the closest confidante to US General Odierno, Sky was valued for her controversial voice and outsider's point of view.

Gavin reassesses the strategy of flexible response, the influence of nuclear weapons during the Berlin Crisis, the origins of and motivations for US nuclear nonproliferation policy, and how to assess the nuclear dangers we face today. Archival evidence makes it clear that decision makers were more concerned about underlying geopolitical questions than about the strategic dynamic between two nuclear superpowers.

Starting not with the United States but with the Corsican constitution of 1755, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen moves through every continent, disrupting accepted narratives. Both monarchs and radicals play a role, from Catherine the Great of Russia, with her remarkable Nakaz, to Sierra Leone's James Africanus Horton, to Tunisia's Khayr-al-Din, a creator of the first modern Islamic constitution. Throughout, Colley demonstrates how constitutions evolved in tandem with warfare, and how they have functioned to advance empire as well as promote nations.

One Christmas in Washington is a fascinating, in-depth look at one of the most crucial periods in modern history: the Washington war conference of 1941, when two proud and accomplished statesmen struggled to overcome biases, suspicion, and hubris to create what turned out to be the war-winning alliance.

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the fifth century BCE). The work, attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu (Sunzi), comprises 13 chapters, each devoted to an aspect of warfare and its application to military tactics and strategy. It contains a detailed analysis of the Chinese military, from weapons and strategy to rank and discipline as well as the importance of intelligence and espionage in war.

The Art of War and The Book of Five Rings are two of the most iconic works of literature ever written, regardless of genre. The perceptiveness with which Sun Tzu and Miyamoto Musashi analyzed human behavior and tendencies apply to strategy in virtually any context, from warfare to business and beyond. In The Master of Strategy Collection, AOG brings you both of these timeless works in full and unabridged, along with extensive supplemental study and discussion materials.

We think we know civil war when we see it. Yet ideas of what it is and what it isn't have a long and contested history, from its fraught origins in republican Rome to debates in early modern Europe to our present day. Defining the term is acutely political, for ideas about what makes a war "civil" often depend on whether one is a ruler or a rebel, victor or vanquished, sufferer or outsider.

An insightful historical account, Democrat and Diplomat exposes the dark underbelly of 1930s Germany and explores the terrible burden of those who realized the horror that was to come. Dodd was the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937, arriving in Berlin with his wife and daughter just as Hitler assumed the chancellorship. An unlikely candidate for the job - and not President Roosevelt's first choice - Dodd quickly came to realize that the situation in Germany was far grimmer than was understood in America.

Foundational study of how institutions work and how leadership promotes them. Often cited in many fields and consistently assigned to classes in a variety of departments — including sociology and business, and executive training in management and military leadership — this book is considered to have virtually created the modern field of institutional-leadership management. It is still recognized as a lively and accessible presentation of the institutionalist school's answer to traditional "rationalist" approaches. Selznick's analysis goes beyond efficiency and traditional loyalty: he ...

In this thoroughly updated second edition, Derek S. Reveron provides a comprehensive analysis of the shift in US foreign policy from coercive diplomacy to cooperative military engagement. The US military does much more than fight wars; it responds to humanitarian crises and natural disasters, assists advanced militaries to support international peace, and trains and equips almost every military in the world.

The product of painstaking research and countless interviews, A High Price offers a nuanced, definitive historical account of Israel's bold but often failed efforts to fight terrorist groups. Israel's debacles in Lebanon against groups like the Lebanese Hizballah are examined in-depth, as is the country's problematic response to Jewish terrorist groups that have struck at Arabs and Israelis seeking peace.