Military Theory

Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong?

The future mirrors the past. In a near-future world teetering on the brink of a global takeover, GlobeVac Pharmaceuticals holds the key to a deadly secret. Chaylie Thorn, a determined analyst, stumbles upon a sinister plot to release a bioweapon disguised as a groundbreaking wellness vaccine. Military allies and a covert team of elite Space Force operatives called the Sentinels enlist Chaylie’s help as they race against time to counter GlobeVac’s plan in a pulse-pounding thriller where every second counts. With the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, can the allies unravel the ...

Appeasing Hitler is a compelling new narrative history of the disastrous years of indecision, failed diplomacy and parliamentary infighting that enabled Nazi domination of Europe. Beginning with the advent of Hitler in 1933, it sweeps from the early days of the Third Reich to the beaches of Dunkirk. Bouverie takes us into the backrooms of 10 Downing Street and Parliament, where a small group of rebellious MPs, including the indomitable Winston Churchill, were among the few to realise that the only choice was between ‘war now or war later’.

A century after Appomattox, the civil rights movement won full citizenship for black Americans in the South. It should not have been necessary: by 1870 those rights were set in the Constitution. This is the story of the terrorist campaign that took them away.

In 1941: Fighting the Shadow War: A Divided America in a World at War, historian Marc Wortman thrillingly explores the little-known history of America's clandestine involvement in World War II before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Prior to that infamous day, America had long been involved in a shadow war. Winston Churchill, England's beleaguered new prime minister, pleaded with Franklin D. Roosevelt for help. FDR concocted ingenious ways to come to his aid without breaking the Neutrality Acts.

In Just War Reconsidered: Strategy, Ethics, and Theory, James M. Dubik draws on years of research as well as his own experiences as a soldier and teacher to fill the gaps left by other theorists. He applies moral philosophy, political philosophy, and strategic studies to historical and contemporary case studies to reveal the inaccuracies and moral bankruptcy that inform some of the literature on military ethics.

Jeannie L. Johnson takes a sympathetic but critical look at the Marine Corps's long experience with counterinsurgency warfare. Which counterinsurgency lessons have been learned and retained for next time and which have been abandoned to history is a story of battlefield trial and error - but also a story of cultural collisions. The audiobook begins with a fascinating and penetrating look inside the culture of the Marine Corps through research in primary sources, including Marine oral histories, and interviews with Marines.

In Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, Thomas J. Balcerski explores the lives of these two politicians and discovers one of the most significant collaborations in American political history. He traces the parallels in the men's personal and professional lives before elected office, including their failed romantic courtships and the stories they told about them. Unlikely companions from the start, they lived together as congressional messmates in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse and became close confidantes.

The Federalist Papers is a series of 85 articles arguing in favor of ratification of the United States Constitution by the 13 original colonies. Federalist No. 74 discusses the powers of the president as commander-in-chief and to grant pardons and reprieves. Hamilton asserts that the role of commander-in-chief is inherent in the office itself and requires the speed and resolve of a single decision-maker.

The key to understanding the calamitous Afghan war is the complex, ultimately failed relationship between the powerful, duplicitous Karzai family and the United States, brilliantly portrayed here by the former Kabul bureau chief for The Washington Post.

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.

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.

Tess Taylor is the wife of a powerful U.S. senator who has just been elected President of the United States. Under normal circumstances, she should be ecstatic, however, her life is anything but normal. Over the past year, Tess has become entangled in a secret government experiment that promised to save her damaged family, yet now threatens to destroy her whole world. All the while, U.S. Naval officer, Ensign Austin, struggles to control his newfound ability to manipulate dimensional time travel. Will he be able to master the potential that his mind now holds in time to save the president, ...

Throughout its 40-year history, the Islamic Republic of Iran has remained implacably opposed to the United States, our presence in the Middle East, and our support to Israel. While attempting to strengthen its deterrence against foreign attack and influence, Tehran has committed itself to becoming the dominant power in the turbulent and strategic Middle East. Its ambitions and identity as a largely Persian Shia power in a region composed of primarily Arab Sunni states often put it at odds with its neighbors.

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.

August 22, 1485, Bosworth, Leicestershire. By noon the King of England, Richard III, will be dead and his naked body will be on route to Leicester. This is the story of Richard's final 24 hours, told in a compelling minute-by-minute countdown, which ends with this final heroic battle charge and his death on the field at Bosworth.

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.

PLAYING WITH REALITY explores the riveting history of games since the Enlightenment, weaving an unexpected path through military theory, biology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and the future of democracy. As neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy shows us, games have been deeply intertwined with the arc of history. War games shaped the outcomes of real wars in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. Game theory warped our understanding of human behavior and brought us to the brink of annihilation.

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.

A major historical account of the Korean War, its origins, and its evolving impact on the world. Sixty years after North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea, the Korean War has not yet ended. Sheila Miyoshi Jager presents the first comprehensive history of this misunderstood war, one that risks involving the world’s superpowers - again. Her sweeping narrative ranges from the middle of the Second World War - when Korean independence was fiercely debated between Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill - to the present day.