True Military

In 1982, a 20-something named Michael Ross left home to backpack across Europe. Little did he know that his vacation would set in motion a chain of events that would hurl him into a career where the bosses are seasoned spies, and the work is tracking the world’s most dangerous terrorists. The Volunteer is a fast-paced memoir that provides insight into our world, both pre- and post-9/11, told by a man on the front lines in the war against terror.

History is swamped by patriotic myths about the aerial combat fought between the RAF and the Luftwaffe over the summer of 1940. In his gripping history of the Battle of Britain, Len Deighton drew on a decade of research and his own wartime experiences to puncture these myths and point towards a more objective, and even more inspiring, truth.

Committed in utmost secrecy in April-May 1940 by the NKVD on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin, for nearly 50 years the Soviet regime succeeded in maintaining the fiction that Katyn was a Nazi crime, their story unchallenged by Western governments fearful of upsetting a powerful wartime ally and Cold War adversary. Surviving Katyn explores the decades-long search for answers, focusing on the experience of those individuals with the most at stake.

All is fair in love and war. At least, the Nazis thought so. They deployed sex like any other weapon in the service of the Third Reich. Al Camino examines many shocking cases, where brothels were hotbeds of bugging and blackmail, and pillow talk could topple nations.

At the core of this ancient strategy manual is the understanding that conflict is an inescapable part of human life. Since, as Sun Tzu teaches, aggression and response in kind can lead only to destruction, we must learn to work with conflict in a more profound and effective way. Crucial to this strategic vision is knowledge - especially self-knowledge - and a view of the whole that seeks to bring conflicting views into a larger perspective.

The remarkable double life of an American-turned-British spy, Virginia Hall, a 'bolshie' woman from Maryland who, determined to overcome a physical disability that threatened to define her life, successfully infiltrated Vichy France for England's SOE before America's entry into WWII and then, three years later, for the SOS, providing crucial intelligence and logistics for the mounting French Resistance and, later, Allied troops.

In April 1861, Wayland Fuller Dunaway left his college classroom and entered the ranks of the men who fought the bloodiest war ever waged on the North American continent. A Captain in the Army of Northern Virginia, he marched hundreds of miles in Stonewall Jackson's command; saw Generals Lee and Longstreet; was among the first soldiers to fight at Gettysburg, where he also participated in Pickett's Charge; and fought against the lines of strangers in blue who, no matter how many times they were defeated, always returned to invade his beloved Virginia.

Maria Nikolayevna Ivanova, Masha, is a russian former special forces soldier and specialized chistilshitsa —a skilled, paid assassin who answers to the darkest and most illegal sector of the Russian Federal Security Service. Despite her innocent appearance, she is a ruthless, cold-blooded killer, with a psychopathic profile, lacking compassion of any kind. Now she faces a new assignment: eliminating Txema Beristain, a Spanish writer and scriptwriter who is a frequent contributor at National Geographic and is preparing a book on great train journeys throughout Europe. Masha, after an ...

Barry Broman joined the CIA in 1971 straight out of the Marine Corps, choosing a career in intelligence largely because he wanted to spend his working life in Southeast Asia. Over the next thirty years, he had the privilege of working with brave men and women who were prepared to put their lives on the line in support of the free world during the Cold War, and he enjoyed the life of adventure he had been seeking since childhood. This book brings together tales from his career as a CIA case officer during the Cold War.

In March 1944, as the Nazis occupied Paris, the French Police and Fire Brigade were called to investigate a vile-smelling black smoke that had been pouring from the chimney of 21 Rue Le Sueur for days. The thick black smoke was rising from a series of wood-burning stoves throughout the property that were stocked with human remains. The homeowner was Dr. Marcel Petiot, an admired and charismatic physician. When questioned, Dr. Petiot claimed that he was a part of the Resistance and the bodies they discovered belonged to Nazi collaborators that he killed for the cause.

A month after her 24th birthday, Lt. Mary Elizabeth Balster collapses among the rubble of a shelled supply room. On the night of November 30, 1944, holed up in the Heinrich Himmler Barracks in Morhange, France, Lt. Balster's evac receives a typical patient load, but this time one of the admissions is a 19-year-old tanker she'd nursed back to health five months before in Normandy. The charge nurse on Surgical gently informs the lieutenant that the private is critical.

At the pinnacle of a soaring career in the U.S. Army, Lt. Col. Mark M. Weber was tapped to serve in a high-profile job within the Afghan Parliament as a military advisor. Weeks later, a routine physical revealed stage IV intestinal cancer in the 38-year-old father of three. Over the next two years he would fight a desperate battle he wasn’t trained for, with his wife and boys as his reluctant but willing fighting force....

At 2:00 a.m. on October 2, 2001, Robert Stevens entered a hospital emergency room. Feverish, nauseated, and barely conscious, no one knew what was making him sick. Three days later he was dead. Stevens was the first fatal victim of bioterrorism in America. Bioterrorism expert Leonard Cole has written the definitive account of the Anthrax attacks. Cole is the only person outside law enforcement to have interviewed every one of the surviving inhalation-anthrax victims, along with the relatives, friends, and associates of those who died.

The word hero is used far too often. So is the word courage. In the case of Capt. Eugene McDaniel and his hellish experience during the Vietnam War, neither word accurately describes his struggle in enduring the horrors of being one of the most brutalized Prisoner of War (POW).

The Handley Page Victor was the third of the three V Bombers and the longest lasting, serving in the RAF until 1993, and still doing invaluable service in the first Iraq war. Moreover, in 1982, it was the only Victor tanker fleet based on Ascension Island that made possible the Vulcan Black Buck bombing of Port Stanley airfield and the long-range reconnaissance of Argentina by Nimrods. Victor Boys tells the story of all the great things that were achieved, recounted firsthand by the operators themselves.

Capturing history was Jonathan Alpeyrie's job, but he never expected to become a news story himself. For a decade, the French-American photojournalist weaved in and out of over a dozen conflict zones. But, during his third assignment to Syria, Alpeyrie was betrayed by his fixer and handed over to a band of Syrian rebels. For 81 days, he was bound, blindfolded, and beaten. Over the course of his captivity, Alpeyrie kept his spirits up and strived to see, without his camera lenses, the humanity in his captors.

Proud Xerxes, Emperor of Persia and King of Kings, invades Greece with a million soldiers. He commands thousands of ships and is supported by dozens of allies, among them the charming Queen Artemisia. At Thermopylae, a rocky mountain pass in northern Greece, the feared and admired Spartan soldiers stood 300 strong. Theirs was a suicide mission, to hold the pass against the invading millions of the mighty Persian army.

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."

"Elsu, my love, our people have faced countless hardships, but together, we have always found a way to survive. We must hold onto hope and fight for our future, we mustn’t handover our only land to the US Army." "Gentlemen, the time has come to rid ourselves of these savages once and for all. These natives are mere obstacles standing in our path to wealth and prosperity." The year was 1885, Elsu, a courageous Red Indian warrior, yearned for a tranquil existence alongside his beloved wife Tayen, childhood friends, and their people. The heart of California cradled their last village, ...

The British losses in ships and men during the Battle of Jutland started a controversy that some continue even up to today over the culpability of Admiral Jellicoe, who commanded the British fleets. In this book published shortly after the war collates accounts from both sides of the conflict and narrates the battle for the first time using knowledge previously unknown and only guessed at.