books tagged “Military”

Captured by a technologically advanced alien race, a group of medieval English knights gains power and experience as savage interstellar mercenaries, all the while planning for the day when they will rise up and reclaim the glory and freedom that is their destiny. [via]

CIA superagent Mitch Rapp battles global terrorism in a high-octane follow-up to The New York Times bestselling Separation of Power -- another chillingly authentic adventure from the master of the political thriller.

Mitch Rapp's cover has been blown. After leading a team of commandos deep into Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from joining the nuclear arms race, he was publicly hailed by the president as the single most important person in the fight against terrorism. But after years of working covertly behind the scenes, Rapp now lives in the glare of the public spotlight, lauded by the nation and an easy target for virtually every terrorist from Jakarta to London.

As special advisor on counterterrorism to CIA director Dr. Irene Kennedy, Rapp is ready to fight the war on terrorism from CIA headquarters rather than the front line. That is, until a platoon of Navy SEALs, sent to the Philippines to save an American family kidnapped by radical Islamic terrorists, is caught in a deadly ambush. The mission had been top secret -- so who told the enemy? All evidence points to the State Department and the Philippine embassy. But a greater threat still lurks. An unknown assassin working closely with the highest powers in the Middle East is bent on igniting war. Now, with the world watching his every move, will Rapp be able to overcome this anonymous foe and once again keep the flames of war from raging?

Transporting us into an intriguing geopolitical puzzle full of deadly motives, covert operatives, and all the true-to-life insider detail we've come to expect from Vince Flynn, Executive Power is a high-flying story that delivers shattering suspense with the velocity of a 9mm bullet. [via]

Lt. Leary and Adele Mundy are Back in the Blazing Sequel to Lt. Leary, Commanding--A New Blockbuster from the Bestselling Grand Master of Military Science Fiction [via]

"This classic adventure story -- first published in
1902 -- gains new life in a blockbuster motion picture epic
from Paramount Pictures and Miramax Films and remains
a timeless novel of love, honor, and courage."

A Soldier's Shame...

It is 1882 and British officer Harry Feversham has it all: a loving fiancee, the camaraderie of fellow soldiers, a bright future in a nation at the height of its imperial power. But before he is deployed to battle in Africa, he resigns -- and receives white feathers, symbols of cowardice, from three friends...and then a fourth from his fiancee.

A Love Lost...

Ethne Eustace has pushed Harry out of her life, but not out of her mind. Still, when another suitor comes calling she makes a decision that could destroy Harry...and alter her life forever.

A Heroic Redemption...

His world in tatters, Harry goes undercover in Africa to win back the respect of his comrades. From the bustling markets of Cairo to the sizzling sands of Omdurman prison, he fights with everything he has to bring honor back to his name...and Ethne back to his heart. [via]

In January 1942, in the aftermath of the infamous Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Robert Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. From boot camp in Parris Island to the bloody war in the Pacific, Robert Leckie experienced it all. The booze, the brawling, the loving on sixty-two-hour liberty; the courageous fighting and dying in combat as the U.S. Marines slugged it out, inch by inch, island by island across the Pacific to the shores of Japan. [via]

Much has been written about the doodlebugs, V2 rockets, and other advanced technologies that the Nazis used to terrorize Europe during World War II. But there is a less well-known story: under the barrage of Allied bombing, German scientists were secretly devising plans for an incredible battery of weapons that had the potential to drastically affect the outcome of the war. There were designs for a hypersonic space plane -- a manned V1 flying bomb from which the hapless pilot would eject moments after aiming his craft at an Allied target -- and plans for aircraft that consisted only of wings. There were dozens of other prototypes that were technologically way ahead of their time -- against which the Allies would have been helpless. Exhaustively researched and grippingly written, Last Talons of the Eagle shows how history might well have been very different had these craft ever flown. [via]

In this incredibly fast-paced thriller, a conspiracy hatched close to the Oval Office results in the kidnapping of the president and the slaughter of a company of Secret Service agents commanded by ex-Navy SEAL Scot Harvath. The story careers from the ski slopes of Utah to the top of Switzerland's Mount Pilatus and sets Scot on an impossible mission: recover the president, evade renegade Swiss spy Gerhard Miner and his cadre of trained agents, and elude the American conspirators who are hot on his trail. Framed for murder, his reputation in tatters, his former colleagues turned against him, Harvath finds an unlikely ally in a beautiful Swiss prosecutor who's been checkmated by Miner once too often. Together they play a high-stakes game of mixed "doubles" to save the president and uncover the conspiracy. Brad Thor's debut novel is a tightly wound spy tale that makes up in excitement what it lacks in subtlety and character development. Ludlum fans will love it. --Jane Adams [via]

"Colorful characters and pulse-pounding narrative drive. Niven is a true master!" [via]

It's Howling Time in Known Space again! Back to the frontlines of the top selling space war in all of science fiction.

The first colonists from Earth named the planet Wunderland. Generations later, the felinoid alien invaders called Kzin came and turned it into a hell for humans. Touched on in other accounts of the Man-Kzin wars, here for the first time is the decades-long saga of Wunderland: how the Wunderlanders first learned of the Kzin attacks on Earth by slower-than-light communications, barely in time to prepare to fight back. How the valiant human defenders turned to guerilla warfare in the Wunderland jungles and caves after the feline warrior race had destroyed or seized the cities. How, after the war ended in an ignominous defeat for the Kzin, some humans and Kzin worked for good will between the two species-their work complicated by humans wanting revenge and Kzin who still saw humans as a somewhat annoying food source. And how a human-Kzin team was sent to investigate a mysterious asteroid and found a threat not only to both species, but to the entire galaxy. The humans wanted to destroy it, but the Kzin wanted to exploit it, and the only hope was a Kzin telepath raised by humans from a cub. Which side would he choose, monkey or warcat? [via]

Fighting terrorism on foreign ground, CIA superagent Mitch Rapp does whatever it takes to protect American freedom.

MEMORIAL DAY

CIA intelligence has pointed to a major terrorist attack on the United States, just as the nation's capital prepares for a grand Memorial Day tribute to the veterans of World War II. Racing to Afghanistan, Mitch Rapp leads a commando raid on an al Queda stronghold in a remote border village -- and defuses plans for a nuclear strike on Washington. The crisis averted, the special ops work is done. But Rapp knows, in the face of a new kind of enemy, nothing is as it seems -- and it's up to him alone to avert a disaster of unimaginable proportions. [via]

Truth and Consequences: A covert ops liberation of Barrayaran allies in a Cetagandan pow camp goes awry and Miles Naismith is right in the middle of it. Will he find damnation though good works, or faith alone? Still reeling from the prior mission, the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet puts in at old Earth for repairsand finds old enemies. Miles' attempt to juggle both his identities, Admiral Naismith and Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan, crashes when a new player enters the game: the brother he never knew he had. Two years later, on the crime planet of Jackson's Whole, disaster gets a new name: Mark Pierre Vorkosigan. Another rescue, of clone children scheduled to be murdered for their bodies, goes seriously sour. This time, the consequences look fatal and permanentunless two brothers can each learn the other's true names and games. Publisher's Note: "Miles Errant" has been previously published in parts as "Borders of Infinity", "Brothers in Arms", and "Mirror Dance". This is the first chronologically combined edition, as chosen by the author. 'Georgette Heyer has met her match for intrigue and style!...[Komarr] has twists and turns that could only happen in a Vorkosigan-inspired novel...Boy, can she write! ' - Anne McCaffrey. [via]

Miles Vorkosigan times three equals entertainment, excitement & excellence. Diplomat, soldier, spy-Lieutenant Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan of the Barrayaran Empire, a.k.a. Admiral Naismith of the Dendarii Free Mercenaries, is a young man of many parts. Miles and his handsome cousin Ivan are called upon to play a simple diplomatic role on the capital world of Barrayar's old enemy until murder and deceit thrust them into Cetagandan internal politics at the highest levels, and Miles discovers the secrets of the haut-women's biological domain to be very complicated indeed. Commander Elli Quinn, sent by Miles on the trail of those secrets, meets a man who marches to the beat of a very different drummer. Dr. Ethan Urquhart, obstretician from a planet forbidden to women, is on a quest at cross-purposes to Elli's mission - or is it? Consequences of Cetagandan bioengineering continue to play out, this time on a Dendrii sortie to the crime planet of Jackson's Whole. When he encounters a genetically altered super-soldier, Miles' routine rescue strike takes a sudden hard turn for the unanticipated. Publisher's Note: "Miles, Mystery & Mayhem" was previously published in parts as "Cetaganda", "Ethan of Athos", and "Labyrinth". This is the first unified edition. [via]

Winner of the 1982 National Book Award for Biography, Mornings on Horseback is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt. Hailed as a masterpiece by Newsday, it also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. Now with a new introduction by the author, Mornings on Horseback is reprinted as a Simon & Schuster Classic Edition.

Mornings on Horseback is about the world of the young Theodore Roosevelt. It is the story of a remarkable little boy, seriously handicapped by recurrent and nearly fatal attacks of asthma, and his struggle to manhood: an amazing metamorphosis seen in the context of the very uncommon household (and rarefied social world) in which he was raised.

His father is the first Theodore Roosevelt, "Greatheart," a figure of unbounded energy, enormously attractive and selfless, a god in the eyes of his small, frail namesake. His mother, Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt, is a Southerner and celebrated beauty, but also considerably more, which the book makes clear as never before. There are sisters Anna and Corinne, brother Elliott (who becomes the father of Eleanor Roosevelt), and the lovely, tragic Alice Lee, Teddy Roosevelt's first love. And while such disparate figures as Abraham Lincoln, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, and Senator Roscoe Conkling play a part, it is this diverse and intensely human assemblage of Roosevelts, all brought to vivid life, which gives the book its remarkable power.

The book spans seventeen years -- from 1869 when little "Teedie" is ten, to 1886 when, as a hardened "real life cowboy," he returns from the West to pick up the pieces of a shattered life and begin anew, a grown man, whole in body and spirit. The story does for Teddy Roosevelt what Sunrise at Campobello did for FDR -- reveals the inner man through his battle against dreadful odds.

Like David McCullough's The Great Bridge, also set in New York, this is at once an enthralling story, with all the elements of a great novel, and a penetrating character study. It is brilliant social history and a work of important scholarship, which does away with several old myths and breaks entirely new ground. For the first time, for example, Roosevelt's asthma is examined closely, drawing on information gleaned from private Roosevelt family papers and in light of present-day knowledge of the disease and its psychosomatic aspects.

At heart it is a book about life intensely lived...about family love and family loyalty...about courtship and childbirth and death, fathers and sons...about winter on the Nile in the grand manner and Harvard College...about gutter politics in washrooms and the tumultuous Republican Convention of 1884...about grizzly bears, grief and courage, and "blessed" mornings on horseback at Oyster Bay or beneath the limitless skies of the Badlands. "Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough," Roosevelt once wrote. It is the key to his life and to much that is so memorable in this magnificent book. [via]

Each edition includes:

" Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

" Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

" Scene-by-scene plot summaries

" A key to famous lines and phrases

" An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language

" An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

" Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books

Essay by Susan Snyder

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit www.folger.edu. [via]

The 2003 American invasion of Iraq was contentious, not just in the arena of global public opinion, but within the tight-lipped world of the George W. Bush White House. As Bob Woodward reveals in Plan of Attack, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were part of a group leading the charge to war while Secretary of State Colin Powell, General Tommy Franks, and others actively questioned the plan to invade a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks while war in Afghanistan was still being waged. Woodward gained extensive access to dozens of key figures and enjoyed hours of direct contact with the President himself (more time, seemingly, than former Bush administration officials Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill claim to have had). As a result, he's able to cite the kind of gossip you won't find in a White House press release: Franks calls Pentagon official Douglas Feith "the f*cking stupidest guy on the face of the earth," Powell shares his alarm over how the cautious Cheney of the first Bush administration had transformed into a zealot, and Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar seems to enjoy significantly more entrée and influence than most anyone would have thought. Bush is shown as a man intent on toppling Saddam Hussein in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and never really wavering in his decision despite offering hints that non-military solutions could be achieved. Light is also shed on CIA director George Tenet, who insists that the evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was "a slam dunk" only to later admit that his intelligence was flawed when months of post-war searches turned up nothing. But the book's most interesting character is Powell. A former soldier himself, who finds himself increasingly at odds with the agenda of the administration, Powell rejects evidence on WMDs that he sees as spurious but ultimately endorses the invasion effort, apparently out of duty. Upon its publication, the Bush administration roundly denied many of the accounts in the book that demonstrated conflict within their circles, poor judgment, or lousy planning, but the Bush/Cheney reelection campaign nonetheless listed Plan of Attack as recommended reading. And it is. It shows alarming problems in the way the war was conceived and planned, but it also demonstrates the tremendous conviction and dedication of the people who decided to carry it out. --John Moe [via]

Meet the Karasiks, a typical middle-class 1960s family: one mother, one father, one daughter, and three sons, one of whom, David, has autism.

The Ride Together is an extraordinary family memoir told in alternating chapters of comics and text. With a narrative that stretches over nearly fifty years, Paul and Judy Karasik -- he writes with pictures, she with words -- unite to relate the story of their family, their brother David, and the history of their relationship with him. In doing so, each comes to understand the responsibility David represents and the meaning his life gives theirs.

In the pages of The Ride Together, David grows from child to man, remaining dependent on others, even as he witnesses his siblings leaving home -- and him -- for careers and lives of their own. He speaks in a code of his own; he performs his own versions of The Adventures of Superman and Face the Nation; he writes page after page of television synopses.

What he understands of life and death no one can truly tell, yet David walks through his days with dignity and, as it turns out, endurance.

At first glance the adventure of this book is its brilliant experiment of form -- the story of a brother with autism told in a style that is as unusual as the subject matter. But The Ride Together goes deeper than that: It takes a family that may appear strange to some -- like many families with disabilities -- and reveals a group of people whose acceptance of what life has dealt them helps them persevere through good times and bad.

Praised by writers for its craft and by families for its authenticity, The Ride Together provides a remarkable portrait of a family with a difference. [via]

Return to the Alternate Universe of 1632 and 1633 with the Top Writers of Alternate History and Military SF [via]

When a ruthless political regime seizes power on a world struggling to recover from alien invasion, a former war hero finds herself leading a desperate band of freedom fighters. Kafari Khrustinova, who fought Deng infantry from farmhouses and barns, finds herself struggling to free her homeworld from an unholy political alliance, headed by the charismatic and ambitious Vittori Santorini, which has seduced her young daughter with its propaganda and subverted the planet's Bolo, using the war machine to crush all political opposition. To free her homeworld, Kafari must somehow cripple or kill the Bolo she once called friend. Unit SOL-0045, "Sonny," is a Mark XX Bolo, self-aware and intelligent. When Sonny's human commander is forced off-world, Sonny tries to navigate his way through ambiguous moral and legal issues, sinking into deep confusion and electronic misery. He eventually faces a dark night of the soul, with no guarantee that he will understand-let alone make-the right decision. And caught in the middle of this volatile battlefield is Yalena Khrustinova, Kafari's young daughter. Will she open her eyes in time to save herself-and millions of innocents-or will Santorini's relentless brainwashing campaign continue to blind her while the tyrant engineers the ultimate destruction of a helpless and enslaved population? [via]

Evan Thomas takes us inside the naval war of 1941-1945 in the South Pacific in a way that blends the best of military and cultural history and riveting narrative drama. He follows four men throughout: Admiral William ("Bull") Halsey, the macho, gallant, racist American fleet commander; Admiral Takeo Kurita, the Japanese battleship commander charged with making what was, in essence, a suicidal fleet attack against the American invasion of the Philippines; Admiral Matome Ugaki, a self-styled samurai who was the commander of all kamikazes and himself the last kamikaze of the war; and Commander Ernest Evans, a Cherokee Indian and Annapolis graduate who led his destroyer on the last great charge in the last great naval battle in history.

Sea of Thunder climaxes with the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the biggest naval battle ever fought, over four bloody and harrowing days in October 1944. We see Halsey make an epic blunder just as he reaches for true glory; we see the Japanese navy literally sailing in circles, torn between the desire to die heroically and the exhausted, unacceptable realization that death is futile; we sail with Commander Evans and the men of the USS Johnston into the jaws of the Japanese fleet and exult and suffer with them as they torpedo a cruiser, bluff and confuse the enemy -- and then, their ship sunk, endure fifty horrific hours in shark-infested water.

Thomas, a journalist and historian, traveled to Japan, where he interviewed veterans of the Imperial Japanese Navy who survived the Battle of Leyte Gulf and friends and family of the two Japanese admirals. From new documents and interviews, he was able to piece together and answer mysteries about the Battle of Leyte Gulf that have puzzled historians for decades. He writes with a knowing feel for the clash of cultures.

Sea of Thunder is a taut, fast-paced, suspenseful narrative of the last great naval war, an important contribution to the history of the Second World War. [via]

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts is retired Colonel David Hackworth's account of his tour of duty in Vietnam commanding the 4/39th, an infantry battalion operating south of Saigon in the Mekong River delta. Poorly led (the previous commander had based the battalion in the middle of a mine field), with frightfully high casualties (40 percent during the six months prior to Hackworth's arrival), and fighting in the most dangerous of terrain, the 4/39th was a dispirited and demoralized group when Hackworth assumed command in January, 1969. Upon arrival, Hackworth fired many of the senior officers and then put the 4/39th through "Combat 101," which made him so unpopular that at one point Hackworth was warned of a bounty some of his men had put out on him. Over the next five months, however, Hackworth would transform the 4/39 from "hopeless to hardcore," dramatically reverse the casualty rate, score some spectacular victories over the Viet Cong, and earn the undying respect of his troops. Here's a gung ho and earthy firsthand account of the Vietnam War that fans of We Were Soldiers Once... will appreciate. --Harry C. Edwards [via]

Led by the supercomputer Link, the Malwa Empire has built a deadly army that nothing on 6th century Earth can beat -- nothing, that is, except Belisarius, the greatest general and military genius of the age. Against overwhelming odds, Belisarius has prevailed in one brilliant victory after another -- but his greatest battle is yet to be fought and this time, the future of mankind is in his hands. [via]

"I am a storyteller by training and inclination," writes the late Stephen Ambrose in To America, his final book. And what a storyteller. One of the most respected and popular historians of his era, Ambrose had a passion for making the events of the past both relevant and entertaining. In these pages, he touches on many of the subjects that he devoted his career to, including presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, the journey of Lewis and Clark, the building of the transcontinental railroad, and the citizen soldiers of World War II. He also writes about his own personal story and his role as a historian. In detailing a family camping trip to Wounded Knee (an outing which directly led to his dual biography of Crazy Horse and George Armstrong Custer) or offering tips on vivid historical writing (keep your narration in chronological order; keep the reader guessing; and never use the passive voice), he shares what it is like to reflect upon the triumphs and mistakes of the past and why it is so important to pass those stories on to the next generation.

In this brief yet satisfying book, Ambrose moves seamlessly from one topic to the next with contagious enthusiasm and unapologetic optimism. Along the way he points out the inherent absurdity of political correctness, and even takes himself to task for past biases and for sometimes failing to consider his subjects within the context of their own times and not his own. He does not shy away from writing about America's sins, both past and present, but Ambrose's undying faith in his country and his fellow citizens is inspiring. --Shawn Carkonen [via]