Search results for ""Potomac Books Inc""

In this provocative set of essays, John Bookman delves beneath the transitory issues of the day to identify and respond to the fundamental, perennial questions of American politics. The questions concern the myths that shape the thinking of so many Americans about politics.

Read more less

Africa is a continent of growing strategic importance in the global war on terrorism. Over the past decade, it has seen a significant number of terrorist attacks and operations, both north and south of the Sahara.

Read more less

The epic World War II battles between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are the subject of a vast literature, but little has been published in English on the experiences of ordinary Soviets - civilians and soldiers - who were sucked into a bitter conflict that marked their lives forever. Their struggle for survival, and their resistance to the invaders' brutality in the occupied territories, is one of the great untold stories of the war.This is why Nikolai Obryn'ba's unforgettable, intimate memoir is so valuable. Written late in the author's life, it tells of Operation Barbarossa, during which he was taken prisoner; the horrors of SS prison camps; his escape; his war fighting behind German lines as a partisan; and the world of suffering and tragedy around him. His perceptive, uncompromising account lays bare the everyday reality of war on the Eastern Front.

Read more less

What is the current state of the global security system, and where is it headed? What challenges and opportunities do we face, and what dangers are emerging? How will various regions of the world be affected? How can the United States best act to help shape the future while protecting its security, interests, and values? How can the United ...

Read more less

Great friendship existed between the United States and Imperial Russia during the nineteenth century. The Old World Russian autocracy supported the young New World democracy because of the emerging U.S. role as a bulwark against Great Britain’s ambitions, in Asia and in the North Pacific Ocean region especially. In fact, when the American Civil War threatened to divide the United States, Russia alone among the European great powers gave no aid or comfort to the seceding states. The surprise 1863 arrival of squadrons of Russian warships and thousands of Russian sailors in New York and San Francisco proved fortuitous, coming when the Union feared British and French intervention on the Confederacy’s behalf. C. Douglas Kroll, using both Russian and U.S. documents, investigates why the Russian Pacific Squadron came to San Francisco, a port of departure for California and Nevada gold headed east; what happened during its nearly year-long visit; and how its presence influenced events. With the units of the U.S. Navy’s small Pacific Squadron widely dispersed and Confederate commerce raiders on the loose, the Russians’ arrival suggested to on-lookers that they intended to defend the Union against interference. Whether actively supporting the Union or training and refitting or both, the Russian officers and sailors endeared themselves to San Francisco’s citizens. Parades and balls, as well as dinners hosted by both sides, helped San Franciscans overlook the various differences they had with their Russian visitors. Kroll gives us a thorough examination of the Russians’visit and its social, diplomatic, and military impact.

Read more less

In a follow-up to his Clearing the BasesSports Illustrated's book of the year for 2002syndicated columnist Allen Barra turns his eye from America's pastime to America's passion.

Read more less

The most storied rivalry in baseball is the Yankees and the Red Sox, despite what often seems like an annual exercise in disappointment in New England. Despite having a comparatively brief and less operatic history of losing to the Bronx Bombers than do the Sox, the Blue Jays were once the team to beat in the American League East.

Read more less

No group is quotedand misquotedmore often than America's founders. When a political controversy heats up, the nation's speechwriters, politicians, reporters, editorial writers, and talking heads try to influence the debate by quoting their words. Year in and year out, teachers and political buffs look to their wisdom to illuminate the issues.

Read more less

This sixtieth-anniversary edition of the 1943 classic returns to print the exciting story of a U.S. Navy fighter squadron during the invasion of French North Africa in World War II.

Read more less

Flying P-38s, Jerry Johnson shot down 24 aircraft in 265 combat missions in the Pacific theater. At the age of only twenty-four, he commanded the highest-scoring fighter group in the Pacific. Tragically, though Johnson had survived three combat tours, which included a mid-air collision with a Japanese aircraft and being shot down by friendly fire, the new father disappeared without a trace while flying a courier mission one month after the war's end.

Read more less

Douglas Haig's career is at the center of a debate concerning the nature of the Great War. Traditionalists contend that, like the majority of general from both sides, he was a hidebound relic of a bygone age who could not come to grips with modern war and sent his soldiers "over the top" in futile attacks, with a criminal disregard for the enormous cost in lives. Indeed, under Haig's leadership, the British Expeditionary Force fought its two signature battles of the war at the Somme and Passchendaele, earning him a reputation as a "butcher and bungler." A revisionist school now contends that wartime leaders, including Haig, inaugurated a phenomenal period of innovation, one that laid the foundations for modern warfare. This learning curve led from the killing fields of the Somme to the protoblitzkrieg tactics of the Hundred Days Battles. While the Hundred Days Battles often go unnoticed or unappreciated in the history of World War I, obscured as they were by the failures of earlier campaigns, here modern war came of age. Haig's role in that transformation makes him the central figure of the war on the western front.

Read more less

With landslide political changes in Europe in the early 1990s, politicians and military planners started to contemplate their possible effects on military postures. Most countries, however, did not enforce plans for post-Cold War reforms because they lacked political will and money, their conservative militaries resisted, and they felt no real pressure from any clear and present threat. Fortunately, debates have begun about the future of military forces, the "revolution in military affairs," and the plans for NATO and European security and defense cooperation. This publication serves as a timely contribution to the debate on determining which lessons have,and have not, been learned—while suggesting possible courses for the way ahead.

Read more less

After Germany's surrender in World War II, Jim Milano, a young U.S. army intelligence officer, led a small, independent group of soldiers charged with carrying out some of the first intelligence efforts of the postwar era. Inventing the techniques of Cold War espionage for themselves and improvising unorthodox methods, the major and his creative cohorts confounded Soviet forces and created escape routes for defectors. In the pages of Milano's fascinating memoir you''ll find the shadowy world populated by spies, prostitutes, refugees, scoundrels, and heroes comes alive.

Read more less

Victor's book is the first to show that implementing the Final Solution was actually the root of Hitler's most disastrous military decisions.

Read more less

At the outset the proposal seemed modest: transfer two hundred unaccompanied Cuban children to Miami to save them from communism. The time apart from their parents would be short, only until Fidel Castro fell from power by the result of U.S. force, Cuban counterrevolutionary tactics, or a combination of both. Families would be reunited in a matter of months. A plan was hatched, and it worked—until it ballooned into something so unwieldy that within two years the modest proposal erupted into what at the time was the largest migration of unaccompanied minors to the United States.Operation Pedro Pan explores the undertaking sponsored by the Miami Catholic Diocese, federal and state offices, child welfare agencies, and anti-Castro Cubans to bring more than fourteen thousand unaccompanied children to the United States during the Cold War. Operation Pedro Pan was the colloquial name for the Unaccompanied Cuban Children’s Program, which began under government la

Read more less

Nicholas Murray's The Rocky Road to the Great War examines the evolution of field fortification theory and practice between 1877 and 1914. During this period field fortifications became increasingly important, and their construction evolved from primarily above to below ground.

Read more less

Jussi M. Hanhimäki offers students and scholars a survey of the evolution of American foreign policy during a key period in recent history, the era of superpower détente and global transformation in the 1960s and 1970s.

Read more less

Now in trade paperback, War Dogs provides an eye-opening look at unsung canine heroes from World War I to the present. Terriers, shepherds, beagles, collies, huskies, and Dobermans are only a few of the breeds that have pulled sleds, searched caves and bunkers, and even parachuted into combat.

Read more less

The ties that bound Abraham Lincoln to California, and California to Lincoln, have long been overlooked by historians. Although the great Civil War president has been the subject of thousands of books, his important relationship with the Western state, both before and during the war—the part it played in bringing on the great conflict and the help it gave him in winning it—have been little described and imperfectly understood. In Lincoln and California Brian McGinty explains the relationship between the president and the Golden State, describing important events that took place in California and elsewhere during Lincoln’s lifetime. He includes the histories of Lincoln’s close friends and personal acquaintances who made history as they went to California, lived there, and helped to keep it part of the imperiled Union. McGinty demonstrates that California was in large part responsible for beginning the Civil War, as the principal purpose of its conquest in the Mexican War was to acquire land into which the Southern states could extend their cotton-growing and slaveholding empire. The decision of California’s first voters to exclude slavery from the state but to enact virulently racist legislation encouraged Southerners’ hope that, if they established a separate republic, it would become an independent slave nation with the power to extend its territory to the Pacific coast of North America and into the Caribbean and Latin America. Lincoln’s opposition to their plans unleashed the Civil War. As the struggle played out, however, the hopes of the proslavery Confederates were ultimately defeated because California played a vital role in helping Lincoln save the Union. Lincoln and California shines new light on an important state, a pivotal president, and a turning point in American history.

Read more less

2023 Best Book Awards Winner in History sponsored by American Book Fest In Murder in Manchuria, Scott D. Seligman explores an unsolved murder set amid the chaos that reigned in China in the run-up to World War II. The story unfolds against the backdrop of a three-country struggle for control of Manchuria—an area some called China’s “Wild East”—and an explosive mixture of nationalities, religions, and ideologies. Semyon Kaspé, a young Jewish musician, is kidnapped, tortured, and ultimately murdered by disaffected, antisemitic White Russians, secretly acting on the orders of Japanese military overlords who covet his father’s wealth. When local authorities deliberately slow-walk the search for the kidnappers, a young French diplomat takes over and launches his own investigation. Part cold-case thriller and part social history, the true, tragic saga of Kaspé is told in the context of the larger, improbable story of the lives of the twenty thousand Jews who called Harbin home at the beginning of the twentieth century. Scott D. Seligman recounts the events that led to their arrival and their hasty exodus—and solves a crime that has puzzled historians for decades.

Read more less

Grappling with centuries-old feuds, defeating a shrewd insurgency, and navigating the sometimes paralyzing bureaucracy of the U.S. military are issues that prompt sleepless nights for both policymakers in Washington, DC and soldiers at war, albeit for different reasons. Few, however, have dealt with these issues in the White House situation room and on the front line. Michael G. Waltz has done just that, working as a policy advisor to Vice President Richard B. Cheney and also serving in the mountains of Afghanistan as a Green Beret, directly implementing strategy in the field that he helped devise in Washington. In Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret’s Battles from Washington to Afghanistan, Waltz shares his unique firsthand experiences, revealing the sights, sounds, emotions, and complexities involved in the war in Afghanistan. Waltz highlights the policy issues that plagued the war effort, from the drug trade to civilian casualties, to a lack of resources in comparison to Iraq, to the overall coalition strategy. He points out that stabilizing Afghanistan and the region remains crucial to national security and that a long-term commitment to Afghanistan is imperative if the United States is to remain secure.

Read more less

On November 18, 1965, U.S. Navy pilot Willie Sharp ejected from his F-8 fighter after being hit while positioned over a target in North Vietnam. With a cloud layer beneath him, he did not know if he was over land—where he would most certainly be captured or killed by the North Vietnamese—or over the Gulf of Tonkin. As he ejected, both navy and air force aircraft were already heading toward him to help. What followed was a dramatic rescue made by pilots and other airmen with little or no training or experience in combat search-and-rescue. Told by former military flight test engineer Eileen A. Bjorkman, this story includes nail-biting descriptions of air combat, flight, and rescue. Bjorkman places Sharp’s story in the larger context of the U.S. military’s development of its “leave no man behind” ethic, and calls attention to the more than eighty thousand Americans still missing from conflicts since World War I. She also explores the devastating aftershocks of the Vietnam War as Sharp struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder. Woven into this gripping tale is the fascinating history of combat search-and-rescue missions that officially began in World War II. Combining the cockiness and camaraderie of Top Gun with the heroics of Sully, Unforgotten in the Gulf of Tonkin is a riveting tale of combat rescue and an unforgettable story about the U.S. military’s commitment to leave no man behind.

Read more less

Death of the Senate is a clear-eyed look inside the Senate chamber in an unprecedented, brutally honest account of the current political reality.

Read more less

During the Civil War his movements from battlefield to battlefield were followed in the North and in the South nearly as closely as those of generals, though he was not in the military. After the war, his swift response to Ku Klux Klan violence sparked passage of a landmark civil rights law, though he was not a politician. When he died in 1888 newspapers reported his death from coast to coast, yet he’s unknown today. He was the man who delivered the most valuable ingredient in U.S. soldiers’ fighting spirit during those terrible war years—letters between the front lines and the home front. He was Absalom Markland, special agent of the United States Post Office, and this is his first biography. At the beginning of the Civil War, at the request of his childhood friend Ulysses S. Grant, Markland created the most efficient military mail system ever devised, and Grant gave him the honorary title of colonel. He met regularly with President Abraham Lincoln during the war and carried important messages between Lincoln and Generals Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman at crucial points in our nation’s peril. When the Ku Klux Klan waged its reign of terror and intimidation after the Civil War, Markland’s decisive action secured the executive powers President Grant needed to combat the Klan. Nearly every biography of Lincoln, Sherman, and Grant includes at least one footnote about Markland, but his important, sometimes daily interaction with them during and after the war has escaped modern notice, until now. Absalom Markland is a forgotten American hero. Delivered Under Fire tells his amazing story.

Read more less

The biography of Julia Wilbur, who left her conventional life to aid newly freed slaves, injured Union soldiers, and, later, the women's suffrage movement in the late nineteenth century.

Read more less

The Journey of Liu Xiaobo is a fitting tribute to Liu Xiaobo's memory and to his influence, which even after his death, continues to grow.

Read more less

The story of Robert Whitney Imbrie (18831924), the first U.S. foreign service officer to be murdered for political reasons.

Read more less

2020 Gourmand Award in Spirits China is one of the world’s leading producers and consumers of liquor, with alcohol infusing all aspects of its culture, from religion and literature to business and warfare. Yet to the outside world, China’s most famous spirit, baijiu, remains a mystery. This is about to change, as baijiu is now being served in cocktail bars beyond its borders.Drunk in China follows Derek Sandhaus’s journey of discovery into the world’s oldest drinking culture. He travels throughout the country and around the globe to meet with distillers, brewers, snake-oil salesmen, archaeologists, and ordinary drinkers. He examines the many ways alcohol has shaped Chinese society and its rituals. He visits production floors, karaoke parlors, hotpot joints, and speakeasies. Along the way he uncovers a tradition spanning more than nine thousand years and explores how recent economic and political developments have conspired t

Read more less

Out of Uniform is designed to help all transitioning military personnel find employment upon returning to civilian life.

Read more less

The firsthand account of Harriet Elam-Thomas, or the little Elam girl from Boston, whose decades-long effort as a woman of color distinguished her as a successful diplomat.

Read more less

From abject poverty to undisputed political boss of Pennsylvania, Lincoln'ssecretary of war, senator, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a founder of the Republican Party, Simon Cameron was one of the nineteenth century's most prominent political figures. Far more than a biography of Cameron, Amiable Scoundrel is also aportrait of an era.

Read more less

[A] must-read for students of history and historians alike.—Washington Book ReviewAlthough southern Poland and western Ukraine are not often thought of in terms of decisive battles in World War I, the impulses that precipitated the battle for Galicia in August 1914—and the unprecedented carnage that resulted—effectively doomed the Austro-Hungarian Empire just six weeks into the war.In Fall of the Double Eagle, John R. Schindler explains how Austria-Hungary, despite military weakness and the foreseeable ill consequences, consciously chose war in that fateful summer of 1914. Through close examination of the Austro-Hungarian military, especially its elite general staff, Schindler shows how even a war that Vienna would likely lose appeared preferable to the “foul peace” the senior generals loathed. After Serbia outgunned the polyglot empire in a humiliating defeat, and the offensive into Russian Poland ended in the

Read more less

The biography of Rags, a stray dog rescued from the streets of Paris to become an America war hero and mascot to the First Division of the American Expeditionary Force during WWI.

Read more less

A guide for writing an authentic military story, drawing from the author's personal experience as a military writer, the experiences of other veteran writers, and from the experiences of noteworthy writing and teaching professionals.

Read more less

Even as we celebrate the return of our military from wars in the Middle East, we are becoming increasingly aware of the struggles that await veterans on the home front. Red, White, and True offers readers a collection of voices that reflect the experiences of those touched by warfrom the children of veterans who encounter them in their fathers' recollections of past wars to the young men and women who fought in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. The diversity of perspectives collected in this volume validates the experiences of our veterans and their families, describing their shared struggles and triumphs while honoring the fact that each person's military experience is different. Leila Levinson's powerful essay recounts her father's experience freeing a POW camp during World War II. Pulitzer Prizewinning author Tracy Kidder provides a chilling account of being a new second lieutenant in Vietnam. Army combat veteran Bro

Read more less

Turkey is positioned to become the twenty-first century's first Muslim power. Based on a dynamic economy and energetic foreign policy, Turkey's growing engagement with other countries has made it a key player in the newly emerging multidirectional world order.

Read more less

When Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, what state was admitted as a free state? President James Buchanan and one member of his cabinet were considered doughfaces. What does this term mean? The Battle of Honey Springs was unusual in that it did not take place in either a state or an organized territory.

Read more less

In America, 2.3 million peoplea population about the size of Houston's, the country's fourth-largest citylive behind bars. Sick Justice explores the economic, social, and political forces that hijacked the criminal justice system to create this bizarre situation.

Read more less

Social responsibility has become a goal for both employers and employees in the business community.

Read more less

The Ohio State Buckeyes have been a national story for decades, with numerous national championships and National Football League draftees to their credit. With such a successful history, it's no wonder that the passion for Ohio State football has reached a level of devotion that has religious overtones.

Read more less

A Free Man of Color and His Hotel weaves the story of a uniquely successful black businessman into the burgeoning postCivil War political struggle that pitted the federal government against the states' desire to remain autonomous. Born in Washington, D.C., James Wormley worked as a hacker in his father's livery stable there and as a steward on Mississippi River steamboats before establishing his own catering and boardinghouse businesses. During a period of limited opportunity for African Americans, he built and operated D.C.'s luxurious Wormley Hotel at a time when most financial and governmental business was conducted in hotels. Not only did a number of notable diplomats and politicians live at the hotel, but because of its location in the city's commercial and political center, Wormley also hosted Washington's movers and shakers. Wormley's rise, however, occurred as three landmark decisions by the Supreme Court effectively dismantled Reconstruction and led to the Pless

Read more less

The 95th Bomb Group (Heavy), the most highly decorated bomb group of World War II, participated in every major mission of the war in Europe from May 1943 through the war’s end and was awarded an unprecedented three Presidential Unit Citations. Flying the celebrated B-17 Flying Fortress, the 95th was the first U.S. bomb group to bomb Berlin—a feat that put it on the centerfold of Life magazine—and the last group to lose a plane over Europe in World War II. Over six hundred men in the 95th never came home. The Wild Blue Yonder and Beyond is the first book to cover a World War II bomb group from its inception through the present day. Utilizing interviews with nearly a hundred air war veterans, dozens of unpublished crew memoirs, all the bomb group’s official mission reports from the National Archives, and nearly a hundred other sources, author Rob Morris (assisted by air war historian Ian Hawkins) provides a deep tactical and human understanding of the

Read more less

From Axis Victories to the Turn of the Tide is a history of the critical campaigns of World War II that highlights the visible turning point battles of the war in 1942 and 1943. By focusing not only on what happened but also on why, Alan Levine's in-depth approach to the subject questions whether the Axis ever had any hope of winning the war.

Read more less

On September 5, 2009, the commanding officer of NATO's German troops in Afghanistan ordered a U.S. Air Force fighter to destroy two fuel trucks hijacked by theTaliban. Within hours, he was being investigated by German prosecutors for the murder of innocent civilianscollateral damage.

Read more less

During the Berlin Wall era (19611989), a committed unit of documentary journalists from the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) reported the stories of America's overseas conflicts. Stuart Schulberg supplied film evidence to prosecute Nazi war criminals and built documentary units in postwar Berlin and Paris.

Read more less

In mid-1940, the British Expeditionary Force desperately attempted to flee the small French port of Dunkirk and reach British shores. France was falling, and the men were well aware that the German army had already conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Belgium. Only Britain remained.

Read more less