Search results for ""Potomac Books Inc""

A valentine for one of the ugliest, albeit most lethally effective, warplanes ever built--as well as for the men who flew them during the Desert Storm campaign. Drawing on interviews with over one hundred A-10 pilots who served in the Persian Gulf during the 1990-91 hostilities, Smallwood (himself an aviator and Korean War vet) offers riveting perspectives on aerial combat. Setting the stage with an informative briefing on how, in the 70''s, the Air Force developed the A-10 (a.k.a. ``Warthog'''') as a means of supporting ground troops with massive firepower, he moves into anecdotal vignettes detailing the ways in which so-called ``hog drivers'''' and their commanders whiled away the weary hours of the calm before the storm in Saudi Arabia''s inhospitable clime. At the heart of his narrative, however, are vivid accounts of how A-10s accomplished their tank-busting missions and then some once the battle was joined. Tasked, among other objectives, to take out missile launchers and ar

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Spymaster’s Prism is a prescient study of our unending struggle with Russia and its intelligence agencies’ relentless effort to undermine our national security. Replete with the most salient spy stories, covert actions, and counterintelligence investigations from the beginning of the Cold War up until the eve of Putin’s misguided march on Kiev, legendary spymaster Jack Devine builds a vivid and complex mosaic that illustrates how Russia has employed intelligence activities to undermine our democracy throughout modern history and lay the groundwork for this invasion. Devine tells this story through the gimlet-eyed perspective of a seasoned CIA professional who served his country for more than three decades, sometimes at the highest levels of the agency, offering objective and candid analysis that will bring new insight into Russia’s invasion. Devine offers key lessons from our intelligence successes and failures over the past seventy-five years that illuminate how best to address our current strategic shortfalls, emerge ahead in the war, and be prepared for what’s to come from any adversary. This cogent study illuminates why intelligence has been such a key driver in the war and how it will be a critical lever in order to prevail.

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The U.S. Army attacked three villages near the German-Belgium border, surprising the Germans who surrendered with little resistance. The German army regrouped and counterattacked. A brief but horrific battle ensued, and as the enemy pressed forward, the Americans retreated in haste, leaving behind their wounded and their dead. Discussion of this week-long conflict that began on All Souls Day, November 2, 1944, has been confined to officer training school, in part due to its heavy losses and ignominy. After the war the U.S. Army returned to the battlefield to bring home its fallen. To its dismay it found that many of these men had vanished. The disappearances were puzzling and for decades the U.S. government searched unsuccessfully for clues. After poring over now-declassified battlefield reports and interviewing family members, the authors reconstruct a spellbinding story of love and sacrifice, honor and bravery, as well as a portrait of the gnawing pain of families not knowing what became of their loved ones. Ultimately this work of history and in-depth contemporary journalism proffers a glimmer of light in the ongoing search.

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Modern biographies of Richard Nixon have been consumed with Watergate. All have missed arguably the most important perspective on Nixon as California’s native son, the only U.S. president born and raised in California. In addition, Nixon was also a son, brother, friend, husband, father, uncle, and grandfather. By shifting the focus from Watergate and Washington to Nixon’s deep, defining roots in California, Paul Carter boldly challenges common conceptions of the thirty-seventh president of the United States. More biographies have been written on Nixon than any other U.S. politician. Yet the territory traversed by Carter is unexplored, revealing for the first time the people, places, and experiences that shaped Richard Nixon and the qualities that garnered him respect from those who knew him well. Born in Yorba Linda and raised in Whittier, California, Nixon succeeded early in life, excelling in academics while enjoying athletics through high school. At Whittier College he graduated at the top of his class and was voted Best Man on Campus. During his career at Whittier’s oldest law firm, he was respected professionally and became a chief trial attorney. As a military man in the South Pacific during World War II, he was admired by his fellow servicemen. Returning to his Quaker roots after the war, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate, and the vice presidency, all within six short years. After losing to John Kennedy in the 1960 presidential campaign, Nixon returned to Southern California to practice law. After losing his gubernatorial race he reinvented himself: he moved to New York and was elected president of the United States in 1968. He returned to Southern California after Watergate and his resignation to heal before once again taking a place on the world stage.Richard Nixon: California’s Native Son is the story of Nixon’s Southern California journey from his birth in Yorba Linda to his final resting place just a few yards from the home in which he was born.

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2023 Gold Medal in Biography/Memoir from the Military Writers Society of America John Spencer was a new second lieutenant in 2003 when he parachuted into Iraq leading a platoon of infantry soldiers into battle. During that combat tour he learned how important unit cohesion was to surviving a war, both physically and mentally. He observed that this cohesion developed as the soldiers experienced the horrors of combat as a group, spending their downtime together and processing their shared experiences. When Spencer returned to Iraq five years later to take command of a troubled company, he found that his lessons on how to build unit cohesion were no longer as applicable. Rather than bonding and processing trauma as a group, soldiers now spent their downtime separately, on computers communicating with family back home. Spencer came to see the internet as a threat to unit cohesion, but when he returned home and his wife was deployed, the internet connected him and hi

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9/12 is the epic saga of more than ten thousand first responders who became ill as a result of working on the Ground Zero cleanup and the historic and ground-breaking legal, political, medical and scientific battle on their behalf.

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In Bourbon and Bullets, John Tramazzo reveals the rich and dramatic connection between bourbon and military service in America.

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Gen. David McMurtrie Gregg (1833–1917) was one of the ablest and most successful commanders of cavalry in any Civil War army. Pennsylvania-born, West Point–educated, and deeply experienced in cavalry operations prior to the conflict, his career personified that of the typical cavalry officer in the mid-nineteenth-century American army. Gregg achieved distinction on many battlefields, including those during the Peninsula, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Bristoe, Overland, and Petersburg campaigns, ultimately gaining the rank of brevet major general as leader of the Second Division, Cavalry Corps, Army of the Potomac. The highlight of his service occurred on July 3, 1863, the climactic third day at Gettysburg, when he led his own command as well as the brigade of Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer in repulsing an attempt by thousands of Confederate cavalry under the legendary J.E.B. Stuart in attacking the right flank and rear of the Union Army while Pickett’s

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From Hope to Horror is Joyce E. Leader's eyewitness account of the struggle for democracy and peace in Rwanda during the early 1990s and the failed diplomatic efforts to prevent conflict from escalating to genocide.

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The reconstruction of a little-known battle during World War II, and the impact it has to this day.

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Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove examines how well the Cold War crisis films stack up against historical reality, or at least as much of that reality as we can reconstruct with confidence.

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In The I-35W Bridge Collapse, Kimberly J. Brown combines memoir and exposé to provide a full account of the Minneapolis I-35W bridge collapse of August 1, 2007, and its aftermath.

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It has long been a commonly shared wisdom that humans need government to bring social order to what would otherwise be a chaotic and dangerous world.

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Assessment of Anwar Sadat and the 1973 War, as well as the event's global implications.

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For centuries, Chinese marriage involved matchmakers, child brides, dowries, and concubines, until the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. This book explores love in Communist China through the personal memories of those who endured the Cultural Revolution and the generations that followed.

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Long before it became the slogan of the Obama campaign, Dr. Dorothy Ferebee (1898-1980) lived by the motto Yes, We Can. An African American elite descended from lawyers, journalists, politicians, and possibly a white governor of Virginia, Ferebee was an obstetrician and civil rights activist from Washington, D.C.

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For many football fans, the National Football League (NFL) season of 1970 was a landmark year in the history of the game. The NFL and American Football League finally began playing as a merged leaguea league that featured such legendary figures as George Blanda, Tom Dempsey, Vince Lombardi, George Allen, Sid Gillman, Lamar Hunt, and Al Davis.

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Americans have been divided along political lines for so long that they have nearly forgotten how to talk to one another, much less how to listen. This is not likely to improve as long as differences between them continue to be cast in overly simplistic terms, such as ignorance vs. enlightened awareness or morality vs. reprobate immorality.

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It began as a Depression-era, winner-take-all challenge between two Chicago stockbrokers, one of them a flamboyant daredevil with more guts than money and the other with more money than sense. It erupted into a national news story, one never told in its entiretyuntil King of Clubs: The Great Golf Marathon of 1938.

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World War II naval history has been discussed and examined from almost every possible angle. One story that has never been told in detail, however, is that of the U.S. Navy's little landing craft, tank (LCT). Even though they are known for landing on the beaches at Normandy, the LCTs were more than mere transports.

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Every ten years political representation in the U.S.House of Representatives is redistributed (reapportioned) among the fifty states.The process began anew with the 2010 census, which is counting the nation's population as the basis for reapportionment.The decennial census has a history wrought with failures and inaccurate counts.

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New York City has long been a breeding ground for spies, saboteurs, terrorists, and other threats to the nation and its greatest city. Battleground New York City examines the history of domestic security operations and the people and agencies involved in safeguarding the city that never sleeps.

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Since radio's debut in the 1920s and television's in the '30s, the baseball announcer has become entertainer, observer, and extended member of the family.

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From 1789 to 1800, the Federalist and Republican parties held opposing visions for America's future.

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On January 26, 1993, a young Palestinian man named Abdel Nasser Zaben was arrested and incarcerated in New York City for kidnapping and robbery. Just thirty days later, while he remained locked up, radical Islamic fundamentalists detonated a bomb in the World Trade Center.

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In March 2004, Capt. Jason Whiteley was appointed the governance officer for Al Dora, one of Baghdad's most violent districts. His job was to establish and oversee a council structure for Iraqis that would allow them to begin governing themselves.

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This edited volume reveals how a permanent war economy has made the United States unable to spread democracy abroad and has worsened domestic problems.

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While many people are familiar with the U.S. Marshals Service's reputation from frontier days, when legendary lawmen such as Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson enforced the Wild West, the agency's modern exploits are less well known.

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FBI operative Raymond W. Holcomb's assignments took him across America, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa, and involved espionage, counter narcotics, Mafia takedowns, national security, Special Weapons and Tactics, and much more.

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Takes the reader on a journey from Iraq's troubled history through the country's invasion and chaotic collapse of governance to the fragile state of political development. This book explains the social, cultural and political roots of violent conflict and political confrontation among Iraq's numerous factions.

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Osama bin Laden's words carry a great deal of weight in the West. When he speaks, or allegedly speaks, we listen. But what about the words of other key leaders in the Al-Qa'ida terrorist network? We can learn how to conduct the war on terrorism more successfully when we study their own manuals, written for their followers.

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Does America's pro-Israel lobby, including the legendary American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have as much power as is commonly believed? Does it have an unbreakable stranglehold on America's Middle East policies? The answer is no, according to Dan Fleshler, an American Jewish activist who has worked within his community to try ...

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The Cold War continues to shape international relations almost twenty years after being acknowledged as the central event of the last half of the twentieth century. Interpretations of how it ended thus remain crucial to an accurate understanding of global events and foreign policy.

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In Red Rogue, Bruce Bechtol analyzes the changing nature of North Korea's national defense, foreign policy, and illicit economic activities in the post9/11 era. He describes how North Korea has adapted to a changing global and regional environment to ensure regime survival and has often dictated the agenda in East Asia.

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During the Iraq War, coauthor Capt. Jason Conroy commanded Charlie Company, which was part of Task Force 1-64, 2d Brigade Combat Team, part of the U.S. Army's 3d Infantry Division. A tank unit equipped with mammoth M1A1 Abrams tanks, Conroy's company was literally at the tip of the U.S. Army's spear and one of the first elements into Baghdad.

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Surviving Twice is the story of five Vietnamese Amerasians born during the Vietnam War to American soldiers and Vietnamese mothers. Unfortunately, they were not among the few thousand Amerasian children who came to the United States before the war's end and grew up as Americans, speaking English and attending American schools.

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Although the basketball teams of the Southeastern Conference dominate the national college rankings, it wasn't too long ago that the SEC was mostly recognized for football. Today the SEC has displaced the Big Ten and the Atlantic Coast Conference as the premier conference of college basketball.

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Journey back fifty years to explore the decade of baby boomers, the Red scare, and the birth of rock and roll with Robert Rodriguez's The 1950s' Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Rock & Roll Rebels, Cold War Crises, and All-American Oddities.

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These are the compelling letters of Karl Fuchs, an ordinary German soldier who was completely convinced of the righteousness of his cause and who wrote them free of the recriminations and hindsight arising from the bitterness of defeat.

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Call Me Commander unravels the mysterious life and crimes of John Donald Cody, a lawyer and former intelligence officer who used a fraudulent veterans charity to swindle tens of millions from unsuspecting Americans.

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During the Cold War, stories of espionage became popular on both sides of the Iron Curtain, capturing the imagination of readers and filmgoers alike as secret police quietly engaged in surveillance under the shroud of impenetrable secrecy. And curiously, in the postCold War period there are no signs of this enthusiasm diminishing. The opening of secret police archives in many Eastern European countries has provided the opportunity to excavate and narrate for the first time forgotten spy stories. Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe brings together a wide range of accounts compiled from the East German Stasi, the Romanian Securitate, and the Ukrainian KGB files. The stories are a complex amalgam of fact and fiction, history and imagination, past and present. These stories of collusion and complicity, betrayal and treason, right and wrong, and good and evil cast surprising new light on the question of Cold War certainties and divides.

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Set in the fictitious world of Westeros, the hit television series Game of Thrones chronicles the bitter and violent struggle between the realm’s noble dynasties for control of the Seven Kingdoms. But this beloved fantasy drama has just as much to say about the successful strategies and real-life warfare waged in our own time and place. Winning Westeros brings together more than thirty of today’s top military and strategic experts, including generals and admirals, policy advisors, counterinsurgency tacticians, science fiction and fantasy writers, and ground-level military officers, to explain the strategy and art of war by way of the Game of Thrones saga. Each chapter provides a relatable, outside‑the‑box way to simplify and clarify the complexities of modern military conflict. A book as captivating and enthralling as Game of Thrones itself, Winning Westeros gives fans of the show and aspiring military minds alike an inspiring and entertaining means of understanding the many facets of modern warfare.

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In the extensive literature about the Battle of Midway, the role of American submarines has not received adequate attention. In The Search for the Japanese Fleet: USS Nautilus and the Battle of Midway, David W.

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Revolutionary War officer Nathan Hale, one of America's first spies, said, Any kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. A statue of Hale stands outside CIA headquarters, and the agency often cites his statement as one of its guiding principles.

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2021 Choice Outstanding Academic Title In this timely and provocative book, Damon Root reveals how Frederick Douglass’s fight for an antislavery Constitution helped to shape the course of American history in the nineteenth century and beyond. At a time when the principles of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were under assault, Frederick Douglass picked up their banner, championing inalienable rights for all, regardless of race. When Americans were killing each other on the battlefield, Douglass fought for a cause greater than the mere preservation of the Union. “No war but an Abolition war,” he maintained. “No peace but an Abolition peace.” In the aftermath of the Civil War, when state and local governments were violating the rights of the recently emancipated, Douglass preached the importance of “the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box” in the struggle against Jim Crow. Frederick Douglass, the former slave who had secretly taught himself how to read, would teach the American people a thing or two about the true meaning of the Constitution. This is the story of a fundamental debate that goes to the very heart of America’s founding ideals—a debate that is still very much with us today.

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Katya Cengel met San Tran Croucher when San was seventy-five years old and living in California, having miraculously survived the Cambodian genocide with her three daughters, Sithy, Sithea, and Jennifer. San’s earliest memories are of fleeing ethnic attacks in her Vietnamese village, only to be later tortured in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge. But San’s family’s troubles didn’t end after their resettlement in California. As a teenager under the Khmer Rouge, San’s daughter Sithy had been the family’s savior, the strong one who learned how to steal food to keep them alive. In the United States, Sithy’s survival skills were best suited for a life of crime, and she was eventually jailed for drug possession. In Exiled Cengel follows the stories of four Cambodian families, including San’s, as they confront criminal deportation forty years after their resettlement in the United States. Weaving together these stories into a single narrative, Cengel finds that violence comes in many forms and that trauma is passed down through generations. This edition includes a new afterword by the author.

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2020–21 Reader Views Literary Award, Gold Medal Winner 2021 Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold Medal Winner 2020 National Jewish Book Award Finalist In the wee hours of May 15, 1902, three thousand Jewish women quietly took up positions on the streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Convinced by the latest jump in the price of kosher meat that they were being gouged, they assembled in squads of five, intent on shutting down every kosher butcher shop in New York’s Jewish quarter. What was conceived as a nonviolent effort did not remain so for long. Customers who crossed the picket lines were heckled and assaulted and their parcels of meat hurled into the gutters. Butchers who remained open were attacked, their windows smashed, stock ruined, equipment destroyed. Brutal blows from police nightsticks sent women to local hospitals and to court. But soon Jewish housewives throughout the area took to the streets in solidarity, w

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