Veteran correspondent Kaplan shows how American imperialism and the Global War on Terrorism are implemented on the ground, mission by mission, in the most exotic landscapes around the world. Kaplan takes us from the jungles of the southern Philippines to the dust bowls of Mongolia, from the forts of Afghanistan to the forests of South America--not to mention Iraq--to show us Army Special Forces, Marines, and other uniformed Americans carrying out the many facets of U.S. foreign policy: negotiating with tribal factions, storming terrorist redoubts, performing humanitarian missions and training foreign soldiers. Kaplan provides an insider's account of where America, including the culture of its officers and enlisted men, is headed. This book has the potential to change the way readers view the men and women of the military, war, and the global reach of America today.--From publisher description.

Documents the author's choice to leave his privileged life in Beverly Hills to become a member of Israel's most elite security force, for which he became an expert in urban counterterror warfare and participated in more than two hundred life-or-death missions.

Renaissance military memoirs studied for what they reveal of contemporary attiudes towards war, selfhood and identity.

"Men of Bronze takes up one of the most important and fiercely debated subjects in ancient history and classics: how did archaic Greek hoplites fight, and what role, if any, did hoplite warfare play in shaping the Greek polis? In the nineteenth century, George Grote argued that the phalanx battle formation of the hoplite farmer citizen-soldier was the driving force behind a revolution in Greek social, political, and cultural institutions. Throughout the twentieth century scholars developed and refined this grand hoplite narrative with the help of archaeology. But over the past thirty years other scholars have criticized nearly every major tenet of this orthodoxy. Indeed, these revisionists have persuaded many specialists that the evidence demands a new interpretation of the hoplite narrative and a rewriting of early Greek history. Men of Bronze gathers leading scholars to advance the current debate and bring it to a broader audience of ancient historians, classicists, archaeologists, and general readers. After explaining the historical context and significance of the hoplite question, the book assesses and pushes forward the debate over the traditional hoplite narrative and demonstrates why it is at a crucial turning point. Instead of reaching a consensus, the contributors have sharpened their differences, providing new evidence, explanations, and theories about the origin, nature, strategy, and tactics of the hoplite phalanx and its effect on Greek culture and the rise of the polis."

Footsloggers and soldiers of fortune, priests, poets, killers, and cads -- they fight for a future Galarchy, for cash, for a cause, for the thrill of adventure. Culled from the forgotten and unwanted of three galaxies, they are trained to be the most elite, and expendable, of fighting forces. Sometimes peacekeepers, sometimes shock troops, the Legion is sent into the Galarchy's most desperate internal and external conflicts. Legionnaires live rough and they die hard, tough as tungsten and loyal to the dirty end. Alien Legion creator Carl Potts on the series: "The original concept was the 'Foreign Legion in space, ' and all the legionnaires were human. The Alien Legion universe is a giant extrapolation of the American democratic melting-pot society, where different races and cultures work together for the common good while dealing with the pluses and problems that the nation's diversity creates."