The Mossad is widely recognized today as the best intelligence service in the world. It is also the most enigmatic, shrouded in secrecy. This book unveils the defining and most dangerous operations that have shaped Israel and the world at large from the agency's more than sixty-year history, among them: the capture of Adolf Eichmann, the eradication of Black September, the destruction of the Syrian nuclear facility, and the elimination of key Iranian nuclear scientists. Through intensive research and exclusive interviews with Israeli leaders and Mossad agents, authors Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal re-create these missions in riveting detail, vividly bringing to life the heroic operatives who risked everything in the face of unimaginable danger.--From publisher description.

"The extraordinary story of the women who took on the Islamic State and won In 2014, northeastern Syria might have been the last place you would expect to find a revolu-tion centered on women's rights. And yet that year, an all-female militia faced off against ISIS in a little town few had ever heard of. The Islamic State by then had swept across vast swaths of the country, taking town after town and spreading terror as the civil war burned all around it. From that unlikely showdown in the town of Kobani emerged a fighting force that would wage war against ISIS across northern Syria as partner of the United States. In the process, these women would spread their own political vision, determined to make women's equality a reality by fighting--house by house, street by street, town by town--the men who bought and sold women. Based on years of on-the-ground reporting, The Daughters of Kobani is the unforgettable story of the women of the Kurdish militia that improbably became part of the world's best hope for stopping ISIS in Syria. Over hundreds of hours of interviews, bestselling author Gayle Tzemach Lemmon introduces us to the women fighting on the front lines, determined to not only extinguish the terror of ISIS but also prove that women could lead in war and must enjoy equal rights come the peace. In helping to cement the territorial defeat of ISIS, whose savagery toward women astounded the world, these women played a central role in neutralizing the threat the group posed worldwide. In the process they earned the respect--and significant military support--of U.S. Special Operations Forces. Rigorously reported and powerfully told, The Daughters of Kobani shines a light on a group of women intent on not only defeating the Islamic State on the battlefield but also changing women's lives in their corner of the Middle East and beyond"--

Like no other novelist at work today, Herman Wouk has managed to capture the sweep of history in novels rich in character and alive with drama. In The Hope, which opens in 1948 and culminates in the miraculous triumph of 1967s Six-Day War, Wouk plunges the reader into the story of a nation struggling for its birth and then its survival. As the tale resumes in The Glory, Wouk portrays the young nation once again pushed to the brink of annihilationand sets the stage for todays ongoing struggle for peace. Taking us from the Sinai to the Jerusalem, from dust-choking battles to the Entebbe raid, from Camp David to the inner lives of such historical figures as Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and Anwar Sadat, these extraordinary novels have the authenticity and authority of Wouks finest fictionand together strike a resounding chord of hope for all humanity. The first trade paperback editions of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, Wouks epic novels of World War II, were recently released by Back Bay Books. - from Amazon

"While the major conflicts in American history have become all too familiar, America's "small wars" have played an essential but little-appreciated role in the country's growth as a world power. First published in 2002, The Savage Wars of Peace quickly became a key volume in the case for a new policy of interventionism. Max Boot shows how America's smaller actions--such as the recent conflicts in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, and Afghanistan--have made up the vast majority of our military engagements, and yet our armed forces do little to prepare for these "low intensity conflicts." A compellingly readable history of the forgotten wars that helped promote America's rise in the last two centuries, The Savage Wars of Peace is now updated with new material on the repercussions of America's far-flung imperial actions and the impact of these ventures in American international affairs"--Amazon.com, viewed April 3, 2014.

In While England Slept Winston Churchill revealed in 1938 how the inadequacy of Britain's military forces to cope with worldwide responsibilities in a peaceful but tense era crippled its ability to deter or even adequately prepare for World War II. In While America Sleeps , historians Donald and Frederick W. Kagan retrace Britain's international and defense policies during the years after World War I leading up to World War II, showing how self-delusion and an unwillingness to face the inescapable responsibilities on which their security and the peace of the world depended cost the British dearly. The Kagans then turn their attention to America and argue that our nation finds itself in a position similar to that of Britain in the 1920s. For all its emergency interventions the U.S. has not yet accepted its unique responsibility to take the lead in preserving the peace. Years of military cutbacks—the "peace dividend" following the buildup and triumph over Communism of the Reagan years—have weakened our armed forces and left us with too few armed forces to cover too many possible threats. This has caused us to bank everything on high tech "smart" weapons—some of which have not yet been invented and others that we are not acquiring or deploying—as opposed to the long-term commitment of money, fighting men and women, and planning that the deterrence of a major war would require. This failure to shape a policy and to commit the resources needed to maintain peace has cost valuable time in shaping a peaceful world and has placed America's long-term security in danger. The policies of the Bush and Clinton administrations have left us in a position where we cannot avoid war and keep the peace in areas vital to our security. Neither have the post-Cold War policies sent clear signals to would-be aggressors that the U.S. can and will resist them. Tensions in the Middle East, instability in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan, the development of nuclear weapons and missile by North Korea, and the menacing threats and actions of China, with its immense population, resentful sense of grievance and years of military buildup, all hint that the current peaceful era will not last forever. Can we make it last as long as possible? Are we prepared to face its collapse? While America Sleeps is a sobering work of history that poses a thoughtful challenge to policy-makers.

Shortly after World War II, when the Allies interrogated Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, the senior commander who opposed the Allied invasion of France, they asked him to rate the skills of his opponents. He is reputed to have said, "Patton, he was your best." Praise for his performance was precisely what George Smith Patton, Jr., had sought all his life. As a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute and West Point, he was already searching for what he called "the undefinable difference" that distinguished a great general from the good ones. He led a mechanized attack in Mexico and a tank battalion during World War I. In World War II he turned American fortunes around in North Africa, chased the Germans out of Sicily, and sparked the breakout and liberation of France. When the Germans attacked the American First Army in the Battle of the Bulge, Patton turned his army north and smashed the German salient. He then drove into the heart of Germany and reached Czechoslovakia by war's end. Brilliant yet flawed, Patton's leadership style drove himself and his men to acts of bravery and victory. Half uncouth, provincial cowboy and half cultured sophisticate, the man behind the warrior mask was a complex and paradoxical person. He became an icon of the American military leader and the uncompromising individual.

First published over thirty years ago, War in European History is a brilliantly written survey of the changing ways that war has been waged in Europe, from the Norse invasions to the present day. Far more than a simple military history, the book serves as a succinct and enlightening overview of the development of European society as a whole over the last millennium. From the Norsemen and the world of the medieval knights, through to the industrialized mass warfare of the twentieth century, Michael Howard illuminates the way in which warfare has shaped the history of the Continent, its effect on social and political institutions, and the ways in which technological and social change have in turn shaped the way in which wars are fought. This new edition includes a fully updated further reading and a new final chapter bringing the story into the twenty-first century, including the invasion of Iraq and the so-called "War against Terror."

Howard Zinn on War is Zinn’s choice of the writing that represents his thinking on a subject that concerned and fascinated him throughout his career. He reflects on the wars against Iraq, the war in Kosovo, the Vietnam War, World War II, and on the meaning of war generally in a world of nations that can't seem to stop destroying each other. These readings appeared first in magazines and newspapers including the Progressive and the Boston Globe, as well as in Zinn's books, Failure to Quit, Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal, The Politics of History, and Declarations of Independence. Here we see Zinn’s perspective as a World War II veteran and peace activist who lived through the most devastating wars of the twentieth century and questioned every one of them with his combination of integrity and historical acumen. In his essay, "Just and Unjust War," Zinn challenges us to fight for justice "with struggle, but without war." He writes in "After the War" (2006) that while governments bring us into war, "their power is dependent on the obedience of the citizenry. When that is withdrawn, governments are helpless." In Howard Zinn on War, his message is clear: "The abolition of war has become not only desirable but absolutely necessary if the planet is to be saved. It is an idea whose time has come."

As an active WWII bombardier returning from the end of the war in Europe and preparing for combat in Japan, Howard Zinn read the headline "Atomic Bomb Dropped on Japan" and was glad—the war would be over. "Like other Americans," writes Zinn, "I had no idea what was going on at the higher levels, and had no idea what that 'atomic bomb' had done to men, women, children in Hiroshima, any more than I ever really understood what the bombs I dropped on European cities were doing to human flesh and blood." During the war, Zinn had taken part in the aerial bombing of Royan, France, and in 1966, he went to Hiroshima, where he was invited to a "house of rest" where survivors of the bombing gathered. In this short and powerful book, the backstory of the making and use of the bomb, Zinn offers his deep personal reflections and political analysis of these events, and the profound influence they had in transforming him from an order-taking combat soldier to one of our greatest anti-authoritarian, anti-war historians. Simultaneous publication this August in the U.S. and Japan commemorates the 65th anniversary of the USA's two atomic bombings of Japan by calling for the abolition of all nuclear weapons and an end to war as an acceptable solution to human conflict. "It's my favorite. . . . He wrote the book to remind himself and to remind us that anybody can throw the wrench in the machinery, and we often should." -- Bill Moyers "Part history, part memoir, part sermon, The Bomb is meant to wake up citizens, to rouse them to reject 'the abstractions of duty and obedience' and to refuse to heed the call of war." —Jonah Raskin, The Rag Blog

On Saturday, August 2, 1941, the Washington Post reported that President Franklin D. Roosevelt would depart the next day for a fishing vacation aboard his yacht, Potomac. By the morning of August 5, the Potomac was sailing toward the fishing waters off Cape Cod -- but the president was not on board. Having quietly disembarked in the middle of the night, the president, now joined by his top military advisors, was headed for Newfoundland, where the U.S. and British governments would meet in a secret summit to coordinate their military efforts, although the United States had yet to declare war on Germany. The British were appalled at the state of American preparedness, one British colonel remarking, "They have a long way to go before they can play any decisive part in the war." But ready or not, the United States would be catapulted into World War II within a matter of months. Alan Schom's superb histories and biographies have been lauded for their dramatic sweep, their focus on extraordinary personalities, and their refreshingly iconoclastic perspective. Schom begins this magisterial account of World War II in the Pacific by demonstrating an ironic paradox: on one hand, the American government and people were as inadequately prepared for war as any major power ever has been; on the other, the Japanese high command plunged headlong into the Pacific campaign despite clear evidence -- from their own analysts -- that Japan had too little oil and too feeble an economy to prevail against the United States. It was a war that should not have been fought. Schom recounts a tense saga of diplomatic maneuvering, strategic blunders, and pivotal successes played out in the halls of the White House, Downing Street, and the Imperial Palace, as well as on the seas and shores of the Pacific. Key figures in the war come vividly to life in a series of brilliant biographical sketches: Emperor Hirohito, a devotee of Western pursuits such as golf and jazz, who hungered to expand Japan's global reach; the destructively egotistical General Douglas MacArthur, whose splendid achievements in World War I stood in stark contrast to his incompetent leadership in the Philippines; Rear Admiral Kelly Turner, whose realism and tactical savvy played a crucial role in turning the tide of the war; and the cool-headed Admiral Tanaka Raizo, who repeatedly slipped through the Allied net, transporting troops and supplies to and from Guadalcanal. The Eagle and the Rising Sun embraces the broad strategic concerns of the war and the telling details and turning points of individual engagements. As Rear Admiral Thomas Marfiak, Ret., CEO and publisher of the U.S. Naval Institute, writes in the Foreword: "From time to time, we are privileged to be given extraordinary insights into the history of our age. Alan Schom has given us a tapestry, into which he has woven figures of immense proportions, yet he has not lost sight of their humanity. He writes ... in the grand tradition of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August." Book jacket.

General Clark became a major figure on the political scene when he was drafted by popular demand to run for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2003. Here, General Clark uses his unique life experience--from his rough childhood in segregated Arkansas, through the horrors of Vietnam to the difficulties of negotiating peace and rebuilding national security after the Cold War--as a springboard to reveal his vision for America, at home and in the world, addressing the current state of our nation, the direction in which we are headed, and what we should hope to achieve.--From publisher description.

"In this important and moving true story of reconciliation after war, beautifully illustrated in watercolor, a Japanese pilot bombs the continental U.S. during WWII--the only enemy ever to do so--and comes back 20 years later to apologize."--Provided by publisher.

On antisemitism see ch. 8 (pp. 159-181), "The Brutalization of German Politics", an expanded version of the article which appeared in German in "Demokratie und Diktatur: Geist und Gestalt politischer Herrschaft in Deutschland und Europa" (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1987).

Book by Kolko, Gabriel

This is the original classic work by one of America's most respected modern military historians. It is a thrilling account of six extraordinary days in June 1967 when Israel embarked on a bold, risky war of national survival - and won! Hammel decisively disproves the myth that Israel's stunning victory was a 'miracle' or a 'fluke' and reveals how a tiny nation was able to, in secret, develop a First-World military force that has become the envy of nations around the world.

From the American Revolution to the end of World War II, the United States spent nineteen years at war against other nations. But since1950, the total is twenty-two years and counting. On four occasions, U.S. presidents elected as "peace candidates" have gone on to lead the nation into ferocious armed conflicts. Repeatedly, wars deemed necessary when they began have been seen in retrospect as avoidable‚ Äîandill-advised. Americans profess to be a peace-loving people and one wary of "foreign entanglements." Yet we have been drawn into wars in distant lands from Vietnam to Afghanistan. We cherish our middle-class comforts and our children. Yet we send our troops to Fallujah and Mogadishu. How is it that ordinary Americans with the most to lose are so easily convinced to follow hawkish leaders-of both parties-into war? In Reasons to Kill noted scholar Richard E. Rubenstein explores both the rhetoric that sells war to the public and the underlying cultural and social factors that make it so effective. With unmatched historical perspective and insightful commentary, Rubenstein offers citizens new ways to think for themselves about crucial issues of war and peace.

Masterfully written and passionately argued, Canada's Army: Waging War and Keeping the Peace traces the full three hundred-year history of the Canadian army, from its origins in New France, through the Conquest, the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, Confederation, militia reform, the South African War, the two world wars, the Korean War, and postwar peacekeeping and peacemaking. Covering the major conflicts in depth, and exploring battles, tactics, and weapons, J.L. Granatstein also offers a rich analysis of the political context for the battles and events that shaped our understanding of the nation's army, not least the fluctuations of Canadian defence spending and methods of raising military manpower. Granatstein pays particular homage to the foot soldier, interweaving personal anecdotes into the history. At once a vivid and impeccably researched history, this major work by one of Canada's leading historians is also a passionate argument for military professionalism, beginning with the recognition that the soldier belongs to a self-regulating and exclusive organization quite distinct from civil society but nevertheless responsible to civil authority. Canadian disinterest in defence was manifested in popular support for a volunteer (but always untrained) militia. It is the historical and continued opposition to a professional army, Granatstein argues, that contributed to the extensive loss of life in the First and Second World Wars. Canada has traditionally undervalued its army in times of peace, but has repeatedly committed its army to war and other military operations, expecting every citizen to be a superb soldier. And, while the army has been able to achieve in times of conflict the professionalism needed by a modern army, this has come only with time and at a high price in the lives of Canadian soldiers. At the start of the twenty-first century, after forty years of cutbacks in budgets and personnel, the Canadian army continues in the same long tradition of unpreparedness. Pointing to the inevitable continuation of armed conflict around the world, Canada's Army makes a compelling case for Canada's need for professional armed forces with a simple but incontrovertible truth: "the equation is and has always been very simple: you pay now in dollars for competent soldiers or you pay later in dollars and your sons and daughters."

Whether viewed as a brave crusader or a power-mad villain, Oliver Cromwell (1599--1658) is irrefutably a key figure in one of the most troubled periods of British history. By examining his performance as a military commander in the widest sense, this intriguing volume offers a new perspective on an intensely religious man who used both soldiering and politics to achieve his underlying goals, as well as insight into the world in which he lived. Whether viewed as a brave crusader or a power-mad villain, Oliver Cromwell (1599--1658) is irrefutably a key figure in one of the most troubled periods of British history. By examining his performance as a military commander in the widest sense, this intriguing volume offers a new perspective on an intensely religious man who used both soldiering and politics to achieve his underlying goals, as well as insight into the world in which he lived.

"Originally published in 2002, Canada's Army quickly became the definitive history of the Canadian military. In the twenty intervening years, we have seen major changes to how Canadians think about their military, and in the ways Canadians fight, train, and serve their nation in peace and in war. Written by J.L. Granatstein, one of the country's leading political and military historians, Canada's Army traces the full three-hundred-year history of the Canadian military. This thoroughly revised third edition brings Granatstein's work up to date with fresh material and new scholarship on the evolving role of the military in Canadian society, along with updated sources, maps, and illustrations. It explores the military from its origins in New France to the Conquest, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812; from South Africa and the two World Wars to the Korean War and contemporary peacekeeping efforts. The third edition includes new coverage of the War in Afghanistan; NATO deployments to Poland, Latvia, and Iraq; aid to the civil power deployments; and the role of the army reserve. Granatstein points to the inevitable continuation of armed conflict around the world and makes a compelling case for Canada to maintain properly equipped and professional armed forces. Masterfully written and passionately argued, Canada's Army offers a rich analysis of the political context for the battles and events that shape our understanding of the Canadian military."--