Lieutenant Schreiber’s Country

Jean-Claude Servan-Schreiber enlisted in the French army at the outset of World War II and quickly rose to the rank of lieutenant. Despite his patriotism and courage in defending his country, in which he narrowly escaped death several times, he suffered the bigotry of his fellow soldiers until he was expelled from the army for […]

Rather Die Fighting

Frank Blaichman was sixteen years old when the war broke out. In 1942, the killings began in Poland. With his family and friends decimated by the roundups, Blaichman decided that he would rather die fighting; he set off for the forest to find the underground bunkers of Jews who had already escaped. Together they formed […]

No Time for the Truth

An Unflinching Look at a Black Chapter in Our War in Iraq and America’s Failure to Serve JusticeIn the waning days of 2005, twelve Marines were ambushed by Sunni Muslim insurgents on Route Chestnut, an ancient Mesopotamian road at the south edge of Haditha, Iraq, when an IED detonated under one of four Humvees they […]

Night Fighter

For readers of American Sniper, the stirring account of a life of service by the “father of the US Navy SEALs”One month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when President John F. Kennedy pressed Congress about America’s “urgent national needs,” he named expanding US special operations forces along with putting a man on the moon. […]

How to Be a Dictator

A Tongue-in-Cheek Guide to Becoming a Dictator, Based on the Outrageous, Scandalous, and Excessive Behavior of Dictators Past and Present Who hasn’t dreamed of one day ruling your own country? Along with great power comes unlimited influence, control, admiration, and often wealth. How to Be a Dictator will teach you the tricks of the trade—how […]

All the Ways We Kill and Die

The search for a friend’s killer is a riveting lesson in the way war has changed.The EOD—explosive ordnance disposal—community is tight-knit, and when one of their own is hurt, an alarm goes out. When Brian Castner, an Iraq War vet, learns that his friend and EOD brother Matt has been killed by an IED in […]

Packed for the Wrong Trip

How an Unprepared, Undertrained Group of Maine National Guard Troops Went to Abu Ghraib to Fix the IrreparableThe prison at Abu Ghraib was still a relatively unknown part of America’s War on Terror when—with no special training and their gear lost somewhere between the United States and Baghdad—the 152nd Field Artillery Battalion of the Maine […]

How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History

From the Trojan Horse to a photograph snapped in Vietnam, world history has been shaped as much by chance and error as by courage and heroism. Despite impossible odds, invincible armies fall in bitter defeat to weaker opponents. How and why does this happen? What decides the fate of battle? In this fascinating book, Erik […]

Son of War

A Son of War presents Melvyn Bragg’s second installment in what the Sunday Telegraph calls “one of the finest literary sagas of postwar Britain.” Continuing the story of the Richardson family begun in the award-winning The Soldier’s Return, this powerful novel depicts how the terrible upheavals of World War II reverberated in the peace that […]

Donovan’s Devils

The stirring, little-known story of the forerunners to today’s Special Forces.The OSS—Office of Strategic Services—created under the command of William Donovan, has been celebrated for its cloak-and-dagger operations during World War II and as the precursor of the CIA. As the “Oh So Social,” it has also been portrayed as a club for the well-connected […]

Master of Thin Air

Named one of the “Five Adventure Books You Need to Read This Summer” by Backpacker MagazineFor readers of Into Thin Air, riveting high-altitude drama and the passion and drive that inspire outsized mountaineering achievements.Master of Thin Air opens with a fall that the author very nearly could not stop down an almost vertical rock ramp […]

Gushing Fountain

Appearing for the first time in English, this masterful novel by one of the foremost figures of postwar German literature is an indelible portrait of Nazism slowly overtaking and poisoning a small town. Semi-autobiographical, it is also a remarkably vivid account of a childhood fraught with troubles, yet full of remembered love and touched by […]