This 31-volume set contains titles, originally published between 1956 and 1993. The first 15 books came out of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute a think tank established in 1966 to commemorate Sweden's 150 years of unbroken peace and one of the most respected worldwide. The majority of titles are from the 1980s, the period of the cold war where tensions had begun to rise again, and the threat of nuclear war gripped the world. International in scope the volumes look at the arms race, deterrence, nuclear proliferation, global policy and strategy and various other issues within the area of nuclear security.

Over the past thousand years, the bloodiest game of the king-of-the-hill has been for supremacy on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the site of the ancient Temple of Solomon. This book recounts the stirring saga of the Knights Templar, the Christian warrior-monks who occupied the sacred Mount in the aftermath of the butchery of the First Crusade. Recruited to a life of poverty, chastity and obedience intended to lead only to martyrdom on the battlefield, they were totally dedicated to the pious paradox that the wholesale slaughter of non-believers would earn the eternal gratitude of the Prince of Peace. The Templars amassed great wealth, which they used to finance their two hundred years of war against Muslims on the desert, in the mountains, and up the broad sweep of the Nile valley. The Templars' reward for those two centuries of military martyrdom was to be arrested by pope and king, tortured by the Inquisition, and finally decreed out of existence. But their legend and legacy just would not die. In telling the incredible story of the Knights Templar, the author's clear explanation of the cultural and religious differences among the Templars' enemies and friends in the Middle East gives fresh understanding of the people who populate this restless region. Here are the Sunnies and the Shiites, the Kurds and Armenians, the Arabs and Turks, who figure so prominently in today's headlines. The similarity of their antagonisms today and those of eight hundred years ago are often so striking as to be eerie. Dungeon, Fire & Sword is a brilliant work of narrative history that can be read as an adventure story, a morality play, or a lesson in the politics of warfare.

Growing up in Da' Harbor, a rough steel town with more than its share of notorious criminals passing through, a young boy seemed destined to a life of crime or, at best, a hazardous life in the steel mill. In Harbor Knight: From Harbor 'Hoodlum' to Honored CIA Agent, Ralph Garcia reflects on "pivotal moments" when his life in East Chicago, Indiana might have taken a horrible turn for the worse. Harbor Knight follows Garcia through his tumultuous childhood, to fatherhood at age sixteen...and to a bunker in Vietnam, where an unconventional message to the CIA gains him an exciting career in covert defense of the United States.

With much humor (and a few other emotions), the author shares incidents from his life of espionage and speaks frankly of how this career has affected his family life. In retirement, Garcia describes how he has been given a second, unexpected opportunity at fatherhood. Keeping one foot in the spy business, he also assists veterans and youth on a variety of fronts and has become involved in politics.

..".an account of the life of that guy next door, the average American, doing his best overseas and at home to defend US national security."

-Michael J. Sulick, former CIA Director of National Clandestine Service

After one of the most controversial and divisive periods in the history of American foreign policy under President George W. Bush, the Obama administration was expected to make changes for the better in US relations with the wider world. Now, international problems confronting Obama appear more intractable, and there seems to be a marked continuity in policies between Obama and his predecessor.
Robert Singh argues that Obama's approach of 'strategic engagement' was appropriate for a new era of constrained internationalism, but it has yielded modest results. Obama's search for the pragmatic middle has cost him political support at home and abroad, whilst failing to make decisive gains. Singh suggests by calibrating his foreign policies to the emergence of a 'post-American'world, the president has yet to preside over a renaissance of US global leadership. Ironically, Obama's policies have instead hastened the arrival of a post-American world.

This 60-volume collection is an in-depth analysis of many areas of Cold War Security Studies. Individual titles examine the origins and early years of the Cold War, all the way up to the early 1990s and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The military and political strategies of both NATO and the Soviet Union are analysed, as are discussions around the difficulties of arms control and chemical weapons. Individual countries are also examined, and taken together these books offer a wide-ranging review of all aspects of the Cold War.

The '82 Kenyan Military Coup is a summary of events that took place in Kenya from the eyes of a victim.It starts with the dreams of a young man aspiring to be a soldier. It talks about the challenges he underwent through in the recruitment process, and in military training. The author talks about how he participated in an attempted Military Coup, and narrowly escaping death. Whereas the book deals with personal experiences and survival in prison, it is a testament of inner strength and triumph over adversity relying on mental toughness.

For the first time, Sophie Harwood uses the Old French tradition as a lens through which to examine women and warfare from the 12th to the 14th centuries. The result is a skilled analysis of gender roles in the medieval era, and a heightened awareness of how important literary texts are to our understanding of the historical period in which they circulated. Medieval Women and War examines both the text and illustrations of over 30 Old French manuscripts to highlight the ways in many of the texts differ from their traditionally assumed (usually classical) sources. Structured around five pivotal female types - women cited as causes for violence, women as victims of violence, women as ancillaries to warriors, women as warriors themselves, and women as political influences - this important book unpicks gendered boundaries to shed new light on the social, political and military structures of warfare as well as adding nuance to current debates on womanhood in the middle ages.

Do the news media have any role in the transformation of war and warfare? A constellation of labels by academics and practitioners have been coined in the last twenty years to describe the new forms of a phenomenon as old as the human race. However, this book claims that it remains to be fully understood what the specific role of the news media is in this process. It argues that the news media, old and new alike, alter the cognitive and strategic environment of the actors of war and politics and change the way these interact with one another. Building on a four-dimensional definition of power and focusing on the role of television, this book recognises the importance of interactions upon the understanding of any social phenomenon. It suggests that the nature of war is changing partly because it is no longer just a matter of linear strategic interactions but also, and mainly, of 'mediated' ones.

An unprecedented description of the critical energy situation throughout Asia, this book examines the energy resources, naval forces, and national strategies of the nations of that vast landmass, set against the priorities and resources of the United States. Energy security in Asia is crucial to the continued economic growth and hence the national security of the region's nations. Providing such security requires a combination of naval, political, and economic policies. Despite dramatic news coverage to the contrary, Cole's research reveals that the nations of the region-of which the United States must be counted-are in fact acting more together than apart in striving to ensure the security of scarce energy resources they all require. No issue in today's international environment is more important than energy security. Even the North Korean nuclear development program must be taken as a subset of this subject. As the United States, the United Kingdom, and other nations have done in past decades, the People's Republic of China is striving to establish proprietorship of energy resources throughout their lifecycle, from recovery from the ground to sale in the market place. This important book demonstrates the vacuity of that paradigm, illustrating the multilateral nature of energy security.

This book deals with the impact of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars on the British Isles. Previous work has concentrated on the ideological formations associated with the French conflict, especially anti-revolutionary loyalism and ideas of Britishness. Here, Dr Cookson provides a new perspective on the social response to the demands of war, through a detailed examination of the mobilization of armed force for the regular army, militia, and volunteers in response to the French encirclement of Britain and Ireland. Dr Cookson's study sheds interesting light on the nature of the British state and the extent of its dependence on society's self-organizing powers. He uses the evidence on mobilization to show the differences in the nature of state and society in various parts of the British Isles, and examines the impact on Scottish and Irish identities within the unions. In England, he shows how mobilization often owed more to working-class pragmatism and the `town-making' interests of urban rulers than to national defence patriotism. The result is a fascinating `war and society' study which is also a significant contribution to urban history.