On June 8, 1967, at the height of the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Israeli air and naval forces attacked the USS LIBERTY, an intelligence-collection ship in the service of Israel's closest ally, while that vessel steamed in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula. The Israelis killed 34 Americans, wounded 171, and nearly sank the ship. Dozens of theories exist about what happened that day. Official inquiries conducted in both the United States and Israel attributed the event to faulty communications and tragic error, but survivors remain outspoken and not alone in their belief that the Israelis acted deliberately. Federal judge and former naval aviator A. Jay Cristol places the incident in its proper context. The Israeli strike, he argues, can only be understood in light of the Cold War, the outbreak of war in the Middle East, interservice rivalry within the Israeli Defense Forces, and the chaos of an operational environment. That both the United States and Israel kept much of the data concerning the incident classified for more than ten years served only to fuel the fires of intrigue and charges of conspiracy to cover up the truth, but since the incident significant portions of most of the official inquiries have now been declassified. Cristol draws on these, on documents recently obtained by him through the Freedom of Information Act, and on extensive oral history interviews to deliver the most comprehensive treatment of the episode that threatened to ruin Israel's relations with the United States and has served as a nagging source of suspicion for so many years.

The Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal was the most bitterly fought contest of nineteenth-century Europe. From 1808 to 1814, Spanish regulars and guerrillas, along with British forces led by Sir John Moore and the duke of Wellington, battled Napoleon's troops across the length and breadth of the Iberian Peninsula. Napoleon considered the war so insignificant that he rarely bothered to bring to it his military genius, relying instead on his marshals and simultaneously launching his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. Yet the Peninsular War was to end with total defeat for the French, and in 1813 Wellington's army crossed the Pyrenees into mainland France. What Napoleon had called "the Spanish ulcer" ultimately helped bring down the French empire. Michael Howard of Oxford University hailed this book as "a major achievement...the first brief and balanced account of the war to have appeared within our generation." Illustrated with over a hundred maps and fifty contemporary drawings and paintings, this is a richly detailed history of a crucial period in history that resonates powerfully to this day--and figures prominently in Bernard Cornwell's internationally acclaimed novels of the Napoleonic era.

The Russian writer Isaac Babel (1894-1940) is widely acknowledged to be one of the great masters of twentieth-century literature, hailed as a genius by such critics as Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe. The work for which he is best known is a cycle of stories called Red Cavalry, which depicts the exploits of the Cossack cavalry during the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920 and is based on Babel's experiences as he rode with the Cossacks during the campaign. Throughout this period Babel kept a diary, in which he recorded the devastation of the war, the extreme cruelty of the Polish and Red armies alike toward the Jewish population in Ukraine and eastern Poland, and his own conflicted role as both Soviet revolutionary and Jew. The 1920 Diary, a vital source for Red Cavalry as well as a compelling narrative, is now published in English for the first time. The 1920 Diary is the most significant contemporary account of the tragedy of Eastern European Jewry during this period. The Diary also yields important insights into Babel's personal evolution, showing his youthful curiosity and his anguish as, frequently concealing his own Jewish identity, he mingled with the victimized Jews of the region's shtetls and with his Cossack comrades. Finally, the Diary sheds light on Babel's artistic development, revealing the path from observations recorded in excitement and despair to the painstakingly crafted narratives of the Red Cavalry cycle.

"Dommen s book promises to be the definitive political history of Indochina during the Franco-American era." William M. Leary,
E. Merton Coulter Professor of History, University of Georgia

This magisterial study by Arthur J. Dommen sets the Indochina wars 'French and American' in perspective as no book that has come before. He summarizes the history of the peninsula from the Vietnamese War of Independence from China in 930-39 through the first French military actions in 1858, when the struggle of the peoples of Indochina with Western powers began.

Dommen details the crucial episodes in the colonization of Indochina by the French and the indigenous reaction to it. The struggle for national sovereignty reached an acute state at the end of World War II, when independent governments rapidly assumed power in Vietnam and Cambodia. When the French returned, the struggle became one of open warfare, with Nationalists and Communists gripped in a contest for ascendancy in Vietnam, while the rulers of Cambodia and Laos sought to obtain independence by negotiation.

The withdrawal of the French after their defeat at Dien Bien Phu brought the Indochinese face-to-face, whether as friends or as enemies, with the Americans. In spite of an armistice in 1954, the war between Hanoi and Saigon resumed as each enlisted the help of foreign allies, which led to the renewed loss of sovereignty as a result of alliances and an increasingly heavy loss of lives. Meticulous and detailed, Dommen s telling of this complicated story is always judicious. Nevertheless, many people will find his analysis of the Diem coup a disturbing account of American plotting and murder.

This is an essential book for anyone who wants to understand Vietnam and the people who fought against the United States and won.
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"Firefight at Yechon" is the harrowing story of Charles M. Bussey, a former Tuskegee airman and one of the first American combatants in the Korean War. He led the Seventy-seventh Engineer Combat Company for 205 days filled with almost continual fighting, during which he and his fellow American soldiers served with distinction. They also felt the effects of racism in the U.S. Army and wartime media, which singled out African American units for blame in the early days of the war.

"Firefight at Yechon" sets the record straight about the contribution of African Americans in the Korean War. It also paints an unforgettably realistic portrait of the terrifying first days of fighting in 1950, when American soldiers, both black and white, were reeling under the assault of the North Korean People's Army. The Seventy-seventh Engineer Combat Company played an instrumental role in the retaking of Yechon on 20 July, the first major victory for the U.S. Army. The carnage of that fight and the shining courage of his fellow soldiers would never be forgotten by Bussey.

* Powerful, passionate and highly topical critique of humanitarian intervention* International political theorist with eight top-selling books"Whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat."In this first time translation in English, Danilo Zolo considers Carl Schmitt's maxim in the context of the "humanitarian war" waged against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the Spring of 1999 by 19 NATO countries. This erudite and disturbing book is a political, legal and philosophical reflection on an extraordinary display of Western Power and its present and future impact on the global system of international relations.Zolo's account of the war is located within the context of the irresistible drive of globalization which he argues brings economic, financial and military, ecological and ethnic-religious turbulence in its wake. Not only the future of the Balkan region, he suggests, is at stake here, but the fate of international law, the future role of the United Nations and the political destiny of Europe.

Since the earliest days of warfare, military operations have followed a predictable formula: after a decisive battle, an army must pursue the enemy and destroy its organization in order to achieve a victorious campaign. But by the mid-nineteenth century, the emergence of massive armies and advanced weaponry--and the concomitant decline in the effectiveness of cavalry--had diminished the practicality of pursuit, producing campaigns that bogged down short of decisive victory. Great battles had become curiously indecisive, decisive campaigns virtually impossible. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the inability to achieve decisive victories in warfare had become the single greatest military problem facing modern armies.

Robert Citino now tells how European military leaders analyzed and eventually overcame this problem by restoring pursuit to its rightful place in combat and resurrecting the possibility of decisive warfare on the operational level.

"Quest for Decisive Victory" chronicles the evolution of European warfare during the first half of the twentieth century. A study of war at the operational level, it demonstrates the interplay and tension between technology and doctrine in warfare and reveals how problems surrounding mobility--including such factors as supply lines, command and control, and prewar campaign planning--forced armies to find new ways of fighting.

Citino focuses on key campaigns of both major and minor conflicts. Minor wars before 1914 (Boer, Russo-Japanese, and the Balkan Wars of 1912-13) featured instructive examples of operational maneuver; the First World War witnessed the collapse of operations and the rise of attrition warfare; the Italo-Ethiopian and Spanish Civil Wars held some promise for breaking out of stalemate by incorporating such innovations as air and tank warfare. Ultimately, it was Germany's opening blitzkrieg of World War II that resurrected the decisive campaign as an operational possibility. By grafting new technologies--tanks, aircraft, and radio--onto a long tradition of maneuver warfare, the Wehrmacht won decisive victories in the first year of the war and in the process transformed modern military doctrine.

Citino's study is important for shifting the focus from military theory and doctrine to detailed operational analyses of actual campaigns that formed the basis for the revival of military doctrine. "Quest for Decisive Victory" gives scholars of military history a better grasp of that elusive concept and a more complete understanding of modern warfare.

"Outstanding....Hibbert has an eye for character and a gift for bringing to life the impact of small-minded incompetents on the wide sweep of history."— Associated Press

The story of this war has usually been told in terms of a conflict between blundering British generals and their rigidly disciplined red-coated troops on the one side and heroic American patriots in their homespun shirts and coonskin caps on the other. In this fresh, compelling narrative, Christopher Hibbert portrays the realities of a war that raged the length of an entire continent—a war that thousands of George Washington's fellow countrymen condemned and that he came close to losing.

Based on a wide variety of sources and alive with astute character sketches and eyewitness accounts, Redcoats and Rebels presents a vivid and convincing picture of the "cruel, accursed" war that changed the world forever. 16 pages of illustrations. "Hibbert combines impeccable scholarship with a liveliness of style that lures the reader from page to page."—Sunday Telegraph

Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Concise Edition

The closest most of us will ever come to being inside the Oval Office at a moment of crisis.

For sheer drama, this work of history may never be duplicated. The events of the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold in the actual words of President John F. Kennedy and his top advisers. Now available in a new, concise edition, this book retains its gripping sense of history in the making. 20 photographs.

"[A] splendid achievement, as powerful and exciting a book as one is likely to read this year...."—Barry Gewen, New York Times Book Review

"Gripping history."—Richard J. Tofel, Wall Street Journal

"[M]esmerizing. I was utterly fascinated....the best, fullest account of crisis yet and will remain so for decades to come."—Stephen E. Ambrose

"[A]s close as most people will ever get to being a fly on the wall during the discussions of leaders."—Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, James G. Blight

The three Punic Wars lasted over 100 years, between 264 BC and 146 BC. They represented a struggle for supremacy in the Mediterranean between the bludgeoning land power of Rome, bent on imperial conquest, and the great maritime power of Carthage with its colonies and trading posts spread around the Mediterranean. This book reveals how the dramas and tragedies of the Punic Wars exemplify many political and military lessons which are as relevant today as when Hannibal and Scipio Africanus fought to determine the course of history in the Mediterranean.

"Black Prisoner of War" chronicles the story of James Daly, a young black soldier held captive for more than five years by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese and subsequently accused (and acquitted) of collaboration with the enemy. One of the very few books about the Vietnam War by an African American, Daly's memoir is both a testament to survival and a provocative meditation on the struggle between patriotism and religious conviction.

First published in 1975 as "A Hero's Welcome," Daly's memoir had only a brief exposure before it sank from sight. At the time, most Americans simply wanted to forget about the war. But, as Jeff Loeb argues, Daly's story is a compelling one that merits a much wider readership.

Raised in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant area, Daly fought to overcome difficult circumstances through hard work and religion. When the Vietnam War intervened, he was denied conscientious objector status, despite his strong pacifist beliefs. He then enlisted in the U.S. Army, but only after a black recruiter assured him he would receive a non-combat assignment. Instead, he was sent to fight in Vietnam, where he was denied repeated requests for reassignment. In protest, he refused to load or fire his weapon, even when sent out on patrol.

When his unit was ambushed by the Viet Cong, he began his long ordeal in captivity, first in the jungles of South Vietnam and then in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton."
As a POW, he was still an outcast: a black "grunt" and pacifist among mostly white air force officers who considered any sort of accommodation treasonable. Such charges were eventually leveled at Daly for joining the so-called Peace Committee and signing a letter condemning American actions in the war. Although Daly's decisions were in keeping with his pacifism and he was later cleared of the charges, he remains a controversial figure for many Vietnam veterans.

Exploring the limits of both accommodation and resistance, Daly's memoir forces us to reassess the POW experience and race relations in Vietnam, as well as the complex relationship between personal belief and public duty.

"Sagebrush Soldier" is an account of military life during the Indian Wars in the late nineteenth-century West. Private William Earl Smith describes daily camp life, battle scenes, and the behavior of famous men - Ranald Mackenzie and George Crook - in public and private poses. His diary covers the war from the enlisted men's viewpoint, as he worries about what he will eat and how he will keep warm in freezing conditions, and how he will keep calm when bullied by the sergeant major, of whom he says he would give "five years of my life to have] walked up to him and smacked him in the nose."

To complete the picture of the Sioux War, and particularly the Powder River Expedition, Sherry Smith frames Private Smith's narrative with contemporary accounts written by other participants in these events. She assembles a balanced, comprehensive history by also incorporating the testimony of officers, their Indian scouts and allies, and their enemy, the Northern Cheyennes.

In camp on Christmas Eve, 1876, Smith bought a can of peaches, which cost him two dollars, to share with his bunkmate. Meanwhile, he sees another man give ten dollars for a bottle of whiskey. His own words best convey the feelings of a young man far from home at Christmas: "We had a regular Old Christmas Dinner, a little piece of fat bacon and hard tack and a half cup of coffee. You bet I thought of home now if ever I did. But fate was a gane me and I could not bee there. My Bunkey bought some candy and we ate it."

Christmas candy and thoughts of home; some things never change, as readers will learn in this picture of military life unique in its eloquent honesty.

A Marine squadron commander prepares his men for combat and on the second day of the Gulf War, is shot down by a Surface to Air Missile and captured by the Iraqis. As a pilot, senior Marine and squadron Commanding Officer, Acree is a goldmine of the tactical information that the iraqis so desperately needed. Though he is brutally beaten and tortured during his 48 days of captivity, Colonel Acree refuses to comply with Iraqi demands.Woven with the account is the story of his new wife, finally married to her high school sweetheart and, as the wife of a commanding officer, finds herself responsible for supporting hundreds of Marine family members as her husband prepares his men for war. When her husband is captured, she finds herself in the eye of an international media storm and experiences her own form of captivity. She launches a massive letter writing campaign to pressure the Iraqi government and founds an international organization for Gulf War POWs and MIAs.Finally, after seven months apart, husband and wife are reunited and attempt the difficult road back to normal life.

"Leckie is a gifted writer with the ability to explain complicated military matters in layperson’s terms, while sustaining the drama involved in a life-and-death struggle. His portraits of the key players in that struggle . . . are seamlessly interwoven with his exciting narrative." –Booklist"As always, [Leckie] describes the maneuvers, battles, and results in telling detail with a cinematic style, and his portraits . . . are first-rate."–The Dallas Morning News"Leckie’s accounts of battles, important individuals, and the role of Native Americans bring to life the distant drama of the French and Indian Wars."–The Daily Reflector

With his celebrated sense of drama and eye for colorful detail, acclaimed military historian Robert Leckie charts the long, savage conflict between England and France in their quest for supremacy in pre-Revolutionary America. Packed with sharply etched profiles of all the major players–including George Washington, Samuel de Champlain, William Pitt, Edward Braddock, Count Frontenac, James Wolfe, Thomas Gage, and the nobly vanquished Marquis de Montcalm–this panoramic history chronicles the four great colonial wars: the War of the Grand Alliance (King William’s War), the War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne’s War), the War of the Austrian Succession (King George’s War), and the decisive French and Indian War (the Seven Years’ War). Leckie not only provides perspective on exactly how the New World came to be such a fiercely contested prize in Western Civilization, but also shows us exactly why we speak English today instead of French–and reminds us how easily things might have gone the other way.

Like the widely praised original, this new edition is compact, clearly written, and accessible to the nonspecialist. First, the book chronicles and analyzes the twenty-year struggle to maintain South Vietnamese independence. Joes tells the story with a sympathetic focus on South Viet Nam and is highly critical of U.S. military strategy and tactics in fighting this war. He claims that the fall of South Viet Nam was not inevitable, that an abrupt and public termination of U.S. aid provoked a crisis of confidence inside South Viet Nam that led to the debacle. Students and scholars of military studies, South East Asia, U.S. foreign policy, or the general reader interested in this fascinating period in 20th century history, will find this new edition to be invaluable reading.

After discussing the principal American mistakes in the conflict, Joes outlines a workable alternative strategy that would have saved South Viet Nam while minimizing U.S. involvement and casualties. He documents the enormous sacrifices made by the South Vietnamese allies, who in proportion to population suffered forty times the casualties the Americans did. He concludes by linking the final conquest of South Viet Nam to an increased level of Soviet adventurism which resulted in the invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. military build-up under Presidents Carter and Reagan, and the eventual collapse of the USSR. The complicated factors involved in the war are here offered in a consolidated, objective form, enabling the reader to consider the implications of U.S. experiences in South Viet Nam for future policy in other world areas.

Adolf Hitler had high hopes for his conquest of Norway, which held both great symbolic and great strategic value for the Fuhrer. Despite early successes, however, his ambitious northern campaign foundered and ultimately failed. Adam Claasen for the first time reveals the full story of this neglected episode and shows how it helped doom the Third Reich to defeat.

Hitler and Raeder, the chief of the German navy, were determined to take and keep Norway. By doing so, they hoped to preempt Allied attempts to outflank Germany, protect sea lanes for German ships, access precious Scandinavian minerals for war production, and provide a launchpad for Luftwaffe and naval operations against Great Britain. Beyond those strategic objectives, Hitler also envisioned Norway as part of a pan-Nordic stronghold--a centerpiece of his new world order. But, as Claasen shows, Hitler's grand expectations were never realized.

Gring's Luftwaffe was the vital spearhead in the invasion of Norway, which marked a number of wartime firsts. Among other things, it involved the first large-scale aerial operations over sea rather than land, the first time operational objectives and logistical needs were fulfilled by air power, and the first deployment of paratroopers.

Although it got off to a promising start, the German effort, particularly against British and arctic convoys, was greatly hampered by flawed strategic thinking, interservice rivalries between the Luftwaffe and navy, the failure to develop a long-range heavy bomber, the diversion of planes and personnel to shore up the German war effort elsewhere, and the northern theater's harsh climate and terrain.

Claasen's study covers every aspect of this ill-fated campaign from the 1940 invasion until war's end and shows how it was eventually relegated to a backwater status as Germany fought to survive in an increasingly unwinnable war. His compelling account sharpens our picture of the German air force and widens our understanding of the Third Reich's way of war.

S.L.A. "Slam" Marshall was a veteran of World War I and a combat historian during World War II. He startled the military and civilian world in 1947 by announcing that, in an average infantry company, no more than one in four soldiers actually fired their weapons while in contact with the enemy. His contention was based on interviews he conducted immediately after combat in both the European and Pacific theaters of World War II.

To remedy the gunfire imbalance he proposed changes to infantry training designed to ensure that American soldiers in future wars brought more fire upon the enemy. His studies during the Korean War showed that the ratio of fire and more than doubled since World War II.

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A pilot for the China-based airline reputed to be the most shot at in the world, Felix Smith recounts in vivid detail his experiences ferrying troops and equipment for the Nationalists during China's civil war; providing medicine and supplies to war-torn regions; and flying under CIA contract during the French war in Indochina, the Korean War, America's secret war in Laos, and the Vietnam War. China Pilot provides a rare view of the Cold War in Asia, documenting not only the hair-raising adventures of Civil Air Transport's pilots but also those of the men and women behind the scenes.

Grayston Lynch presents an exceptional portrayal of actual events that led to the betrayal of extraordinary, patriotic, and courageous men. Lynch's unmasking of "Kennedy's Camelot" reveals heart-wrenching facts that continue to stir emotions among Brigade 2506 veterans.

Did the Vietnam War have to happen? And why couldn't it have ended earlier? These are among the questions that Robert McNamara and his collaborators ask in "Argument Without End," a book that will stand as a major contribution to what we know about the Vietnam War. Drawing on a series of meetings that brought together, for the first time ever, senior American and Vietnamese officials who had served during the war, the book looks at the many instances in which one side, or both, made crucial mistakes that led to the war and its duration. Using Vietnamese and Chinese documents, many never before made public, McNamara reveals both American and Vietnamese blunders, and points out ways in which such mistakes can be avoided in the future. He also shows conclusively that war could not be won militarily by the United States.McNamara's last book on Vietnam was one of the most controversial books ever published in this country. This book will reignite the passionate debate about the war, about McNamara, and about the lessons we can take away from the tragedy.

America's "forgotten war" lasted just thirty-seven months, yet 54,246 Americans died in that time -- nearly as many as died in ten years in Vietnam. On the fiftieth anniversary of this devastating conflict, James Brady tells the story of his life as a young marine lieutenant in Korea.

In 1947, seeking to avoid the draft, nineteen-year-old Jim Brady volunteered for a Marine Corps program that made him a lieutenant in the reserves on the day he graduated college. He didn't plan to find himself in command of a rifle platoon three years later facing a real enemy, but that is exactly what happened after the Chinese turned a so-called police action into a war.

The Coldest War vividly describes Brady's rapid education in the realities of war and the pressures of command. Opportunities for bold offensives sink in the miasma of trench warfare; death comes in fits and starts as too-accurate artillery on both sides seeks out men in their bunkers; constant alertness is crucial for survival, while brutal cold and a seductive silence conspire to lull soldiers into an often fatal stupor.

The Korean War affected the lives of all Americans, yet is little known beyond the antics of "M*A*S*H." Here is the inside story that deserves to be told, and James Brady is a powerful witness to a vital chapter of our history.