On Sunday, 25 June 1950, Communist North Korea unexpectedly invaded its southern neighbor, the American-backed Republic of Korea (ROK). The poorly equipped ROK Army was no match for the well prepared North Korean People's Army (NKPA) whose armored spearheads quickly thrust across the 38th Parallel. The stunned world helplessly looked on as the out-numbered and outgunned South Koreans were quickly routed. With the fall of the capital city of Seoul imminent, President Harry S. Truman ordered General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Commander in Chief, Far East, in Tokyo, to immediately pull all American nationals in South Korea out of harm's way. During the course of the resultant noncombatant evacuation operations an unmanned American transport plane was destroyed on the ground and a flight of U.S. Air Force aircraft were buzzed by a North Korean Air Force plane over the Yellow Sea without any shots being fired. On 27 July, an American combat air patrol protecting Kimpo Airfield near the South Korean capital actively engaged menacing North Korean planes and promptly downed three of the five Soviet-built Yak fighters. Soon thereafter American military forces operating under the auspices of the United Nations Command (UNC) were committed to thwart a Communist takeover of South Korea. Thus, only four years and nine months after V-J Day marked the end of World War II, the United States was once again involved in a shooting war in Asia.

In "Wild Grass" Pulitzer Prize-winning Ian Johnson describes a China caught between the desire for change percolating up from below and the ossified political structure above. He recounts the stories of three ordinary people who find themselves finding oppression and government corruption, risking imprisonment and even death. A young architecture student, a bereaved daughter, and a peasant legal clerk are the unlikely heroes of these stories, private citizens cast by unexpected circumstances into surprising roles.

Chronicles the role of the Combat Cargo Command during the Korean War under the command of Major General William H. Tunner. The lessons of the Korean War reinforced what Tunner had learned during World War II and the Berlin airlift.

Rashid Khalidi's powerful book examines the record of Western involvement in the Middle East and analyzes the likely outcome of our most recent incursions into the area. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of the political and cultural history of the entire region, Khalidi paints a chilling scenario of our present situation and yet offers a tangible alternative that can help us find the path to peace rather than Empire. Additionally, Professor Khalidi contributes a new introduction to this paperback edition, covering recent developments in Iraq and the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election.

The Cannes Film Festival jury voted unanimously to award the 2004 Best Picture Award to Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11. Since then it has gone on to smash all box office records for a documentary and created an international discussion about the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader is a powerful and informative book that includes the complete screenplay of the most provocative film of the year. The book also includes extensive sources that back up all facts in the film, as well as articles, letters, photos, and cartoons about the most influential documentary of all time.

The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday: Fighting the War on Terrorism is a collection of stories, essays and politically incorrect commentary by and about the Marines fighting terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a "must read" for all Americans who want to know what was REALLY going on over there. Included are reminders of how we became involved in the global war on terror, profiles of the heroes we don't hear about on the news, and tributes to some of our fallen warriors. The letters and e-mails upon which some of these stories are based show how our troops feel about being in harm's way - and show that we still "make them like we used to."

First published by the Combat Studies Institute Press. The resulting anthology begins with a general overview of urban operations from ancient times to the midpoint of the twentieth century. It then details ten specific case studies of U.S., German, and Japanese operations in cities during World War II and ends with more recent Russian attempts to subdue Chechen fighters in Grozny and the Serbian siege of Sarajevo. Operations range across the spectrum from combat to humanitarian and disaster relief. Each chapter contains a narrative account of a designated operation, identifying and analyzing the lessons that remain relevant today.

North Korea, despite a shattered economy and a populace suffering from widespread hunger, has outlived repeated forecasts of its imminent demise. Charles K. Armstrong contends that a major source of North Korea's strength and resiliency, as well as of its flaws and shortcomings, lies in the poorly understood origins of its system of government. Armstrong's account is based on long-classified documents captured by U.S. forces during the Korean War. Thus enormous archive of over 1.6 million pages provides unprecedented insight into the making of the Pyongyang regime and fuels the author's argument that the North Korean state is likely to remain viable for some years to come.

The Burmese army took political power in Burma in 1962 and has ruled the country ever since. The persistence of this government - even in the face of long-term non-violent opposition led by activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 - has puzzled scholars. In a book relevant to debates about democratization, Mary P. Callahan seeks to explain the extraordinary durability of the Burmese military regime. In her view, the origins of army rule are to be found in the relationship between war and state formation. civil sectors. That imbalance was accentuated soon after formal independence by one of the earliest and most persistent covert Cold War conflicts, involving CIA-funded Kuomintang incursions across the Burmese border into the People's Republic of China. Because this raised concerns in Rangoon about the possibility of a showdown with Communist China, the Burmese Army received even more autonomy and funding to protect the integrity of the new nation-state. group of anti-colonial guerrilla bands into the professional force that seized power in 1962. The army edged out all other state and social institutions in the competition for national power. Making Enemies draws upon Callahan's interviews with former military officers and her archival work in Burmese libraries and halls of power. Callahan's access allows her to correct existing explanations of Burmese authoritarianism and to supply new information about the coups of 1958 and 1962.

This is the second book in William L. Adams' series about military vets from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. "Valley Vets II: An Oral History of Texan Korean and Viet Nam Veterans of the Lower Rio Grande Valley includes the oral histories of more than fifty veterans, include four who fought on the side of the enemy Most of the vets were from Brownsville, but other cities include Harlingen, San Benito, Port Isabel, South Padre Island, Los Fresnos, and other Valley communities..

"All Good Men" was written to chronicle the experiences of a young lieutenant from the time he joined the First Artillery Battalion to fight in the Korean War in August 1950 until he returned home in December 1951. He describes in gripping detail his days as a forward observer in the Naktong Bulge during the searing heat of August, his exploits as a reconnaissance officer from the Pusan Perimeter through the dash to the Yalu River, his contribution as Assistant Operations Officer to the 52nd Field Artillery Battalion, and his days as a unit commander when he rebuilt his firing battery from scratch after losing most of his experienced personnel. With his untested unit he supported the final advance of the 21st Infantry Regiment 30 miles north of the 38th Parallel in October 1951. The author pays tribute to the men who gave their lives fighting in the stinking rice paddies and frozen hills of that unforgiving land under the harsh conditions of ground combat. His poignant comment is still true today. "They could stand tall in any nation's hall of heroes. They were all good men."

In the summer of 1998, Daniel Gordis and his family moved to Israel from Los Angeles. They planned to be there for a year, but a few months into their stay, Gordis and his wife decided to remain in Jerusalem permanently, confident that their children would be among the first generation of Israelis to grow up in peace.

Immediately after arriving in Israel, Daniel had started sending out e-mails about his life to friends and family abroad. These missives—passionate, thoughtful, beautifully written, and informative—began reaching a much broader readership than he’d ever envisioned, eventually being excerpted in The New York Times Magazine to much acclaim. An edited and finely crafted collection of his original e-mails, Home to Stay is a first-person, immediate account of Israel’s post-Oslo meltdown that cuts through the rhetoric and stridency of most dispatches from that country or from the international media. This is must reading for anyone who wants to get a firsthand, personal view of what it’s like for a family on the front lines of war.

"A must read for all Damien Lewis fans" Compass --------------------------------------------------------- The most explosive true war story of the 21st Century It is the winter of 2001. A terror ship is bound for Britain carrying a horrifying weapon. The British military sends a crack unit of SAS and SBS to assault the vessel before she reaches London. So begins a true story of explosive action as this band of elite warriors pursues the merchants of death from the high seas to the harsh wildlands of Afghanistan. The hunt culminates in the single greatest battle of the Afghan war, the brutal and bloody siege of an ancient mud-walled fortress crammed full of hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban. Fighting against impossible odds and bitter betrayal, our handful of crack fighters battle to rescue their fellow soldiers trapped by a murderous, fanatical enemy. --------------------------------------------------------- "The most dramatic story of a secret wartime mission you will ever read" News of the World "The author has been given unprecedented access" Zoo "Gripping" Eye Spy

This is the dramatic, fully-researched and definitive account of the war that almost destroyed Israel: the Yom Kippur War. Launched by Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and his primary ally, Syria's President Hafiz al-Asad, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, the sudden attack took the Israeli Defense Force totally by surprise. Here you will discover how such a colossal intelligence blunder -- one that almost caused the destruction of Israel -- happened. It is a story of incredible courage and bravery of the soldiers on both sides, of the high-stakes diplomatic battles waged by the UN, the United States, and the Soviet Union, even as troops and pilots from Israel and the nine Arab states attacking it shed their blood on the desert sands.

As the first full-length study of conspiracy theories in the Middle East, The Hidden Hand reveals how such theories play a powerful role in the political life of the region. Placing conspiracy theories in their historical context, Daniel Pipes shows how the idea of the conspiracy has come to suffuse life in the Middle East, from the most private family conversations to the highest and most public levels of politics. Pipes then looks at conspiracies and their strength as a partial explanation for much of the region’s problems, including its record of political extremism, its culture of violence, and its lack of modernization. Concluding with speculations about the future of conspiracy theories, Pipes provides a key to understanding the often complicated political culture of the Middle East.

In Shadows and Wind, Robert Templer paints a fascinating and fresh picture of a country usually viewed with hazy nostalgia or deep suspicion. Here is Hanoi, an increasingly tense and troubled city approaching its millennium but uncertain of its direction. Here are people emerging from a long wilderness of malnutrition, discovering a new lifestyle of leisure and luxury. And everywhere are the anomalies that burst the bubble of optimism: a vastly expensive luxury hotel sitting empty in an unknown town six hours from an international airport; museums crammed with fake exhibits. And there remains the one-party Communist state, still wrapped in secrecy and corruption, and making for an uneasy bedfellow with the rapacious capitalism it now encourages. Drawing on hundreds of interviews in Vietnam and years of research, Robert Templer has produced the first in-depth examination of the problems facing modern Vietnam. Shadows and Wind is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Vietnam that now has emerged from a century of conflict with both foreign powers and with itself.

In this new analysis of democracy in Japan, Bradley Richardson refutes the widely accepted hypothesis that postwar Japan has been a semiauthoritarian and consensual state, heavily influenced by corporations and led by the government bureaucracy. On the contrary, Richardson's extensive newspaper and documentary research shows that Japanese political life has been extremely fragmented and discordant at all levels - in the bureaucracy, legislatures, parties, and interest groups and in business and industry. In Japanese Democracy, Richardson explores power relations and demonstrates how Japan's political system is unlike Great Britain's and similar to those of the United States and Italy, where politics is decentralized and decisions are made at many levels. He draws some important conclusions: that Japan's postwar industrial policy has not always been successful, that the country is as much an economic welfare state as it is an economic "miracle", and that the lack of strong leadership has kept Japan from playing a more assertive role in the international arena. As in the United States, private interests hold central policymaking processes hostage, and weak leadership prevails.

This monograph presents a preliminary account of operations by the embarked Marine units under the operational control of the Commander, Naval Forces, Central Command, in the Persian Gulf from August 1990 to May 1991. It tells the story of the 4th and 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigades (MEBs) and the 13th and 11th Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) which comprised the Marine Forces Afloat during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The term "Marine Forces Afloat" was chosen carefully because although each of these units served in the same theater of operations, they remained separate entities capable of rapidly integrating into a single force or breaking away to conduct independent operations as the situation required. The Marine Forces Afloat came into existence early in Operation Desert Shield when the seaborne 4th MEB joined the forward-deployed 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) in the North Arabian Sea in mid-September. These Marines were later joined by the 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade during what would eventually become the longest continuous shipboard deployment by a brigade-sized force in Marine Corps history. For those Marines, the major events of Desert Shield were a series of large amphibious exercises, maritime interdiction operations, and a daring evacuation of the American Embassy at Mogadishu, Somalia. During Operation Desert Storm the U.S. amphibious threat created a strategic distraction that kept Saddam Hussein's attention focused away from the main attack; Marine Aircraft Group 40 flew the first-ever fixed-wing combat strike off an amphibious assault ship; the 13th MEU made two landings; the 4th MEB conducted amphibious demonstrations off the coast of Kuwait; and the 5th MEB participated in ground combat ashore. On its way home the 5th MEB joined Operation Sea Angel, the international humanitarian effort to assist Bangladesh in dealing with the devastation of Cyclone Marian. This work is one in a series of monographs written by members of Mobilization Training Unit (Historical) DC-7 who deployed to the Persian Gulf. The MTU is a Reserve unit composed of artists, historians, and museum specialists who support the activities of the History and Museums Division in peacetime and stand ready to deploy at a moment's notice in times of crisis. Members of the MTU have covered Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (Persian Gulf), Provide Comfort (Northern Iraq), Restore Hope (Somalia), Restore Democracy (Haiti), and Deny Flight (Bosnia).

This monograph is an account of the activities of the Marines and units of the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing in support of the I Marine Expeditionary Force's efforts to liberate Kuwait. This document is part of a preliminary series of official Marine Corps histories that cover Marine Corps operations in the Gulf War. On 2 September 1990, 3d Marine Aircraft Wing took command of Marine aviation forces ashore from a Marine composite aircraft group, which had hurriedly been moved to the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Desert Shield. The wing would grow to be the largest deployed in Marine Corps history. It would fly more than 10 different types of aircraft from eight airfield sites that required laying more than 4.5 million square feet of ramps, landing, and taxiing areas. In addition, the wing and its support groups would construct six 3,000-man base camps and establish a Marine Air Command and Control System that would operate across four countries in a joint and combined arena. When Operation Desert Storm began, the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing was ready and provided more than 18,000 fixed-wing and helicopter sorties in support of I Marine Expeditionary Force's mission of ejecting Iraqi forces from Kuwait. This monograph is predominantly based on unit command chronologies, more than three dozen interviews with key participants, comments from key participants on the draft monograph, and other source documents available at the Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, D.C.

This monograph tells the story of the Marines and sailors of the 1St Force Service Support Group, the 2d Force Service Support Group, Marine Wing Support Group 37, and the 3d Naval Construction Regiment whose combined efforts gave the I Marine Expeditionary Force the ability to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm. This document is part of a preliminary series of official Marine Corps histories that cover Marine Corps operations in the Gulf War. During the Persian Gulf crisis, the History and Museums Division sent a team to Saudi Arabia to produce first-hand accounts of unit operations. In November 1990, five Reserve officers from the Mobilization Training Unit (MTU) (History)-DC-7 arrived in Saudi Arabia, deployed to different commands, accompanied their units throughout the battle, and produced powerful narratives on the operations of I Marine Expeditionary Force, the 1st Marine Division, the 2d Marine Division, and Marine Forces Afloat. Unforeseen circumstances prevented a logistics history from being included in the series, so the Secretary of the Navy recalled Major Steven M. Zimmeck, USMC (Ret), to active duty to complete this account of Marine Corps combat service support in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. This monograph is predominantly based upon documentation collected during and immediately after Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Unit command chronologies and interviews recorded by the Battlefield Assessment Team served as the basis of a comment edition which was sent out to key participants in the events depicted. These comments were then incorporated into the final narrative. This methodology produced a history that approaches the accuracy and vigor of the MTU's first-hand accounts. Please note that this manuscript was prepared using different files which contained missing pages. This was done to ensure that ALL of the pages from the original manuscript are intact.

These memoirs are not an attempt to answer, solve, or resolve the problems arising from or about the three-year-long Korean War or the much longer stalemate that followed. This story was written to let you know how one very young, very scared marine saw his very first war and how he reacted to the killing and the mayhem of it. The stories are my view of that war, a war gone to ground in the trench lines. Dig into the stories and you may find something you were not expecting.

I am well aware that my view of the Korean War has no historical importance. Still, it is my view, and I want to share it with you. I do not have a cause to plead or an ax to grind, and that alone ought to count for something. My memoirs are selective and most certainly tainted with time. My recollections are a lot like boot mines, and ought to be approached with caution.

I was a grunt, a Four Deuce forward observer, assigned to duty with a marine infantry company every time the 1st Marine Regiment went back up on line. During the time I was in Korea my boondockers were firmly planted in trench-line mud. When I came home in September 1952, I was proud that I had helped in the attempt to stop Communism in Korea. I was proud of all the men I served, and served with, and I was a little bit proud of myself, too.

On General Douglas MacArthur's orders, a force of 12,000 U.S. Marines were marching north to the Yalu river in late November 1950. These three regiments of the 1st Marine Division--strung out along eighty miles of a narrow mountain road--soon found themselves completely surrounded by 60,000 Chinese soldiers. Despite being given up for lost by the military brass, the 1st Marine Division fought its way out of the frozen mountains, miraculously taking thier dead and wounded with them as they ran the gauntlet of unceasing Chinese attacks. This is the gripping story that Martin Russ tells in his extraordinary book. Breakout is an unforgettable portrayal of the terror and courage of men as they face sudden death, making the bloody battles of the Korean hills and valleys come alive as they never have before.