In the fall of 1965, Army cadet Tom Carhart and five others at West Point Academy pulled off a feat of precision and ingenuity that made them famous: the theft of the Navy's Billy-Goat mascot from their rival academy, Annapolis, just before the biggest game of the year. With U.S. forces in Vietnam swollen to nearly 200,000 and American casualties steadily growing, it was an unnerving time to join the military. At West Point, the young men preparing to graduate the following June were well aware that they would be called upon to serve, and quite possibly die, in that far-off country where war raged. That November would be the last Army-Navy football game any of the six cadets would ever participate in, so they had to make it count. After an embarrassing theft of their mascot ten years earlier, the Navy went to extraordinary lengths to make sure it could never happen again. Formal agreements were made between the two superintendents, who subsequently threatened fire and brimstone to any of their charges who dared go near the other Academy. To reinforce those orders, during the week before The Big Game, the Navy placed their goat in an effectively impregnable lockup under 24/7 guard by U.S. Marines at an intimidating Naval Security Station--a modern day Golden Fleece. The Golden Fleece by Tom Carhart is the incredible true story, told by one of the participants, of how six West Point cadets in the Class of 1966 set out to steal that Golden Fleece, and how they succeeded against all odds. The Golden Fleece is a rollicking non-fiction military caper about a famous prank conducted by these cadets as their one last hurrah before shipping off to a war they might not come back from.

Going beyond the dominant orthodox narrative to incorporate insight from revisionist scholarship on the Vietnam War, Michael G. Kort presents the case that the United States should have been able to win the war, and at a much lower cost than it suffered in defeat. Presenting a study that is both historiographic and a narrative history, Kort analyzes important factors such as the strong nationalist credentials and leadership qualities of South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem; the flawed military strategy of 'graduated response' developed by Robert McNamara; and the real reasons South Vietnam collapsed in the face of a massive North Vietnamese invasion in 1975. Kort shows how the US commitment to defend South Vietnam was not a strategic error but a policy consistent with US security interests during the Cold War, and that there were potentially viable strategic approaches to the war that might have saved South Vietnam.

Donut Dolly puts you in the Vietnam War face down in the dirt under a sniper attack, inside a helicopter being struck by lightning, at dinner next to a commanding general, and slogging through the mud along a line of foxholes. You see the war through the eyes of one of the first women officially allowed in the combat zone. When Joann Puffer Kotcher left for Vietnam in 1966, she was fresh out of the University of Michigan with a year of teaching, and a year as an American Red Cross Donut Dolly in Korea. All she wanted was to go someplace exciting. In Vietnam, she visited troops from the Central Highlands to the Mekong Delta, from the South China Sea to the Cambodian border. At four duty stations, she set up recreation centers and made mobile visits wherever commanders requested. That included Special Forces Teams in remote combat zone jungles. She brought reminders of home, thoughts of a sister or the girl next door. Officers asked her to take risks because they believed her visits to the front lines were important to the men. Every Vietnam veteran who meets her thinks of her as a brother-at-arms. Donut Dolly is Kotcher's personal view of the war, recorded in a journal kept during her tour, day by day as she experienced it. It is a faithful representation of the twists and turns of the turbulent, controversial time. While in Vietnam, Kotcher was once abducted; dodged an ambush in the Delta; talked with a true war hero in a hospital who had charged a machine gun; and had a conversation with a prostitute. A rare account of an American Red Cross volunteer in Vietnam, Donut Dolly will appeal to those interested in the Vietnam War, to those who have interest in the military, and to women aspiring to go beyond the ordinary.

BLOODY MAMA BLUES captures the war behind the war in Vietnam. Corruption, black market dealings, prostitution, drugs, and easy money proved seductive to countless American soldiers. Lieutenant Mike Hardy expects to serve an honorable tour of duty as an infantry officer. Instead, he is thrown into a cauldron of evil. BLOODY MAMA BLUES explores the underside of the Vietnam experience, and the irreparable damage suffered by a generation of young men and women.