In 1963, a frustrated President Kennedy turned to the Pentagon for help in carrying out subversive operations against North Vietnam- a job the CIA had not managed to handle effectively. Thus was born the Pentagon's Special Operations Group(SOG). Under the cover name"Studies and Observation Group," SOG would, over the next eight years, dispatch numerous spies to North Vietnam, create a triple-cross deception program, wage psychological warfare by manipulating North Vietnamese POW's and kidnapped citizens, and stage deadly assaults on enemy soldiers traveling the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Written by the country's leading expert on SOG, here is the story of that covert war-one that would have both spectacular and disastrous results.

In Belles and Poets, Julia Nitz analyzes the Civil War diary writing of eight white women from the U.S. South, focusing specifically on how they made sense of the world around them through references to literary texts. Nitz finds that many diarists incorporated allusions to poems, plays, and novels, especially works by Shakespeare and the British Romantic poets, in moments of uncertainty and crisis. While previous studies have overlooked or neglected such literary allusions in personal writings, regarding them as mere embellishments or signs of elite social status, Nitz reveals that these references functioned as codes through which women diarists contemplated their roles in society and addressed topics related to slavery, Confederate politics, gender, and personal identity. Nitz's innovative study of identity construction and literary intertextuality focuses on diaries written by the following women: Eliza Frances (Fanny) Andrews of Georgia (1840-1931), Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut of South Carolina (1823-1886), Malvina Sara Black Gist of South Carolina (1842-1930), Sarah Ida Fowler Morgan of Louisiana (1842-1909), Cornelia Peake McDonald of Virginia (1822-1909), Judith White Brockenbrough McGuire of Virginia (1813-1897), Sarah Katherine (Kate) Stone of Louisiana (1841-1907), and Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas of Georgia (1843-1907). These women's diaries circulated in postwar commemoration associations, and several saw publication. The public acclaim they received helped shape the collective memory of the war and, according to Nitz, further legitimized notions of racial supremacy and segregation. Comparing and contrasting their own lives to literary precedents and fictional role models allowed the diarists to process the privations of war, the loss of family members, and the looming defeat of the Confederacy. Belles and Poets establishes the extent to which literature offered a means of exploring ideas and convictions about class, gender, and racial hierarchies in the Civil War-era South. Nitz's work shows that literary allusions in wartime diaries expose the ways in which some white southern women coped with the war and its potential threats to their way of life.

This is beautifully slipcased presented collector' s edition of the best selling title, The Lost World of Bletchley Park, a comprehensive illustrated history of this remarkable place, from its prewar heyday as a country estate, its wartime requisition and how it became the place where modern computing was invented and the German Enigma code was cracked, to its post-war dereliction and then rescue towards the end of the twentieth century as a museum. Removable memorabilia includes: 1938 recruiting memo with a big tick against Turing' s name Churchill' s ' Action this day' letter giving code breakers extra resources Handwritten Turing memos Top Secret Engima decryptions, about the sinking of the Bismark, German High Command' s assessment of D-Day threat and the message announcing Hitler' s suicide A wealth of everyday items such as call-up papers, security notices and propoganda posters Newly redesigned interiors with 25% new content, high end slipcase package featuring removable facsimile documents, this is an essential purchase for everyone interested and wanting to experience the place where code-breaking helped to win the war.

Americans wrote fiercely during the Civil War. War surprised, devastated, and opened up imagination, taking hold of Americans' words as well as their homes and families. The personal diary-wildly ragged yet rooted in day following day-was one place Americans wrote their war. Diaries, then, have become one of the best-known, most-used sources for exploring the life of the mind in a war-torn place and time. Delving into several familiar wartime diaries kept by women of the southern slave-owning class, Steven Stowe recaptures their motivations to keep the days close even as war tore apart the brutal system of slavery that had benefited them. Whether the diarists recorded thoughts about themselves, their opinions about men, or their observations about slavery, race, and warfare, Stowe shows how these women, by writing the immediate moment, found meaning in a changing world. In studying the inner lives of these unsympathetic characters, Stowe also explores the importance-and the limits-of historical empathy as a condition for knowing the past, demonstrating how these plain, first-draft texts can offer new ways to make sense of the world in which these Confederate women lived.