The eighth volume in the acclaimed paperback series . . . the only county series that can legitimately claim to represent the past and present of a nation.

Contributions by
Lynn Abrams, Katherine Bradley, Graham Busby, Paul Cockerham, Treve Crago, Bernard Deacon, Amy Hale, Zoe Hambly, Dorothy Mindenhall, Philip Payton, Ronald Perry, Sharron P. Schwartz, Garry Tregidga and Simon Trezise

For centuries the British Empire has ruled territories the world over, maintaining its grasp on its far-flung colonies by way of magic and brute force. Any successful attempt at rebellion is short-lived, as the rebels do not have the benefit of wizardy on their side. The most recent attempt at secession happened in the New World in 1776, some two hundred years ago. General George Washington nearly succeeded at rallying his countrymen in a military revolt against the Crown. But disunity and infighting ultimately brought them down, and Washington was executed in a public spectacle. Most people gave up. But not all. The cleverest and most driven survivors went to ground. They learned from their mistakes. They planned, they plotted, they tinkered and they toiled. They began to develop new weapons and machines that would level the playing field. With technology at their fingertips, anyone could stand toe-to-toe with a British mage and come off conqueror. The uprising has been a long time coming. The arsenal is as large as it's going to get. Now all the "technomancer" army needs is soldiers, young patriots like Calvin Adler, who has had enough of the mages pushing him around. Freedom beckons, if he will but pay the price in blood, sweat, and tears. This is the New Revolution.

Once considered among the best and brightest of his generation, Donald Rumsfeld left office as the most controversial Defense Secretary since Robert McNamara, widely criticized for his management of the Iraq war and for his difficult relationships with Congress, administration colleagues, and military officers. Was he really the arrogant, errant, controlling Pentagon leader frequently portrayed--or, a brilliant visionary caught in a whirl of polarized Washington politics, dysfunctional federal bureaucracy, and bad luck?

Bradley Graham, a longtime "Washington Post" reporter who closely covered Rumsfeld's challenging tenure at the Pentagon, offers an insightful biography of a complex and immensely influential personality.

The definitive account of the precipitous and politically charged revival of national missile defense--now updated to address post-9/11 developments Even as America faces a world of difficult-to-detect, low-tech, unconventional threats, the Bush administration has put its faith in a missile defense system or "shield" to keep us all safe. There are only two problems: this may not be the sort of threat we should be focusing on and this system may not work anyway. The recent alarming news about North Korea's nuclear and missile programs has strengthened the administration's support for this extremely expensive and still unproven defense. Bradley Graham, the longtime Pentagon correspondent of The Washington Post, tells the long, strange story of how missile defense, once considered a relic of the Cold War, was revived during the 1990s to address an emerging Third World missile threat, particularly from North Korea, Iraq, and other "rogue states." Over the past half century, no proposed weapons system has drawn more argument or dollars than national missile defense, and Graham explores the origins of the enduring debate, the costs to the nation of having failed to resolve it, and the wisdom of continuing to pursue what we used to call "Star Wars."