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    David Hebditch and Ken Connor examine, with a critical eye, successful as well as failed coup attempts throughout the twentieth century with the aim of showing their readers just what it takes to swiftly and soundly overthrow a government. Exploring coups from Nigeria, to Cuba, to Iraq, and with true stories of SAS combat written by Ken Connor, the book gives an insightful glimpse into this violent and rarely-seen world of shifting power.How to Stage a Military Coup is a unique textbook for the armchair revolutionary, as well as a practical guide for the idealist with a soft spot for the sound of artillery fire. From evaluation of the political climate and investigation of potential allies, to recruiting and training personnel, to strategies for ensuring timely transfer of power, the book leaves no aspect of the coup d'etat unexamined. The book also includes appendixes, notes, and a world map of coups d'etat.

    In this riveting and insightful cultural history, Lucy Hughes-Hallett brings to life eight exceptional men from history and myth whose outsized accomplishments made them heroes of their times. Alcibiades was Athens's most dazzling citizen but an incorrigible traitor. El Cid was an invincible but self-interested warlord. Albrecht von Wallenstein terrified both enemies and allies in the Thirty Years' War. Despite their flaws, all three were celebrated as superhuman paragons of virility. We see them in contrast to heroes of a different kind: Cato, the stubborn opponent of dictatorship; Sir Francis Drake, who used wit instead of might to defeat the Spanish; and Giuseppe Garibaldi, the gallant revolutionary and international celebrity. Framing these six men are the two paradigmatic Homeric heroes: Achilles, who sacrificed his life for glory, and Odysseus, who lied and cheated and stole, doing anything to survive. As Hughes-Hallett vividly re-creates these extraordinary lives, she illuminates the attractions and dangers of hero worship. This is a fascinating book about dictatorship and democracy, seduction and mass hysteria, politics and culture, and the eternal tension between the Achillean glorification of death and the Odyssean affirmation of life.

    And it's precisely this offbeat sense of curiosity that led the duo to create Weird N.J. and the successful series that followed. The NOT shocking result? Every Weird book has become a best seller in its region! This best-selling series has sold more than one million copies...and counting! Thirty volumes of the Weird series have been published to great success since Weird New Jersey's 2003 debut.

    Calling themselves "pilgrims of Christ," thousands of Europeans from all stations in life undertook the harsh and bloody quest to reclaim Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and Christ's tomb for Christendom. Robert Payne brings to life every step of the Crusaders' thousand-mile journey: the deprivation; the desperate, rapacious, and brutal raids for food and supplies; the epic battles for Antioch, Jerusalem, and Acre; the barbarous treatment of captives; and the quarreling European princes who vied for power and wealth in the Near East. An epic tale of the glorious and the base, of unshakable faith and unspeakable atrocities, The Dream and the Tomb captures not only the events but the very essence of the Crusades.

    Raymond A. Spruance. Spruance, victor of the battles of Midway and the Philippine Sea and commander of the Fifth Fleet in the invasions of the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Marianas, and Okinawa, is one of the towering figures in American naval history. Yet his reserved, cerebral personality did not make good copy for correspondents, and until the publication of The Quiet Warrior he remained an elusive figure. Thomas Buell has succeeded in evoking the nature of the man as well as recording the achievements of the admiral in this brilliant biography, which won the Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement the year of its publication.

    Faced with the dissolution of familial ties and the prospective collapse of her marriage, alongside a looming nervous breakdown, Dunya's consequent actions exemplify both the strength and frailty of the human spirit. When the Haboob Sings paints a poignant picture of a woman whose unshakeable resolve to preserve her authenticity costs her more than she ever imagined.Winner Indie Discovery Awards, 2020Gold Winner Reader's Favorite Award in Fiction: Religious Theme

    In addition to multiple ground wars, it has pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance, as well as detaining people indefinitely and torturing them. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized, paranoid feature of American politics and security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home. A politically divided country turned the War on Terror into a cultural and then tribal struggle, first on the ideological fringes and ultimately expanding to conquer the Republican Party, often with the timid acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today's nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era.Reign of Terror will show how these policies created a foundation for American authoritarianism and, though it is not a book about Donald Trump, it will provide a critical explanation of his rise to power and the sources of his political strength. It will show that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. That mistake turns out to have been portentous. By the end of his tenure, the war metastasized into a broader and bitter culture struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it.A union of journalism and intellectual history, Reign of Terror will be a pathbreaking and definitive book with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on its civic life.

    He compares the army's organization and strategic doctrine with those of its chief opponents and explores in detail the reality of battle: tactics, weaponry, leadership, and, most of all, the important issue of morale.

    Once assumed to be mere assassins, the Assamites have thrown off the Camarillas debilitating curse and their mantle of silence. A diverse clan of noble warriors, erudite scholars, learned sorcerers and murderous diablerists, the Assamites have stepped forth to claim their legacy in the Final Nights.The High Price of UndeathAs part of the revised lineup of clanbooks, Assamite takes one of the classic sourcebooks for the game and brings it into a modern context. All-new information accompanies a re-examination of earlier concepts, allowing you to add as much depth to your character as you like. The sheer volume of information contained in the new clanbooks (each 32 pages longer than the first-edition series) permits Storytellers to round out their chronicles.

    But with the fall of the Twin Towers came a turning point in his life. After graduating he joined the Central Intelligence Agency, determined to get himself to Afghanistan and into the center of the action. Through persistence and hard work he was fast-tracked to a clandestine operations position overseas. Dropped into a remote region of Afghanistan, he received his baptism by fire. Frustrated by bureaucratic red tape, a widespread lack of knowledge of the local customs and culture and an attitude of complacency that hindered his ability to combat the local Taliban, Doug confounded his peers by dressing like a native and mastering the local dialect, making contact and building sources within several deadly terrorist networks. His new approach resulted in unprecedented successes, including the uncovering the largest IED network in the world, responsible for killing hundreds of US soldiers. Meanwhile, Doug had to keep up false pretenses with his family, girlfriend and friends--nobody could know what he did for a living--and deal with the emotional turbulence of constantly living a lie. His double life was building to an explosive resolution, with repercussions that would have far reaching consequences.

    Her American grandmother's love affair with an Iranian physician took her from New York to Iran in 1931. Ardalan herself moved from San Francsico to rural Iran in 1964 with her Iranian American parents who barely spoke Farsi. After her parents' divorce, Ardalan joined her father in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he had gone to make a new life; however improbably, after high school, Ardalan decided to move back to an Islamic Iran. When she arrived, she discovered a world she hardly recognized, and one which demands a near-complete renunciation of the freedoms she experienced in the West. In time, she and her young family make the opposite migration and discover the difficulties, however paradoxical, inherent in living a free life in America.

    While there, he was captured by ISIS and held for a nightmarish thirteen months. Held alongside hostages of 13 different nationalities, Daniel was starved and tortured, and he was the last of the hostages to leave captivity alive.Walking readers through Daniel’s everyday experiences in captivity, this compelling account also follows Daniel’s family and their nerve-wracking negotiations with his kidnappers, tracing their horrifying journey through impossible dilemmas and offering a rare glimpse into the secret world of the investigation launched to locate and free not only Daniel, but also the American freelance journalist and fellow hostage James Foley. Capitalizing on a Danish legal loophole, Daniel’s friends and family were ultimately able to raise $2.2 million to secure his release. Written with Daniel’s full cooperation and based on interviews with former fellow prisoners, jihadists, and key figures who worked behind the scenes to secure his release, The ISIS Hostage offers a compelling window into life under the veil of the Islamic State and tells a moving and terrifying story of friendship and survival.

    The shift in focus towards tribals, peasants and workers is shown to involve important charges in our whole understanding of modern Indian history. Modern India contains reading list for those who wish to examine the plethora of research work on subject. (13th reprinted)

    Under their sultan, Solyman the Magnificent, the Turks had conquered most of Eastern Europe. The rulers of Christian Europe were at their wits' end to stem the tide of disaster. The Knights of St John, the fighting religious order drawn from most of the nations of Christendom had been driven from their island fortress of Rhodes 40 years earlier. From their new base of Malta their galleys had been so successful in their raids on Turkish shipping that the Sultan realised that only they stood between him and total mastery of the Mediterranean. He determined to obliterartethe Knights of Malta.