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    Marshall set out with a plan to reconstruct Western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events.Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Benn Steil’s thrilling account brings to life the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar US-Soviet relations—the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, we see and understand like never before Stalin’s determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe.Given the current echoes of the Cold War, as Putin’s Russia rattles the world order, the tenuous balance of power and uncertain global order of the late 1940s is as relevant as ever. The Marshall Plan provides thorough context into understanding today’s international landscape. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Steil’s account will forever change how we see the birth of the Cold War and the Marshall Plan. A polished and masterly work of historical narrative, this is an instant classic of Cold War literature.

    Fallout is an eye-opening odyssey through the first eight decades of this struggle and the radioactive landscapes it has left behind. We are, he finds, forever torn between technological hubris and all-too-human terror about what we have created.At first, Pearce reminds us, America loved the bomb. Las Vegas, only seventy miles from the Nevada site of some hundred atmospheric tests, crowned four Miss Atomic Bombs in 1950s. Later, communities downwind of these tests suffered high cancer rates. The fate of a group of Japanese fishermen, who suffered high radiation doses from the first hydrogen bomb test in Bikini atoll, was worse. The United States Atomic Energy Commission accused them of being Red spies and ignored requests from the doctors desperately trying to treat them.Pearce moves on to explore the closed cities of the Soviet Union, where plutonium was refined and nuclear bombs tested throughout the '50s and '60s, and where the full extent of environmental and human damage is only now coming to light. Exploring the radioactive badlands created by nuclear accidents--not only the well-known examples of Chernobyl and Fukushima, but also the little known area around Satlykovo in the Russian Ural Mountains and the Windscale fire in the UK--Pearce describes the compulsive secrecy, deviousness, and lack of accountability that have persisted even as the technology has morphed from military to civilian uses.Finally, Pearce turns to the toxic legacies of nuclear technology: the emerging dilemmas over handling its waste and decommissioning of the great radioactive structures of the nuclear age, and the fearful doublethink over the world's growing stockpiles of plutonium, the most lethal and ubiquitous product of nuclear technologies.For any reader who craves a clear-headed examination of the tangled relationship between a powerful technology and human politics, foibles, fears, and arrogance, Fallout is the definitive look at humanity's nuclear adventure.

    

    government has knowingly suppressed evidence of American soldiers still held captive in Southeast Asia. Over the course of a five-year investigation, the authors became convinced that the safety and interests of these prisoners and their families were being sacrificed to American foreign policy. 16 pages of photographs.

    special operations personnel, the demise of Ahmad Shah, and the impact this incident had on the War on Terror.

    It reveals, in gripping detail, the espionage, innovative high technology, and heroic seafaring the United States employed against the Soviet Union in the battle for nuclear and military supremacy. John Pi?a Craven, who shared management responsibility for the submarine-borne Polaris missile system, captures the excitement and the dangers of the times as he recounts the true stories behind some of the century's most shocking headlines and reveals harrowing episodes kept hidden from the public. Craven describes for the first time the structural problems that almost caused the destruction of the Nautilus, the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, and presents startling information about the race to recover a hydrogen bomb from the B-52 bomber that went down off the coast of Spain. In a report no fan of The Hunt for Red October will want to miss, he provides a fascinating, authoritative perspective on the Navy's reaction to the rogue Soviet submarine and its mission. A major contribution to Cold War history and literature, The Silent War will appeal to military buffs and fans of nonstop adventure thrillers alike.

    Two men meet. One is elderly, the other in his twenties. One will become the most revered man of his time, and the other known as the greatest of traitors.Winston Churchill met Guy Burgess at a moment when the world was about to explode. Now in his astonishing new novel, Michael Dobbs throws brilliant fresh light upon Churchill's relationship with the Soviet spy and the twenty months of conspiracy, chance and outright treachery that were to propel Churchill from outcast to messiah and change the course of history.

    From May 1967 through May 1968, Ted Arthurs was in the thick of it, humping an eighty-pound rucksack through triple canopy jungle, chasing down the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. As sergeant major for a battalion of 800 men, it was his job to see them through this jungle hell and get them back home again.

    Kennedy’s assassination has been the subject of public and cultural fascination (a film by Oliver Stone, a novel by Stephen King, endless conspiracy theories) for nearly 50 years. It’s time, this brief biography argues, to give equal consideration to Kennedy’s life.

    Between 1500 and 1800, the West sprinted ahead of other centers of power in Asia and the Middle East. Europe and the United States have dominated the world since. But today the West's preeminence is slipping away as China, India, Brazil and other emerging powers rise. Although most strategists recognize that the dominance of the West is on the wane, they are confident that its founding ideas--democracy, capitalism, and secular nationalism--will continue to spread, ensuring that the Western order will outlast its primacy.In No One's World, Charles A. Kupchan boldly challenges this view, arguing that the world is headed for political and ideological diversity; emerging powers will neither defer to the West's lead nor converge toward the Western way. The ascent of the West was the product of social and economic conditions unique to Europe and the United States. As other regions now rise, they are following their own paths to modernity and embracing their own conceptions of domestic and international order.Kupchan contends that the Western order will not be displaced by a new great power or dominant political model. The twenty-first century will not belong to America, China, Asia, or anyone else. It will be no one's world. For the first time in history, the world will be interdependent--but without a center of gravity or global guardian.More than simply diagnosing what lies ahead, Kupchan provides a detailed strategy for striking a bargain between the West and the rising rest by fashioning a new consensus on issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, and governance. Thoughtful, provocative, sweeping in scope, this work is nothing less than a global guidebook for the 21st century.

    First deployed in Vietnam in 1967 and loaded with a formidable arsenal of weaponry, the Cobra was the first helicopter designed from inception as an attack aircraft. It dramatically changed the nature of the war in Vietnam by offering the Army, for the first time, its own powerful and highly accurate weapons platform for close-air-support missions. Randy Zahn arrived in Vietnam shortly before the 1970 U.S. invasion of Cambodia, one of the most impressive demonstrations by the Cobra in the war. He describes his stunning transformation from a naive, middle-class teenager from southern California to a hardened killer during his tour in Vietnam. Unlike the pilots who flew the fast-moving strike jets, Zahn experienced the war “up close and personal,” witnessing the grisly effects of the Cobra’s firepower on enemy soldiers. The author does not glorify killing but rather explains in sharp relief the kaleidoscope of emotions associated with combat: fear, revenge, hate, remorse, pity, and even ecstasy. He captures many of the ironies and nuances inherent in Vietnam, especially during the final years of the conflict. Zahn displays a sensitivity rarely found in memoirs written by battle-hardened warriors. This human element, combined with the vast amount of archival research and interviews with members of his former unit, ensures that Snake Pilot will become the definitive account of the role helicopters played in Vietnam.

    For 27 years, Morris Childs, code name "Agent 58", provided the USA with the Kremlin's innermost secrets. Repeatedly risking his life, "Agent 58" made 57 clandestine missions into the USSR, China, Eastern Europe & Cuba. Because of his high ranking in the American communist party & his position as editor of its official paper, the Daily Worker, he was treated like royalty by communist leaders such as Khrushchev, Brezhnev & Mao Tse-tung. Thru first-hand accounts, Operation Solo tells the story of the conflicts within the FBI & American intelligence about the operation, & how the FBI, thru extraordinary measures, managed to keep that operation hidden from everyone, including the CIA.

    Because so few of us now serve in the military, our men and women in uniform have become strangers to us. We stand up at athletic events to honor them, but we hardly know their true measure. Here, Starbucks CEO and longtime veterans’ advocate Howard Schultz and National Book Award finalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post offer an enlightening, inspiring corrective. The authors honor acts of uncommon valor in Iraq and Afghanistan, including an Army sergeant who repeatedly runs through a storm of gunfire to save the lives of his wounded comrades; two Marines who sacrifice their lives to halt an oncoming truck bomb and protect thirty-three of their brothers in arms; a sixty-year-old doctor who joins the Navy to honor his fallen son. We also see how veterans make vital contributions once they return home, drawing on their leadership skills and commitment to service: former soldiers who aid residents in rebuilding after natural disasters; a former infantry officer who trades in a Pentagon job to teach in an inner-city neighborhood; a retired general leading efforts to improve treatments for brain-injured troops; the spouse of a severely injured soldier assisting families in similar positions. These powerful, unforgettable stories demonstrate just how indebted we are to those who protect us and what they have to offer our nation when their military service is done.

    Others are often summed up in a few words: the stubborn, taciturn Grant; the gentlemanly, gifted Lee; the stomping, cursing Sheridan; and the flamboyant, boyish Stuart. But the enigmatic Sherman still manages to elude us. Probably no other figure of his day divides historians so deeply-leading some to praise him as a genius, others to condemn him as a savage.Now, in Sherman, Lee Kennett offers a brilliant new interpretation of the general's life and career, one that embraces his erratic, contradictory nature. Here we see the making of a true soldier, beginning with a colorful view of Sherman's rich family tradition, his formative years at West Point, and the critical period leading up to the Civil War, during which Sherman served in the small frustrated peacetime army and saw service in the South and California, and in the Mexican War Trying to advance himself, Sherman resigned from the army and he soon began to distinguish hiniself as a general known for his tenacity, vision, and mercurial temper. Throughout the spirited Battles of Bull Run and Shiloh, the siege of Vicksburg, and ultimately the famous march to the sea through Georgia, no one displayed the same intensity as did Sherman.From the heights of success to the depths of his own depression, Sherman managed to forge on after the war with barely a moment of slowing down. Born to fight, he was also born to lead and to provoke, traits he showed by serving as commanding general of the army, cutting a wide swath through the western frontier, and finally writing his classic -- and highly controversial -- memoirs. Eventually Sherman would die famous, well-to-do, and revered -- but also deeply misunderstood.By drawing on previously unexploited materials and maintaining a sharp, lively narrative, Lee Kennett presents a rich, authoritative portrait of Sherman, the man and the soldier, who emerges from this work more human and more fascinating than ever before.