A mixture of police procedural, treasure hunt, war-time thriller, and cold-eyed assessment of the international black market in stolen art, Thieves of Baghdad also explores the soul of a truly remarkable man: a soldier, a father, and a passionate, dedicated scholar. Matthew Bogdanos has been an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan since 1988-where New York tabloids call him pit bull for his relentless prosecution of criminals such as the 15-year-old Baby-Faced Butchers for their 1997 grisly Central Park murder and rappers Sean P. Diddy Combs and Jamal Shyne Barrows for their 1999 shootout. A colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, middleweight boxer, and native New Yorker, he was raised waiting tables in his family's Greek restaurant in lower Manhattan and holds a classics degree from Bucknell University, a law degree and a master's degree in classics from Columbia University, and a master's degree in Strategic Studies from the Army War College. Commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Marines in 1980, he served as a Judge Advocate until he left active duty to join the District Attorney's Office, rising to Senior Homicide Trial Counsel in 1996. Recalled to active duty after losing his apartment near the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, he joined a multi-agency task force in Afghanistan and received a Bronze Star for counterterrorist operations against al-Qaeda. He then served in Iraq and the Horn of Africa as the head of that task force and received a 2005 National Humanities Medal from President George Bush for his work recovering Iraq's priceless treasures. He has returned to the DA's Office where he still boxes for the New York City Police Department Widows & Orphans Charity and continues the hunt for stolen antiqu

    His unique knowledge of this complex, war-torn region gives him a panoramic vision and grasp of nuance that no Western writer can emulate.

    Now, in On Grand Strategy, Gaddis reflects on what he has learned. In chapters extending from the ancient world through World War II, Gaddis assesses grand strategic theory and practice in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Octavian/Augustus, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Philip II, the American Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Isaiah Berlin. On Grand Strategy applies the sharp insights and wit readers have come to expect from Gaddis to times, places, and people he's never written about before. For anyone interested in the art of leadership, On Grand Strategy is, in every way, a master class.

    The storm broke on September 11th 2001. Since then much of the world has seen invasions, bombings, battles and riots. Hundreds of thousands of people have died.Jason Burke, a first hand witness of many of the conflict's key moments, has written the definitive account of its course. At once investigation, reportage and contemporary history, it is based on hundreds of interviews with participants including desperate refugees and senior intelligence officials, ministers and foot-soldiers, active militants and their victims. Burke reveals the true nature of contemporary Islamic militancy and the inside story of the fight against it. He cuts through the myth and propaganda of all sides to reveal the reality behind well-known - and lesser known - episodes, and brings characters, voices and a sense of place to a gripping narrative.The 9/11 Wars is an essential book for understanding the dangerous and unstable twenty-first century. Whether reporting on the riots in France or the killing of Bin Laden, suicide bombers in Iraq or British troops fighting in Helmand, Jason Burke tells the story of a world that changed forever when the hijacked planes flew out of the brilliant blue sky above Manhattan on September 11th 2001.

    Beset by body-double rumors and false alarms during a nine-month search, the Bush administration needed positive identification of the prisoner before it could make the announcement that would rocket around the world. At the time, John Nixon was a senior CIA leadership analyst who had spent years studying the Iraqi dictator. Called upon to make the official ID, Nixon looked for telltale scars and tribal tattoos and asked Hussein a list of questions only he could answer. The man was indeed Saddam Hussein, but as Nixon learned in the ensuing weeks, both he and America had greatly misunderstood just who Saddam Hussein really was. Debriefing the President presents an astounding, candid portrait of one of our era’s most notorious strongmen. Nixon, the first man to conduct a prolonged interrogation of Hussein after his capture, offers expert insight into the history and mind of America’s most enigmatic enemy. After years of parsing Hussein’s leadership from afar, Nixon faithfully recounts his debriefing sessions and subsequently strips away the mythology surrounding an equally brutal and complex man. His account is not an apology, but a sobering examination of how preconceived ideas led Washington policymakers—and the Bush White House—astray. Unflinching and unprecedented, Debriefing the President exposes a fundamental misreading of one of the modern world’s most central figures and presents a new narrative that boldly counters the received account.