Book picks similar to
The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security by Grant Tedrick Hammond
strategy
non-fiction
biography
military
Instruments of Darkness: The History of Electronic Warfare, 1939–1945
Alfred Price - 1977
The result was a continual series of thrusts, parries, and counter-thrusts, as first one side then the other sought to wrest the initiative in the struggle to control the ether. This was a battle fought with strange-sounding weapons---Freya, - -Mandrel, - -Boozer, - and -Window---and characterized by the bravery, self-sacrifice, and skill of those who took part in it. During the war, however, and for many years after, electronic-warfare systems and their employment during the conflict remained closely guarded military secrets. When that veil of secrecy was finally lifted, the technicalities of the subject helped ensure that it remained beyond the reach of many lay researchers and readers.Long regarded as a standard reference work, Instruments of Darkness has been expanded and completely revised.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness
Eric Jorgenson - 2020
These aspirations may seem out of reach, but building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn.So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like?Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval's wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn't a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval's own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life.
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
Denise Kiernan - 2013
history.
The Tennessee town of Oak Ridge was created from scratch in 1942. One of the Manhattan Project’s secret cities, it didn’t appear on any maps until 1949, and yet at the height of World War II it was using more electricity than New York City and was home to more than 75,000 people, many of them young women recruited from small towns across the South. Their jobs were shrouded in mystery, but they were buoyed by a sense of shared purpose, close friendships—and a surplus of handsome scientists and Army men!But against this vibrant wartime backdrop, a darker story was unfolding. The penalty for talking about their work—even the most innocuous details—was job loss and eviction. One woman was recruited to spy on her coworkers. They all knew something big was happening at Oak Ridge, but few could piece together the true nature of their work until the bomb "Little Boy" was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and the secret was out. The shocking revelation: the residents of Oak Ridge were enriching uranium for the atomic bomb.Though the young women originally believed they would leave Oak Ridge after the war, many met husbands there, made lifelong friends, and still call the seventy-year-old town home. The reverberations from their work there—work they didn’t fully understand at the time—are still being felt today. In The Girls of Atomic City, Denise Kiernan traces the astonishing story of these unsung WWII workers through interviews with dozens of surviving women and other Oak Ridge residents. Like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this is history and science made fresh and vibrant—a beautifully told, deeply researched story that unfolds in a suspenseful and exciting way.
Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations
William H. McRaven - 2019
McRaven is a part of American military history, having been involved in some of the most famous missions in recent memory, including the capture of Saddam Hussein, the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, and the raid to kill Osama bin Laden.Sea Stories begins in 1960 at the American Officers' Club in France, where Allied officers and their wives gathered to have drinks and tell stories about their adventures during World War II -- the place where a young Bill McRaven learned the value of a good story. Sea Stories is an unforgettable look back on one man's incredible life, from childhood days sneaking into high-security military sites to a day job of hunting terrorists and rescuing hostages.
The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower
Michael Pillsbury - 2014
government's leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country's rise – and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world's leading superpower.For more than forty years, the United States has played an indispensable role helping the Chinese government build a booming economy, develop its scientific and military capabilities, and take its place on the world stage, in the belief that China's rise will bring us cooperation, diplomacy, and free trade. But what if the "China Dream" is to replace us, just as America replaced the British Empire, without firing a shot?Based on interviews with Chinese defectors and newly declassified, previously undisclosed national security documents, The Hundred-Year Marathon reveals China's secret strategy to supplant the United States as the world's dominant power, and to do so by 2049, the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. Michael Pillsbury, a fluent Mandarin speaker who has served in senior national security positions in the U.S. government since the days of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, draws on his decades of contact with the "hawks" in China's military and intelligence agencies and translates their documents, speeches, and books to show how the teachings of traditional Chinese statecraft underpin their actions. He offers an inside look at how the Chinese really view America and its leaders – as barbarians who will be the architects of their own demise.Pillsbury also explains how the U.S. government has helped – sometimes unwittingly and sometimes deliberately – to make this "China Dream" come true, and he calls for the United States to implement a new, more competitive strategy toward China as it really is, and not as we might wish it to be. The Hundred-Year Marathon is a wake-up call as we face the greatest national security challenge of the twenty-first century.
The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
Philip K. Howard - 1995
Using blood-boiling examples of government regulations run amok, Howard reveals a society in which rules have replaced thinking--allowing law to infiltrate the nooks and crannies of everyday life.
Scholars of Mayhem: My Father's Secret War in Nazi-Occupied France
Daniel C. Guiet - 2019
Daniel was admonished never to touch the box, but one day he couldn't resist. What he found astonished him: a .45 automatic and five full clips; three slim knives; a length of wire with a wooden handle at each end; thin pieces of paper with random numbers on them; several passports with his father's photograph, each bearing a different name; and a large silk square with eight flags, with a message underneath each flag in the language corresponding to it. The one in English read: "I am an American. Help me. You will be well paid."Eventually Jean Claude Guiet revealed to his family that he had been in the CIA, but it was only at the very end of his life that he spoke of the mission during World War II that marked the beginning of his career in clandestine service. It is one of the last great untold stories of the war, and Daniel Guiet and his collaborator, the writer Tim Smith, have spent several years bringing it to life. Jean Claude was an American citizen but a child of France, and fluent in the language; he was also extremely bright. The American military was on the lookout for native French speakers to be seconded to a secret British special operations commando operation, dropping saboteurs behind German lines in France to coordinate aid to the French Resistance and lead missions wreaking havoc on Germany's military efforts across the entire country. Jean Claude was recruited, and his life was changed forever. Though the human cost was terrible, the mission succeeded beyond the Allies' wildest dreams.Scholars of Mayhem tells the story of Jean Claude and the other three agents in his "circuit," codenamed Salesman, a unit of Britain's Special Operations Executive, the secret service ordered by Churchill to "Set Europe ablaze." Parachuted into France the day after D-Day, the Salesman team organized, armed, and commanded a ghostly army of 10,000 French Resistance fighters. National pride has kept the story of SOE in France obscure, but of this there is no doubt: While the Resistance had plenty of heart, it was SOE that gave it teeth and claws. Scholars of Mayhem adds brilliantly to that picture, and further underscores what a close-run thing the success of the Allied breakout from the Normandy landings actually was.
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
Eugene B. Sledge - 1981
Sledge's memoir of his experience fighting in the South Pacific during World War II so devastatingly powerful is its sheer honest simplicity and compassion.Now including a new introduction by Paul Fussell, With the Old Breed presents a stirring, personal account of the vitality and bravery of the Marines in the battles at Peleliu and Okinawa. Born in Mobile, Alabama in 1923 and raised on riding, hunting, fishing, and a respect for history and legendary heroes such as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene Bondurant Sledge (later called "Sledgehammer" by his Marine Corps buddies) joined the Marines the year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and from 1943 to 1946 endured the events recorded in this book. In those years, he passed, often painfully, from innocence to experience.Sledge enlisted out of patriotism, idealism, and youthful courage, but once he landed on the beach at Peleliu, it was purely a struggle for survival. Based on the notes he kept on slips of paper tucked secretly away in his New Testament, he simply and directly recalls those long months, mincing no words and sparing no pain. The reality of battle meant unbearable heat, deafening gunfire, unimaginable brutality and cruelty, the stench of death, and, above all, constant fear. Sledge still has nightmares about "the bloody, muddy month of May on Okinawa." But, as he also tellingly reveals, the bonds of friendship formed then will never be severed.Sledge's honesty and compassion for the other marines, even complete strangers, sets him apart as a memoirist of war. Read as sobering history or as high adventure, With the Old Breed is a moving chronicle of action and courage.
To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight
James Tobin - 2003
From the Kansas City Star, "A wonderful story, wonderfully told, a history that delivers all the suspense and heartache of a novel, and is as difficult to put down"
Personal Memoirs
Ulysses S. Grant - 1885
Grant (1822-1885) was one of the most esteemed individuals of the nineteenth century. His two-volume memoirs, sold door-to-door by former Union soldiers, have never gone out of print and were once as ubiquitous in American households as the Bible. Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein, Matthew Arnold, Henry James, and Edmund Wilson hailed these works as great literature, and Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both credit Grant with influencing their own writing. Yet a judiciously annotated clarifying edition of these memoirs has never been produced until now.The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant is the first comprehensively annotated edition of Grant's memoirs, fully representing the great military leader's thoughts on his life and times through the end of the Civil War and his invaluable perspective on battlefield decision making. An introduction contextualizes Grant's life and significance, and lucid editorial commentary allows the president's voice and narrative to shine through. With annotations compiled by the editors of the Ulysses S. Grant Association's Presidential Library, this definitive edition enriches our understanding of the antebellum era, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. Grant provides insight into how rigorously these events tested America's democratic institutions and the cohesion of its social order.The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant preserves and extends a work of profound political, historical, and literary significance and serves as the gateway for modern readers of all backgrounds to an American classic.
The Mission, the Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander
Pete Blaber - 2008
And he's learned and experienced more about the real world and how things really work than most people could imagine.
Partners in Command: George Marshall & Dwight Eisenhower in War & Peace
Mark Perry - 2007
In "Partners in Command," acclaimed historian and journalist Mark Perry gets to the heart of arguably the most fateful partnership in American military history, a union of two very different men bound by an epic common purpose. He follows Marshall and Eisenhower's collaboration from the major battles in North Africa and Italy to the planning and execution of the D-Day invasion, the crisis of the Battle of the Bulge, and the postwar implementation of the Marshall Plan, and the establishment of Eisenhower's leadership of NATO. erry shows that Marshall and Eisenhower were remarkably close colleagues who brilliantly combined strengths and offset each other's weaknesses in their strategic planning, on the battlefields, and in their mutual struggle to overcome the bungling, political sniping, and careerism of both British and American commanders that infected nearly every battle and campaign. Finally, Marshall and Eisenhower collaborated in crafting the foreign policy and military infrastructure that became the foundation for winning the Cold War. From their first meeting after Pearl Harbor in 1941, Marshall and Eisenhower recognized in each other an invaluable military partner-by February 1942, Marshall, who was Army chief of staff, had promoted Eisenhower to head the War Plans Division, where his first job was to write the initial plan to win the war against Japan. Within a few months, Marshall selected Eisenhower as commander of all U.S. forces in the European theater. By early 1944, however, a subtle but major shift had occurred: Marshall the teacher had become Eisenhower's student, Eisenhower having developed the superior grasp of command challenges. "Partners in Command" is an extraordinary portrait of an often ignored alliance between two iconic military figures and the ways in which their unusual collaboration would ultimately shape fifty years of successful American foreign policy.
In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
Robert S. McNamara - 1995
McNamara's controversial book tells the inside and personal story of America's descent into Vietnam from a unique point of view, and is one of the most enlightening books about government ever written. This new edition features a new Foreword by McNamara. of photos. (Military History)
Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War
Fred Kaplan - 2016
The general said it was. This set in motion the first presidential directive on computer security.The first use of cyber techniques in battle occurred in George H.W. Bush's Kuwait invasion in 1991 to disable Saddam's military communications. One year later, the NSA Director watched Sneakers, in which one of the characters says wars will soon be decided not by bullets or bombs but by information. The NSA and the Pentagon have been rowing over control of cyber weapons ever since.From the 1994 (aborted) US invasion of Haiti, when the plan was to neutralize Haitian air-defenses by making all the telephones in Haiti busy at the same time, to Obama's Defense Department 2015 report on cyber policy that spells out the lead role played by our offensive operation, Fred Kaplan tells the story of the NSA and the Pentagon as they explore, exploit, fight, and defend the US. Dark Territory reveals all the details, including the 1998 incident when someone hacked into major US military commands and it wasn't Iraq, but two teenagers from California; how Israeli jets bomb a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 by hacking into Syrian air-defense radar system; the time in 2014 when North Korea hacks Sony's networks to pressure the studio to cancel a major Hollywood blockbuster; and many more. Dark Territory is the most urgent and controversial topic in national defense policy.
Master of War: The Life of General George H. Thomas
Benson Bobrick - 2009
Thomas, arguing that he was the greatest and most successful general of the Civil War. Because Thomas didn't live to write his memoirs, his reputation has been largely shaped by others, most notably Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, two generals with whom Thomas served and who, Bobrick says, diminished his successes in their favor in their own memoirs.Born in Virginia, Thomas survived Nat Turner's rebellion as a boy, then studied at West Point, where Sherman was a classmate. Thomas distinguished himself in the Mexican War and then returned to West Point as an instructor. When the Civil War broke out, Thomas remained loyal to the Union, unlike fellow Virginia-born officer Robert E. Lee (among others). He compiled an outstanding record as an officer in battles at Mill Springs, Perryville, and Stones River. At the Battle of Chickamauga, Thomas, at the time a corps commander, held the center of the Union line under a ferocious assault, then rallied the troops on Horseshoe Ridge to prevent a Confederate rout of the Union army. His extraordinary performance there earned him the nickname "The Rock of Chickamauga."Promoted to command of the Army of the Cumberland, he led his army in a stunning Union victory at the Battle of Chattanooga. Thomas supported Sherman on his march through Georgia in the spring of 1864, winning an important victory at the Battle of Peachtree Creek. As Sherman continued on his March to the Sea, Thomas returned to Tennessee and in the battle of Nashville destroyed the army of Confederate General John Bell Hood. It was one of the most decisive victories of the war, and Thomas won it even as Grant was on his way to remove Thomas from his command. (When Grant discovered the magnitude of Thomas's victory, he quickly changed his mind.) Thomas died of a stroke in 1870 while still on active duty. In the entire Civil War, he never lost a battle or a movement.Throughout his career, Thomas was methodical and careful, and always prepared. Unlike Grant at Shiloh, he was never surprised by an enemy. Unlike Sherman, he never panicked in battle but always remained calm and focused. He was derided by both men as "Slow Trot Thomas," but as Bobrick shows in this brilliant biography, he was quick to analyze every situation and always knew what to do and when to do it. He was not colorful like Grant and Sherman, but he was widely admired by his peers, and some, such as Grant's favorite cavalry commander, General James H. Wilson, thought Thomas the peer of any general in either army. He was the only Union commander to destroy two Confederate armies in the field.Although historians of the Civil War have always regarded Thomas highly, he has never captured the public imagination, perhaps because he has lacked an outstanding biographer -- until now. This informed, judicious, and lucid biography at last gives Thomas his due.