Book picks similar to
What Every Person Should Know About War by Chris Hedges
non-fiction
war
politics
nonfiction
Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics & Revolution
Ernesto Che Guevara - 1997
This volume covers Che’s writings on the Cuban revolutionary war, the first years of the revolution in Cuba and his vision for Latin America and the Third World. It includes such classic essays as "Socialism and Man in Cuba" and his call to create "Two, Three, Many Vietnams."Among the features of this expanded edition are several unpublished articles, essays and letters, including a letter from Che to his children shortly before his death in Bolivia in 1967 and an essay, "Strategy and tactics for the Latin American revolution."This new edition of a popular Ocean title is published in collaboration with the Che Guevara Archive in Havana. It includes:* an expanded and revised chronology* complete bibliography of the works of Che Guevara* new, extensive annotation and index"Deep inside the T-shirt where we have tried to trap him the eyes of Che Guevara are still burning with im-patience."—Ariel Dorfman
The Moscow Rules: The Secret CIA Tactics That Helped America Win the Cold War
Antonio J. Méndez - 2019
Soviets kept files on all foreigners, studied their patterns, tapped their phones, and even planted listening devices within the US Embassy. In short, intelligence work was effectively impossible. The Soviet threat loomed larger than ever. The Moscow Rules tells the story of the intelligence breakthrough that turned the odds in America's favor. As Chief of Disguise and Authentication, Mendez was instrumental in creating and honing a series of tactics that allowed officers to finally get one step ahead of the KGB. These techniques included everything from elaborate, Hollywood-inspired identity swaps, to deception or evasion techniques, to more mundane document forgery. With these new guidelines in place, and with an armory of new gadgets perfected by the Office of Technical Services including miniature cameras, suitcase release body doubles, and wall repelling mechanisms, the CIA managed to gain a foothold in Moscow and pull off some of the greatest intelligence operations in the history of espionage. As America is again confronted by the threat of Russian disinformation, the dramatic inside story of how we defeated our once-and-future enemy is as timely as ever.
From Dictatorship to Democracy
Gene Sharp - 1993
From Dictatorship to Democracy is virtually the handbook for (almost) peaceful overthrow of repressive regimes, the manual consulted by revolutionary leadership throughout the Middle East, from Tunis to Egypt.
D-Day / Citizen Soldier
Stephen E. Ambrose
November '98 publication date.
The Navy SEAL Art of War: Leadership Lessons from the World's Most Elite Fighting Force
Rob Roy - 2015
But in life, as in war, it’s in chaotic, challenging times that genuine leaders distinguish themselves. As a Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer, Rob Roy learned this lesson over twenty-five years of combat, in which the difference between life and death was his team’s ability to decode complex environments, take decisive action, and seize opportunities when they presented themselves. In The Navy SEAL Art of War, Roy decodes the leadership lessons of the battlefield for today’s business leaders and individuals: how to make good decisions under pressure, how to utilize and leverage the strengths of others while minimizing the weaknesses of the individual or team, and how to act instead of react, anticipating events despite having minimal information and effectively communicating tasks and priorities. Illustrated with countless stories from the front lines, and featuring unprecedented exercises and drills from the SEALs’ training program, The Navy SEAL Art of War is destined to take its place aside It’s Your Ship as a bestselling business classic.
Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media
Nick Davies - 2008
In this eye-opening exposé, Davies uncovers an industry awash in corruption and bias. His findings include the story of a prestigious Sunday newspaper that allowed the CIA to plant fiction in its columns; the newsroom that routinely rejects stories about black people; the respected paper that hired a professional fraudster to set up a front company to entrap senior political figures; as well as a number of newspapers that pay cash bribes to bent detectives. His research also exposes a range of national stories that were in fact pseudo events manufactured by the public relations industry and global news stories that were fiction generated by a machinery of international propaganda. The degree to which the media industry has affected government policy and perverted popular belief is also addressed. Gripping and thought-provoking, this is an insider’s look at one of the world’s most tainted professions.
Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution
Richard Whittle - 2014
As Richard Whittle shows in Predator, it was one of the most profound developments in the history of military and aerospace technology.Once considered fragile toys, drones were long thought to be of limited utility. The Predator itself was resisted at nearly every turn by the military establishment, but a few iconoclasts refused to see this new technology smothered at birth. The remarkable cast of characters responsible for developing the Predator includes a former Israeli inventor who turned his Los Angeles garage into a drone laboratory, two billionaire brothers marketing a futuristic weapon to help combat Communism, a pair of fighter pilots willing to buck their white-scarf fraternity, a cunning Pentagon operator nicknamed "Snake," and a secretive Air Force organization known as Big Safari. When an Air Force team unleashed the first lethal drone strikes in 2001 for the CIA, the military's view of drones changed nearly overnight.Based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews, Predator reveals the dramatic inside story of the creation of a revolutionary weapon that forever changed the way we wage war and opened the door to a new age in aviation.
Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
Michael Isikoff - 2006
October 2006: The world finds out why. What was really behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq? As George W. Bush steered the nation to war, who spoke the truth and who tried to hide it? "Hubris" takes us behind the scenes at the Bush White House, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Congress to answer all the vital questions about how the Bush administration came to invade Iraq. Filled with new revelations, "Hubris" is a gripping narrative of intrigue that connects the dots between George W. Bush's expletive-laden outbursts at Saddam Hussein, the bitter battles between the CIA and the White House, the fights within the intelligence community over Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, the startling influence of an obscure academic on top government officials, the "real "reason Valerie Plame was outed, and a top reporter's ties to wily Iraqi exiles trying to start a war. Written by veteran reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn, this is the inside story of how President Bush took the nation to war using faulty and fraudulent intelligence. It is a news-making account of conspiracy, backstabbing, bureaucratic ineptitude, journalistic malfeasance, and, especially, arrogance.
Inside Delta Force: The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist Unit
Eric L. Haney - 2002
They are the U.S. Army's most elite top-secret strike force. They dominate the modern battlefield, but you won't hear about their heroics on CNN. No headlines can reveal their top-secret missions, and no book has ever taken readers inside—until now. Here, a founding member of Delta Force takes us behind the veil of secrecy and into the action-to reveal the never-before-told story of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-D (Delta Force).Inside Delta Forece
The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist Unit
He is a master of espionage, trained to take on hijackers, terrorists, hostage takers, and enemy armies. He can deploy by parachute or arrive by commercial aircraft. Survive alone in hostile cities. Speak foreign languages fluently. Strike at enemy targets with stunning swiftness and extraordinary teamwork. He is the ultimate modern warrior: the Delta Force Operator.In this dramatic behind-the-scenes chronicle, Eric Haney, one of the founding members of Delta Force, takes us inside this legendary counterterrorist unit. Here, for the first time, are details of the grueling selection process—designed to break the strongest of men—that singles out the best of the best: the Delta Force Operator.With heart-stopping immediacy, Haney tells what it's really like to enter a hostage-held airplane. And from his days in Beirut, Haney tells an unforgettable tale of bodyguards and bombs, of a day-to-day life of madness and beauty, and of how he and a teammate are called on to kill two gunmen targeting U.S. Marines at the Beirut airport. As part of the team sent to rescue American hostages in Tehran, Haney offers a first-person description of that failed mission that is a chilling, compelling account of a bold maneuver undone by chance—and a few fatal mistakes.From fighting guerrilla warfare in Honduras to rescuing missionaries in Sudan and leading the way onto the island of Grenada, Eric Haney captures the daring and discipline that distinguish the men of Delta Force. Inside Delta Force brings honor to these singular men while it puts us in the middle of action that is sudden, frightening, and nonstop around the world.From the Hardcover edition.
Stealth: The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft
Peter Westwick - 2020
Or, rather, didn't appear. They arrived in the dark, their black outlines cloaking them from sight. More importantly, their odd, angular shapes, which made them look like flying origami, rendered them undetectable to Iraq's formidable air defenses. Stealth technology, developed during the decades before Desert Storm, had arrived. To American planners and strategists at the outset of the Cold War, this seemingly ultimate way to gain ascendance over the USSR was only a question. What if the United States could defend its airspace while at the same time send a plane through Soviet skies undetected? A craft with such capacity would have to be essentially invisible to radar - an apparently miraculous feat of physics and engineering. In Stealth, Peter Westwick unveils the process by which the impossible was achieved.At heart, Stealth is a tale of two aerospace companies, Lockheed and Northrop, and their fierce competition - with each other and with themselves - to obtain what was estimated one of the largest procurement contracts in history. Westwick's book fully explores the individual and collective ingenuity and determination required to make these planes and in the process provides a fresh view of the period leading up to the end of the Soviet Union. Taking into account the role of technology, as well as the art and science of physics and engineering, Westwick offers an engaging narrative, one that immerses readers in the race to produce a weapon that some thought might save the world, and which certainly changed it.
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Tim Weiner - 2007
Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, “a legacy of ashes.”Now Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIA—and everything is on the record. LEGACY OF ASHES is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after September 11th, 2001.Tim Weiner’s past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as “impressively reported” and “immensely entertaining” in The New York Times.The Wall Street Journal called it “truly extraordinary . . . the best book ever written on a case of espionage.” Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.
15 Stars: Eisenhower, MacArthur, Marshall: Three Generals Who Saved the American Century
Stanley Weintraub - 2007
to victory in World War II and who shaped the following decades with their larger-than-life legacies as rivals, peers, and friends.
Hiroshima
John Hersey - 1946
This book, John Hersey's journalistic masterpiece, tells what happened on that day. Told through the memories of survivors, this timeless, powerful and compassionate document has become a classic "that stirs the conscience of humanity" (The New York Times).
The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL
Eric Greitens - 2011
His life and this book remind us that America remains the land of the brave and generous.” — Tom Brokaw Like many young idealists, Eric Greitens wanted to make a difference, so he traveled to the world’s trouble spots to work in refugee camps and serve the sick and the poor. Yet when innocent civilians were threatened with harm, there was nothing he could do but step in afterward and try to ease the suffering. In studying humanitarianism, he realized a fundamental truth: when an army invades, the weak need protection. So he joined the Navy SEALs and became one of the world’s elite warriors. Greitens led his men through the unforgettable soul-testing of SEAL training and went on to deployments in Kenya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, where he faced harrowing encounters and brutal attacks. Yet even in the deadliest combat situations, the lessons of his humanitarian work bore fruit. At the heart of this powerful story lies a paradox: sometimes you have to be strong to do good, but you also have to do good to be strong. The heart and the fist together are more powerful than either one alone. “If you're restless or itching for some calling you can't name, read this book. Give it to your son and daughter. The Heart and the Fist epitomizes — as does Mr. Greitens's life, present and future — all that is best in this country, and what we need desperately right now.” — Steven Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire “Vivid and compelling . . . a great read.” — Washington Times A Hudson Booksellers Top Ten Nonfiction Book of the Year A USA Today and Publishers Weekly Bestseller WITH A NEW AFTERWORD
Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper
Jack Coughlin - 2005
Shooter is his harrowing first-person account of a sniper's life on and off the modern battlefield.Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin is a divorced father of two who grew up in a wealthy Boston suburb. At the age of nineteen, although he had never even held a gun, he joined the Marines and would spend the next twenty years behind the scope of a long-range precision rifle as a sniper.In that time he accumulated one of the most successful sniper records in the Corps, ranging through many of the world's hotspots. During Operation Iraqi Freedom alone, he recorded at least thirty-six kills, thirteen of them in a single twenty-four-hour period.Now Coughlin has written a highly personal story about his deadly craft, taking readers deep inside an invisible society that is off-limits to outsiders. This is not a heroic battlefield memoir, but the careful study of an exceptional man who must keep his sanity while carrying forward one of the deadliest legacies in the U.S. military today.