The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency


Annie Jacobsen - 2015
    In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain," from its Cold War inception in 1958 to the present.This is the book on DARPA--a compelling narrative about this clandestine intersection of science and the American military and the often frightening results.

The Silence of War: An Old Marine in a Young Marine's War


Terry Mcgowan - 2016
    But when tragedy struck the United States on September 11th, 2001, Terry felt an undiminished sense of duty to protect and serve his country.Six years later, he was in Iraq as a member of a team of high ranking retired and active duty military working for the highest level of Marine military intelligence. His success in Iraq led to a position as a Law Enforcement Professional with the Marines in Afghanistan. There he found himself the oldest member of a platoon on the front line; a platoon that was understrength and under fire. While an eighteen year old Marine can't look at a crowd of Afghans and pick out the guilty party, with his years of experience in law enforcement, Terry had developed an eye for the "felony look".His training as a Marine Officer combined with his experience as an FBI Agent made him a unique asset as he struggled to keep up with young Marines while they humped over the mountains.In The Silence of War, Terry recounts the many trials of his life of service, providing an intimate glimpse into the horrible realities of modern military conflict.INCLUDES PHOTOS

Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944


Antony Beevor - 2018
    He went out on to his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions. He gazed up in envy at this massive demonstration of paratroop power.Operation Market Garden, the plan to end the war by capturing the bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond, was a bold concept: the Americans thought it unusually bold for Field Marshal Montgomery. But could it ever have worked? The cost of failure was horrendous, above all for the Dutch, who risked everything to help. German reprisals were pitiless and cruel, and lasted until the end of the war.The British fascination with heroic failure has clouded the story of Arnhem in myths. Antony Beevor, using often overlooked sources from Dutch, British, American, Polish and German archives, has reconstructed the terrible reality of the fighting, which General Student himself called 'The Last German Victory'. Yet this book, written in Beevor's inimitable and gripping narrative style, is about much more than a single, dramatic battle. It looks into the very heart of war.

They Are All My Family: A Daring Rescue in the Chaos of Saigon's Fall


John P. Riordan - 2015
    They were his 33 Vietnamese staff members and their families. Unable to secure exit papers for the employees, Citibank ordered Riordan to leave the country alone. Safe in Hong Kong, Riordan could not imagine leaving behind his employees and defied instructions from his superiors not to return to Saigon. But once he did make it back on the last commercial flight, his actions were daring and ingenious.In They Are All My Family, Riordan recounts in a vivid narrative how the escape was organized and carried out. He assembled all 106 of the Vietnamese into his villa and a neighboring one telling them to keep their locations secret. A CIA contact told him that only dependents of Americans were allowed to escape on U.S. military cargo planes. Riordan repeatedly went to the processing area and claimed groups of the Vietnamese as his relatives—his wife and children—somehow managing to get through the bureaucratic shambles. Eventually he went back and forth to the airport 15 times. Filling out papers in groups, using false documents and even resorting to a bribe, he succeeded in rescuing the group. For the last round, the group drove the bank van to the airport pretending they had bundles of money to transport. Miraculously, all these gambits worked and the Citibank group made it to Guam and the Philippines, eventually reuniting at Camp Pendleton in California. All the while, Riordan assumed he had been fired for ignoring orders but once the mission was completed, his extraordinary commitment and resourcefulness won him widespread praise from senior officials. Citibank spent a million dollars to resettle the Vietnamese, offering jobs to some of the staff and their spouses.Decades later, Riordan has located the Vietnamese and reconnected with them, sharing accounts of those frantic days and the derring-do it took to get them out to safety. John Riordan is now a farmer in Wisconsin. His story of those fateful days decades ago and their aftermath provides a compelling insight to the courage of individuals when all seemed lost. For all the tragedy of the Vietnam War, this saga is an uplifting counterpoint and a compelling piece of micro-history.

The Amazing SAS: The Inside Story of Australia's Special Forces


Ian McPhedran - 2007
    For the soldiers and officers of Australia's Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment, this is not just their professional motto, but a creed that shapes their lives. the SAS is among the world's most respected special forces units, a crack team of men from the Australian Defence Force who can be relied upon to handle the most difficult, strategically sensitive and dangerous of military tasks. Now The Amazing SAS provides a thrilling insight into the way this country's SAS soldiers are selected and trained, and reveals fascinating details about recent SAS deployments: East Timor, the 2000 Olympic games, the Tampa, the Afghanistan campaign and the regiment's action-packed mission in Iraq. The Amazing SAS draws on interviews with General Peter Cosgrove, Prime Minister John Howard, Chief of Army Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, former SAS commanding officers Gus Gilmore and tim McOwan, and many SAS soldiers and officers.

11 Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944


Stanley Weintraub - 2006
    He tells how the Russians were rapidly advancing in the east, while the Americans and British, after a brief pause, were primed to thrust into Germany from the west.