- Table View
- List View
Fixing Intelligence: For a More Secure America
by William E. OdomBasing his text in large part on a study he authored in 1997, published by the National Institute of Public Policy, Odom (a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former director of the National Security Agency) considers recommendations for the reform of American intelligence activities and organization. Among his suggestions are granting more intelligence oversight authority over all the diverse intelligence organizations to the Director of Central Intelligence; eliminating CIA obstructionism in expanding military intelligence capabilities; recognizing the need to have national managers for the separate disciplines of signals, imagery, and human intelligence; and taking counterintelligence activities out from under the provenance of the law enforcement agencies. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence
by Joshua RovnerWhat is the role of intelligence agencies in strategy and policy? How do policymakers use (or misuse) intelligence estimates? When do intelligence-policy relations work best? How do intelligence-policy failures influence threat assessment, military strategy, and foreign policy? These questions are at the heart of recent national security controversies, including the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq. In both cases the relationship between intelligence and policy broke down-with disastrous consequences. In Fixing the Facts, Joshua Rovner explores the complex interaction between intelligence and policy and shines a spotlight on the problem of politicization. Major episodes in the history of American foreign policy have been closely tied to the manipulation of intelligence estimates. Rovner describes how the Johnson administration dealt with the intelligence community during the Vietnam War; how President Nixon and President Ford politicized estimates on the Soviet Union; and how pressure from the George W. Bush administration contributed to flawed intelligence on Iraq. He also compares the U.S. case with the British experience between 1998 and 2003, and demonstrates that high-profile government inquiries in both countries were fundamentally wrong about what happened before the war.
The Flag Never Touched the Ground: America’s Brave Black Regiment in Battle (True Adventures)
by Kekla MagoonThe story of an all-black regiment's assault on the impregnable Fort Wagner in the Civil War, an act of extraordinary courage that changed hearts and minds in America for everTHE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 1863. On a cold beach in South Carolina, the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment are marching into battle. Their mission: to capture the impregnable Fort Wagner. The odds are heavily against them, and the stakes could not be higher - they are one of the first all-Black regiments in the Union Army, and all of America is watching them. Among their ranks is William Harvey Carney. A former enslaved man who escaped to the North, he knows what a precious thing freedom is. So when the bugle sounds, and the regimental flag is hoisted high, William charges towards the guns.
Flags of Our Fathers: A Young People's Edition (Playaway Adult Nonfiction Ser.)
by James Bradley Ron PowersIn this unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history, James Bradley has captured the glory, the triumph, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America. In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima—and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag. Now the son of one of the flagraisers has written a powerful account of six very different young men who came together in a moment that will live forever. To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. InFlags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of Easy Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island—an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man. But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what happened after the victory. The men in the photo—three were killed during the battle—were proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only James Bradley's father truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: "The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn't come back. " Few books ever have captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well asFlags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.
Flags of Our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima
by James Bradley Ron Powers Michael FrenchNow abridged for young people, Flags of Our Fathers is the unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history: the raising of the U. S. flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America. In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima-and into history. The son of one of the flag raisers has written a powerful account of six very different men who came together in the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island.From the Hardcover edition.
Flags of Our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima (abridged)
by James Bradley Ron Powers Michael FrenchNow abridged for young people, Flags of Our Fathers is the unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history: the raising of the U. S. flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America. In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima--and into history. The son of one of the flag raisers has written a powerful account of six very different men who came together in the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island.
Flags of the Napoleonic Wars
by Guido Rosignoli Terence WiseIn the summer of 1804, the eagle was chosen as the symbol of the French Army by Napoleon himself. The Emperor's sculptor, Chaudet, made the original model, and from this were cast bronze copies in the workshop of Thomire, which would be proudly borne into battle by many a French regiment. This fascinating work by Terence Wise explores in depth the flags, colours and guidons of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), concentrating on France and her allies, and covering every faction from Baden to Würzburg. This book is a must for anyone interested in this fascinating topic.
Flags of the Third Reich
by Brian Davis Malcolm McgregorIn his book Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler claims that he made the decision to use the swastika as the emblem for his fledgling movement. He was responsible for the shape the swastika finally took, and for the choice of colours used, which set the pattern for all subsequent flags. In this third of a series of texts [MAA 270 & MAA 274], Brian L. Davis investigates the flags of the Third Reich party and police units, in a text complemented by numerous contemporary photographs, and eight full page colour plates by Malcolm McGregor.
Flags on the Bayou
by James Lee BurkeIn the fall of 1863, the Union Army controls the Mississippi River and much of Louisiana, as the Civil War rolls on.Wade Lufkin is a man without a country or a cause - an idle spectator since New Orleans surrendered, he now paints at his uncle's plantation. That is until he finds an intriguing new subject...Hannah Laveau is an enslaved woman who stands accused of everything from adultery to insurrection, from magic to murder. But all she wants is to find her missing son - and she will risk her life for it.When Hannah goes on the run, she must dodge the calculating and merciless local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayou as she flees through Louisiana, from the cottonmouth snakes and tree-lined swamps to the dingy saloons of New Orleans. From 'the king of Southern noir' (Daily Mirror) comes a powerful and deeply moving Civil War thriller - a story of tragic acts of war, lost and desperate people, and love enduring through it all.PRAISE FOR JAMES LEE BURKE, THE AWARD-WINNING KING OF SOUTHERN NOIR:'James Lee Burke is the heavyweight champ, a great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is unsurpassed' Michael Connelly'A gorgeous prose stylist' Stephen King'No argument: James Lee Burke is among the finest of all contemporary American novelists' Daily Mail
The Flamboya Tree
by Clara Kelly"The Flamboya Tree is a fascinating story that will leave the reader informed about a missing piece of the World War II experience, and in awe of one family's survival."--Elizabeth M. Norman, author of We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese "It is a well-known fact that war, any war, is senseless and degrading. When innocent people are brought into that war because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, it becomes incomprehensible. Java, 1942, was such a place and time, and we were those innocent people."Fifty years after the end of World War II, Clara Olink Kelly sat down to write a memoir that is both a fierce and enduring testament to a mother's courage and a poignant record of an often overlooked chapter of the war.As the fighting in the Pacific spread, four-year-old Clara Olink and her family found their tranquil, pampered lives on the beautiful island of Java torn apart by the invasion of Japanese troops. Clara's father was taken away, forced to work on the Burma railroad. For Clara, her mother, and her two brothers, the younger one only six weeks old, an insistent knock on the door ended all hope of escaping internment in a concentration camp. For nearly four years, they endured starvation, filth-ridden living conditions, sickness, and the danger of violence from their prison guards. Clara credits her mother with their survival: Even in the most perilous of situations, Clara's mother never compromised her beliefs, never admitted defeat, and never lost her courage. Her resilience sustained her three children through their frightening years in the camp.Told through the eyes of a young Clara, who was eight at the end of her family's ordeal, The Flamboya Tree portrays her mother's tenacity, the power of hope and humor, and the buoyancy of a child's spirit. A painting of a flamboya tree--a treasured possession of the family's former life--miraculously survived the surprise searches by the often brutal Japanese soldiers and every last-minute flight. Just as her mother carried this painting through the years of imprisonment and the life that followed, so Clara carries her mother's unvanquished spirit through all of her experiences and into the reader's heart.From the Hardcover edition.
The Flame Bearer (Saxon Tales #10)
by Bernard CornwellThe tenth installment of Bernard Cornwell’s New York Times bestselling series chronicling the epic saga of the making of England, “like Game of Thrones, but real” (The Observer, London)—the basis for The Last Kingdom, the hit television series.Britain is in a state of uneasy peace. Northumbria’s Viking ruler, Sigtryggr, and Mercia’s Saxon Queen Aethelflaed have agreed a truce. And so England’s greatest warrior, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, at last has the chance to take back the home his traitorous uncle stole from him so many years ago—and which his scheming cousin still occupies.But fate is inexorable, and the enemies Uhtred has made and the oaths he has sworn conspire to distract him from his dream of recapturing his home. New enemies enter into the fight for England’s kingdoms: the redoubtable Constantin of Scotland seizes an opportunity for conquest and leads his armies south. Britain’s precarious peace threatens to turn into a war of annihilation. Yet Uhtred is determined that nothing—neither the new adversaries nor the old foes who combine against him—will keep him from his birthright. “Historical novels stand or fall on detail, and Mr. Cornwell writes as if he has been to ninth-century Wessex and back.”—Wall Street Journal
Flames Across the Border: 1813-1814
by Pierre BertonThe Canada-U.S. border was in flames as the War of 1812 continued. York's parliament buildings were on fire, Niagara-on-the-Lake burned to the ground and Buffalo lay in ashes. Even the American capital of Washington, far to the south, was put to the torch. The War of 1812 had become one of the nineteenth century's bloodiest struggles. Flames Across the Border is a compelling evocation of war at its most primeval level -- the muddy fields, the frozen forests and the ominous waters where men fought and died. Pierre Berton skilfully captures the courage, determination and terror of the universal soldier, giving new dimension and fresh perspective to this early conflict between the two emerging nations of North America.
Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Confederate Expedition to the Susquehanna River, June 1863
by Scott L. Mingus Sr.An in-depth look at a Confederate general and the first blood spilled at Gettysburg, with maps, photos, and a guide to historic sites. This book examines the key role played by Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell&’s Second Corps during the final days in June. It is the first in-depth study of these crucial summer days that not only shaped the course of the Gettysburg Campaign but altered the course of our nation&’s history. In two powerful columns, Ewell&’s Corps swept toward the strategically important Susquehanna River and the Pennsylvania capital looming beyond. Fear coursed through the local populace while Washington and Harrisburg scrambled to meet the threat. One of Ewell&’s columns included a veteran division under Jubal Early, whose objectives included the capture and ransom of towns and the destruction of railroad bridges and the Hanover Junction rail yard. Early&’s most vital mission was the seizure of the Columbia Bridge, which spanned the Susquehanna River between Wrightsville and Columbia. To capture the longest covered bridge in the world would allow the division to cross into prosperous Lancaster County and move against the capital in Harrisburg. Flames Beyond Gettysburg vividly narrates both sides of Ewell&’s drama-filled expedition, including key Southern decisions, the response of the Pennsylvania militiamen and civilians who opposed the Confederates, and the burning of the Columbia Bridge. It also features detailed driving tours of the various sites discussed in the book. Based upon extensive primary source material and featuring original maps by cartographer Steven Stanley, this fast-paced and gracefully written history is a welcome and important addition to the Gettysburg literature.
Flames of Calais: The Soldier's Battle, 1940
by Airey NeaveThe defence of Calais in May/June 1940 was a superb example of selfless courage and sacrifice. Sent by Churchill to divert the Germans from Dunkirk and so save the British Army, 30 Infantry Brigade had orders not to evacuate or surrender. Airey Neave, later to be Margaret Thatcher's right hand man until his assassination in 1979, was one of those who fought, was wounded and captured there and his account remains the classic.
Flames of Fury (Executioner #309, Org Crime Trilogy, Book II)
by Don Pendleton Mike NewtonHis brother Johnny's urgent summons draws Mack Bolan into a campaign to take down Maxwell Reed, an exiled Caribbean dictator using an army of mercenaries to stage a coup. Reed is financed by a consortium of international crime lords intent on claiming a stake in the corrupt and violent future of Isla de Victoria. DIRECT ASSAULT Bolan has Reed in his sights when his quarry and those who pay his way move the fight from its stateside beginnings to Panama City and the Bahamas. Along the way, many fall to the guns of the Bolan brothers, a rogue lady Fed and Stony Man's Jack Grimaldi. But the foursome is shattered when one of their own is captured, and all that may be left to fight for is the bittersweet taste of revenge.
Flames of Rebellion
by Jay AllanA group of rebels fighting for independence sows the seeds of revolution across the galaxy in this blockbuster military sci-fi adventure from the author of the Crimson Worlds and Far Stars series.The planet Haven slides closer to revolution against its parent nation, Federal America. Everett Wells, the fair-minded planetary governor, has tried to create a peaceful resolution, but his failure has caused the government to send Asha Stanton, a ruthless federal operative, to quell the insurgency.Wells quickly realizes that Stanton has the true power . . . and two battalions of government security troops—specifically trained to put down unrest—under her control. Unlike Wells, Stanton is prepared to resort to extreme methods to break the back of the gathering rebellion, including unleashing Colonel Robert Semmes, the psychopathic commander of her soldiers, on the Havenites.But the people of Haven have their own ideas. They are not the beaten-down masses of Earth, but men and women with the courage and fortitude to tame a new world.Damian Ward is such a resident of Haven, a retired veteran and decorated war hero, who has watched events on his adopted world with growing apprehension. He sympathizes with the revolutionaries, his friends and neighbors, but he is loath to rebel against the flag he fought to defend. That is, until Stanton’s reign of terror intrudes into his life—and threatens those he knows and loves. Then he does what he must, rallying Haven’s other veterans and leading them to the aid of the revolutionaries.Yet the battle-scarred warrior knows that even if Haven’s freedom fighters defeat the federalists, the rebellion is far from over . . . it’s only just begun.
Flames of the Tiger
by John WilsonIn this novel by John Wilson, Dieter is seduced by the pomp and circumstance of war as a boy growing up during Hitler's rise to power. But as global hostilities intensify, Dieter is called upon to fight for his country in a conflict that he doesn't fully understand. With most of his family dead, Berlin in ruins and the Russian army closing in, Dieter can no longer naively cling to his childhood beliefs. The world he is facing is brutal, dirty and unforgiving, and the most he can hope for is the chance to survive.
The Flames of War: The Fight for Upper Canada, July—December 1813
by Richard FeltoeThe third in a series of unique surveys of the battles in the War of 1812. In April 1813 the Americans launched a new campaign to conquer Upper Canada, after their failure to do so in 1812. However, following initial victories, the U.S. assault stalled as a combined force of British regulars, Canadian militia, and Native allies counterattacked, throwing the Americans entirely onto the defensive by the end of June. During the next six months, this seesaw of military advantage was repeated again and again as each side escalated its commitment of men and resources and fought to gain the "final" victory. Unfortunately, this also brought with it an increasing level of destruction and hardship suffered by armies and civilian populations on both sides of the border. Numerous images of locations at the time are counterpointed with modern pictures taken from the same perspective to give a true then-and-now effect. Maps are also included to trace the course of individual battles stage by stage, while placing and moving the shifting formations of troops across a geographically accurate battlefield. This third volume in the six-part series Upper Canada Preserved — War of 1812 recounts the dramatic and destructive campaigns in the last six months of 1813 as the Americans continued their remounted attack on Upper Canada.
The Flamethrower
by Steve Noon Chris McnabFire is one of humanity's most rudimentary tools, but also one of its oldest killers. This focus of this book is a weapon that has literally placed the power of fire in human hands - the man-portable flamethrower. From its very first use in World War I to its deployment in Vietnam, the weapon has proven to be devastatingly effective, not least because of its huge psychological impact on enemy troops - few other weapons in history have caused such terror. Yet despite this, the man-portable flamethrower has always been vulnerable, suffering from a very particular set of limitations, all of which are explored here, as are some lesser-known capabilities such as the ability to 'bounce' a stream of flammable liquid off the interior surfaces of fortified structures. Featuring expert analysis, first-hand accounts, and a startling array of illustrations and photographs, this book is the definitive guide to an extraordinary chapter in the history of military technology.
The Flaming Arrow: New Earth #4 (Star Trek: Vanguard #92)
by Jerry Oltion Kathy OltionBeyond the borders of the Federation, Kirk must bring peace and security to the final frontier. His new mission: to defend an isolated human colony an a newly discovered world, deter aggression from neighboring alien races, and ensure the survival of a brave new Earth! The Flaming Arrow Belle Terre's stubborn colonists have survived the countless hardships and natural disasters of their new home, only to face a deadly foreign enemy. The alien Kauld, intent on claiming the world's unique resources for their own are determined to destroy the human settlements at any cost. Months away from any hope of Starfleet reinforcements, the Starship Enterprise is all that stands between Belle Terre and an all-out alien invasion. But Kirk and his valiant crew may not be enough to save the planet from a relentless assault by the ultimate superweapon!
Flanders
by Patricia Anthony"A harrowing and beautiful novel, demonstrating — again — that Patricia Anthony is one of our great writers." — Publishers WeeklyIn this gritty look at World War I's trench warfare, a young American sharpshooter ventures into no man's land each night to be ready by daybreak for the grim business of slaying record numbers of enemies. But Travis Lee Stanhope, a Texan serving with an English unit, is haunted by ghosts of the men he's killed as well as those of his fallen comrades. As he hovers on the brink of a transcendent experience, Travis gradually realizes that although he is surrounded by death, his true mission is related to life.A New York Times and American Library Association Notable Book, this tale was acclaimed by Booklist as "a haunting, sometimes almost hallucinatory, yet surprising war novel" and by Kirkus Reviews as "mesmerizing … highly textured and brimming with insight.""Flanders ranks close to All Quiet on the Western Front in its impact." — San Francisco Chronicle"Anthony's subtle and innovative storytelling reaches a new plane in her latest novel, a foray into magical realism that contrasts the waking hell of war with the fragile peace of eternity." — Library Journal
Flanders 1915: Rare Photographs From Wartime Archives (Images of War)
by Jon CookseyBy Christmas 1914 Britain's Regular Army had virtually ceased to exist. Four months of hard fighting had drained its manpower and the Territorial Army were called on to plug the gaps. The part-timers leapt at the chance to serve their country overseas and were soon on their way to the trenches and the harsh realities of war on the Western Front.Flanders 1915 tells the story, through rare and previously unpublished photographs and extended captions, of one of those eager Territorial battalions posted to Flanders during the first twelve months of WW1. It forms a unique and intimate record of the early years of war; many images captured on film by the private cameras of the battalion's junior officers, before official censorship was established. Above all it is a rare and outstanding portrait of the 'great adventure' of war in the days before Loos, the Somme and Passchendaele and the resulting lengthy casualty lists.
The Flanders Road
by Claude SimonBy the winner of the 1985 Nobel Prize in Literature, a riveting, stylistically audacious modernist epic about the French cavalry's bloody face-off against German Panzer tanks during WWII.On a sunny day in May 1940, the French army sent out the cavalry against the invading German army&’s panzer tanks. Unsurprisingly, the French were routed. Twenty-six-year-old Claude Simon was among the French forces. As they retreated, he saw his captain shot off his horse by a German sniper.This is the primal scene to which Simon returns repeatedly in his fiction and nowhere so powerfully as in his most famous novel The Flanders Road. Here Simon&’s own memories overlap with those of his central character, Georges, whose captain, a distant relative, dies a similar death. Georges reviews the circumstances and sense—or senselessness—of that death, first in the company of a fellow prisoner in a POW camp and then some years later in the course of an ever more erotically charged visit to the captain&’s widow, Corinne. As he does, other stories emerge: Corinne&’s prewar affair with the jockey Iglésia, who would become the captain&’s orderly; the possible suicide of an eighteenth-century ancestor, whose grim portrait loomed large in Georges&’s childhood home; Georges&’s learned father, whose books are no help against barbarism. The great question throughout, the question that must be urgently asked even as it remains unanswerable, is whether fiction can confront and respond to the trauma of history.
Flandry of Terra: A Flandry Book (Gateway Essentials #8)
by Poul AndersonCaptain Sir Dominic Flandry was a top man in the Intelligence Corps of the Imperial Terrestrial Navy. He knew that on the outer edges of the empire, civilisation was spread hideously thin. The stars faded towards barbarism, with the great evil Empire of Merseia beyond.But there were times when Flandry abandoned his senior position of command to go out into the field. Then he operated like the cool and brilliant agent he was, a ruthless, highly-trained professional. And in these three fast-moving adventures Captain Dominic Flandry shows that a space-age secret agent has to stay on top of the job - or succumb to nameless horrors.
Flank Defense In Far-Reaching Operations [Illustrated Edition]
by Generaloberst Heinz GuderianIncludes the World War Two On The Eastern Front (1941-1945) Illustration Pack - 198 photos/illustrations and 46 maps.Often written during imprisonment in Allied War camps by former German officers, with their memories of the World War fresh in their minds, The Foreign Military Studies series offers rare glimpses into the Third Reich. In this study the father of the Panzerarmeen, Generaloberst Heinz Guderian discusses how he and his tanks attained such success in Russia.Focussing on the Second Panzer Army's, which he commanded during 1941, General Guderian discusses the actions for the offensive over the Bug, the crossing of the Dnepr, the attack at Smolensk, the thrust at Kiev, the breakthrough at Orel-Bryansk and the operations around Tula.