Showing titles in Weapons & Warfare

From the Pulitzer Prize—winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb: the story of the entire postwar superpower arms race, climaxing during the Reagan-Gorbachev decade when the United States and the Soviet Union came within scant hours of nuclear war–and then nearly agreed to abolish...

The culminating volume in Richard Rhodes’s monumental and prizewinning history of nuclear weapons, offering the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in a post–Cold War age. The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With...

By the Sword is an epic history of sword fighting - a science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword.

A gripping history chronicling the fits and starts of American special operations and the ultimate rise of the Navy SEALs from unarmed frogmen to elite, go-anywhere commandos—as told by one of their own. “Deeply researched, well organized, and incredibly engaging . . . This is our legacy...

Covering the development of the atomic bomb during the Second World War, the origins and early course of the Cold War and the advent of the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s, Churchill and the Bomb in War and Cold War explores a still neglected aspect of Winston Churchill's career: his relationship with and thinking on nuclear weapons.

From the author of the classic The Wizards of Armageddon and Pulitzer Prize finalist comes the definitive history of American policy on nuclear war—and several presidents’ actions in nuclear crises—from Truman to Trump. Fred Kaplan, hailed by The New York Times as “a rare combination of...

“The bard of biological weapons captures the drama of the front lines.”—Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy The first major bioterror event in the United States-the anthrax attacks in October 2001-was a clarion call for scientists who work with “hot” agents to find ways of...

Painstakingly researched, the story behind the decision to send the Enola Gay to bomb Hiroshima is told through firsthand sources. From diplomatic moves behind the scenes to Japanese actions and the US Army Air Force's call to action, no detail is left untold. Touching on the early days of the Manhattan Project and the first inkling of an atomic bomb, investigative journalist Gordon Thomas and his writing partner Max Morgan-Witts, take WWII enthusiasts through the training of the crew of the Enola Gay and the challenges faced by pilot Paul Tibbets.

It's 1942 and the Nazis are racing to be the first to build a weapon unlike any known before. They have the physicists, they have the uranium, and now all their plans depend on amassing a single ingredient: heavy water, which is produced in Norway's Vemork, the lone plant in all the world that makes this rare substance. Under threat of death, Vemork's engineers push production into overdrive. For the Allies, the plant must be destroyed.

The Battle of Kursk was one of the most pivotal campaigns of World War II and Germany's final strategic offensive on the Eastern Front. Soviet armies had recently occupied the city of Kursk and the Germans aimed to pinch off the salient and cut off its supply chain. But Commander Erich von Manstein did not anticipate the Soviet's dramatic counter offensive, resulting in one of the bloodiest encounters of the Second World War which turned the tide against Adolf Hitler.

“A searing, facts-driven indictment of America’s drone wars and their implications for US democracy and foreign policy. A must-read for concerned citizens” (Library Journal, starred review) from bestselling author Jeremy Scahill and his colleagues at the investigative website The Intercept...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * by the author of The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald Read by award winning narrator, Johnny Heller, whose performance brings this dramatic event to life. The "riveting" (National Post) tick-tock account of the largest manmade explosion in...

Few raids of the Second World War have captured the public imagination like Operation Chastise. Here is the full story—not the familiar headlines, but the unexpected details that reveal how ingenuity, improvisation, and human courage combined to pull off one of history’s most audacious bombing missions.

Originally published more than fifty years ago, this landmark book explores the ways in which military capabilities—real or imagined—are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. Anne-Marie Slaughter's new introduction to the work shows how Schelling's framework—conceived of in a time of superpowers and mutually assured destruction—still applies to our multipolar world, where wars are fought as much online as on the ground.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution triggered a cold war between Iran and the United States—former fast friends. Despite the US's relentless efforts at containment, Iran has risen as a formidable power in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza. Its newfound status not only frustrates the US but has...

The story of Black Hawk Down is a familiar one. On 3 October 1993 two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, and in the ensuing Battle of Mogadishu eighteen Americans and hundreds of Somalis were killed. But very few appreciate that this was one day in a two-and-a-half-year operation; the most...

The first-ever inside look at the US military’s secretive Remotely Piloted Aircraft program—equal parts techno-thriller, historical account, and war memoir Remotely piloted aircraft (RPA), commonly referred to by the media as drones, are a mysterious and headline-making tool in the...

The Cold War is one of the furthest-reaching and longest-lasting conflicts in modern history. It spanned the globe - from Greece to China, Hungary to Cuba - and lasted for almost half a century. It has shaped political relations to this day, drawing new physical and ideological boundaries between East and West. Bridget Kendall explores the Cold War through the eyes of those who experienced it first-hand.

Respected journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun tell the incredible story of Viktor Bout, the Russian weapons supplier whose global network has changed the way modern warfare is fought. Bout’s vast enterprise of guns, planes, and money has fueled internecine slaughter in Africa and aided both militant Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan and the American military in Iraq. Combining spy thrills with crucial insights on the shortcomings of a U.S.

The first audiobook of its kind, Mind Wars covers the ethical dilemmas and bizarre history of cutting-edge technology and neuroscience developed for military applications. As the author discusses the innovative Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the role of the intelligence community and countless university science departments in preparing the military and intelligence services for the 21st century, he also charts the future of national security.