Soldiers of Reason

Soldiers of Reason PDF

Author: Alex Abella

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9780156033442

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This history of the RAND Corporation, written with full access to its archives, is a page-turning chronicle of the rise of the secretive think tank that has been the driving force behind the American government for 60 years.

A Soldier's Duty

A Soldier's Duty PDF

Author: Jean Johnson

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2011-07-26

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0441020631

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Ia is a precog, tormented by visions of the future where her home galaxy has been devastated. To prevent this vision from coming true, Ia enlists in the Terran United Planets military with a plan to become a soldier who will inspire generations for the next three hundred years-a soldier history will call Bloody Mary.

Soldiers of Destruction

Soldiers of Destruction PDF

Author: Charles Sydnor

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1990-05-21

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9780691008530

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Surveys the emergence of the Nazi SS and its Death's Head Division, noting the impact of this elite and powerful army upon military history.

Three Soldiers

Three Soldiers PDF

Author: John Dos Passos

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2012-04-19

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0486114767

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A grimly realistic depiction of army life follows a trio of idealists as they contend with the regimentation, violence, and boredom of military service. A powerful exploration of warfare's dehumanizing effects.

Breach of Trust

Breach of Trust PDF

Author: Andrew J. Bacevich

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2013-09-10

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0805096035

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A blistering critique of the gulf between America's soldiers and the society that sends them off to war, from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power and Washington Rules The United States has been "at war" in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than a decade. Yet as war has become normalized, a yawning gap has opened between America's soldiers and veterans and the society in whose name they fight. For ordinary citizens, as former secretary of defense Robert Gates has acknowledged, armed conflict has become an "abstraction" and military service "something for other people to do." In Breach of Trust, bestselling author Andrew J. Bacevich takes stock of the separation between Americans and their military, tracing its origins to the Vietnam era and exploring its pernicious implications: a nation with an abiding appetite for war waged at enormous expense by a standing army demonstrably unable to achieve victory. Among the collateral casualties are values once considered central to democratic practice, including the principle that responsibility for defending the country should rest with its citizens. Citing figures as diverse as the martyr-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the marine-turned-anti-warrior Smedley Butler, Breach of Trust summons Americans to restore that principle. Rather than something for "other people" to do, national defense should become the business of "we the people." Should Americans refuse to shoulder this responsibility, Bacevich warns, the prospect of endless war, waged by a "foreign legion" of professionals and contractor-mercenaries, beckons. So too does bankruptcy—moral as well as fiscal.

Prodigal Soldiers

Prodigal Soldiers PDF

Author: James Kitfield

Publisher: Potomac Books Incorporated

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 9781574881233

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In Prodigal Soldiers, James Kitfield chronicles that remarkable revitalization of the military by following the lives of a unique generation of officers.

Soldiers of Reason

Soldiers of Reason PDF

Author: Alex Abella

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2009-05-04

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 015603512X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An “entertaining and fast-paced” account of the organization that defines the military-industrial complex—and continues to shape our world today (The New York Times Book Review). The RAND Corporation was born in the wake of World War II as a think tank to generate research and analysis for the United States military. It was a magnet for the best and the brightest—and also the most dangerous. RAND quickly became the creator of America’s anti-Soviet nuclear strategy, attracting such Cold War luminaries as Albert Wohlstetter, Bernard Brodie, and Herman Kahn, who arguably saved us from nuclear annihilation—and unquestionably created the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned against. In the Kennedy era, RAND analysts and their theories of rational warfare steered our conduct in Vietnam. Those same theories drove our invasion of Iraq forty-five years later, championed by RAND affiliated actors such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Zalmay Khalilzad. But RAND’s greatest contribution might be its least known: rational choice theory, a model explaining all human behavior through self-interest. Through it RAND sparked the Reagan-led transformation of our social and economic system, but also unleashed a resurgence of precisely the forces whose existence it denied: religion, patriotism, tribalism. With Soldiers of Reason, Alex Abella shares a “well-researched” history of America’s last half century that casts a new light on our problematic present (San Francisco Chronicle).

Supreme Command

Supreme Command PDF

Author: Eliot A. Cohen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-04-17

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 074324222X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The relationship between military leaders and political leaders has always been a complicated one, especially in times of war. When the chips are down, who should run the show -- the politicians or the generals? In Supreme Command, Eliot Cohen examines four great democratic war statesmen -- Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion -- to reveal the surprising answer: the politicians. Great states-men do not turn their wars over to their generals, and then stay out of their way. Great statesmen make better generals of their generals. They question and drive their military men, and at key times they overrule their advice. The generals may think they know how to win, but the statesmen are the ones who see the big picture. Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill, and Ben-Gurion led four very different kinds of democracy, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. They came from four very different backgrounds -- backwoods lawyer, dueling French doctor, rogue aristocrat, and impoverished Jewish socialist.Yet they faced similar challenges, not least the possibility that their conduct of the war could bring about their fall from power. Each exhibited mastery of detail and fascination with technology. All four were great learners, who studied war as if it were their own profession, and in many ways mastered it as well as did their generals. All found themselves locked in conflict with military men. All four triumphed. Military men often dismiss politicians as meddlers, doves, or naifs. Yet military men make mistakes. The art of a great leader is to push his subordinates to achieve great things. The lessons of the book apply not just to President Bush and other world leaders in the war on terrorism, but to anyone who faces extreme adversity at the head of a free organization -- including leaders and managers throughout the corporate world. The lessons of Supreme Command will be immediately apparent to all managers and leaders, as well as students of history.

A Soldier's Duty

A Soldier's Duty PDF

Author: Thomas E. Ricks

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2002-06-11

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0375760202

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From one of America’s most esteemed military correspondents and the author of Making the Corps comes a “briskly paced, engrossing tale” (Los Angeles Times) about a brutal brushfire war in Afghanistan that sets off a titanic struggle for the soul of the twenty-first-century American military.