The Pentagon Wars

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Author :
Publisher : US Naval Institute Press
ISBN 13 : 9781612516004
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pentagon Wars by : James G. Burton

Download or read book The Pentagon Wars written by James G. Burton and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2014-02-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, a small band of military activists waged war against corruption in the Pentagon, challenging a system they believed squandered the public's money and trust. The book examines the movement and its proponents and describes how the system responded to the criticisms and efforts to change accepted practices and entrenched ways of thinking. The author, an air force colonel and part of the movement, worked in the pentagon for fourteen years. He presents a view of the Department of Defense that only an insider could offer. He exposes serious flaws in the military policy-making process, particularly in weapons development and procurement. The details he gives on the unrelenting push for high-tech weapons, despite their ineffectiveness and extraordinary cost-overruns, provide a strong case for the charge of ethical bankruptcy. The second half of the book deals with the author's attempts to get frontline equipment tested under combat conditions. For the first time, readers learn the nasty details of his battle with the army over line-fire testing of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle--a battle that he eventually won, leading to the personnel carrier's redesign and the saving of many lives. Never reluctant to name names and reveal details, James G. Burton presents a forceful case. And his revelations offer insights not found elsewhere into the motivations and actions of the people who wield power from within. Nor does he stop at the walls of the Pentagon. In his epilogue he tells what happened in the field during the final hours of the Gulf War that allowed Hussein's elite Republican Guard to escape. Now back in print after having inspired a feature HBO film, this explosive account of insider corruption is sure to serve policy-makers for generations to come.

How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476777861
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (767 download)

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Book Synopsis How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything by : Rosa Brooks

Download or read book How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything written by Rosa Brooks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inside secure command centers, military officials make life and death decisions-- but the Pentagon also offers food courts, banks, drugstores, florists, and chocolate shops. It is rather symbolic of the way that the U.S. military has become our one-stop-shopping solution to global problems. Brooks traces this seismic shift in how America wages war, and provides a rallying cry for action as we undermine the values and rules that keep our world from sliding toward chaos.

The Pentagon

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Author :
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1588367010
Total Pages : 674 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (883 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pentagon by : Steve Vogel

Download or read book The Pentagon written by Steve Vogel and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-05-27 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The creation of the Pentagon in seventeen whirlwind months during World War II is one of the great construction feats in American history, involving a tremendous mobilization of manpower, resources, and minds. In astonishingly short order, Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell conceived and built an institution that ranks with the White House, the Vatican, and a handful of other structures as symbols recognized around the world. Now veteran military reporter Steve Vogel reveals for the first time the remarkable story of the Pentagon’s construction, from it’s dramatic birth to its rebuilding after the September 11 attack. At the center of the story is the tempestuous but courtly Somervell–“dynamite in a Tiffany box,” as he was once described. In July 1941, the Army construction chief sprang the idea of building a single, huge headquarters that could house the entire War Department, then scattered in seventeen buildings around Washington. Somervell ordered drawings produced in one weekend and, despite a firestorm of opposition, broke ground two months later, vowing that the building would be finished in little more than a year. Thousands of workers descended on the site, a raffish Virginia neighborhood known as Hell’s Bottom, while an army of draftsmen churned out designs barely one step ahead of their execution. Seven months later the first Pentagon employees skirted seas of mud to move into the building and went to work even as construction roared around them. The colossal Army headquarters helped recast Washington from a sleepy southern town into the bustling center of a reluctant empire. Vivid portraits are drawn of other key figures in the drama, among them Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president who fancied himself an architect; Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, both desperate for a home for the War Department as the country prepared for battle; Colonel Leslie R. Groves, the ruthless force of nature who oversaw the Pentagon’s construction (as well as the Manhattan Project to create an atomic bomb); and John McShain, the charming and dapper builder who used his relationship with FDR to help land himself the contract for the biggest office building in the world. The Pentagon’s post-World War II history is told through its critical moments, including the troubled birth of the Department of Defense during the Cold War, the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the tumultuous 1967 protest against the Vietnam War. The pivotal attack on September 11 is related with chilling new detail, as is the race to rebuild the damaged Pentagon, a restoration that echoed the spirit of its creation. This study of a single enigmatic building tells a broader story of modern American history, from the eve of World War II to the new wars of the twenty-first century. Steve Vogel has crafted a dazzling work of military social history that merits comparison with the best works of David Halberstam or David McCullough. Like its namesake, The Pentagon is a true landmark.

House of War

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Author :
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 9780618872015
Total Pages : 696 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (72 download)

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Book Synopsis House of War by : James Carroll

Download or read book House of War written by James Carroll and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2007-06 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the Pentagon, the military, and their vast, frequently hidden influence on American life argues that the Pentagon has, since its inception, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society.

The Pentagon Wars

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Author :
Publisher : Naval Institute Press
ISBN 13 : 1612513697
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (125 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pentagon Wars by : James G Burton

Download or read book The Pentagon Wars written by James G Burton and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2014-02-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, a small band of military activists waged war against corruption in the Pentagon, challenging a system they believed squandered the public’s money and trust. The book examines the movement and its proponents and describes how the system responded to the criticisms and efforts to change accepted practices and entrenched ways of thinking. The author, an air force colonel and part of the movement, worked in the pentagon for fourteen years. He presents a view of the Department of Defense that only an insider could offer. He exposes serious flaws in the military policy-making process, particularly in weapons development and procurement. The details he gives on the unrelenting push for high-tech weapons, despite their ineffectiveness and extraordinary cost-overruns, provide a strong case for the charge of ethical bankruptcy. The second half of the book deals with the author’s attempts to get frontline equipment tested under combat conditions. For the first time, readers learn the nasty details of his battle with the army over line-fire testing of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle—a battle that he eventually won, leading to the personnel carrier’s redesign and the saving of many lives. Never reluctant to name names and reveal details, James G. Burton presents a forceful case. And his revelations offer insights not found elsewhere into the motivations and actions of the people who wield power from within. Nor does he stop at the walls of the Pentagon. In his epilogue he tells what happened in the field during the final hours of the Gulf War that allowed Hussein’s elite Republican Guard to escape. Now back in print after having inspired a feature HBO film, this explosive account of insider corruption is sure to serve policy-makers for generations to come.

Rumsfeld's Wars

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Rumsfeld's Wars by : Dale Roy Herspring

Download or read book Rumsfeld's Wars written by Dale Roy Herspring and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly critical but nonpartisan assessment of the controversial former Defense Secretary as told by one of the leading experts on civil-military relations. Focuses on Rumsfeld's notoriously domineering leadership style, flawed vision for transforming the military, and failures in the Iraq War.

Inside the Pentagon Papers

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Inside the Pentagon Papers by : John Prados

Download or read book Inside the Pentagon Papers written by John Prados and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inside the Pentagon Papers addresses legal and moral issues that resonate today as debates continue over government secrecy and democracy's requisite demand for truthfully informed citizens. In the process, it also shows how a closer study of this signal event can illuminate questions of government responsibility in any era. When Daniel Ellsberg leaked a secret government study about the Vietnam War to the press in 1971, he set off a chain of events that culminated in one of the most important First Amendment decisions in American legal history. That affair is now part of history, but the story behind the case has much to tell us about government secrecy and the public's right to know. Commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the Pentagon Papers were assembled by a team of analysts who investigated every aspect of the war. Ellsberg, a member of the team, was horrified by the government's public lies about the war - discrepancies with reality that were revealed by the report's secret findings. His leak of the report to the New York Times and Washington Post triggered the Nixon administration's heavy-handed attempt to halt publication of their stories, which in turn le

The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262371928
Total Pages : 393 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War by : Neta C. Crawford

Download or read book The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War written by Neta C. Crawford and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the Pentagon became the world’s largest single greenhouse gas emitter and why it’s not too late to break the link between national security and fossil fuel consumption. The military has for years (unlike many politicians) acknowledged that climate change is real, creating conditions so extreme that some military officials fear future climate wars. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Defense—military forces and DOD agencies—is the largest single energy consumer in the United States and the world’s largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter. In this eye-opening book, Neta Crawford traces the U.S. military’s growing consumption of energy and calls for a reconceptualization of foreign policy and military doctrine. Only such a rethinking, she argues, will break the link between national security and fossil fuels. The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War shows how the U.S. economy and military together have created a deep and long-term cycle of economic growth, fossil fuel use, and dependency. This cycle has shaped U.S. military doctrine and, over the past fifty years, has driven the mission to protect access to Persian Gulf oil. Crawford shows that even as the U.S. military acknowledged and adapted to human-caused climate change, it resisted reporting its own greenhouse gas emissions. Examining the idea of climate change as a “threat multiplier” in national security, she argues that the United States faces more risk from climate change than from lost access to Persian Gulf oil—or from most military conflicts. The most effective way to cut military emissions, Crawford suggests provocatively, is to rethink U.S. grand strategy, which would enable the United States to reduce the size and operations of the military.

The Pentagon Paradox

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Author :
Publisher : US Naval Institute Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 474 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pentagon Paradox by : James Perry Stevenson

Download or read book The Pentagon Paradox written by James Perry Stevenson and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did the U.S. Navy avoid Congress's explicit direction to "navalize" the winning design in a flyoff competition - by lying to Congress with the argument that the winner was not carrier capable - and then develop the losing aircraft into an even worse fighter for its carrier squadrons? To find the answer James Stevenson, an experienced aviation writer, dug through government files and interviewed key players to present this hard-hitting, behind-the-scenes account of the development of one of the Navy's current front-line aircraft. His investigation exposes the politics of Pentagon weapons procurement, a process that pits service against service, the military against Congress, admirals against generals, pilots against engineers, hard liners against reformers. This book provides a developmental history of the F-18 Hornet from drawing board to its results in Desert Storm. It is the story of a multi-billion-dollar aircraft-design war between those military officers who insist that America's interests will be protected best by sophisticated aircraft, even if America can afford fewer of them, and a group known as the "Fighter Mafia", who claim that larger numbers have always won in warfare and that for equal dollars America can only produce greater numbers if each one is less sophisticated. He shows that by picking the YF-17 - and renaming the F-17 as the F-18 - over the clearly superior YF-16, the Navy antagonized the Air Force, Congress, and its own F-14 community, and sparked a major legal battle. Undeterred, the Navy took the light, cheap YF-17 and loaded it with technology and weight, which produced an F-18 that has less maneuverability, less acceleration, a range no better than the1952-vintage A-4, and costs almost three times as much as the F-16. From its first flight in 1978, the F-18 performance continued to degrade. Nevertheless, in 1992 the Navy asked for additional money to modify the F-18 as the F-18E/F. This request was in reality funding for a brand-new aircraft, which Stevenson calls the F-19, designed to get back to the original requirements and help bail out the financially troubled McDonnell Douglas. In this highly readable study, Stevenson takes the reader into the Pentagon's corridors of power, where test results are distorted, history rewritten, and requirements changed to match aircraft performance, and the public's trust and treasure squandered. Fascinating yet sobering, The Pentagon Paradox will appeal to everyone interested in the military establishment, the future of U.S. forces, and how tax dollars are spent.

The Heart of War

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Author :
Publisher : Post Hill Press
ISBN 13 : 1682616525
Total Pages : 578 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (826 download)

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Book Synopsis The Heart of War by : Kathleen J. McInnis

Download or read book The Heart of War written by Kathleen J. McInnis and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: N/A

Secrets

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780142003428
Total Pages : 532 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (34 download)

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Book Synopsis Secrets by : Daniel Ellsberg

Download or read book Secrets written by Daniel Ellsberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-09-30 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, the event which inspired Steven Spielberg’s feature film The Post In 1971 former Cold War hard-liner Daniel Ellsberg made history by releasing the Pentagon Papers - a 7,000-page top-secret study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam - to the New York Times and Washington Post. The document set in motion a chain of events that ended not only the Nixon presidency but the Vietnam War. In this remarkable memoir, Ellsberg describes in dramatic detail the two years he spent in Vietnam as a U.S. State Department observer, and how he came to risk his career and freedom to expose the deceptions and delusions that shaped three decades of American foreign policy. The story of one man's exploration of conscience, Secrets is also a portrait of America at a perilous crossroad. "[Ellsberg's] well-told memoir sticks in the mind and will be a powerful testament for future students of a war that the United States should never have fought." -The Washington Post "Ellsberg's deft critique of secrecy in government is an invaluable contribution to understanding one of our nation's darkest hours." -Theodore Roszak, San Francisco Chronicle

The Imagineers of War

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Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0804169721
Total Pages : 498 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis The Imagineers of War by : Sharon Weinberger

Download or read book The Imagineers of War written by Sharon Weinberger and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly sixty years. Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, the agency’s original mission was to create “the unimagined weapons of the future.” Over the decades, DARPA has been responsible for countless inventions and technologies that extend well beyond military technology. Sharon Weinberger gives us a riveting account of DARPA’s successes and failures, its remarkable innovations, and its wild-eyed schemes. We see how the threat of nuclear Armageddon sparked investment in computer networking, leading to the Internet, as well as to a proposal to power a missile-destroying particle beam by draining the Great Lakes. We learn how DARPA was responsible during the Vietnam War for both Agent Orange and the development of the world’s first armed drones, and how after 9/11 the agency sparked a national controversy over surveillance with its data-mining research. And we see how DARPA’s success with self-driving cars was followed by disappointing contributions to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Weinberger has interviewed more than one hundred former Pentagon officials and scientists involved in DARPA’s projects—many of whom have never spoken publicly about their work with the agency—and pored over countless declassified records from archives around the country, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and exclusive materials provided by sources. The Imagineers of War is a compelling and groundbreaking history in which science, technology, and politics collide.

The Savage Wars Of Peace

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Author :
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465038662
Total Pages : 496 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis The Savage Wars Of Peace by : Max Boot

Download or read book The Savage Wars Of Peace written by Max Boot and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's "small wars," "imperial wars," or, as the Pentagon now terms them, "low-intensity conflicts," have played an essential but little-appreciated role in its growth as a world power. Beginning with Jefferson's expedition against the Barbary Pirates, Max Boot tells the exciting stories of our sometimes minor but often bloody landings in Samoa, the Philippines, China, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Mexico, Russia, and elsewhere. Along the way he sketches colorful portraits of little-known military heroes such as Stephen Decatur, "Fighting Fred" Funston, and Smedley Butler. From 1800 to the present day, such undeclared wars have made up the vast majority of our military engagements. Yet the military has often resisted preparing itself for small wars, preferring instead to train for big conflicts that seldom come. Boot re-examines the tragedy of Vietnam through a "small war" prism. He concludes with a devastating critique of the Powell Doctrine and a convincing argument that the armed forces must reorient themselves to better handle small-war missions, because such clashes are an inevitable result of America's far-flung imperial responsibilities.

The Pentagon's New Map

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780425202395
Total Pages : 452 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pentagon's New Map by : Thomas P.M. Barnett

Download or read book The Pentagon's New Map written by Thomas P.M. Barnett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-05-03 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the end of the Cold War, America's national security establishment has been searching for a new operating theory to explain how this seemingly "chaotic" world actually works. Gone is the clash of blocs, but replaced by what? Thomas Barnett has the answers. A senior military analyst with the U.S. Naval War College, he has given a constant stream of briefings over the past few years, and particularly since 9/11, to the highest of high-level civilian and military policymakers-and now he gives it to you. The Pentagon's New Map is a cutting-edge approach to globalization that combines security, economic, political, and cultural factors to do no less than predict and explain the nature of war and peace in the twenty-first century. Building on the works of Friedman, Huntington, and Fukuyama, and then taking a leap beyond, Barnett crystallizes recent American military history and strategy, sets the parameters for where our forces will likely be headed in the future, outlines the unique role that America can and will play in establishing international stability-and provides much-needed hope at a crucial yet uncertain time in world history. For anyone seeking to understand the Iraqs, Afghanistans, and Liberias of the present and future, the intimate new links between foreign policy and national security, and the operational realities of the world as it exists today, The Pentagon's New Map is a template, a Rosetta stone. Agree with it, disagree with it, argue with it-there is no book more essential for 2004 and beyond.

The Spoils of War

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Author :
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1839763655
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (397 download)

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Book Synopsis The Spoils of War by : Andrew Cockburn

Download or read book The Spoils of War written by Andrew Cockburn and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does the United States go to war?—a leading Harper’s commentator on U.S. foreign affairs searches for answers. A withering exposé of runaway military spending and the private economic interests funding the U.S. war machine—for fans of Rachel Maddow and Democracy Now! America has a long tradition of justifying war as the defense of democracy. The War on Terror was waged to protect the West from the dangers of Islamists. The US soldiers stationed in over 800 locations across the world are meant to be the righteous arbiters of justice. Against this background, Andrew Cockburn brilliantly dissects the true intentions behind Washington’s martial appetites. The American war machine can only be understood in terms of the private passions and interests of those who control it—principally a passionate interest in money. Thus, as Cockburn witheringly reports, Washington expanded NATO to satisfy an arms manufacturer’s urgent financial requirements; the US Navy’s Pacific fleet deployments were for years dictated by a corrupt contractor who bribed high-ranking officers with cash and prostitutes; senior Marine commanders agreed to a troop surge in Afghanistan in 2017 for budgetary reasons. Based on years of wide-ranging research, Cockburn lays bare the ugly reality of the largest military machine in history: as profoundly squalid as it is terrifyingly deadly.

To Win a Nuclear War

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780921689072
Total Pages : 380 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (89 download)

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Book Synopsis To Win a Nuclear War by : Michio Kaku

Download or read book To Win a Nuclear War written by Michio Kaku and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Win a Nuclear War records as fully as we are likely to find what has gone on in the minds of American leaders and nuclear strategists on this awesome subject during these fateful forty years. It is an appalling story... This book compels us to re-think and re-write the history of the Cold War and the arms race."--From the foreword by Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the United States. To Win a Nuclear War provides a startling glimpse into secret U.S. plans to initiate a nuclear war from 1945 to the present. Based on recently declassified Top Secret documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, this book meticulously traces how U.S. policy makers in over a dozen episodes have threatened to initiate a nuclear attack. The book also documents the surprising reasons why the war plans were never carried out and discloses the deeper, hidden meaning of the Star Wars program.

Secrets

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101191317
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis Secrets by : Daniel Ellsberg

Download or read book Secrets written by Daniel Ellsberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-09-30 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, the event which inspired Steven Spielberg’s feature film The Post In 1971 former Cold War hard-liner Daniel Ellsberg made history by releasing the Pentagon Papers - a 7,000-page top-secret study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam - to the New York Times and Washington Post. The document set in motion a chain of events that ended not only the Nixon presidency but the Vietnam War. In this remarkable memoir, Ellsberg describes in dramatic detail the two years he spent in Vietnam as a U.S. State Department observer, and how he came to risk his career and freedom to expose the deceptions and delusions that shaped three decades of American foreign policy. The story of one man's exploration of conscience, Secrets is also a portrait of America at a perilous crossroad. "[Ellsberg's] well-told memoir sticks in the mind and will be a powerful testament for future students of a war that the United States should never have fought." -The Washington Post "Ellsberg's deft critique of secrecy in government is an invaluable contribution to understanding one of our nation's darkest hours." -Theodore Roszak, San Francisco Chronicle