War Beneath the Waves: A True Story of Courage and Leadership Aboard a World War II Submarine

By Don Keith

A seasoned chronicler of submariners' exploits now tells the tale of a heroic feat of endurance in the fall of 1943, when U.S.S. Billfish endured a 15-hour depth-charging by some uncommonly skilled and persistent Japanese antisubmarine vessels. Further handicapping her was the fact that her captain was better at being a staff officer than he was at the extraordinarily demanding and personal job of leadership required in submarines. Nor was he the only one whose skill or nerve failed to meet requirements. On the other hand, many of the crew rose to fill gaps and bring the ship safe home. Dealing equally with the hardware and the interpersonal dynamics of WWII submarining, Keith will inform and please both the rank newcomer to the subject and the well-read expert on it.

Check Catalog

America's Captives: Treatment of POWs from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror

By Paul J. Springer

In his well-documented survey, Springer (leadership & strategy, Air Command & Staff Coll.) argues that America has improvised and haphazardly managed its treatment of prisoners of war (POWs), from the thousands of British prisoners exchanged on a rank-for-rank basis during the Revolution to the Guantánamo prisoners in legal limbo today. In addressing a predictable problem in ad hoc ways, the United States has reckoned with issues of humanitarianism, military expediency, retaliation, the rule of law, and public perception. Springer uses the Revolution and the Civil War to highlight the difficulties; in both cases one side was reluctant to recognize the rights of POWs for fear of legitimizing the existence of the rebel state, a problem that persists with today's nonstate combatants. Neither Springer nor Doyle is an easy or popular read, but these complementary titles are mandatory for all interested readers, students, scholars, and informed lay persons.

Check Catalog

America's Captives: Treatment of POWs from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror

By Paul J. Springer

In his well-documented survey, Springer (leadership & strategy, Air Command & Staff Coll.) argues that America has improvised and haphazardly managed its treatment of prisoners of war (POWs), from the thousands of British prisoners exchanged on a rank-for-rank basis during the Revolution to the Guantánamo prisoners in legal limbo today. In addressing a predictable problem in ad hoc ways, the United States has reckoned with issues of humanitarianism, military expediency, retaliation, the rule of law, and public perception. Springer uses the Revolution and the Civil War to highlight the difficulties; in both cases one side was reluctant to recognize the rights of POWs for fear of legitimizing the existence of the rebel state, a problem that persists with today's nonstate combatants. Neither Springer nor Doyle is an easy or popular read, but these complementary titles are mandatory for all interested readers and students, scholars, and informed lay persons.

Check Catalog

Target Patton: The Plot to Assassinate General George S. Patton

By Robert K. Wilcox

He was the most controversial American general in World War II - and also one of the most successful, courageous, and audacious. As a post -war administrator of defeated Germany, he sounded alarm bells about the dangers of Soviet encroachment into Europe. Politically, he was a lightning rod - an outspoken conservative who continually embarrassed his superiors with his uncensored, undiplomatic, and unrestrained comments to the press. He was General George S. Patton Jr., old Blood and Guts.
In 1945, shortly before he was to fly home to the states as a conquering hero, he was involved in a mysterious car crash that left him partially paralyzed.
Two weeks later. just as his doctors were about to send him home to finish his recovery, he was dead.
The army ruled the car crash an accident, his death natural. Yet witness testimony on the crash conflicted, key players in the incident disappeared, official reports vanished, soldiers were ordered to keep silent, and there was no autopsy performed on the body.
Investigative and military reporter Robert Wilcox, author of Black Aces High and Wings of Fury, has spent more than ten years investigating these mysteries, and in Target: Patton he has written an electrifying account of the shocking circumstances - long hidden from the public - surrounding the death of America's most famous general.

Check Catalog

Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt Vs. the Supreme Court

By Jeff Shesol

Lengthier than FDR vs. the Constitution, by Burt Solomon (2009), an account of the 1937 political fracas between the president, the Supreme Court, and the Senate, Shesol's history of the same episode expands with detail about the origin of Roosevelt's proposal to reorganize the federal judiciary. It sprang from liberals' infuriation with the conservative Court's invalidation of some New Deal programs; Shesol's quotations of New Dealers' diaries well convey the incandescence of their fury. He also attends to Washington's sociopolitical atmosphere, such as the Gridiron Dinner's spoofs of the Supremes and FDR's landslide reelection, which set the stage for Roosevelt's hubristic moment. After providing background to FDR's reform plan, which its opponents (and history) branded a court-packing scheme, Shesol continues with a narrative of the political battle that erupted. Characterizing defining traits of the main combatants: FDR, Chief Justice Charles Hughes, and Senator Burt Wheeler, Shesol skillfully illustrates the nexus of personality and principle, with the New Deal and the Constitution being perceived as at stake. A book sure to recruit history readers, especially those eyeing present political currents.

Check Catalog

The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy

By Richard A. Posner

Following up on his timely and well-received book, A Failure of Capitalism, Richard Posner steps back to take a longer view of the continuing crisis of democratic capitalism as the American and world economies crawl gradually back from the depths to which they had fallen in the autumn of 2008 and the winter of 2009.
By means of a lucid narrative of the crisis and a series of analytical chapters pinpointing critical issues of economic collapse and gradual recovery, Posner helps non-technical readers understand business-cycle and financial economics, and financial and governmental institutions, practices, and transactions, while maintaining a neutrality impossible for persons professionally committed to one theory or another. He calls for fresh thinking about the business cycle that would build on the original ideas of Keynes. Central to these ideas is that of uncertainty as opposed to risk. Risk can be quantified and measured. Uncertainty cannot, and in this lies the inherent instability of a capitalist economy.
As we emerge from the financial earthquake, a deficit aftershock rumbles. It is in reference to that potential aftershock, as well as to the government’s stumbling efforts at financial regulatory reform, that Posner raises the question of the adequacy of our democratic institutions to the economic challenges heightened by the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. The crisis and the government’s energetic response to it have enormously increased the national debt at the same time that structural defects in the American political system may make it impossible to pay down the debt by any means other than inflation or devaluation.

Check Catalog

The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism

By Joyce Appleby

Historian Appleby traces capitalism (a system based on individual investments in the production of marketable goods) from early industrialization to the present global economy. She explores the benchmarks in capitalism's ascent, looking at how this system transformed politics while churning up practices, thoughts, values and ideals that had long prevailed within the cocoon of custom. It changed the way people thought and planned, and the author shows how different societies respond to its challenges up to the twenty-first century and the world recession of 2008–09. She explains that the 2008 financial crisis was caused by the era of deregulation from the late 1970s to 1999, while vast sums of money circulated through global markets and the growth in financial assets outpaced real economic activity. Appleby concludes that since capitalism is a set of practices and institutions that permits billions of people to pursue their interests in the marketplace, it is highly likely that panics and bubbles will occur again. This is an excellent book.

Check Catalog

Dark Harbor: The War for the New York Waterfront

By Nathan Ward
Traces the historical influence of the Mafia on New York's waterfront, drawing on the investigative series of New York Sun reporter Malcolm "Mike" Johnson into the region's racketeering, violent territorial disputes, and union corruption.

Check Catalog

The Cheapskate Next Door; the Surprising Secrets Of Americans Living Happily Below Their Means

By Jeff Yeager
"Yeager (The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches) is back with another energetic, likably eccentric lesson on living happily well below your means. Interviewing a variety of self-professed cheapskates, he finds—despite a diversity of lifestyles, backgrounds, and beliefs— common practices and philosophies when it came to money; their knowledge of how to live on less has insulated them from the economic crash. He presents their tips on frugal living in grocery shopping, entertainment, and sensible parenting, but the real value is in Yeager's persuasive argument that an onset of "Spending Anxiety Disorder" is good for our wallets, our communities, and the environment. If we change the way we think about "want" vs. "need," we can focus our time and attention on the truly valuable things—family, charity, passions, the early retirement that will make enjoying them longer possible—and if we consume sparingly, thoughtfully, and fully, our possessions will not consume us. Yeager and his "Miser Advisers" are proof that living more frugally isn't about sacrifice—it's about making choices every day to live a better, happier, more thoughtful life with less. " (PW Reviews)
Check Our Catalog