Presents a definitive history of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, from its inception during the Cold War in 1958 to the present, detailing its work as the most secret, powerful, and controversial military science research agency.

"With the death of his heroic father, bomber and space warfare veteran Patrick McLanahan, Bradley McLanahan must now fly solo, leading a team of young engineers designing Starfire, the world's first orbiting solar power plant. Starfire will not only deliver unlimited and inexpensive electricity anywhere on planet Earth, it can also transmit power to the moon, and even to spacecraft and asteroids. It's a crucial first step in the exploration of the...

"Again and again, American taxpayers are asked to open their wallets and pay for a national security machine that costs $1.25 trillion to operate. How is it possible that the United States Government gets it so wrong on so many critical issues, and so often? And if our expensive national security machine is not working, what can be done? Enter Thom Shanker, best-selling author and former New York Times editor, along with Andrew Hoehn, RAND SVP of...

In a late 1990s North Korea, a younger Inspector O is working Pyongyang as the country's nuclear missile program begins to escalate and as the wife of a North Korean diplomat turns up dead in Pakistan under suspicious circumstances, but as Inspector O investigates, he discovers that the woman's death could lead to a larger conspiracy.

Just a few years ago, people spoke of the US as a hyperpower--a titan stalking the world stage with more relative power than any empire in history. Yet as early as 1993, newly-appointed CIA director James Woolsey pointed out that although Western powers had "slain a large dragon" by defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, they now faced a "bewildering variety of poisonous snakes." In The Dragons and the Snakes, the eminent soldier-scholar David...

Blood Year is for anyone interested in understanding not only why the region that the U.S. invaded a dozen years ago has collapsed into utter chaos, but also what it can do to alleviate the grim situation.

"The United States has been fighting wars constantly since invading Afghanistan in 2001. This nonstop warfare is far less exceptional than it might seem: the US has been at war or has invaded other countries almost every year since independence. In The United States of War, David Vine traces this pattern of bloody, near-permanent conflict from Columbus's 1494 arrival in Guantanamo Bay through the 250-year expansion of a global US empire. Drawing on...

Drawing from new archival research, prize-winning historian Michael Burleigh gives new meaning to the seminal decades of 1945 to 1965 by examining the many, largely forgotten, "hot" wars fought around the world.

A scholar of international relations outlines compelling arguments in favor of America's enduring relevance and why an active military presence is essential to preserving and enforcing the nation's foreign policies.

"A candid new political memoir from Senator John McCain--his most personal book in years--covering everything from 2008 up to the present."--Provided by publisher.