Breaking 170 years of secrecy, this intriguing exposé takes a behind-the-scenes look at Yale's mysterious society, the Order of the Skull and Bones, and its prominent members, numbering among them Tafts, Rockefellers, Pillsburys, and Bushes. Explored is how Skull and Bones initiates have become senators, judges, cabinet secretaries, spies, titans of finance and industry, and even U.S. presidents, including George W. Bush. This book reveals that far from being a campus fraternity, the socie...

With mountains of documentation, mostly from government and corporate sources, Sutton shows that Soviet military technology is heavily dependent on U.S. and allied gifts, "peaceful trade" and exchange programs. We've built for, sold or traded, or given outright to the Communists everything from copper wiring and military trucks to tank technology, missile guidance technology, computers - even the Space Shuttle. Peaceful trade is a myth ... to the Soviets all trade is strategic. The paradox...

**The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal.“A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Fascinating.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine“Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of bot...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEThe first full account of how the Cold War arms race finally came to a close, this riveting narrative history sheds new light on the people who struggled to end this era of massive overkill, and examines the legacy of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that remain a threat today.Drawing on memoirs, interviews in both Russia and the US, and classified documents from deep inside the Kremlin, David E. Hoffman examines the...

Shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionFinalist for The California Book Award in NonfictionThe San Francisco Chronicle's Best of the Year ListForeign Affairs Best Books of the YearIn These Times “Best Books of the Year"Huffington Post's Ten Excellent December Books ListLitHub's “Five Books Making News This Week”

In a tour de force, prize-winning New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers traces the invention of the assault rifle, following the miniaturization of rapid-fire arms from the American Civil War, through WWI, Vietnam, to present day Afghanistan when Kalashnikovs and their knock-offs number as many as 100 million—enough for one out of seventy people on earth.At a secret arms-design contest in Stalin’s Soviet Union, army technicians submitted a stubby rifle with...

The inspiration behind the VICE TV six-part mini-series Why the Rest of Us Die!The shocking truth about the government’s secret plans to survive a catastrophic attack on US soil—even if the rest of us die—is “a frightening eye-opener” (Kirkus Reviews) that spans the dawn of the nuclear age to today, and “contains everything one could possibly want to know” (The Wall Street Journal).Every day in Washington...

A vivid, behind-the-scenes history of the Cold War's space race between the Soviets & Americans following the launch of Sputnik."In his exuberant narrative of the superpower space race . . . [Brzezinski] tells the story of American and Soviet decisions with remarkable dramatic—even cinematic—flair." — The New York Times Book ReviewIn Red Moon Rising, Matthew Brzezinski recounts the dramatic behind-the-scen...

Provocative and highly controversial, The Nazi Hydra in America reveals the dark secrets of the fascist influence in the USA. While Eisenhower's troops defeated The Third Reich on the battlefields of Europe, the war against fascism was lost on the home front, to the very cadre of American plutocrats who built and paid for Hitler's war machine. At the center of this small confederacy two firms stand out: Brown Brothers & Harriman, and Sullivan & Cromwell. And at the very eye of this oligarc...

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a riveting account of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War.In the Reagan-Gorbachev era, the United States and the Soviet Union came within minutes of nuclear war, until Gorbachev boldly launched a campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons, setting the stage for the 1986 Reykjavik summit and the incredible events that followed. In this thrilling, authoritative narrative, Richard Rhodes draws on personal interviews with both Soviet ...

“The Cold War . . . was a fight to the death,” notes Thomas C. Reed, “fought with bayonets, napalm, and high-tech weaponry of every sort—save one. It was not fought with nuclear weapons.” With global powers now engaged in cataclysmic encounters, there is no more important time for this essential, epic account of the past half century, the tense years when the world trembled At the Abyss. Written by an author who rose from military officer to administration inside...

The colossal scale of World War II required a mobilization effort greater than anything attempted in all of the world's history. The United States had to fight a war across two oceans and three continents--and to do so, it had to build and equip a military that was all but nonexistent before the war began. Never in the nation's history did it have to create, outfit, transport, and supply huge armies, navies, and air forces on so many distant and disparate fronts.The Axis powers mig...