"A little Elmore Leonard, a little Charles Portis, and very much its own uniquely American self. . .Tom Cooper has written one hell of a novel." –Stephen KingWhen the BP oil spill devastates the Louisiana Gulf Coast, the citizens of the bayou town of Jeanette scramble to replace their lost livelihoods. Among them is one-armed, pill-popping shrimper Gus Lindquist, who has nothing left but the dying glimmer of a boyhood dream: finding the lost treasure of pirate Jean...

As of 1975, the decades long insurgency in Angola appeared to be short of its conclusion. However, with no less than three major insurgent movements fighting for supremacy, the war went on and then South Africa, USA, the Soviet Union, Zaire and Cuba became involved.Affairs like the CIA’s efforts to destabilize Angola for little else but to recoup its prestige after the catastrophic defeat in South Vietnam, or the South African military intervention in Angola – Operation Savannah – ...

The Syrian Civil War, (the colloquial name of the ongoing conflict in Syria), has experienced an entirely unexpected transformation during its first two years. It started as unrest within the Syrian population and a series of mass demonstrations within the context of wider protest movements in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, known as the Arab Spring. Contrary to events in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, where oppressive governments were toppled by the end of that year, the gover...

Drive down almost any street in Webster Groves and one is filled with a sense of timelessness. Entire neighborhoods are in the National Register of Historic Places, and there are lovingly preserved century homes, beautiful old churches, avenues lined with gardens, and shopping districts more reminiscent of small-town America than a thriving suburb next door to the city of St. Louis. History runs deep here, as it is home to the first chapter of the Red Cross and the first Boy Scout Troop we...

Through late 1987 and early 1988, the battlefields of southern Angola moved ever further away from the border with South West Africa/Namibia, until the showdown between the Soviet and Cuban-supported government in Luanda and South African-supported insurgency of UNITA culminated in the controversial and still much disputed Battle of Cuito Cuanavale.During this period, Angolan and Cuban airpower slowly grew to a point where it outmatched the SAAF, in turn limiting the freedom of mov...

On 24 February 2022, the Russian Federation launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine. Coming after years of tensions following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and thinly veiled direct armed support for separatists fighting in Donbass and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, observers gave Ukraine’s military little chance of surviving the initial Russian onslaught. Yet the Russian forces failed to deliver a decisive blow in the opening air or ground campaign. Volume 6 of War in Ukraine ex...

With Ethiopia in disarray following a period of severe internal unrest and the spread of insurgencies in Eritrea and Tigray, Ethiopia and its armed forces should have offered little opposition to well-equipped Somali armed forces which were unleashed to capture Ogaden, in July 1977. However, excellently trained pilots of the Ethiopian Air Force took full advantage of their US-made equipment, primarily their few brand-new Northrop F-5E Tiger II fighter-bombers, to take the fight to their op...

The ‘Cyprus Problem’ – also known as the Cyprus dispute, Cyprus issue, Cyprus question or Cyprus conflict – is an ongoing dispute between Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Greece and Turkey. It has bedevilled not only their relations, but also those within the European Union, NATO and the United Nations, for more than 60 years.Following a long insurgency against British colonial rule, Cyprus gained independence in 1960. Almost immediately, high tension emerged between the Greek and...

When released into independence from Great Britain in 1948, the stunningly beautiful island of Ceylon, renamed Sri Lanka in 1972, was expected to become a sort of ‘South Asian Singapore.' However, stable political order and bright economic prospects proved insufficient to maintain peace. A host of unsolved ethnic conflicts and social inequalities conspired to erupt into an armed conflict in 1971.When this broke out the entire Sri Lankan society was shocked to its core by a large-sc...

In 1971, Idi Amin Dada, a former officer of the King’s African Rifles and commander of the Ugandan Army, seized power in a military coup in Uganda. Characterized by human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extra judicial killings, nepotism, corruption and gross economic mismanagement, Amin’s rule drove thousands into exile. Amin shifted the country’s orientation in international relations from alliances with the West and Israel, to cooperation with the Soviet Union.

Following the Civil War of 1994, Yemen experienced few years of relative peace. This was rudely interrupted in 2004, when the government opened the first of six campaigns against the movement colloquially known as ‘Houthis’. The Yemeni Air Force – partially re-equipped over the previous years – saw intensive involvement in this conflict, but proved insufficient. In late 2009 and through 2010, the war spread into Saudi Arabia, which reacted with its first military intervention in the countr...

Ethiopia, a country of ancient origins in eastern Africa, remains a military powerhouse of that continent until our days. Nowadays involved in the war in neighboring Somalia, Ethiopia was also involved in half a dozen of other armed conflicts over the last 60 years.Crucial between these was the Eritrean War of Independence. Fought 1961-1991, this was one of biggest armed conflicts on the African continent, especially if measured by numbers of involved combatants. It included a wide...