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Lavi: The United States, Israel, and a Controversial Fighter Jet traces the evolution of Israel's Lavi fighter program, the largest weapons development initiative ever undertaken by the State of Israel, and the wider societal and international political contexts in which it played so great a part.

National security, a topic routinely discussed behind the closed doors of Washington's political scientists and policymakers, is believed to be an insider's game. All too often, such highly specialized knowledge is assumed to place issues beyond the grasp--and interest--of the American public. Author D. Robert Worley disagrees.

In the spring of 2001, George W. Bush selected Dallas attorney Robert W. Jordan as the ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Jordan¿s nomination sped through Congress in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, and he was at his post by early October, though with no prior diplomatic experience, as Saudi Arabia mandates that the U.S. Ambassador be a political appointee with the ear of the president. Hence Jordan had to learn on the job how to run an embassy, deal with a foreign culture, and protect U.S. interests, all following the most significant terrorist attacks on the United States in history.From 2001 through 2003, Jordan worked closely with Crown Prince Abdullah and other Saudi leaders on sensitive issues of terrorism and human rights, all the while trying to maintain a positive relationship to ensure their cooperation with the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. At the same time he worked with top officials in Washington, including President Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, and Tommy Franks. Desert Diplomat discusses these relationships as well as the historic decisions of Jordan¿s tenure and provides a candid and thoughtful assessment of the sometimes distressing dysfunction in the conduct of American foreign policy, warfare, and intelligence gathering. Still involved in the Middle East, Jordan also offers important insights into the political, economic, and social changes occurring in this critical region, particularly Saudi Arabia.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded the Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia. A deceitful campaign promoting Asian brotherhood recruited and coerced young Indonesian men to support the Japanese occupation with the sinister outcome that several million of them were worked to death or summarily killed as expendable slave laborers, or romusha, as they were called. While many romusha disappeared from the record, nine hundred were known victims of a brutal and immoral medical experiment perpetuated by an increasingly desperate Imperial Japan. In anticipation of a land assault, the Japanese needed a means to protect their troops from tetanus, and they used these nine hundred men as human guinea pigs to test an insufficiently vetted vaccine. Within days, all nine hundred suffered the protracted, agonizing death of acute tetanus. With the Allied forces poised for victory, the Japanese needed a scapegoat for this well-documented incident if they were to avoid war-crimes prosecution. They brutally tortured Achmad Mochtar, a native Indonesian and renowned scientist, along with his colleagues at the Eijkman Institute in Batavia (now Jakarta), until Mochtar signed a confession to the murders in exchange for the liberty of his fellow scientists. The Japanese beheaded Mochtar weeks before the war ended. War Crimes in Japan-Occupied Indonesia unravels the deceit of the Japanese Army, the reasons for the mass murder of the romusha, and Mochtar¿s heroic role in these tragic events. The end result finds justice for Mochtar and reveals the true extent of one of the least recognized war crimes of World War II.

Pauline Frederick Reporting is the biography of the life and career of the first woman to become a network news correspondent. After no less an authority than Edward R. Murrow told her there was no place for her in broadcasting, Pauline Frederick (1908¿90) cracked the good old boys¿ club through determination and years of hard work, eventually becoming a trusted voice to millions of television viewers. During Frederick¿s nearly fifty years as a journalist, she interviewed a young Fidel Castro, covered the Nuremberg trials, interpreted diplomatic actions at the United Nations, and was the first woman to moderate a presidential debate. The life of this pivotal figure in American journalism provides an inside perspective on the growth and political maneuverings of television networks as well as Frederick¿s relationships with iconic NBC broadcast figures David Brinkley, Chet Huntley, and others. Although Frederick repeatedly insisted that she would trade her career, glamorous as it was, to have a family, a series of romances ended in heartache when she did indeed choose her work over love. At the age of sixty-one, however, she married and attained the family life she had always wanted. Her story is one for all modern women striving to balance career and family.

The mother of all conspiracy theories is about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Many of its elements have become part of American folklore: the single bullet, the Grassy Knoll shooter, and the mysterious deaths of interested parties. JFK Assassination Logic shows how to approach such conspiracy claims.

When "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the official U.S. policy on gays serving in the military, was repealed in September 2011, soldier Stephen Snyder-Hill (then Captain Hill) was serving in Iraq.

David Mulford has witnessed and participated in dramatic changes in the world economic system-from newly independent countries in Africa and the emerging Eurobond market to the boardrooms of New York, from the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency to the White House and Treasury Department, and from the halls of Oxford to the developing expanse of India.

Americans have been almost constantly at war since 1917. In addition to two world wars, the United States has fought proxy wars, propaganda wars, and a "war on terror," among others. But even with the constant presence of war in American life, much of what Americans remember about those conflicts still comes from Hollywood depictions.

Donald E. Nuechterlein examines George W. Bush's transformation of American foreign policy and the repercussions for the future. Defiant Superpower recounts how the Bush administration's bold actions in response to September 11, 2001, toppled the Taliban and displayed American strength.

Since the end of World War II a paradigm shift has occurred in armed conflict. Asymmetric, or fourth-generation warfare--the challenge of nonstate belligerents to the authority and power of the state--has become the dominant form of conflict, while interstate conventional war has become an increasingly irrelevant instrument of statecraft. In asymmetric conflicts the enemy is often a fellow citizen with a different vision for the future of the country--waging war among the people, maneuvering on the borderlines between parliamentary politics, street politics, criminal activity, and combat operations. Winning Wars amongst the People analyzes the special circumstances of asymmetric conflicts in the domestic context and seeks to identify those principles that allow a democratic state's security forces to meet the challenge, while at the same time obey their homeland's laws, protect its culture, observe its values, and maintain its liberties, traditions, and way of life. Using five detailed case studies, Peter A. Kiss explains the fundamental differences between the paradigm of conventional warfare and that of asymmetric warfare as well as the latter's political, social, and economic roots and main characteristics. Most important, he identifies the measures a government must take to prepare its security forces and other institutions of state for an asymmetric conflict.

Turkey, which has always held an important position in global affairs, has become even more prominent on the international stage as an economic power and a harbinger of political Islam.During more than ten years in power--an unprecedented tenure--Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) have expanded Turkey's trade, diplomatic ties, and cultural exports to transform the country from an economically disadvantaged secular state into the first large Muslim nation with a middle-class majority. Erdogan has asserted Turkish influence in high-stakes, high-profile foreign issues from Gaza to Egypt to Syria, often breaking ranks with his NATO allies. Today, from the cafés of the Arab world to the boardrooms of the G-20, Turkey suddenly matters.The Rise of Turkey: The Twenty-First Century's First Muslim Power is a guide to the country's changes, both in its inspiring national potential and in the grave challenges it poses to regional affairs. Structured as a travelogue, each chapter opens on a different Turkish city and captures a new theme of Turkey's transformation. From the Kurdish issue to foreign policy, Soner Cagaptay argues that Turkey needs to successfully balance its Muslim identity with its Western orientation in order to solidify its position as a regional and global power.

The 1960s was a decade of contrasts. It had the Summer of Love, but it also witnessed the assassinations of three American leaders. It fulfilled President Kennedy's promise of successfully landing a man on the moon but also saw the beginning of the ultimately disastrous Vietnam War.

From China's economic and cyber war on the United States to Islamist victories across the Middle East to the lengthening shadow cast by Iran, the Washington establishment as led by presidents of both parties has consistently failed to neutralise such dangers, but they are drawing nearer.

Odd Man Out is a novel assessment of the motives and strategies of Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong as they struggled to maneuver their countries into positions of advantage in the postwar world. Their successes and failures resulted in the catastrophic event that globalized the Cold War ---the Korean War.

In 1812, less than forty years after breaking from Britain, the United States found itself in another war with its former colonial master. Now, during the two hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812 comes Neither Victor nor Vanquished, William Weber¿s reappraisal of this critical but frequently misunderstood conflict. In the first half of the book, Weber reexamines the war¿s military aspects, highlighting the asymmetric nature of the conflict as the world¿s foremost naval power with a credible professional army stood against an idealist republic with commercial and agricultural aspirations but without an adequate navy and army. Weber also attempts to recalibrate popular conceptions of the U.S. forces¿ generally poor performance during ¿Mr. Madison¿s War,¿ and frames the War of 1812 in the context of both the Jeffersonian Revolution that preceded the war and the accelerated territorial expansion and consolidation of the United States that eventually led to the American Civil War. The book¿s thought-provoking second half presents alternative outcomes for the War of 1812, reminding us that history is made, not predetermined. Various scenarios arise from differences in two key factors¿the quality of generalship in both armies and the direction of the Napoleonic Wars, which Britain was simultaneously fighting. Weber imagines a worst case scenario for the young republic, an ending worse than a simple military defeat. Indeed, history might have provided a different answer to Francis Scott Key¿s central question, ¿O, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave / O¿er the land of the free and the home of the brave?¿ A final what-if explores a nineteenth-century America that chooses to avoid the War of 1812 and, consequently, the rise of Andrew Jackson.

In Sand in the Gears, Andrew Smith argues that the US lost manufacturing not to forces beyond its control, such as globalisation and cheaper labour overseas, but as the result of misguided policies that are well within its abilities to reform for the benefit of manufacturing.

This courageous anthology posits that unearned privilege has damaged the psyche of white people as well as their capacity to understand racism. Using intimate stories, some from writers who have never before spoken of these highly charged issues, Jealous and Haskell offer readers a chance to explore their own experiences.

In Imperfect Compromise, Karpin presents an entirely different thesis from that of most books about the Middle East peace settlement: when it comes to the proverbial man or woman on the street, he asserts that both Arabs and Jews prefer a peaceful solution.