In the winter of 1944–1945, Hitler sought to divide Allied forces in the heavily forested Ardennes region of Luxembourg and Belgium. He deployed more than 400,000 troops in one of the last major German offensives of the war, which became known as the Battle of the Bulge, in a desperate attempt to regain the strategic initiative in the West. Hitler’s effort failed for a variety of reasons, but many historians assert that Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr.’s Third Army was ultimately responsible for securing Allied victory. Although Patton has assumed a larger-than-life reputation for his leadership in the years since World War II, scholars have paid little attention to his generalship in the Ardennes following the relief of Bastogne. In Advance and Destroy, Captain John Nelson Rickard explores the commander’s operational performance during the entire Ardennes campaign, through his “estimate of the situation,” the U.S. Army’s doctrinal approach to problem-solving. Patton’s day-by-day situational understanding of the Battle of the Bulge, as revealed through ULTRA intelligence and the influence of the other Allied generals on his decision-making, gives readers an in-depth, critical analysis of Patton’s overall effectiveness, measured in terms of mission accomplishment, his ability to gain and hold ground, and a cost-benefit analysis of his operations relative to the lives of his soldiers. The work not only debunks myths about one of America’s most controversial generals but provides new insights into his renowned military skill and colorful personality.
Shaffer delivers an exciting, eyewitness account of fighting terrorism in Afghanistan using the military's most cutting-edge espionage tactics. Just before St. Martin's Press release of the book, The Department of Defense and the Defense Intelligence Agency, demanded the author and the publisher produce the book for review. They, and "other interested U.S. intelligence agencies" met with the author to review changes and redactions that they required be made, before the book could be published, in order to "not damage our national security, harm our troops, or harm U.S. military intelligence efforts or assets." Thus, there are sections with redactions in the final book.
"This is the ultimate insider's view of perhaps the darkest chapter of the Forever Wars. Michael Gordon knows everyone, was seemingly everywhere, and brings a lifetime of brilliant reporting to telling this crucial story." —Retired U.S. Navy admiral James Stavridis, 16th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and author of To Risk it All: Nine Crises and the Crucible of Decision An essential account of the struggle against ISIS—and of how Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden have waged war. In the summer of 2014, President Barack Obama faced an unwelcome surprise: insurgents from the Islamic State had seized the Iraqi city of Mosul and proclaimed a new caliphate, which they were ruling with an iron fist and using to launch terrorist attacks abroad. After considerable deliberation, President Obama sent American troops back to Iraq. The new mission was to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS, primarily by advising Iraqi and Syrian partners who would do the bulk of the fighting and by supporting them with airpower and artillery. More than four years later, the caliphate had been dismantled, the cities of Mosul and Raqqa lay in ruins, and several thousand U.S. troops remained to prevent ISIS from making a comeback. The “by, with, and through” strategy was hailed as a template for future campaigns. But how was the war actually fought? What were the key decisions, successes, and failures? And what was learned? In Degrade and Destroy, the bestselling author and Wall Street Journal national security correspondent Michael R. Gordon reveals the strategy debates, diplomatic gambits, and military operations that shaped the struggle against the Islamic State. With extraordinary access to top U.S. officials and military commanders and to the forces on the battlefield, Gordon offers a riveting narrative that ferrets out some of the war’s most guarded secrets. Degrade and Destroy takes us inside National Security Council meetings at which Obama and his top aides grapple with early setbacks and discuss whether the war can be won. It also offers the most detailed account to date of how President Donald Trump waged war—delegating greater authority to the Pentagon but jeopardizing the outcome with a rush for the exit. Drawing on his reporting in Iraq and Syria, Gordon documents the closed-door deliberations of U.S. generals with their Iraqi and Syrian counterparts and describes some of the toughest urban battles since World War II. As Americans debate the future of using force abroad, Gordon’s book offers vital insights into how our wars today are fought against militant foes, and the enduring lessons we can draw from them.
General George S. Patton Jr. is one of the most successful yet misunderstood figures in American military history. Despite the many books and articles written about him, none considers in depth how his love of history shaped the course of his life. In this thematic biography, Furman Daniel traces Patton’s obsession with history and argues that it informed and contributed to many of his successes, both on and off the battlefield. Patton deliberately cultivated the image of himself as a warrior from ages past; the more interesting truth is that he was an exceptionally dedicated student of history. He was a hard worker and voracious reader who gave a great deal of thought to how military history might inform his endeavors. Most scholars have overlooked this element of Patton’s character, which Daniel argues is essential to understanding the man’s genius.
This book provides tax advice to small business owners in seventy-six areas of tax law including payroll tax liability, excessive salaries, travel and entertainment expenses, fringe benefits, pension plans, owning multiple companies, and many more.
Volcanic Rock Mechanics includes papers and special lectures of the 3rd International Workshop on Volcanic Rocks, Rock Mechanics and Geo-Engineering in Volcanic Environments, which was held within the framework of the Congress Cities on Volcanoes6-Tenerife 2010 (Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, Spain, 31 May 4 June 2010). The book is a comprehensiv
Fully updated to reflect Java SE 7 language changes, Advance Java®, Volume II—Advanced Features, Fifteenth Best Selling Edition, is the definitive guide to Java’s most powerful features for enterprise and desktop application development. "I was fortunate indeed to have worked with a fantastic team on the design and implementation of the concurrency features added to the Java platform in Java 5.0 and Java 6. Now this same team provides the best explanation yet of these new features, and of concurrency in general. Concurrency is no longer a subject for advanced users only. Every Java developer should read this book." --Martin Buchholz JDK Concurrency Czar, Sun Microsystems "For the past 30 years, computer performance has been driven by Moore's Law; from now on, it will be driven by Amdahl's Law. Writing code that effectively exploits multiple processors can be very challenging. Java Concurrency in Practice provides you with the concepts and techniques needed to write safe and scalable Java programs for today's--and tomorrow's--systems." --Doron Rajwan Research Scientist, Intel Corp "This is the book you need if you're writing--or designing, or debugging, or maintaining, or contemplating--multithreaded Java programs. If you've ever had to synchronize a method and you weren't sure why, you owe it to yourself and your users to read this book, cover to cover." --Ted Neward Author of Effective Enterprise Java "Brian addresses the fundamental issues and complexities of concurrency with uncommon clarity. This book is a must-read for anyone who uses threads and cares about performance." --Kirk Pepperdine CTO, JavaPerformanceTuning.com "This book covers a very deep and subtle topic in a very clear and concise way, making it the perfect Java Concurrency reference manual. Each page is filled with the problems (and solutions!) that programmers struggle with every day. Effectively exploiting concurrency is becoming more and more important now that Moore's Law is delivering more cores but not faster cores, and this book will show you how to do it." --Dr. Cliff Click Senior Software Engineer, Azul Systems "I have a strong interest in concurrency, and have probably written more thread deadlocks and made more synchronization mistakes than most programmers. Brian's book is the most readable on the topic of threading and concurrency in Java, and deals with this difficult subject with a wonderful hands-on approach. This is a book I am recommending to all my readers of The Java Specialists' Newsletter, because it is interesting, useful, and relevant to the problems facing Java developers today." --Dr. Heinz Kabutz The Java Specialists' Designed for serious programmers, this reliable, unbiased, no-nonsense tutorial illuminates advanced Java language and library features with thoroughly tested code examples. As in previous editions, all code is easy to understand and displays modern best-practice solutions to the realworld challenges faced by professional developers. Volume II quickly brings you up-to-speed on key Java SE 7 enhancements, ranging from the new file I/O API to improved concurrency utilities. All code examples are updated to reflect these enhancements. Complete descriptions of new language and platform features are highlighted and integrated with insightful explanations of advanced Java programming techniques. You’ll learn all you need to build robust production software with Streams, files, and regular expressions XML Networking Database programming facilities JNDI/LDAP directory integration Internationalization Advanced Swing techniques JavaBeans components Web services Advanced platform security features Annotations Distributed objects Native methods, and more For detailed coverage of fundamental Java SE 7 features, including objects, classes, inheritance, interfaces, reflection, events, exceptions, graphics, Swing, generics, collections, concurrency, and debugging,
