"Climbing the Military Hierarchy: A Guide to Advancing in the Army" is an essential resource for anyone aspiring to navigate and excel within the ranks of the armed forces. Authored by JB Jones, a distinguished military leader, this book draws on his extensive experience and expertise to offer practical advice and strategies for career progression. From mastering the intricacies of military culture to understanding the dynamics of leadership and command, Jones provides insights that are both insightful and actionable. The book covers a wide range of topics including effective communication, decision-making under pressure, and building strong professional relationships. Whether you're a new recruit or a seasoned officer aiming for higher ranks, "Climbing the Military Hierarchy" serves as a comprehensive guidebook, equipping readers with the knowledge and tools necessary to achieve success in the Army and beyond.
An inspiring legal thriller set against the backdrop of the war on terror, The Challenge tells the inside story of a historic Supreme Court showdown. At its center are a Navy JAG and a young constitutional law professor who, in the aftermath of 9/11, find themselves defending their nation in the unlikeliest of ways: by suing the president of the United States on behalf of an accused terrorist in order to prevent the American government from breaking the law and violating the Constitution. Jonathan Mahler traces the journey of their client, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, from the Yemeni mosque where he was first recruited for jihad in 1998, through his years working as a driver for Osama bin Laden, to his capture in Afghanistan in November 2001 and his subsequent transfer to Guantanamo Bay. It was there that Hamdan was designated by President Bush to be tried before a special military tribunal and assigned a military lawyer to represent him, a thirty-five-year-old graduate student of the Naval Academy, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift. No one expected Swift to mount much of a defense. Not only were the rules of the tribunals, America’s first in more than fifty years, stacked against him, his superiors at the Pentagon were pressuring him to persuade Hamdan to plead guilty. But Swift didn’t believe that the tribunals were either legal or fair, so he enlisted a young Georgetown law professor named Neal Katyal to help him sue the Bush administration over their legality. In the spring of 2006, Katyal, who had almost no trial experience, took the case to the Supreme Court and won. The landmark ruling has been called the Court’s most important decision ever on presidential power and the rule of law. Written with the cooperation of Swift and Katyal, The Challenge follows the braided stories of Swift’s intense, precarious relationship with Hamdan and the unprecedented legal case itself. Combining rich character portraits and courtroom drama reminiscent of Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action with sophisticated yet accessible legal analysis, The Challenge is a riveting narrative that illuminates some of the most pressing constitutional questions of the post-9/11 era.
This book examines the connection between sociology and the challenges faced by the modern military. Military sociology has received little attention in the broader academic world, and is mostly focused on civil-military relations. This book seeks to address this gap and combines ideas, theories and insights from sociology’s founding authors, with each chapter focusing on a specific thinker. There are chapters on Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Jane Addams, W. E. B. Du Bois, Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, Morris Janowitz, Norbert Elias, Cornelis Lammers, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Cynthia Enloe and Bruno Latour, and each essay discusses their ideas and theories in relation to topics that are of concern in and around the military today. Military studies are taken in a broad sense here, so the volume encompasses a wide range of issues, including civil-military relations, military-political affairs, performance and outcomes of military operations, and organizational arrangements including technology and the composition, performance and well-being of personnel. The book intends to provide views and insights that will help the military to innovate their organizations and practices, not necessarily in the usual functional way of innovating (i.e. faster, more precise, etc.) but in a broader way. This book will be of great interest to students of sociology, military studies, civil-military relations, war and conflict studies, and IR in general.
A fascinating and controversial study of the organization of our society, this well-known volume depicts the style and substance of the men and women at the pinnacles of fame, power, and fortune in mid-1900s America. Alan Wolfe's astute afterword to this new edition shows how Mills was a pioneer in helping readers think about the society they have and the society they might want.
The bestselling author of The Mountain and No Shortcuts to the Top chronicles his three attempts to climb the world’s tenth-highest and statistically deadliest peak while exploring the dramatic and tragic history of others who have made—or attempted—the ascent. “Viesturs and Roberts have written an exhaustively researched and wonderfully compelling history of the most fascinating and dangerous of the Himalayan giants.”—David Breashers, veteran mountaineer and documentary filmmaker, director of IMAX film Everest As a high school student, Ed Viesturs read and was captivated by the French climber Maurice Herzog’s famous and grisly account of the first ascent of Annapurna in 1950. When he began his own campaign to climb the world’s fourteen highest peaks in the late 1980s, Viesturs looked forward with trepidation to undertaking Annapurna himself. Two failures to summit in 2000 and 2002 made Annapurna his nemesis. His successful 2005 ascent was the triumphant capstone of his climbing quest. In The Will to Climb Viesturs and co-author David Roberts bring the extraordinary challenges of Annapurna to vivid life through edge-of-your-seat accounts of the greatest climbs in the mountain’s history, and of his own failed attempts and eventual success. In the process Viesturs ponders what Annapurna reveals about some of our most fundamental moral and spiritual questions—questions, he believes, that we need to answer to lead our lives well.
In this autobiography, Omar N. Bradley (1893-1981) recounts his youth in Missouri, his years at the US Military Academy at West Point (he graduated in 1915 alongside Dwight D. Eisenhower), his assignments on the US-Mexico border and in Montana guarding copper mines during World War I, his tours teaching mathematics at West Point and in 1941, commanding of the US Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, his active duty during World War II in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy and eventually commanding 43 divisions and 1.3 million Americans in Europe, linking up with Soviet forces on the Elbe in April 1945, sealing the defeat of Nazi forces. Bradley provides vivid descriptions of key figures in the liberation of Europe, including Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, Churchill and Montgomery. Back in Washington, Bradley describes his years heading the Veterans Administration, his tenure as Army Chief of Staff and as first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff starting in 1949. After being promoted to the rank of General of the Army (five stars) in 1950, Bradley was the senior military commander when the Korean War started; he supported President Truman’s wartime policy of containment and was instrumental in persuading Truman to dismiss General MacArthur in 1951 after MacArthur resisted administration attempts to scale back the war’s strategic objectives. “The narrative deals skillfully with the planning and execution of campaigns that changed history... an unmatched panorama of 40 years of American military history... A great many writers have taken a crack at describing the 1944 Allied landings in Normandy [but] no overall description of that long, bitter battle on the American beaches, Utah and Omaha, is better than the one in this book.” — Drew Middleton,The New York Times “The most unassuming of the WW II military chiefs has (in recompense?) the last, stinging word... a vigorous, accomplished, exceptionally unconstrained narrative... Explosive yet likable.” — Kirkus Reviews “[A] surprisingly candid account from a man long reputed to be mild-mannered, discreet, and uncritical of the figures of his time... General Bradley has given us a very informative autobiography. Especially interesting are the sections on American military participation in the North African and Sicilian campaigns, and Eisenhower’s role there; the Normandy landings and subsequent breakout; the Battle of the Bulge; and President Truman’s removal of General MacArthur from command in Korea... He is very frank in his comments on Eisenhower’s weaknesses as Allied commander in North Africa and Sicily, and of Patton’s ill-advised behavior and remarks during that period and later. He is also harshly critical of Montgomery’s “prima donna”-like behavior and his continual efforts to push Eisenhower into giving him the supreme command of all Allied ground troops... With the loss of General Bradley, there are unlikely to be any more top-rank firsthand accounts of this period in US military history. Bradley’s book, therefore, may have the last word, but he hasn’t abused that privilege. He was too fair a man for that.” — Howard C. Thomas, The Christian Science Monitor “[A] superb book... a remarkably smooth-flowing account of the life of one of this country’s most distinguished military leaders... Bradley’s candid appraisals of his superiors, subordinates and peers, notably Patton, Montgomery, Eisenhower, Simpson and Hodges, make fascinating reading... this is a first-rate addition to the growing number of biographies of prominent World War II military personalities. Besides being eminently enjoyable reading for casual consumption, it is of significant value to the student of military history.” — Lieutenant Colonel William A. de Palo, Jr., Infantry Magazine
Every veteran has a story. You just have to listen to it. It can be surprising how difficult it is...and also how easy...for a veteran to be able to tell their story. The impacts of combat, deployments, or even just military experience in general are felt long after a veteran leaves the service. The guns do not always go silent when a veteran leaves the military...neither should the veteran. When combat veteran and retired Army Noncommissioned Officer Duane France retired, he knew he wanted to continue to serve his fellow veterans. As a grandson, nephew, and son of combat veterans, he grew up knowing the impact of combat and military service on veterans and their families, and as a leader with five combat and operational deployments, he saw the same things happening in the service members of his generation. After starting to work as a clinical mental health counselor exclusively for veterans and their spouses, Duane started to write his observations and experiences on his blog, Head Space and Timing, located at www.veteranmentalhealth.com. This book is a collection of 52 articles designed to help veterans, those who support them, and those who care for them to understand the military experience and to change the way they think about veteran mental health.
