Download or read book Shock and Awe on America written by Teeluck Sooknarine and published by . This book was released on 2010-05 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An informative and creative view of American Politics, Religion and almost every other problem that we face. The author addresses a wide array of our daily concerns including 9/11, Columbine, Gangs, Immigration, Economics, Addiction, Drug Companies, Food Risks, Water Polution, Evolution, Spiritual existence, Science, Jesus' real teachings and many more in this 47 chapter book that is truly a wealth of knowledge and insight. It leaves you with a great understanding of the meaning and purpose of life on Earth and how to live it. The author skillfully spares no detail to keep you fixed to your seat and engaged with it all.
Download or read book Shock and Awe Achieving Rapid Dominance written by James P. Wade and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-09-12 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The military posture and capability of the United States of America are, today, dominant. Simply put, there is no external adversary in the world that can successfully challenge the extraordinary power of the American military in either regional conflict or in "conventional" war as we know it once the United States makes the commitment to take whatever action may be needed. To be sure, the first phase of a crisis may be the most difficult-if an aggressor has attacked and U.S. forces are not in place. However, it will still be years, if not decades, before potential adversaries will be able to deploy systems with a full panoply of capabilities that are equivalent to or better than the aggregate strength of the ships, aircraft, armored vehicles, and weapons systems in our inventory. Even if an adversary could deploy similar systems, then matching and overcoming the superb training and preparation of American service personnel would still be a daunting task.
Download or read book Beyond Shock and Awe written by Eric L. Haney and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-03-06 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the twelve founding members of Delta Force, a collection of commentary on the future of war. In Beyond Shock and Awe, media commentator Eric Haney—a founding member of Delta Force and author of Inside Delta Force—along with other noted military analysts and award-nominated editor Brian M. Thomsen, examines how our military must evolve to face changing times, technology, and adversaries. From limited wars to possible large scale invasions of Syria or Iran—or a major military stand-down with North Korea—Beyond Shock and Awe is a fresh, provocative peek at America’s army of the future. Contributors include: • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade Jr. which first used the term “shock and awe” • Kevin Dockery on the weapons of future wars • Professor William Forstchen on how precision guided weaponry will eliminate “problem” individuals before they can start a war • Eugene Sullivan on such legal issues as preemptive attacks and military tribunals • Paul A. Thomsen on integrating military intelligence into strategic warfare • John Helfers on the importance of cultural knowledge in winning wars and building alliances • Eric Haney on the many ways in which Rapid Dominance of an adversary can be gained through Shock and Awe.
Download or read book Shock and Awe written by Simon Reynolds and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NPR Great Read of 2016 From the acclaimed author of Rip It Upand Start Again and Retromania—“the foremost popular music critic of this era (Times Literary Supplement)—comes the definitive cultural history of glam and glitter rock, celebrating its outlandish fashion and outrageous stars, including David Bowie and Alice Cooper, and tracking its vibrant legacy in contemporary pop. Spearheaded by David Bowie, Alice Cooper, T. Rex, and Roxy Music, glam rock reveled in artifice and spectacle. Reacting against the hairy, denim-clad rock bands of the late Sixties, glam was the first true teenage rampage of the new decade. In Shock and Awe, Simon Reynolds takes you on a wild cultural tour through the early Seventies, a period packed with glitzy costumes and alien make-up, thrilling music and larger-than-life personas. Shock and Awe offers a fresh, in-depth look at the glam and glitter phenomenon, placing it the wider Seventies context of social upheaval and political disillusion. It explores how artists like Lou Reed, New York Dolls, and Queen broke with the hippie generation, celebrating illusion and artifice over truth and authenticity. Probing the genre’s major themes—stardom, androgyny, image, decadence, fandom, apocalypse—Reynolds tracks glam’s legacy as it unfolded in subsequent decades, from Eighties art-pop icons like Kate Bush through to twenty-first century idols of outrage such as Lady Gaga. Shock and Awe shows how the original glam artists’ obsessions with fame, extreme fashion, and theatrical excess continue to reverberate through contemporary pop culture.
Download or read book Shock and Awe written by David Isaak and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shock and Awe is an incendiary action thriller from an audacious new voice. Ex-special forces operative Carla Smukowski is struggling to come to terms with her brother’s murder by Islamic militants, but she’s unwilling to make peace with a world which has betrayed her. Her collaborator – and sometimes lover – is Boyce Hammond, a down-at-heel FBI agent who’s been undercover so long he’s forgotten where his loyalties lie. Smukowski, Hammond and their squad of American terrorists – the so-called Ethan Allen Brigade – seize a shipment of Indonesian nuclear waste, intending to make a radiological ‘dirty bomb’ for an attack that will inflame the Islamic world. But just as Hammond begins to fear the group he has infiltrated might pull off their insane scheme, the stolen shipment is snatched from them by a group of extremist every bit as dangerous – and now America itself is the target. Packed with breathtaking action scenes, political insight and unforgettable characters, Shock and Awe turns the terrorist novel on its head: a subversive action thriller for a new era.
Download or read book The Shock Doctrine written by Naomi Klein and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global "free market" has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment," losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.
Download or read book The Iraq Wars and America s Military Revolution written by Keith L. Shimko and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-30 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive study of the Iraq Wars in the context of the revolution in military affairs debate.
Download or read book Anatomy of Failure written by Harlan Ullman and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why, since the end of World War II, has the United States either lost every war it started or failed in every military intervention it prosecuted? Harlan Ullman's new book answers this most disturbing question, a question Americans would never think of even asking because this record of failure has been largely hidden in plain sight or forgotten with the passage of time. The most straightforward answer is that presidents and administrations have consistently failed to use sound strategic thinking and lacked sufficient knowledge or understanding of the circumstances prior to deciding whether or not to employ force. Making this case is an in-depth analysis of the records of presidents from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama and Donald Trump in using force or starting wars. His recommended solutions begin with a "brains-based" approach to sound strategic thinking to address one of the major causes of failure ----the inexperience of too many of the nation's commanders-in-chief. Ullman reinforces his argument through the use of autobiographical vignettes that provide a human dimension and insight into the reasons for failure, in some cases making public previously unknown history. The clarion call of Anatomy of Failure is that both a sound strategic framework and sufficient knowledge and understanding of the circumstance that may lead to using force are vital. Without them, failure is virtually guaranteed.
Download or read book A Time of Our Choosing written by Todd S. Purdum and published by Times Books. This book was released on 2014-03-18 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authoritative account of America's most controversial war since Vietnam, a conflict in which "shock and awe" were not confined to the battlefield It was a war like no other the United States had ever fought. It began with the bombing of Saddam Hussein's bunker and ended with statues of the Iraqi dictator being toppled in downtown Baghdad, and it marked a turning point in America's relations with its enemies, its allies, and its sense of itself. Yet most Americans experienced the war as impressionistic and often confusing—the story of one battle here, one unit there, a report from one city, then another, without the larger context we so urgently needed. Each reporter had his "slice" of the war, it seemed, but no one had the whole story or the broad view. A Time of Our Choosing fills that gap brilliantly, drawing on the unparalleled resources and reportage of The New York Times. Todd S. Purdum, one of the paper's most gifted storytellers, traces the war in Iraq from the first rumblings after 9/11, to the diplomatic recriminations at the United Nations, to the battles themselves and their aftermath. He deftly rolls out the whole canvas before our eyes, showing how the individual "slices" fit together into a single, gripping drama. Purdum also explores the complex legacy of America's near-unilateral action. Since the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush has vowed that the United States would confront its enemies "at a time of our choosing," and Purdum shows in vivid terms what this choice has meant for our now transformed world.
Download or read book The Violent American Century written by John W. Dower and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2017-03-20 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Tells how America, since the end of World War II, has turned away from its ideals and goodness to become a match setting the world on fire” (Seymour Hersh, investigative journalist and national security correspondent). World War II marked the apogee of industrialized “total war.” Great powers savaged one another. Hostilities engulfed the globe. Mobilization extended to virtually every sector of every nation. Air war, including the terror bombing of civilians, emerged as a central strategy of the victorious Anglo-American powers. The devastation was catastrophic almost everywhere, with the notable exception of the United States, which exited the strife unmatched in power and influence. The death toll of fighting forces plus civilians worldwide was staggering. The Violent American Century addresses the US-led transformations in war conduct and strategizing that followed 1945—beginning with brutal localized hostilities, proxy wars, and the nuclear terror of the Cold War, and ending with the asymmetrical conflicts of the present day. The military playbook now meshes brute force with a focus on non-state terrorism, counterinsurgency, clandestine operations, a vast web of overseas American military bases, and—most touted of all—a revolutionary new era of computerized “precision” warfare. In contrast to World War II, postwar death and destruction has been comparatively small. By any other measure, it has been appalling—and shows no sign of abating. The author, recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, draws heavily on hard data and internal US planning and pronouncements in this concise analysis of war and terror in our time. In doing so, he places US policy and practice firmly within the broader context of global mayhem, havoc, and slaughter since World War II—always with bottom-line attentiveness to the human costs of this legacy of unceasing violence. “Dower delivers a convincing blow to publisher Henry Luce’s benign ‘American Century’ thesis.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Tales of the Out the Gone written by Amiri Baraka and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Controversial literary legend Amiri Baraka's new short story collection will shock and awe.
Download or read book Surprise Security and the American Experience written by John Lewis Gaddis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005-10-31 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative book, a distinguished Cold War historian argues that September 11, 2001, was not the first time a surprise attack shattered American assumptions about national security and reshaped American grand strategy.
Download or read book Shock Awe in America written by Thomas Bayuk and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2009-05-13 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this brief, readable time, Bayuk (Coping and Prevailing, 1986, etc.) recounts a lifetime of pulling away from and moving closer to God, before finally setting out to motivate others to do His will. In the prologue, the author tackles Americas current ambivalence about the churchs role in society. This section contains provocative statements and stories that take aim at the current trend toward political correctness, with its strict separation of God from government. In his points to ponder, Bayuk notes meaningfully that a statue of Moses holding the Ten Commandments stares down from the top of the Supreme Court building. On the whole, however, the author focuses on his vacillating relationship with God. Bayuk, who has written two books about coping with his multiple sclerosis, turns his struggles into warmhearted stories. He recalls in detail his long and happy relationship with his wife, his glory days of welling commercial real state, the ups and downs of owning a deli and a diner and of having learned to live with his disease. Throughout, the author recounts being torn between following his free will and following what he perceived as Gods instructions. However, his major defiance of Gods will seems to have been his reluctance to attend church. Bayuk recalls that he refused to go to mass for years, feeling frustrated when he spent hours at Pentecostal services and guilty when he did not. Readers may not view these moments as the powerful conflicts of God that Bayuk presents them as. The author later describes miracles that have occurred since he has become more spiritually involved. Here again, the reader may see his helpful daughter, a reconciliation between parents and children and the brother who raises some cash in a time of need, not as miracles but simply as blessings. Also, while the author is an engaging storyteller, hes also a bit repetitious. Nevertheless, Bayuk writes convincingly about the satisfactions of a faith-based life. A handy night stand book for those seeking spiritual affirmation.
Download or read book The Men Who Lost America written by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 876 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questioning popular belief, a historian and re-examines what exactly led to the British Empire’s loss of the American Revolution. The loss of America was an unexpected defeat for the powerful British Empire. Common wisdom has held that incompetent military commanders and political leaders in Britain must have been to blame, but were they? This intriguing book makes a different argument. Weaving together the personal stories of ten prominent men who directed the British dimension of the war, historian Andrew O’Shaughnessy dispels the incompetence myth and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve their surprising victory. In interlinked biographical chapters, the author follows the course of the war from the perspectives of King George III, Prime Minister Lord North, military leaders including General Burgoyne, the Earl of Sandwich, and others who, for the most part, led ably and even brilliantly. Victories were frequent, and in fact the British conquered every American city at some stage of the Revolutionary War. Yet roiling political complexities at home, combined with the fervency of the fighting Americans, proved fatal to the British war effort. The book concludes with a penetrating assessment of the years after Yorktown, when the British achieved victories against the French and Spanish, thereby keeping intact what remained of the British Empire. “A remarkable book about an important but curiously underappreciated subject: the British side of the American Revolution. With meticulous scholarship and an eloquent writing style, O'Shaughnessy gives us a fresh and compelling view of a critical aspect of the struggle that changed the world.”—Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
Download or read book The Unraveling written by Emma Sky and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Emma Sky volunteered to help rebuild Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, she had little idea what she was getting in to. Her assignment was only supposed to last three months. She went on to serve there longer than any other senior military or diplomatic figure, giving her an unrivaled perspective of the entire conflict. As the representative of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Kirkuk in 2003 and then the political advisor to US General Odierno from 2007-2010, Sky was valued for her knowledge of the region and her outspoken voice. She became a tireless witness to American efforts to transform a country traumatized by decades of war, sanctions, and brutal dictatorship; to insurgencies and civil war; to the planning and implementation of the surge and the subsequent drawdown of US troops; to the corrupt political elites who used sectarianism to mobilize support; and to the takeover of a third of the country by the Islamic State. With sharp detail and tremendous empathy, Sky provides unique insights into the US military as well as the complexities, diversity, and evolution of Iraqi society. The Unraveling is an intimate insider's portrait of how and why the Iraq adventure failed and contains a unique analysis of the course of the war. Highlighting how nothing that happened in Iraq after 2003 was inevitable, Sky exposes the failures of the policies of both Republicans and Democrats, and the lessons that must be learned about the limitations of power.
Download or read book The End of Loyalty written by Rick Wartzman and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having a good, stable job used to be the bedrock of the American Dream. Not anymore. In this richly detailed and eye-opening book, Rick Wartzman chronicles the erosion of the relationship between American companies and their workers. Through the stories of four major employers--General Motors, General Electric, Kodak, and Coca-Cola--he shows how big businesses once took responsibility for providing their workers and retirees with an array of social benefits. At the height of the post-World War II economy, these companies also believed that worker pay needed to be kept high in order to preserve morale and keep the economy humming. Productivity boomed. But the corporate social contract didn't last. By tracing the ups and downs of these four corporate icons over seventy years, Wartzman illustrates just how much has been lost: job security and steadily rising pay, guaranteed pensions, robust health benefits, and much more. Charting the Golden Age of the '50s and '60s; the turbulent years of the '70s and '80s; and the growth of downsizing, outsourcing, and instability in the modern era, Wartzman's narrative is a biography of the American Dream gone sideways. Deeply researched and compelling, The End of Loyalty will make you rethink how Americans can begin to resurrect the middle class. Finalist for the Los Angeles Times book prize in current interestA best business book of the year in economics, Strategy+Business
Download or read book Armed Humanitarians written by Nathan Hodge and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 2003, President George W. Bush declared victory in Iraq. But while we won the war, we catastrophically lost the peace. Our failure prompted a fundamental change in our foreign policy. Confronted with the shortcomings of "shock and awe," the U.S. military shifted its focus to "stability operations": counterinsurgency and the rebuilding of failed states. In less than a decade, foreign assistance has become militarized; humanitarianism has been armed. Combining recent history and firsthand reporting, Armed Humanitarians traces how the concepts of nation-building came into vogue, and how, evangelized through think tanks, government seminars, and the press, this new doctrine took root inside the Pentagon and the State Department. Following this extraordinary experiment in armed social work as it plays out from Afghanistan and Iraq to Africa and Haiti, Nathan Hodge exposes the difficulties of translating these ambitious new theories into action. Ultimately seeing this new era in foreign relations as a noble but flawed experiment, he shows how armed humanitarianism strains our resources, deepens our reliance on outsourcing and private contractors, and leads to perceptions of a new imperialism, arguably a major factor in any number of new conflicts around the world. As we attempt to build nations, we may in fact be weakening our own. Nathan Hodge is a Washington, D.C.-based writer who specializes in defense and national security. He has reported from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, and a number of other countries in the Middle East and former Soviet Union. He is the author, with Sharon Weinberger, of A Nuclear Family Vacation, and his work has appeared in Slate, the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and many other newspapers and magazines.
