With a post* describing SEAL efforts in Afghanistan,The Warrior Elite takes you into the toughest, longest, and mostrelentless military training in the world. What does it take to become a Navy SEAL? What makes talented,intelligent young men volunteer for physical punishment, coldwater, and days without sleep? In The Warrior Elite, former NavySEAL Dick Couch documents the process that transforms young meninto warriors. SEAL training is the distillation of the humanspirit, a tradition-bound ordeal that seeks to find men withcharacter, courage, and the burning desire to win at all costs, menwho would rather die than quit.

March 23, 2003: U.S. Marines from the Task Force Tarawa arecaught up in one of the most unexpected battles of the Iraq War.What started off as a routine maneuver to secure two key bridges inthe town of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq degenerated into anightmarish twenty-four-hour urban clash in which eighteen youngMarines lost their lives and more than thirty-five others werewounded. It was the single heaviest loss suffered by the U.S.military during the initial combat phase of the war. On that fateful day, Marines came across the burned-out remains ofa U.S. Army convoy that had been ambushed by Saddam Hussein’sforces outside Nasiriyah. In an attempt to rescue the missingsoldiers and seize the bridges before the Iraqis could destroythem, the Marines decided to advance their attack on the city bytwenty-four hours. What happened next is a gripping and gruesometale of military blunders, tragedy, and heroism. Huge M1 tanks leading the attack were rendered ineffective whenthey became mired in an open sewer. Then a

The Boys’ Crusade is the great historian PaulFussell’s unflinching and unforgettable account of the Americaninfantryman’s experiences in Europe during World War II. Based inpart on the author’s own experiences, it provides a stirringnarrative of what the war was actually like, from the point of viewof the children—for children they were—who fought it. While dealingdefinitively with issues of strategy, leadership, context, andtactics, Fussell has an additional purpose: to tear away the veilof feel-good mythology that so often obscures and sanitizes war’sbrutal essence. “A chronicle should deal with nothing but the truth,” Fussellwrites in his Preface. Accord-ingly, he eschews every kind ofsentimentalism, focusing instead on the raw action and humanemotion triggered by the intimacy, horror, and intense sorrows ofwar, and honestly addressing the errors, waste, fear, misery, andresentments that plagued both sides. In the vast literature onWorld War II, The Boys’ Crusade stands

"The letters provide a nostalgic timeline of American historytold through the words and feelings of Americans, from regularfolks to kings." —Star Gazette, Elmira, NY, Dec. '05 "There are more than 80 letters, reflecting both our history andour very American sense that when we speak, our president shouldlisten." —The Arizona Republic, Dec. '05 Drawn from the extensive holdings of the National Archives—whichincludes all of the Presidential libraries—these carefully chosenletters remind us that ours is a government "of the people, by thepeople, and for the people," which entitles us to make our viewsknown to our leaders. Most of the letters come from workingcitizens; others were written by notable figures: John Glenn, ElvisPresley, Walt Disney, Ho Chi Minh, Nikita Kruschev, Upton Sinclair,John Steinbeck, Robert Kennedy, and many more. Grouped thematically, the sections cover such topics as civilrights, the Cold War, physical fitness, joblessness, World War II,western expansion, and the space race. An

John Julius Norwich’s A History of Venice has been dubbed“indispensable” by none other than Jan Morris. Now, in his secondbook on the city once known as La Serenissima, Norwich advances thestory in this elegant chronicle of a hundred years of Venice’shighs and lows, from its ignominious capture by Napoleon in 1797 tothe dawn of the 20th century. An obligatory stop on the Grand Tour for any cultured Englishman(and, later, Americans), Venice limped into the 19th century–firstunder the yoke of France, then as an outpost of the AustrianHapsburgs, stripped of riches yet indelibly the most ravishing cityin Italy. Even when subsumed into a unified Italy in 1866, itremained a magnet for aesthetes of all stripes–subject or settingof books by Ruskin and James, a muse to poets and musicians, in itsway the most gracious courtesan of all European cities. Byrefracting images of Venice through the visits of such extravagant(and sometimes debauched) artists as Lord Byron, Richard Wagner,and the inimi

This brief and illuminating account of the ideas of worldorder prevalent in the Elizabethan age and later is anindispensable companion for readers of the great writers of thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Shakespeare and the Elizabethandramatists, Donne and Milton, among many others. The basic medievalidea of an ordered Chain of Being is studied by Professor Tillyardin the process of its various transformations by the dynamic spiritof the Renaissance. Among his topics are: Angels; the Stars andFortunes; the Analogy between Macrocosm and Microcosm; the FourElements; the Four Humours; Sympathies; Correspondences; and theCosmic Dance—ideas and symbols which inspirited the minds andimaginations not only of the Elizabethans but of all men of theRenaissance.

The fighting that waged across the Philippines during WorldWar II ranks among the most vicious in the annals of war. Nearly80,000 Americans and Filipinos were taken prisoner on Bataan, thename of which is forever linked with the notorious "death march."During the three years that Japan occupied the archipelago, 130,000American and Filipinos were killed. Prisoners in Japanese prisoncamps were 10 times as likely to die in captivity as soldiers heldby the Germans. When they returned to retake the islands, Americantroops preferred not to take any prisoners at all. Gerald Astorgives voice to the soldiers who participated in this gruesomeperiod of world military history. --This text refers to an outof print or unavailable edition of this title.

In mid-1943 James Megellas, known as “Maggie” to his fellowparatroopers, joined the 82d Airborne Division, his new “home” forthe duration. His first taste of combat was in the rugged mountainsoutside Naples. In October 1943, when most of the 82d departed Italy to prepare forthe D-Day invasion of France, Lt. Gen. Mark Clark, the Fifth Armycommander, requested that the division’s 504th Parachute InfantryRegiment, Maggie’s outfit, stay behind for a daring new operationthat would outflank the Nazis’ stubborn defensive lines and openthe road to Rome. On 22 January 1944, Megellas and the rest of the504th landed across the beach at Anzio. Following initial success,Fifth Army’s amphibious assault, Operation Shingle, bogged down inthe face of heavy German counterattacks that threatened to drivethe Allies into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Anzio turned into a fiasco, oneof the bloodiest Allied operations of the war. Not until April werethe remnants of the regiment withdrawn and shipped to England torecover, reo

The Watergate scandal began with a break-in at the office ofthe Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel on June17, 1971, and ended when President Gerald Ford granted Richard M.Nixon a pardon on September 8, 1974, one month after Nixon resignedfrom office in disgrace. Effectively removed from the reach ofprosecutors, Nixon returned to California, uncontrite andunconvicted, convinced that time would exonerate him of anywrongdoing and certain that history would remember his greataccomplishments—the opening of China and the winding down of theVietnam War—and forget his “mistake,” the “pipsqueak thing” calledWatergate. In 1977, three years after his resignation, Nixon agreed to aseries of interviews with television personality David Frost.Conducted over twelve days, they resulted in twenty-eight hours oftaped material, which were aired on prime-time television andwatched by more than 50 million people worldwide. Nixon, a skilledlawyer by training, was paid $1 million for the i