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  Mysterious Losses of the USS...

  Editors Charles River

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  In April 1963, one of the most advanced U.S. hunter-killer nuclear submarines and the 129 men onboard vanished while on a routine voyage. The USS Thresher was one of the country’s most advanced ships, but it had the misfortune of becoming the first American nuclear submarine to be lost at sea, prompting obvious questions over what had happened. Had it accidentally collided with a Soviet ship? Was it destroyed by a new and secret Soviet weapon? Was it secretly captured and taken back to the Soviet Union to reveal its secrets? 
  For those who choose to make the careers as submariners, there is no more beloved service. That is, one hopes, how it was for the 99 men who were serving on the USS Scorpion on May 22, 1968, the fateful day the submarine is believed to have sank. It appears that the crew members died quickly, but however it happened, the grief experienced by their family members dragged on for decades, exacerbated both by the Navy’s lack of information about the submarine’s final moments and the government’s unwillingness to share what little knowledge it had. 
  It is easy in hindsight to criticize the military for its secrecy, but it must be remembered that the Scorpion disappeared at the height of the Cold War, and therefore, little could be said publicly about its fate. Coincidentally, 3 other nuclear submarines suffered mysterious sinkings the same year, and the Cold War adversaries were interested in locating them and gleaning any secrets or technology that they could from the other side’s bad luck. Indeed, it was only after the fall of the Soviet Union that the truth could be told, bringing closure to family members and a dark lesson in espionage to the American people.

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  No Place for Mercy

  Davis Truman

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  Where empire rose, mercy fell. 
  In No Place for Mercy, ancient Rome is unmasked—not as the marble-clad cradle of civilization, but as a brutal stage where sex, violence, and power played their most calculated roles. With a piercing lens, this provocative and deeply researched work reveals how sexual violence was not only a consequence of conquest but a deliberate tool of political manipulation and imperial propaganda. 
  From the mythologized Rape of the Sabine Women to the whispered scandals of imperial courts, No Place for Mercy exposes how Rome’s leaders wielded control over bodies as a means to control the narrative, transforming victims into symbols and violence into spectacle. 
  Drawing from primary sources, inscriptions, and visual art, this groundbreaking book explores how Roman elites exploited sexual violence to define citizenship, masculinity, and moral order. It challenges romanticized visions of antiquity and forces us to confront the uncomfortable truths beneath Rome’s glorious facade. 
  Bold, unflinching, and urgently relevant, this is history that speaks to today’s conversations about power, gender, and the weaponization of sexuality. For scholars, students, and anyone who dares to ask what lies beneath the empire’s polished stone, No Place for Mercy is an essential and unforgettable read.

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  How You Can Talk With God - A...

  Paramahansa Yogananda

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  Have you ever enjoyed your own personal conversations with God? In this series of short lectures, the celebrated author of Autobiography of a Yogi shares his personal insights and testimonies regarding the nature of God, and how each and every one of us can initiate talks with Him. 
  "Our love is the one thing God does not possess, unless we choose to bestow it. So, you see, even the Lord has something to attain: our love. And we shall never be happy until we give it." - Paramahansa Yogananda 
  "Yogananda dispels the notion held by most people that direct contact with God is beyond their reach...Millions of readers who were introduced to the spiritual wisdom of the East through "Autobiography of a Yogi" will find the same deep inspiration and wisdom in the pages of "How You Can Talk with God." - Arkansas State Press Review

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  The Art of War

  Sun Tzu

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  The world’s most influential treatise on strategy Mao Zedong used it to defeat Chiang Kai-shek. Colin Powell thinks every US soldier should be familiar with its principles. New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick built a football dynasty out of lessons learned within its pages. Even Gordon Gekko and Tony Soprano are fans. In the twenty-five hundred years since it was composed, The Art of War has been applied to just about every field of human endeavor. Sun Tzu’s shrewd advice is indispensible to anyone seeking to gain an advantage over an opponent.

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  America’s First Korean War: The...

  Editors Charles River

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  hips engaged in trade in Asia were at risk from pirates, and shipwrecked sailors were at the mercy of locals. Additionally, American whaling ships came to dominate the whaling trade in the Pacific and were also vulnerable to piracy and to incidents when they docked at Pacific ports to refresh supplies. American warships investigated incidents of piracy, including occasional punitive expeditions to punish pirates or their maltreatment of shipwrecked sailors. 
  Given the distances involved, the captains of warships had a great deal of discretion to commit their ships to action as they saw fit. Before they left port, they were usually given deliberately broad instructions by the Secretary of the Navy or by the President. U.S. ships got to Asia by way of Cape Horn at the tip of South America, or by the Cape of Good Hope around southern Africa, as there was no Suez Canal to shorten the very long voyage until 1869, and there was no easy communication between Washington and California until the transcontinental telegraph in 1861. California became a state in 1850, and the Navy was quick to establish a naval base there, setting up the Mare Island Navy Yard base near San Francisco in 1854. The first warship constructed there was in 1859. 
  An American warship was involved in a punitive expedition in the Pacific as early as 1813-14 at Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas. American naval landing forces fought battles at Quallah Batoo in 1831 and at Muckee in 1839, both in Sumatra. The Navy was involved in a battle in the Gilbert Islands in 1841. The Navy sometimes cooperated with the Royal Navy in actions against pirates off the Chinese coast and was involved in fighting in China in the 1850s and 1860s. There were incidents when American warships were involved not only in China, but also Vietnam and Japan. Americans participated in the violence in Japan as the Shogunate fell and the Meiji restoration began.

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  The Venlo Sting - MI6's Deadly...

  Norman Ridley

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  "I would recommend the book to intelligence practitioners, scholars, and other persons interested in World War II intelligence history." —Michael Nady, American Intelligence JournalOn 9 November 1939, two unsuspecting British agents of the Special Intelligence Services walked into a trap set by German Spymaster Reinhard Heydrich. Believing that they were meeting a dissident German general for talks about helping German military opposition to bring down Hitler and end the war, they were instead taken captive in the Dutch village of Venlo and whisked away to Germany for interrogation by the Gestapo. The incident was a huge embarrassment for the Dutch government and provided the Germans with significant intelligence about SIS operations throughout Europe.  The incident itself was an intelligence catastrophe but it also acts as a prism through which a number of other important narrative strands pass. Fundamental to the subterfuge perpetrated at Venlo were unsubstantiated but insistent rumours of high-ranking German generals plotting to overthrow the Nazi regime from within. After the humiliation suffered when Hitler tore up the Munich Agreement, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was anxious to see just how much truth there was in these stories; keen to rehabilitate his reputation through one last effort to find a peaceful rapprochement with Germany.  When Franz Fischer, a small-time petty crook and agent provocateur, persuaded British SIS operatives in the Netherlands that he could act as a go-between for the British government with disaffected German generals, the German Security chief Reinhard Heydrich stepped in and quietly took control of the operation. Heydrich’s boss, head of the Gestapo Heinrich Himmler, was anxious to explore the possibility of peace negotiations with Britain and saw an opportunity to exploit the situation for his personal benefit.  On the day before a crucial meeting of conspirators and British agents on the Dutch-German border, a bomb exploded in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich in the exact spot where Hitler had stood to deliver a speech only minutes earlier. The perpetrator was quickly arrested, and Hitler demanded that Himmler find evidence to show that the two events were intimately connected—the British agents were snatched hours later.  While the world was coming to terms with the fearsome power of German military might the British intelligence capability in northern Europe was consigned to the dustbin in the sleepy Dutch town of Venlo. This first full account of the Venlo incident explores the wider context of this German intelligence coup, and its consequences.

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