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  T-54 55 - The Soviet Army's Cold...

  Anthony Tucker-Jones

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  The Soviet T-54/55 is probably the best-known tank of the Cold War, and it was produced in greater numbers that any other tank in history. It first went into service just after the Second World War and over 70,000 were made, and its design was so successful that it even outlasted its successor the T-62. For a generation it formed the backbone of the armored forces of the Warsaw Pact and it was exported all over the world, remaining in the front-line until the 1990s. This photographic history in the Images of War series by Anthony Tucker-Jones is the ideal introduction to it. In over 150 archive photographs and a detailed analytical text, he traces the design and development of the T-54/55 and records its operational history. He describes how it was conceived as a main battle tank, an all-rounder, contrasting with the light, medium and heavy tanks produced in the past, and it proved to be extraordinarily effective. It was as adaptable as it was long-lasting, different versions being produced by China, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania. Its relatively simple design also meant it was easy to maintain even in difficult conditions and it was used by armies across the Third World, in particular in wars in Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Somalia. Anthony Tucker-Jones's history of this remarkable armored vehicle will be absorbing reading for tank enthusiasts and a valuable source for modelers.

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  Hope in the Dark - Untold...

  Rebecca Solnit

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  “[A] landmark book . . . Solnit illustrates how the uprisings that begin on the streets can upend the status quo and topple authoritarian regimes” (Vice).   A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of activists at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them—and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable.   Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of our times in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book.   “One of the best books of the 21st century.” —The Guardian   “No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that’s marked this new millennium.” —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author of Falter   “An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways.” —The New Yorker

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  The Spies Who Never Were - The...

  Hervie Haufler

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  After the fall of France in the mid-1940s, Adolf Hitler faced a British Empire that refused to negotiate for peace. With total war looming, he ordered the Abwehr, Germany's defense and intelligence organization, to carry out Operation Lena—a program to place information-gathering spies within Britain. 
  Quickly, a network of secret agents spread within the United Kingdom and across the British Empire. A master of disguises, a professional safecracker, a scrubwoman, a diplomat's daughter—they all reported news of the Allied defenses and strategies back to their German spymasters. One Yugoslav playboy codenamed "Tricycle" infiltrated the highest echelon of British society and is said to have been one of Ian Fleming's models for James Bond. 
  The stunning truth, though, was that every last one of these German spies had been captured and turned by the British. As double agents, they sent a canny mix of truth and misinformation back to Hitler, all carefully controlled by the Allies. As one British report put it: "By means of the double agent system, we actually ran and controlled the German espionage system in this country."

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  Hearts and Minds - The Battle...

  Oliver Letwin

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  An important new book by one of Britain's great liberal thinkers, Hearts and Minds is part memoir, part political history and part history of ideas.
  In it, former Cabinet minister Oliver Letwin explains how the central ideas and policies of the modern Conservative party came into being, how they have played out over the period from Mrs Thatcher to Mrs May, and what needs to happen next in order to make the country a better place to live.
  Far from being a sugar-coated version of events, Letwin tells a story that he hopes will persuade readers that politicians are capable of recognising their mistakes and learning from them – and will show that social and economic liberalism, if correctly conceived, are capable of addressing the issues that confront us today.
  The book also describes Letwin's own journey from a remarkable childhood with American academic parents, via Margaret Thatcher's policy unit, into the very centre of first the Conservative—Liberal Democrat coalition, and then the Cameron government, where, as Minister for Government Policy and then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, every piece of government policy crossed his desk.
  It includes Letwin's personal reflections on two devastating electoral events: the EU referendum and the general election of June 2017.

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  Vote for US - How to Take Back...

  Joshua A. Douglas

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  In contrast to the anxiety surrounding our voting system, with stories about voter suppression and manipulation, there are actually quite a few positive initiatives toward voting rights reform. Professor Joshua A. Douglas, an expert on our electoral system, examines these encouraging developments in this inspiring audiobook about how regular Americans are working to take back their democracy, one community at a time.Told through the narratives of those working on positive voting rights reforms, Douglas includes chapters on expanding voter eligibility, easing voter registration rules, making voting more convenient, enhancing accessibility at the polls, providing voters with more choices, finding ways to comply with voter ID rules, giving redistricting back to the voters, pushing back on big money through local and state efforts, using journalism to make the system more accountable, and improving civics education.Unusually accessible for a lay audience and thoroughly researched, this audiobook gives anyone fed up with our current political environment the ideas and tools necessary to affect change in their own communities.

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  Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam...

  Lloyd C. Gardner, Marilyn B. Young

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  Essays by Christian G. Appy, Andrew J. Bacevich, John Prados, and others offer “history at its best, meaning, at its most useful.” —Howard Zinn   From the launch of the “Shock and Awe” invasion in March 2003 through President George W. Bush’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished” two months later, the war in Iraq was meant to demonstrate definitively that the United States had learned the lessons of Vietnam. This new book makes clear that something closer to the opposite is true—that US foreign policy makers have learned little from the past, even as they have been obsessed with the “Vietnam Syndrome.”  Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam brings together the country’s leading historians of the Vietnam experience. Examining the profound changes that have occurred in the country and the military since the Vietnam War, this book assembles a distinguished group to consider how America found itself once again in the midst of a quagmire—and the continuing debate about the purpose and exercise of American power.   Also includes contributions from: Alex Danchev * David Elliott * Elizabeth L. Hillman * Gabriel Kolko * Walter LaFeber * Wilfried Mausbach * Alfred W. McCoy * Gareth Porter   “Essential.” —Bill Moyers

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