Fighting Elites

Fighting Elites
Author: John C. Fredriksen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2011-12-12
Genre: History
ISBN:

From Army Rangers to Green Berets to the U.S. Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden, this book explains what makes Special Forces "special," covering the rich and varied history of elite formations in American military history and describing their recruitment, intense training, and equipment in depth. Most civilians have only a vague idea of what the U.S. Special Forces are all about—who they are, how they differ from our "normal" military forces, what they've accomplished throughout our history, and how they operate today. Fighting Elites: A History of U.S. Special Forces examines the rich and varied history of U.S. Special Forces, identifies their contributions to specific conflicts from colonial times forward, and highlights their present operational excellence. In this first-ever reference guide to U.S. Special Forces, military historian John C. Fredriksen provides a carefully balanced presentation, describing all units in their own detailed section that discusses their origins, recruitment, training, tactics, and equipment, and defining military engagements, if known. The text also contains 20 biographical entries of noted personalities associated with special purpose activities.

World War II Street-Fighting Tactics

World War II Street-Fighting Tactics
Author: Stephen Bull
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2012-12-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782008462

In a continuation of the tactics mini-series, this book analyzes the physical tactics of the close-quarter fighting that took place in ruined cities during World War II. Street-to-street fighting in cities was not a new development, but the bombed-out shells of cities and advances in weaponry meant that World War II took such strategies to a new level of savagery and violence. Packed with eye-witness accounts, tutorials from original training manuals, maps, and full-colour artwork, this is an eye-opening insight into the tactics and experiences of infantry fighting their way through ruined cities in the face of heavy casualty rates and vicious resistance.

Cavalry

Cavalry
Author: V. Vukšić
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1999-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781854095008

Over 100 color paintings of mounted cavalry through the centuries--in the most spectacularly illustrated book on the subject ever published--highlight this tribute to 2,500 years of history's most fascinating fighting force. From the early rise of Assyrians, Persians, Carthaginians, and Romans, view the ascendency of Parthians, Goths, Byzantines, Mongols, and the Ottoman Empire, and follow it to the 20th-century triumphs of Texas Rangers, Russian Cossacks, Bengal Lancers, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Elite Fighting Forces

Elite Fighting Forces
Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Thames and Hudson
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-04-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780500251768

The most authoritative and up-to-date account available on special forces in history, with texts by noted military historians. Many of the most famous fighting forces in history have been elite units, trained and equipped for particular tasks, whether as imperial guards, shock troops, fighter pilots, or behind-enemy-lines special forces. This highly illustrated survey covers fifty-two such units, from the Persian Immortals of 2,500 years ago to the Delta Force and Green Berets today. These forces are distinguished by: • a willingness to fight to the death (the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae; the Knights of Malta) • a spearhead role (Alexander the Great’s Companion Cavalry; the Mongol Keshik; the Aztec Military Orders) • specialist skills and endurance (Edward III’s longbow men; Navy Seals) • reliability and loyalty to a leader or cause (the Zulu Impis; Mosby’s Rangers in the Civil War) Each profile lists important dates and includes a key battle and quotations from contemporary sources. The wide range of illustrations includes battle scenes and special uniforms and insignia.

The Europe of Elites

The Europe of Elites
Author: Heinrich Best
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2012-03-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191628387

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. It has been widely acknowledged that the process of European integration and unification was started and is still pursued as an elite project, designed to put an end to debilitating conflicts and rivalries by consolidating a common power base and by pooling Europe's economic resources. Nevertheless elites have remained the known unknowns of the European integration process. The present volume is designed to change this. Based on surveys of political and economic elites in 18 European countries, it is a comprehensive study of the visions, fears, cognitions and values of members of national parliaments and top business leaders underlying their attitudes towards European integration. It also investigates political and economic elites' embeddedness in transnational networks and their ability to communicate in multicultural settings. The book strongly supports the view of an elitist character of the process of European integration on the one hand, while challenging the idea that European national elites have merged or are even merging into a coherent Eurelite on the other. As the 11 chapters of this book show the process of European integration is much more colourful and even contradictory than concepts of a straight forward normative and structural integration suggest. In particular this process is deeply rooted in, and conditional on, the social and political settings in national contexts. The empirical basis for this book is provided by the data of the international IntUne project, which has for the first time created a comprehensive database combining coordinated surveys of Europe-related attitudes at the elite and general population level.

Battle for Our Minds

Battle for Our Minds
Author: Michael Widlanski
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2012-03-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1451659059

From political communications expert Dr. Michael Widlanski comes a rich and detailed portrayal of how intellectual arrogance and complacency in our government has led to a failure to effectively use counter-terrorism intelligence. When 3,000 people were murdered in simultaneous terror attacks on September 11, 2001, The New York Times said the attacks came “out of the blue.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Arab-Islamic terrorists had been attacking the West for a decade—in Arabia and Africa, but the attacks began to focus on America itself with the World Trade Center strike in 1993. Dr. Michael Widlanski describes other attacks and plots that were largely forgiven, ignored, or botched by academia, media, and government in this provocative book. He paints a chilling portrait of how our top analytical institutions were unaware as terrorists bragged about their plans, in mosques in New York and New Jersey, while professors, the media, the FBI, the CIA, and CNN all dropped the ball. Terrorists want to get into our head, not into our house. Their goal is not seizing territory, but rather, controlling the mind—including manipulating communication and public opinion. Combating terror means fighting on the battlefield of the mind. Battle for Our Minds confronts this battle, and shows how the West has been defeating itself. Timely, informative, and thoroughly researched, this is an eye-opening portrayal of the top echelons of our country’s counter-terrorism system.

Perspectives of National Elites on European Citizenship

Perspectives of National Elites on European Citizenship
Author: Nicolò Conti
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2014-04-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317995759

Over the last two decades, the process of European integration has become interwoven with the theme of citizenship and the debate on the democratic quality of the EU and of its institutions has become more salient. What are the views about Europe which emerge when we interrogate the national elites of the four large South European countries, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and what is their vision of a supra-national citizenship in its different facets? Are these views sufficiently homogeneous and do they distinguish themselves from those of the rest of the European Union to the point of enabling us to talk about a "distinctive region of Europe"? Which interpretation(s) of European citizenship emerges from a systematic exploration of these opinions? Using a set of survey and textual data collected in the framework of the IntUne project, the authors attempt to provide some original answers to these questions. This book was published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.

Halo: Envoy

Halo: Envoy
Author: Tobias S. Buckell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2017-04-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501106880

An original full-length novel set in the Halo universe and based on the New York Times bestselling video game series! It has been six years since the end of the Covenant War...and yet on the planet Carrow, a world on the edge of the Joint Occupation Zone, a decisive new battle suddenly erupts. Human colonists and the alien Sangheili have already been living a tension-filled coexistence in this place, with Unified Earth Government envoy Melody Azikiwe attempting to broker a lasting peace between their two species. But as civil war now engulfs the Sangheili, Melody must act on an additional covert assignment courtesy of the Office of Naval Intelligence: free the SPARTAN-IIs known as Gray Team, held in stasis since the end of the war by a cunning Elite fleetmaster consumed with vengeance. And none can anticipate the ongoing violence leading to the discovery of an even greater, unstoppable threat—one hidden for eons below the surface of the planet...

The Elite Forces Handbook of Unarmed Combat

The Elite Forces Handbook of Unarmed Combat
Author: Ron Shillingford
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2001-08-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780312264369

Examines techniques used by special forces around the world: the lethal strikes of the Spetsnaz, locks and constrictions used by the Egyptian special forces, U.S. Army throws and holds, and elementary methods taught to Britain's Parachute Regiment.