DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "John Brown, Soldier of Fortune: A Critique" by Hill Peebles Wilson. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

The founder of Soldier of Fortune magazine tells his own story, from Green Beret to trailblazing combat zone journalist. In 1975, former Green Beret Robert K. Brown found his true calling as the publisher of an upstart magazine called Soldier of Fortune. Brown pushed the bounds of journalism with his untamed brand of reporting—a camera in one hand, a gun in the other. He quickly established a worldwide community as his notorious magazine drew the avid attention of action-seekers across the globe. Brown and his combat journalists embedded themselves with anti-Communist guerillas and freedom fighters, often training and fighting alongside the groups they reported on. Brown himself accompanied teams to work and fight with the Rhodesians; the Afghans during the Afghan-Russo war; Christian Phalange in Lebanon; ethnic minority Karens in Burma; the ethnic tribes fighting the Communist government of Laos; the army of El Salvador; and the armed forces of struggling Croatia. Brown also sent medical teams to Burma, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Afghanistan, Bosnia, El Salvador. and Nicaragua, as well as Peru after a devastating earthquake. In I Am Soldier of Fortune, the exploits of Brown and his veteran teams are revealed for the first time in all their gonzo glory, even as the US military, public, and polite diplomatic society sometimes shunned their endeavors.

John Brown Gordon’s career of prominent public service spanned four of America’s most turbulent decades. Born in Upson County, Georgia, in 1832, Gordon practiced law in Atlanta and, in the years immediately preceding the Civil War, developed coal mines in northwest Georgia. In 1861, he responded to the Confederate call to arms by raising a company of volunteers. His subsequent rise from captain to corps commander was unmatched in the Army of Northern Virginia. He emerged from the Civil War as one of the South’s most respected generals, and the reputation that Gordon earned while “wearing the gray” significantly influenced almost every aspect of his life during the next forty years. After the Civil War, Gordon drifted into politics. He was elected to the United States Senate in 2873 and quickly established himself as a spokesman for Georgia and for the South as a whole. He eloquently defended the integrity of southern whites while fighting to restore home rule. In addition to safeguarding and promoting southern interests, Gordon strove to replace sectional antagonisms with a commitment to building a stronger, more unified nation. His efforts throughout his post-war career contributed significantly to the process of national reconciliation. Even in the wake of charges of corruption that surrounded his resignation from the Senate in 1880, Gordon remained an extremely popular man in the South. He engaged in a variety of speculative business ventures, served as governor of Georgia, and returned for another term in the Senate before he retired permanently from public office. He devoted his final years to lecture tours, to serving as commander-in-chief of the United Confederate Veterans, and to writing his memoirs, Reminiscences of the Civil War. Utilizing newspapers, scattered manuscript collections, and official records, Ralph Eckert presents a critical biography of Gordon that analyzes all areas of his career. As one of the few Confederates to command a corps without the benefit of previous military training, Gordon provides a fascinating example of a Civil War citizen-soldier. Equally interesting, however, were Gordon’s postwar activities and the often conflicting responsibilities that he felt as a southerner and an American. The contributions that Gordon made to Georgia, to the South, and to the United States during this period are arguably as important as any of his career.

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The “fast-paced, fascinating, often shocking” account of hired guns and their heroic adventures in hotspots around the world—includes photos (Milwaukee Journal). Merc is a classic; first published in 1979, its characters and stories are as vivid and worthy of retelling today. American soldiers of fortune have seen action on nearly every battlefield in history—from the Revolutionary War to modern times, men like John Early, a member of the famed Selous Scouts who hunted terrorists in Rhodesia. They fight because they enjoy combat, for causes in which they passionately believe, for money, or simply for adventure. The mercs profiled in this book range from West Point graduates and Harvard poets to former CIA agents and ex-cons. They are men like William Morgan, a guerrilla leader in the Cuban uprising against Fulgencio Batista, later imprisoned and executed by Fidel Castro; David Marcus, raised in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, who went on to a brilliant career in law and reform politics and died in 1947 fighting for the survival of a tiny new nation called Israel; William Brooks, Vietnam Special Forces veteran who, down and out in a cheap Paris hotel, joined the French Foreign Legion and ended up in a remote African outpost where he lived on Coke, salt tablets, and paregoric while fighting Somali insurgents; and George Bacon, an ex-CIA operative in Laos with mysterious connections, who died fighting Cubans in Angola. Because their private histories parallel the larger history of unconventional warfare and political upheaval, Merc provides insight into global conflicts—but most of all it is a fast-paced, eye-opening account of a little-known but fascinating way of life.