This report analyzes the golden hour-the early phase of a postconflict stability operation-and the actions, organization, and capabilities necessary to seize it and set the conflict-affected country on a path to self-sustaining peace. There is evidence that the early phases of postconflict operations are critical for improving the odds of success and reducing the eventual costs of achieving an acceptable outcome.

An Epic Saga of Two Families Living on Opposite Sides of Slavery in Pre-civil War South
It's 1852 in the Delta of Mississippi, and the choice to sell one slave sets in motion a series of tragic events for two families on a cotton plantation.
What if the nightmare you feared your entire life became a reality in one day? Without notice, Thomas is snatched from all he knows and placed in an unjust world of cruelty. Back at Arledge Hall plantation, his parents, Joe and Lucy, grieve his absence, but are powerless to help their firstborn son. When Joe stands up to the neighboring plantation's overseer, he invites vengeance on his son, which causes Thomas to run.
The Banks family is at odds with the decision to sell their slave Thomas. When a new book circulates the country, raising questions about their southern way of life, the family faces opposition, not only with each other, but with their neighbors as well, especially since they have family members in the north. What follows is unthinkable for them all, but Joe's courageous faith shines in the face of an evil that threatens the occupants of Arledge Hall.
 How can a slave have such an impact on a landowner's family as they endure cruel tragedy while approaching the threat of war? And can that impact be welcomed by the landowner who blames him for their grief?
Spend almost a decade at Arledge Hall in this first book of the trilogy, and discover why you'll want to visit again and again.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States, NATO, the United Nations, and a range of other states and nongovernmental organizations have become increasingly involved in nation-building operations. Nation-building involves the use of armed force as part of a broader effort to promote political and economic reforms, with the objective of transforming a society emerging from conflict into one at peace with itself and its neighbors. This guidebook is a practical ?how-to? manual on the conduct of effective nation-building. It is organized around the constituent elements that make up any nation-building mission: military, police, rule of law, humanitarian relief, governance, economic stabilization, democratization, and development. The chapters describe how each of these components should be organized and employed, how much of each is likely to be needed, and the likely cost. The lessons are drawn principally from 16 U.S.- and UN-led nation-building operations since World War II and from a forthcoming study on European-led missions. In short, this guidebook presents a comprehensive history of best practices in nation-building and serves as an indispensable reference for the preplanning of future interventions and for contingency planning on the ground.

In emergency medicine, ôthe golden hourö is the first hour after injury during which treatment greatly increases survivability. In post-conflict transition terminology, it is the first year after hostilities end. Without steadily improving conditions then, popular support declines and chances for economic, political, and social transformation begin to evaporate. James Stephenson believes we have lost Iraq's golden hour. A veteran of postconflict reconstruction on three continents, he ran the Iraq mission of the Agency for International Development in 2004û05 with more than a thousand employees and expatriate contractors. The Coalition Provisional Authority, which oversaw the largest reconstruction and nation-building exercise ever, was a dysfunctional organization the Department of Defense cobbled together with temporary employees and a few experienced professionals from the State Department and other agencies. Iraqis soon became disillusioned, and the insurgency grew. Losing the Golden Hour tells of hubris, incompetence, courage, fear, and duty. It is about foreign assistance professionals trying to overcome the mistakes of an ill-conceived occupation and help Iraqis create a nation after decades of despair. Neither criticizing nor defending U.S. foreign policy, Stephenson offers an informed assessment of Iraq's future. Selected for the Diplomats and Diplomacy Book Series of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired.

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER A remarkable thriller debut of twenty-first-century espionage, by a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State who “knows where all the bodies are buried—literally" (W. E. B. Griffin). The Golden Hour: In international politics, the hundred hours following a coup, when there is still a chance that diplomacy, a secret back channel, military action—something—may reverse the chain of events. As the director of the new State Department Crisis Reaction Unit, Judd Ryker gets a chance to prove that his theory of the Golden Hour actually works, when there’s a coup in Mali. But in the real world, those hours include things he’s never even imagined. As Ryker races from Washington to Europe and across the Sahara Desert, he finds that personalities, loyalties—everything he thought he knew—begin to shift beneath his feet, and that friends and enemies come in many forms.