Dark Days for White Knights is the story of one Veteran's loss of innocence and his sojourn down a lonely corridor...a chronicle of his quest to recover something of what he lost in Vietnam. Combat veterans of every war and from every nation have been scarred by the atrocities of war. However, because of the rotation system implemented during the Vietnam War, the veterans of Vietnam straggled home, one by one, to be scattered across an increasingly hostile America. America seemed as foreign as Vietnam had once been, but these were no longer the boys who had dreamed of serving America. The dreams of many had died in the soul-sucking mud of fetid rice paddies. There are many novels about Vietnam, most of which highlight heroic actions in combat. Heroes are a part of all wars and their stories are exciting and important. Vietnam was no exception. The devotion the warriors shared for one another spawned many heroic actions...but perhaps the important lessons from Vietnam were about personal responsibility, misplaced trust and the ultimate cost of survival. In that light...Dark Days for White Knights is a unique perspective on a still controversial time in American history.

This memoir of an American woman’s life in Moscow traces the social and cultural evolution of Russia from the era of Krushchev to the era of Putin. In the mid-1960s, Naomi Collins was a graduate student at Moscow State University. As the 21st century began, she was the wife of the American Ambassador to Russia. In this insightful memoir, she shares her reflections and impressions of life as an American woman living in the Russian capital over the course of four decades. Rather than retracing the economic and political events of the period, Collins focuses her narrative on daily as it changed over the years. She offers fascinating anecdotal snapshots that reveal rare insight into the evolving state of the nation. “This book is like a script for a documentary spanning four decades when an especially astute and literate observer watched Russia emerge from stagnation and enter a period of dramatic economic, social, and political change and, on many fronts, upheaval.” —Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution

An Iraq War veteran’s firsthand account of surviving a deadly insurgent ambush against the 1st Cavalry Division—and battling through the aftermath. It was known as Black Sunday—April 4, 2004, when units of America’s 1st Cavalry Division saw their routine deployment turn into a harrowing and costly fight. Enraged, motivated, and well-armed insurgents crammed the alleys, streets, and buildings of Sadr City. In that fight, a surging mob of militants ambushed one small unit of the Black Knight battalion. The heroic rescue attempt proved fatal for many of the determined soldiers who braved the gauntlet. Cav veteran Matt Fisk—who fought through Black Sunday and survived—gives a gut-level, over-the-rifle-sights view of a short, violent period when one of the safest places in the war zone suddenly turned into a cauldron of death and destruction, leaving eight US troops dead and dozens wounded—only the beginning of a lengthy siege aimed at defeating the Mahdi Army. Fisk’s rugged deployment with colorful and courageous fellow soldiers would result in some serious problems when he returned home, testing his coping skills. He turned to the VA for help—and wound up with the same frustration that plagues so many of today’s returning combat veterans. It’s all here in Black Knights, Dark Days—and it’s all brutally honest. “A gripping, astonishing insider’s account of the April 4, 2004, ambush of a First Cavalry Platoon in Sadr City that changed the course of the Iraq War. With great candor and skill, Matt Fisk interweaves the chaos and adrenaline of modern combat with the continuing battles with PTSD at home. An intense, vivid, deeply personal portrait of men at war that is up there with the very best books of the genre.” —Mikko Alanne, screenwriter and producer, The Long Road Home, The 33

The Civil Rights Movement is now remembered as a long-lost era, which came to an end along with the idealism of the 1960s. In Dark Days, Bright Nights, acclaimed scholar Peniel E. Joseph puts this pat assessment to the test, showing the 60s -- particularly the tumultuous period after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act -- to be the catalyst of a movement that culminated in the inauguration of Barack Obama. Joseph argues that the 1965 Voting Rights Act burst a dam holding back radical democratic impulses. This political explosion initially took the form of the Black Power Movement, conventionally adjudged a failure. Joseph resurrects the movement to elucidate its unfairly forgotten achievements. Told through the lives of activists, intellectuals, and artists, including Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Amiri Baraka, Tupac Shakur, and Barack Obama, Dark Days, Bright Nights will make coherent a fraught half-century of struggle, reassessing its impact on American democracy and the larger world.