In this authoritative, in-depth account, military author and historian James F. Dunnigan uncovers the fascinating evolution of the world's deadliest warriors, from skilled prehistoric hunters, through Stoss Truppen', British SAS, Russia's Spetnaz, the Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrols of the Vietnam War, antiterrorism commandos, SWAT teams, and the commando wars of Afghanistan and Iraq. With brilliant analysis and gripping descriptions, Dunnigan explores the minds, methods and decisive battles of elite forces. This inside look shows the way warfare has changed forever.'

“The definitive book on the nineteen men who brought such devastation and terror to this country . . . a well-told, meticulously researched cautionary tale.” —Washington Post Book World The attacks of September 11, 2001, were a calamity on a scale few had imagined possible. In their aftermath, we exaggerated the men who perpetrated the attacks, shaping hasty and often mistaken reporting into caricatures we could comprehend—monsters and master criminals equal to the enormity of their crime. In reality, the 9/11 hijackers were unexceptional men, not much different from countless others. It is this ordinary enemy, not the caricature, that we must understand if we are to have a legitimate hope of defeating terrorism. Using research undertaken in twenty countries on four continents, Los Angeles Times correspondent Terry McDermott provides gripping, authoritative portraits of the main players in the 9/11 plot. With brilliant reporting and thoughtful analysis, McDermott brings us a clearer, more nuanced, and in some ways more frightening, understanding of the landmark event of our time. “The very best [book] available . . . on the subject.” —Los Angeles Times “Absorbing. . . . [A] richly textured narrative full of the sort of small, telling details that turn these men from faceless figures of evil into individuals.” —New York Times “Bound to become one of the most insightful books ever published about September 11.” —Houston Chronicle “Offers riveting accounts of the final weeks and days as the plotters prepared to carry out their horrific mission.” —Booklist “Chilling.” —KirkusReviews “This is journalism at its best.” —Seymour M. Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist “Engrossing and deeply disturbing.” —Publishers Weekly

Concentrating at first on the welfare of children who had lost their fathers in the war, the Legion later became involved in a variety of community service activities and served as a political training ground."--Jacket.

Walt Whitman, Americas eternal and greatest poet, returns on the eve of September 11, 2001, to pay a visit to his chosen Camerado, Michael Sweda, in order to inspire the completion of a great American work to complement his Leaves of Grass and to honor America, its people, and the military service members. Michael Sweda delivers with haunting and stunning poetry that recalls that of Whitman and extends Whitmans great poetic vision for a new time and millenniumour time, this time. For anyone who loves America or an American service member, Dialogues with Walt Whitman for the New American Millennium is a must read. Prepare to be swept away and awed with the poetry of Michael Sweda, who honors the tradition of Walt Whitman and who brings Whitman to a new, higher level, just as Whitman envisioned during his lifetime.

Why did poets continue to call themselves singers, and their poems songs, long after the formal link between poetry and music had been severed? Daniel Karlin explores the origin and meaning of the 'figure of the singer', tracing its roots in classical mythology and in the Bible, and following its rise from the 'adventurous song' of Milton's Paradise Lost to its apotheosis in the nineteenth century-by which time it had also become an oppressive cliché. Poets might embrace, or resist, this dominant figure of their art, but could not ignore it. Shadowing the metaphor is another figure, that of the literal singer, a source of fascination, and rivalry, to poets who are confined to words on the page. The book opens with an emblematic figure of the greatest of all 'singers': Homer, playing his lyre, at the centre of the frieze of poets on the Albert Memorial in London. Chapters on the tragicomic rise and fall of 'the bard', on the link between female song and suffering, and on the metaphor of poetry as birdsong, are followed by detailed readings of poems by Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walt Whitman, and Thomas Hardy. The final chapter, on the songs of Bob Dylan, suggests that recording technology has given fresh impetus to the quarrel (which is also a love-affair) between poetic language and song. The Figure of the Singer offers a profound and stimulating analysis of the idea of poetry as song and of the complex, troubled relations between voice and text