New Releases by Thomas Fleming

"Discusses socialism as a political system, and details the history of socialist governments throughout the world"--Provided by publisher.

Even fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, it is still hard to grasp that we no longer live under its immense specter. For nearly half a century, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, all world events hung in the balance of a simmering dispute between two of the greatest military powers in history. Hundreds of millions of people held their collective breath as the United States and the Soviet Union, two national ideological entities, waged proxy wars to determine spheres of influence–and millions of others perished in places like Korea, Vietnam, and Angola, where this cold war flared hot. Such a consideration of the Cold War–as a military event with sociopolitical and economic overtones–is the crux of this stellar collection of twenty-six essays compiled and edited by Robert Cowley, the longtime editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. Befitting such a complex and far-ranging period, the volume’s contributing writers cover myriad angles. John Prados, in “The War Scare of 1983,” shows just how close we were to escalating a war of words into a nuclear holocaust. Victor Davis Hanson offers “The Right Man,” his pungent reassessment of the bellicose air-power zealot Curtis LeMay as a man whose words were judged more critically than his actions. The secret war also gets its due in George Feiffer’s “The Berlin Tunnel,” which details the charismatic C.I.A. operative “Big Bill” Harvey’s effort to tunnel under East Berlin and tap Soviet phone lines–and the Soviets’ equally audacious reaction to the plan; while “The Truth About Overflights,” by R. Cargill Hall, sheds light on some of the Cold War’s best-kept secrets. The often overlooked human cost of fighting the Cold War finds a clear voice in “MIA” by Marilyn Elkins, the widow of a Navy airman, who details the struggle to learn the truth about her husband, Lt. Frank C. Elkins, whose A-4 Skyhawk disappeared over Vietnam in 1966. In addition there are profiles of the war’s “front lines”–Dien Bien Phu, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs–as well as of prominent military and civil leaders from both sides, including Harry S. Truman, Nikita Khrushchev, Dean Acheson, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Richard M. Nixon, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, and others. Encompassing so many perspectives and events, The Cold War succeeds at an impossible task: illuminating and explaining the history of an undeclared shadow war that threatened the very existence of humankind.

From Lexington and Concord to Yorktown, Bruce Lancaster''s classic, The American Revolution, covers the story of America''s fight for independence in vivid detail. With an introduction by the critically acclaimed author Bruce Catton, and a new foreword by Thomas Fleming, The American Revolution is a highly readable and engaging volume.

The "New York Times" bestselling author presents a classic novel of Irish American history and the Fenian invasion of the English colony of Canada.

A novel celebrating one hundred years of flight.

Acclaimed historian Thomas Fleming brings to life a flawed and troubled FDR struggling to manage World War II. Starting with the leak to the press of Roosevelt''s famous Rainbow Plan, then spiraling back to FDR''s inept prewar diplomacy with Japan and his various attempts to lure Japan into an attack on the U.S. Fleet in the Pacific, Fleming takes the reader on a journey through the incredibly fractious struggles and debates that went on in Washington, the nation, and the world as the New Dealers strove to impose their will on the conduct of the War. In bold contrast to the familiar, idealized FDR of other biographies, Fleming''s Roosevelt is a man in remorseless decline, battered by ideological forces and primitive hatreds that he could not handleand frequently failed to understandsome of them leading to unimaginable catastrophe. Among FDR''s most dismaying policies, Fleming argues, is his insistence on "unconditional surrender" for Germany (a policy that perhaps prolonged the war by as much as two years, leaving millions more dead) and his often-uncritical embrace of and acquiescence to Stalin and the Soviets as an ally. The New Dealers'' War is one of those rare books that force readers to rethink what they think they know about a pivotal event in the American past.

Portrays the history of Montenegro from the Middle Ages to the present. Predominantly Serbian since the ninth century, Montenegrins adopted clan organization for survival which fostered local loyalties but did not unify them against outside aggressors.

A summary and analysis on research regarding the effects of class size in education.

They called themselves Sons of Liberty--a revolutionary conspiracy that intended to form a new confederacy in the American heartland--and put an end to the American Civil War. Backed by the South, the Sons launch guerilla attacks against Union troops. The year is 1864, the place Indiana and Kentucky. A time of ruthless censorship, conscription, and a seemingly endless war that has left a half a million Americans dead. Union Major Paul Stapleton falls in love with Janet Todd, courier and evangelist for the Sons of Liberty. Another admirer, Colonel Adam Jameson, readies his Confederate cavalry division to support the Sons'' revolt. The battle for the future of America is about to begin. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Paradise Beach, New Jersey. The perfect place for Dick O''Gorman and Billy Kilroy to smuggle ashore Cuban missiles to be used in the Irish Republican Army''s war against England. Paradise Beach is an Irish American enclave, one that has no idea about the violent upheaval into which it will soon be thrown. It is 1984. Irish Americans, preoccupied with a loss of political power in the cities, have little sympathy for Ireland and the IRA. This is especially true of Mick O''Day, an ex-marine whose moral failure in Vietnam haunts him still. It is a combustible mix, as a British secret agent disguised as a priest sows suspicion between the Irish Americans and the IRA men that could ignite into a physical and spiritual explosion and could tear the community apart at its very seams. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Examines the growth of the conservative movement from a small band of dissidents after World War II to the dominant force in American politics in the 1980s. Clearly distinguishes between the old Right, the religious Right, the New Right, libertarians, and neoconservatives.

When members of the colonial assembly warned Governor Philip Carteret in 1668 that he should abandon any expectations "that things must go according to your opinions," they struck a keynote for the New Jersey experience and suggested to author Thomas Fleming what perhaps should have been the state''s motto: "Divided We Stand." Ethnic diversity made New Jersey an early testing ground for the melting pot, as Yankees, Irish, Italians, and blacks strove for a chance at the good life. To many, that meant a job in the factories that made the state an industrial pioneer; to others, it meant life on the farms that made New Jersey truly the "Garden State."Mr. Fleming concludes that today New Jersey may be in the vanguard of a new American way of life, "the first metropolitan state with equally convenient access to cities and to countryside." He foresees an "equally-oriented New Jersey, honestly and efficiently governed," reminding the nation that divisiveness and acrimony can have more than one outcome. After all, New Jerseyites may have voted repeatedly for the "Boss of Bosses," Frank Hague, but they also once chose as their governor a Princeton professor named Woodrow Wilson.