LITMIR.BIZ

Some cultures are clearly more deceptive than others but only during any given slice of time. No single culture has excelled in deceptiveness throughout its history. While the Chinese did rise to the highest level of military deviousness during the time of Sun Tzu (c.350 BC), they had low levels before Master Sun, and afterwards largely lost it during three long periods, only to regain it each time. The most recent Chinese loss was when they fell to the lowest level from the late 1700s until being conquered in 1948 by the stratagemic Chinese Communists (PLA). Thence the PLA has displayed high if not the highest levels of deceptiveness, although there are indications that, beginning in 2002, they are again on the upswing.The levels of guilefulness at any given time can be quite different across the major disciplines of military, domestic politics, foreign diplomacy, and commercial business. Perceived practical considerations of greed and survival do sometimes override religious, moral, or ethical factors to produce deceptive behavior.The levels of guilefulness at any given point in time between any two contemporary armed entities (nations, insurgents, or terrorists) are apt to be asymmetric.Deception sophistication is independent of technological change. Within each culture deception varies widely in its levels of sophistication. High, medium, and low levels were found in every culture at different times and regardless of its level of technology. The reason? Because deception is a mind game, it is played only between or among humans. And this condition will remain as long as machines such as computers lack artificial intelligence.Because deception is a mind game, the variations in guilefulness between opposing individuals or groups can be crucial in deciding the victor in combat.

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The book is a short review of British air and naval power from 1909 -1940 and represents an attack upon “independent” airpower. When Bleriot became the first man to fly the English Channel in a heavier-than-air flying machine in 1909, it seemed to mark the beginning of a fundamental decline in British attitudes towards maritime defense. Exploiting prevalent invasion paranoia, press baron, Lord Northcliffe invited distinguished writers such as William Le Queue and H G Wells to write articles on the theme “We are no longer an Island”.Bleriot’s exploit encouraged the politicians to reassess how Britain would be defended in the future. An important government committee heard evidence that led directly to the forming of the Royal Flying Corps – an organization that initially included army and naval wings. Superficially, the Royal Navy was moving from strength to strength as it expanded in the naval arms race with Germany. The service remained in high public esteem but a section of the ruling Liberal party wanted money diverted for welfare – a new and powerful competitor for funds. The Two-Power Standard was quietly dropped in 1909 and the astronomical costs of battleship building forced the Navy to look for cheaper substitutes such as submarines and aircraft. A forceful critic of naval expenditure, Winston S. Churchill fostered the early development of airpower when he became First Lord in 1911 and continued to do so when out of office.The German air raids of 1917 panicked the wartime government into making an ill-considered merger of naval and army air arms that supported imaginative but untried theories of airpower. In 1938, a later government submitted to the national psychosis of bombing by allowing the Royal Air Force to be the only service to rearm without regard to the nation’s ability to afford it. In 1940, the contribution of the Royal Navy was minimized as Churchill praised the RAF for saving the nation from invasion in the Battle of Britain. As a result the RAF’s story has achieved an iconic status that is part of British national identity. Consequently, more important operations including the Dunkirk evacuation; Battle of the Atlantic; Battle of Mers El Kebir and the naval operations against the Italian fleet have been underrated and misunderstood. This ultimate justification of independent airpower continues to undermine understandings of maritime defense and may have skewed US and UK defense policies in the wrong direction for decades.

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This is the true life story of the Scottish gardener’s son, John Paul, who became America’s greatest naval hero, John Paul Jones. British midshipman, African slaver, traveling actor, merchant captain, accused of murder and suspected of freebooting—this was John Paul. Captain in Washington’s Continental Navy, raider of the British coasts and victor in one of history’s most desperate naval battles, lion of the French court and beloved by beautiful women, Russian admiral under Catherine the Great, and dead at 45, neglected by his adopted United States, his very grave lost for a hundred years—that was John Paul Jones.

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In Silent and Unseen, veteran submarine commander Captain Alfred S. McLaren describes in riveting detail the more significant events that occurred early in the Cold War during his seven years, 1958-1965, onboard three attack submarines: the USS Greenfish (SS-351), USS Seadragon (SSN-584), and USS Skipjack (SSN-585). Through myriad stories and anecdotes, his book focuses on the development of attack-boat tactics and under-ice exploration techniques.The commanding officers that a young submarine officer serves with will determine how well prepared he will be to assume his own command years later. This was particularly true in attack submarines, during the early high-risk years of the Cold War. They were continually at sea, and each reconnaissance and intelligence collection mission was of potentially great, and sometimes extraordinary, value to the government of the United States of America. The missions more often than not required closing of the potential enemy to collect the intelligence desired, generally within weapons range. But, unlike a war patrol, the U.S. attack boat had to remain completely undetected; then withdraw as silently and unseen as it approached.Greenfish was one of the most successful Pacific diesel submarines when McLaren served aboard her as a watch and weapons officer during an era when she and other diesel boats executed all Cold War missions and overseas deployments. McLaren then reported to Seadragon in time to serve as a watch officer, as she became the first nuclear submarine to transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Arctic Ocean. En route, she examined the underside of icebergs, conducted the first underwater survey and passage through the Northwest Passage, and surfaced at the North Pole. He subsequently served as diving officer, an engineering department division officer and as weapons officer during a series of Cold War missions and a lengthy Western Pacific deployment. Silent and Unseen concludes with a recounting of the author’s experiences as diving officer, navigator, and chief engineer onboard what was then world’s fastest and most advanced submarine, USS Skipjack (SSN-585) during the Cuban Missile Crisis, two Cold War missions, and the very intensive and exciting period of new tactical and weapons development which followed to counter a rapidly emerging Soviet nuclear submarine threat

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During the Cold War a number of high-ranking Soviet citizens spied for the CIA, providing the United States with valuable information while putting themselves and their families in great danger. In this book a seasoned CIA field operator and station chief looks at what drove these agents to betray their own country. Unlike many authors who write about spies, John Hart knows the espionage profession first-hand, and his penetrating analysis of the motivations involved is based on top-secret operational files. Four major Soviet agents – Yuri Nosenko, the dissident KGB agent who disclosed the bugs in the American Embassy in Moscow and claimed the KGB had no connection to the assassination of President Kennedy; Oleg Penkovsky, one of the West's most important agents who was eventually executed by the Soviets; and Pyotr Popov and Mikhail – are examined in depth, and the cases of six others are discussed. The stories of each reveal a great deal about the realities of the intelligence craft. Hart became so intrigued with the reasons behind the agents' spying activities that he asked then-CIA director Richard Helms for time off to investigate the cases. For a full year he searched for common denominators in the personalities of these Soviet moles that would explain their willingness to take such life-threatening risks. He had complete access to their operational files, including psychological profiles. He studied not only documentation of the material the agents provided but also their own accounts of their thoughts and emotions when they divulged secrets that could damage their homeland. This behind-the-headlines look at what makes spies tick is aimed at every reader with a penchant for good spy stories.

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When William Bradford Huie, a reporter for H. L. Mencken's American Mercury, joined the U.S. Navy in 1943, he received a commission as a public relations officer in the little-known Civil Engineer's Corps Construction Battalions–the Seabees. With the publication of Can Do! the following year, Americans soon came to appreciate the significance of the corps's work and the danger of their wartime activities. As readable and entertaining today as it was some fifty years ago, this account tells the story of the Seabees who landed with the Marines at Guadalcanal and Wake Island, Sicily and Salerno. Experienced civilian engineers, carpenters, steam-shovel operators, plumbers, truck drivers, surveyors, and the like, they landed with the first waves of American assault troops, bringing heavy equipment ashore to build roads, bridges, and airfields and repair whatever they could. Often working under enemy fire, they incurred many casualties and won the deep respect of everyone who came into contact with them.Huie's book is filled with spirited accounts of the Seabees's achievements in the Aleutians, the South Sea islands, Europe, and Africa. A passionate and convincing advocate, Huie wrote the book not only to call attention to their accomplishments but to serve as an inspiration to others, and he often has the Seabees tell their stories in their own words. Appendixes offer valuable details, including lists of casualties, award recipients, and Seabees' poems. An introduction by Donald R. Noble is included in this new paperback edition.

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In the early nineteenth century, the United States of America was far from united. The United States faced internal strife over the extent of governance and the rights of individual states. The United States’ relationship with their former colonial power was also uncertain. Britain impressed American sailors and supported Native Americans’ actions in the northwest and on the Canadian border. In the summer of 1812, President James Madison chose to go to war against Britain. War in the Chesapeake illustrates the causes for the War of 1812, the political impacts of the war on America, and the war effort in the Chesapeake Bay.The book examines the early war efforts, when both countries focused efforts on Canada and the Northwest front. Some historians claim Madison chose to go to war in an attempt to annex the neighboring British territories. The book goes on to discuss the war in the Chesapeake Bay. The British began their Chesapeake campaign in an effort to relieve pressure on their defenses in Canada. Rear Admiral George Cockburn led the resulting efforts, and began to terrorize the towns of the Chesapeake. From Norfolk to Annapolis, the British forces raided coastal towns, plundering villages for supplies and encouraging slaves to join the British forces. The British also actively campaigned against the large American frigates- seeing them as the only threat to their own naval superiority.War in the Chesapeake traces these British efforts on land and sea. It also traces the Americans’ attempts to arm and protect the region while the majority of the American regular forces fought on the Northwest front. In the summer campaign of 1814, the British trounced the Americans at Bladensburg, and burned Washington, D.C. Afterwards, the Baltimoreans shocked the British with a stalwart defense at Fort McHenry. The British leaders, Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane and Major General Robert Ross, did not expect strong resistance after their quick victories at Bladensburg.War in the Chesapeake tells the story of some of the earliest national heroes, including the defenders of Baltimore and naval leaders like John Rodgers and Stephen Decatur. The following December 1814, the United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent, ending hostilities and returning North America to a peaceful status quo. The United States and neighboring Canada would not go to war on opposing sides again. The United States left the war slightly more unified and independent of the British.

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Key Selling Points<br> 1. Audience<br> &bull; Will appeal to readers interested in immigration, in fact and literature: “Greenhorns” opens a window into the historical experience of Jewish immigration in the 20th Century, and the problematic process of assimilation. As such it connects to the current public and political interest in immigrants and immigration, with parallels between the successful integration of past immigrants and current patterns of Americanization. Immigration and assimilation has also been a major theme in contemporary fiction, in the works of Gish Jen, Amy Tan, David Bezmozgis, Jumpa Lahiri, and many others. <br> &bull; Jewish readers: The book deals with the experience of three generations of Jewish immigrants, people of the author's generation but also the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of American Jews now in their 30s and 40s.<br> &bull; Author has a reputation as a historian and historical novelist, and readers will be interested in the connection of this book to his earlier work.<br> <br> 2. Notable Author<br> &bull; recently cited in New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/movies/hostiles-review-christian-bale.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0 &bull; best known for an award-winning trilogy of scholarly books on the myth of the frontier in American cultural history. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Wesleyan University Press; was a finalist for a National Book Award, and received the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association, which cited it as “a turning point in the study of American intellectual history.” The second volume received the Little Big Horn Associates Literary Award. George Frederickson, writing in the <i>New York Review of Books</i>, called Fatal Environment “Without question . . . the most ambitious and provocative work in American studies to appear in recent years.” Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century America (Atheneum, 1992) was a Finalist for the 1993 National Book Award. The citation praised it as the culmination of a “magisterial multi-volume study of the myth of the frontier . . . cultural history at its best – well argued, richly supported, critically astute, and written with genuine craft.” <br> &bull; Other work links cultural history with military history: Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality (Holt, 2005); No Quarter: The Battle of the Petersburg Crater, 1864 (Random House, 2009); Long Road to Antietam: How the Civil War Became a Revolution (Norton, 2012), etc.<br> &bull; Three historical novels. Abe: A Novel of the Young Lincoln (Holt, 2000) was a New York Times Notable Book and won the Michael Shaara Award for Civil War Fiction (2001) and the Salon.com Book Award (2000). The Return of Henry Starr (Atheneum, 1988); The Crater (Atheneum, 1980) was the first work of fiction to be adopted as a selection by the History Book Club.<br> &bull; Author has been awarded fellowships from the NEH and Rockefeller Foundation; was elected a Fellow of the Society of American Historians in 1986, and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.<br> &bull; Serves as consultant and on-screen interviewee for media projects on violence, racism, popular culture, the Civil War, World War I and the American West. A 2013 episode of “Moyers & Company” was devoted to the author's book Gunfighter Nation. Recent projects include “The Great War” (PBS, 2017), “Clint Eastwood” (American Masters, 2000), “Colt: Legend and Legacy” (PBS/1998), «Big Guns Talk» (TNT, 1997), “Gunpower: One Nation Under Fire” (Discovery Channel, 1996), “Guns” (ABC Turning Point, 1994), “Last Stand at Little Big Horn,” (American Experience/ PBS, 1992).<br> <br> 3. The Competition<br> Unlike the work of other writers of new-immigrant fiction (David Bezmozgis, Gary Shteyngart), or Jewish-American writers like Philip Roth, “Greenhorns” roots the story of Jewish Americans in the primal experience of Jewish emigration, the passage from the Pale of Settlement &mdash; the bloody and impoverished Polish/Russian borderland &mdahs; to America in the early 20th Century. It sets the immigrant experience against the specifics of historical events, specifically the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and the Russian Civil War of 1919-23. It traces the effects of that heritage of trauma on later generations, again through particular historical moments &mdash; army life in WW2, and school and college life in the 1950s and early 1960s. <br>

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"A poignant story of colonization and assimilation, something I know a little bit about. A masterpiece."&#8212;Chinua Achebe"One of our most brilliant writers tells a harsh truth about American history."&#8212;Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Praise for Edge of Nowhere :"Smelcer's prose is lyrical, straightforward, and brilliant . . . authentic Native Alaskan storytelling at its best."&#8212; School Library Journal (starred review)"A spare tale of courage, love and terrible obstacles."&#8212; The Wall Street Journal "More psychological depth than Robinson Crusoe."&#8212;Frank McCourtPraise for Lone Wolves :"A beautiful and moving story of courage and love."&#8212;Ray Bradbury"Smelcer [is] a rockstar of Alaskan literature."&#8212; Mushing magazine"Powerful, eloquent, and fascinating."&#8212; Kirkus Reviews "Smelcer's work has a touch of the classical, combining good old-fashioned adventure and survival themes with heart-tugging moments of clarity and poignancy that recall Jean Craighead George's Julie of the Wolves ."&#8212; Booklist Praise for The Trap :"A gripping and poignant story, made even more so because of its basis in historical fact."&#8212; Horn Book (starred review)Four Indian teenagers are kidnapped from different regions, their lives immutably changed by an institution designed to eradicate their identity. And no matter what their home, their stories are representative of every story, every stolen life. So far from home, without family to protect them, only their friendship helps them endure. This is a work of fiction. Every word is true. John Smelcer is the author of over forty books, including essays, story collections, poetry, and novels, and five YA novels.

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"Smelcer clearly knows his way around Alaskan mountains."&#8212;David Roberts, author of The Mountain of My Fear Praise for Edge of Nowhere :"A survival story, but one with a strong heart."&#8212; ForeWord Reviews "A thought-provoking and moving coming-of-age story."&#8212; Publishers Weekly "Another gripping literary triumph for Smelcer."&#8212; Midwest Book Review Praise for Lone Wolves :"A beautiful and moving story of courage and love."&#8212;Ray Bradbury"An engaging tale of survival, love, and courage."&#8212; School Library Journal "[Smelcer] promises to further solidify his status as 'Alaska's modern day Jack London.'"&#8212;Suzanne Steinert, Mushing "Powerful, eloquent, and fascinating, showcasing a vanishing way of life in rich detail."&#8212; Kirkus "Combines good old-fashioned adventure . . . with heart-tugging moments of clarity and poignancy that recall Julie of the Wolves ."&#8212; Booklist "A compassionate and inspiring tale . . . highlights the importance of family, community, and heritage."&#8212; Midwest Book Review Brothers Sebastian and James Savage decide to climb one of the highest Alaskan mountains to prove themselves to their father. Inspired by true events, Savage Mountain is not a story of father-son reconciliation, but a touching story of two brothers who test their limits and learn that no matter how different they might be, the strongest bond of all is brotherhood. John Smelcer is poetry editor of Rosebud and the author of more than forty books. He is an Alaskan native of the Ahtna tribe, and a skilled mountaineer. He divides his time between Talkeetna, Alaska, and Kirksville, Missouri, where he teaches in the department of communications studies at Truman State University.

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