In the wild, animals use teeth, claws, and other natural weapons to attack their prey. On the battlefield, soldiers need weapons to fight the enemy. Military forces have often looked to nature for inspiration to develop effective weapons and combat tactics. From the first feathered arrows to tomorrow's high-tech weaponry, take a look at how military technology often imitates the natural weapons of animals to help soldiers succeed in combat. Then be sure to catch the other amazing titles in the Beasts and the Battlefield series.

In the wild, animals use teeth, claws, and other natural weapons to attack their prey. On the battlefield, soldiers need weapons to fight the enemy. Military forces have often looked to nature for inspiration to develop effective weapons and combat tactics. From the first feathered arrows to tomorrow's high-tech weaponry, take a look at how military technology often imitates the natural weapons of animals to help soldiers succeed in combat. Then be sure to catch the other amazing titles in the Beasts and the Battlefield series.

A retired detective investigates a cold case of child murder in Colorado in this “darkly engrossing” mystery thriller (New York Times–bestselling author Anne Hillerman). Former detective Woodrow Bell left his big-city homicide beat for a quiet life in a small Colorado mountain town. Having failed in so many ways—as a father, husband, friend, and cop—all he wants out of retirement is to fade away. But when he stumbles across a long-forgotten child murder, he can’t just let it go. Suspecting that the killer may still be near, Woodrow is drawn into the macabre cold case. With local cops taking no interest, Bell must rely on the end-of-the-road codgers he meets for coffee every morning—a club of old guys with unique skills who call themselves Deaf Row. Soon, this motley crew finds itself on a collision course with a serial butcher.

Throughout history the English have been a warlike lot. Often we fight among ourselves - there have been a good few civil wars - and when we were not slaughtering each other, we practiced on our neighbours, the Scots, the Irish, the French . . . When that got too easy, we set off around the world to find other people to fight. This was usually done with a hubris that invited some ludicrous pratfall. In THE BEASTLY BATTLES OF OLD ENGLAND, Nigel Cawthorne takes us on a darkly humorous journey through some of our ill-advised military actions. From the war over a severed ear to a general seeking out his rival's mistresses to even the score, it is a miscellany of insufferable arrogance, reckless gallantry, stunning stupidity, massive misjudgements and general beastliness.

The U.S. Armed Forces started integrating its services in 1948, and with that push, more African Americans started rising through the ranks to become officers, although the number of black officers has always been much lower than African Americans' total percentage in the military. Astonishingly, the experiences of these unknown reformers have largely gone unexamined and unreported, until now. The Black Officer Corps traces segments of the African American officers' experience from 1946-1973. From generals who served in the Pentagon and Vietnam, to enlisted servicemen and officers' wives, Isaac Hampton has conducted over seventy-five oral history interviews with African American officers. Through their voices, this book illuminates what they dealt with on a day to day basis, including cultural differences, racist attitudes, unfair promotion standards, the civil rights movement, Black Power, and the experience of being in ROTC at Historically Black Colleges. Hampton provides a nuanced study of the people whose service reshaped race relations in the U.S. Armed Forces, ending with how the military attempted to control racism with the creation of the Defense Race Relations Institute of 1971. The Black Officer Corps gives us a much fuller picture of the experience of black officers, and a place to start asking further questions.

Following the 1952 reorganization of the Portuguese Air Force from the army and naval air arms, Portugal now had an entity dedicated solely to aviation that would bring it into line with its new NATO commitment. As it proceeded to develop a competence in modern multiengine and jet fighter aircraft for its NATO role and train a professional corps of pilots, it was suddenly confronted in 1961 with fighting insurgencies in all three of its African possessions. This development forced it to acquire an entirely new and separate air force, the African air force, to address this emerging danger. This is the story of just how Portuguese leadership anticipated and dealt with this threat, and how it assembled an air force from scratch to meet it. The aircraft available at the time were largely castoffs from the larger, richer, and more sophisticated air forces of its NATO partners and not designed for counterinsurgency. Yet Portugal adapted them to the task and effectively crafted the appropriate strategies and tactics for their successful employment. The book explores the vicissitudes of procurement, an exercise fraught with anti-colonial political undercurrents, the imaginative modification and adaptation of the aircraft to fight in the African theaters, and the development of tactics, techniques, and procedures for their effective employment against an elusive, clever, and dangerous enemy. Advances in weaponry, such as the helicopter gun ship, were the outgrowth of combat needs. The acquired logistic competences assured that the needed fuel types and lubricants, spare parts, and qualified maintenance personnel were available in even the most remote African landing sites. The advanced flying skills, such as visual reconnaissance and air-ground coordinated fire support, were honed and perfected. All of these aspects and more are explored and hold lessons in the application of airpower in any insurgency today.