A TLS and a Prospect Book of the Year A revelatory, explosive new analysis of the British military today. Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Britain has changed enormously. During this time, the British Army fought two campaigns, in Iraq and Afghanistan, at considerable financial and human cost. Yet neither war achieved its objectives. This book questions why, and provides challenging but necessary answers. Composed from assiduous documentary research, field reportage, and hundreds of interviews with many soldiers and officers who served, as well as the politicians who directed them, the allies who accompanied them, and the family members who loved and — on occasion — lost them, it is a strikingly rich, nuanced portrait of one of our pivotal national institutions in a time of great stress. Award-winning journalist Simon Akam, who spent a year in the army when he was 18, returned a decade later to see how the institution had changed. His book examines the relevance of the armed forces today — their social, economic, political, and cultural role. This is as much a book about Britain, and about the politics of failure, as it is about the military.

In Stand on Guard, Stephanie Carvin sets out to explain the range of activities considered national security threats by Canadian security services today. As new forms of terrorism and extremism appear, especially online, we need a responsibly widened view of such threats and how they manifest in the contemporary world. Canadians should not be more fearful, Carvin explains, but a more sophisticated understanding among security services personnel and the general public is needed if we are to anticipate and ameliorate threats to national security. As a former security analyst tasked with providing threat assessments to high levels of government, Carvin writes with both authority and urgency. Her book presents an insider’s look at the issues facing the Canadian security and intelligence community. Timely and accessible, Stand on Guard will be required reading for scholars, practitioners, and any Canadian concerned about national security in the twenty-first century.

When a woman linked to the supernatural finds her mother's journal holds a cryptic mystery, she and her friends race to uncover a secret matriarchal society protected by mystical unseen forces.

On Guard offers churches eight strategies for preventing child abuse and three for responding to it, helping to move church staff and leaders beyond fearful awareness to prayerful preparedness.

Between 1941 and 1946, in response to the devastation caused by World War II, memories of the Great Depression, and the prospect of Soviet expansion, a group of politicians, diplomats, and economists in the United States and Great Britain sought to repair the ruined economies of of Europe and secure economic prosperity for America. Their program, which became known as multilateralism, called for reduced quotas on imports, lowered tariffs, the abandonment of currency exchange controls, and economic decision making by international bodies. Randall Woods explores this attempt to create an interdependent world economy and sets it against the broader political and strategic backdrop of the period. In the United States, multilateralism attracted New Deal liberals because it proposed to help not only the established economic interests but traditionally disadvantaged groups such as farmers and industrial workers as well. Moderate socialists in Britain also lent their support to a liberalized trading system, as did many conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic, believing that the program would preserve some degree of free enterprise in the international economy. Unfortunately for its disciples, Woods argues, multilateralism was so modified by the forces of isolationism and economic nationalism_and by bureaucratic politics in the United States_that it failed to achieve its economic and strategic goals. The international economy that emerged after World War II was not an equitable partnership and merely finalized the fifty-year process by which the United States supplanted Great Britain as the arbiter of Western Capitalism. In the end, modified multilateralism hampered rather than facilitated the free flow of goods and capital, and it did little to promote social democracy.

The first book of its kind on the fastest growing marital art in the world, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The book is unique in its concentration on an thorough treatment of one of the most important aspects of groundfighting, passing the guard. Visually oriented, the volume is teeming with photos and illustrations. Must be seen to be appreciated. SPO027000

Winner of the European Union Literature Prize, Peter Terrin's The Guard is a haunting novel of perceived oppression by the an omnipresent, but unknown, authority. In the near future, Harry and Michel live in the basement of a luxury apartment block, guarding the inhabitants. No one goes outside. The world might be at war, it might even have been plunged into nuclear winter. No one knows. But one weekend, all of the residents leave the block, one by one. All but the man on floor 29. Harry and Michel stick to their posts. All they know, all they can hope for, is that if they are vigilant, the "Organization" will reward them with a promotion to an elite cadre of security officers. But what if there were no one left to guard? Playing on our darkest fears, The Guard is a tautly observed novel by a writer of striking and stylish originality.

"Forging a Total Force traces the evolution of the Guard and reserve from the Revolutionary War-era militias to today's operational reserve, an integral part of the nation's total force. In the early republic, the ideal of a citizen-solider, capable of taking the field with little or no training, predominated. The realities of modern combat slowly made it clear that a more professional force was required, but policy changes failed to keep up with that changing necessity. The nation struggled to provide adequate training and equipment to the reserve component throughout the Cold War until the idea of a Total Force, which integrated regular and reserve components, emerged and was achieved. It wasn't until the defense buildup of the 1980s that the ideal of a combat-ready reserve became reality. The core of this book focuses on what came next, from 1990 to 2011, with particular emphasis on the decade after 9/11. The Persian Gulf War demonstrated both the effectiveness of the reserve and the challenges it continued to face. The post-Cold War drawdown during the 1990s made the smaller active component more dependent on the reserves than it had been since the nation's founding. The reserve component proved itself yet again in the wars following 9/11, but also became strained as it became clear just how much the nation depended on its Guard and reserve. Finally, the authors detail the policy changes made midstream in an attempt to address issues with the overextended force, such as balancing training and deployment with civilian lives and careers, providing health care to reservists, and integrating the active and reserve components. The authors conclude by detailing the issues policymakers will face as they forge ahead with citizen-soldiers serving as an operational force."--Provided by publisher.