Frank Kane and his girlfriend, Sam, after their business was failing in the U.K. made the fateful decision to become cocaine drug couriers in Venezuela. Whilst attempting to fly out from the airport on Caribbean Island, Isla de Margarita, the airport authorities stopped and searched them and discovered the smuggled…
In addition to Sun Tzu’s Art of War, this book authored by Prussian officer Carl von Clausewitz is the quintessential classic book on military theory. The book (although this edition was only an abridged version) puts forward in detail theory for all elements of war, from politics to military leadership,…
View More Review: On War – by Carl von Clausewitz
Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most influential and critical figures of the twentieth century. When I was growing up in the 1980s he was part os a set of international world leaders that seemingly had much more influence over people than the political leaders of today. Gorbachev was the…
View More Review: Memoirs – by Mikhail Gorbachev
This is a weighty tome (800 plus pages) and the authoritative history of perhaps the least glamorous of the U.K.’s principal security services. However, the facts illustrated in this book clearly demonstrates the critical role GCHQ plays in national security and perhaps one could argue is more relevant and more…
View More Review: Behind The Enigma – The Authorised History of GCHQ – Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency – by John Ferris
David Kilcullen is an experienced Australian military professional. He is a senior advisor to the US Military. In this book, Kilcullen describes the recent Western conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq as relative anomalies in the progress of future wars and conflict. He focus on the Urban, networked littoral. Giant coastal…
View More Review: Out of the Mountains – The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla – by David Kilcullen
Although by the time I finally finished reading this book it was perhaps over a decade old and hence due the hi-tech nature of the subject, perhaps dated, I gained a lot of new knowledge about the robotics industry, technological progress in society and in particular, the application of robotics…
View More Review: Wired for War by P.W.Singer
Ingrid Betancourt was one of the most high profile political prisoners in the world during her captivity in the Colombian Jungle at the hands of the FARC-EP, Colombia’s left wing communist guerrillas. A brutal civil war has raged for the best part of 60 years in this Southern hemisphere country.…
View More Review: Even Silence has an End – My six years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle – by Ingrid Betancourt
I initially bought the second book in this series, I Spy, but on learning that this volume preceded it I thought it apt to try this one out first. It’s not a huge book and is very accessible. The autobiographical account of a soldier from the streets, recognised for his…
View More Review: Soldier Spy by Tom Marcus
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was from humble beginnings. He lived through a critical period of Turkish history, witnessing the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire and making it possible for the modern secular, Western-focused nation state of Turkey to phoenix itself from the Ashes. Atatürk was a military man and…
View More Review: Atatürk – The Rebirth of a Nation – by Patrick Kinross
This espionage thriller tells the true life story of one of the Cold War’s most valuable assets, a Russian spy working for the CIA in the heart of the Soviet military aerospace sector. Adolf Tolkachev made the first tentative moves to reach out to the Americans in January 1977, in…
View More Review: The Billion Dollar Spy – by David E. HoffmanHaving covered Che Guevara’s thoughts on Guerrilla Warfare I was keen to visit those of Chairman Mao. After guiding the Communist Party on its 6000 mile Long March across China, Mao Tse-tung united with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces in order to repel the Imperial Japanese invader that had set up…
View More Review: Mao Tse-tung on Guerrilla Warfare
This book examines post-revolutionary France, highlighting the bourgeois’s dominance during various changes of power from 1789 onwards. It explores modernisation, capitalism’s conflict with the left, and rising living standards among the working class. The author skillfully elaborates on complex topics, emphasizing the lower classes’ experiences amid political transformations.
View More Review: France 1815-1914 The Bourgeois Century – by Roger Magraw
Only a short volume, this well-written work documents the weakening of the West in the geopolitical arena. The book first focuses on the reductions in military power of Western nations, both in terms of their military budgets and also their matériel. Despite modern weapons being produced, the volume of forces…
View More Review: The Edge – Is the Military Dominance of the West Coming to an End – by Mark Urban
The author is a military expert and the phrase he coins to determine Mexico’s narcotics problem is a ‘mosaic cartel war’. This book analyses in detail the various cartels that are present in Mexico that operate in a highly competitive, highly profitable, highly illegal, immensely violent global industry. The Mexican…
View More Review: Cartels At War – by Paul Rexton Can
This is an excellent introductory text for those wishing to better understand the complex details of the rise of Islamic State, ISIS or ISIL. From its arrival due to the Syrian Civil War and its cancerous spread into post-war Iraq, this extremist-terrorist Sunni Islamic (Wahhabi) nation/fundamentalist organisation, has been indefatigable.…
View More Review: The Rise Of Islamic State – by Patrick Cockburn