Every leader must be ready and willing to take charge, to make hard, crucial calls for the good of the team and the mission. Something much more difficult to understand is that, in order to be a good leader, one must also be a good follower. This is a dichotomy; a Dichotomy of Leadership. It is, as authors Jocko Willink and Leif Babin wrote in their bestselling first book Extreme Ownership, "Simple, Not Easy." Discipline Equals Freedom: Jocko Willink's...

"The modern world has given us stupendous know-how. Yet avoidable failures continue to plague us in health care, government, the law, the financial industry--in almost every realm of organized activity. And the reason is simple: the volume and complexity of knowledge today has exceeded our ability as individuals to properly deliver to people--consistently, correctly, safely. ....Atul Gawande makes a compelling argument that we can do better and finds...

Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic -- a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another...

"One of the most important untold stories of World War II. The light of days is a soaring landmark history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who helped weaponize Poland's Jewish youth groups to resist the Nazis. Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland--some still in their teens--became the nerves of a wide-ranging...

"From the New York Times bestselling author of Wintering, an invitation to rediscover the feelings of awe and wonder available to us all. Many of us feel trapped in a grind of constant change: rolling news cycles, the chatter of social media, our families split along partisan lines. We feel fearful and tired, on edge in our bodies, not quite knowing what has us perpetually depleted. For Katherine May, this low hum of fatigue and anxiety made her wonder...

A Dutch Jewish girl describes the two-and-one-half years she spent in hiding in the upstairs bedroom of a farmer's house during World War II.

"Walk in my Combat Boots is a powerful collection crafted from hundreds of original interviews by James Patterson, the world’s #1 bestselling writer, and First Sergeant US Army (Ret.) Matt Eversmann, part of the Ranger unit portrayed in the movie Black Hawk Down. These are the brutally honest stories usually only shared amongst comrades in arms. Here, in the voices of the men and women who’ve fought overseas from Vietnam to Iraq and...

On a clear night in late June 2005, four U.S. Navy SEALs left their base in northern Afghanistan for the mountainous Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less then twenty-four hours later, only one of those Navy SEALs remained alive. This is the story of fire team leader Marcus Luttrell, the sole survivor of Operation...

A former member of the First Marine Division gives a front line description of two World War II Pacific campaigns.

Most history-minded Americans have discussed the Vietnam War, becoming familiar, at the very least, with the names of such pivotal events as the Siege of Khe Sanh, the Tet Offensive, and the Fall of Saigon. But to grasp the full impact of this agonizing conflict, the human costs of an infernal war that raged for ten years and took more than 58,000 American lives, one must hear about it from the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who experienced the fighting...