Potomac Books imprint: 389 books

A shrewd politician, Abraham Lincoln recognized the power of the press. He knew that, at most, a few thousand people might hear one of his speeches in person, but countless readers across the nation would absorb his message through newspapers. While he was always under fire by some hostile portion of...

As the first chief of the Special Intelligence Unit at the Treasury Department, Elmer L. Irey accomplished what J. Edgar Hoover wouldnt and Eliot Ness couldnt. From the 1920s through the 1940s, he headed the investigations that led to the prosecution of the ruthless, murderous bosses who ruled American...

Since the United Nations adopted the principle of self-determination in 1945, great powers have found that military strength is no guarantee of success in small wars fought against insurgents who use guerrilla and terrorist tactics. The author argues that it is well past time for Americans to understand...

Biographers and historians have lionized Heinz Guderian as the legendary father of the German armored force and brilliant practitioner of blitzkrieg maneuver warfare. As Russell A. Hart argues, Guderian created this legend with his own highly influential yet self-serving and distorted memoir, which remains...

Few figures in modern French history have aroused more controversy than Marshal Philippe PTtain, who rose from obscurity to great fame in the First World War only to fall into infamy during the dark days of Nazi occupation in World War II. PTtainÆs brilliant theories of firepower and flexible defense,...

The battle of Tannenberg (August 2730, 1914) opened World War I with a decisive German victory over Russiaindeed the Kaisers only clear-cut victory in a non-attritional battle during four years of war. In this first paperback edition of the classic work, historian Dennis Showalter analyzes this battles...

Baryalai Popal sees his Western-educated professors at Kabul University replaced by communists. He witnesses his classmates “disappearing.” The communist takeover uproots Popal from his family and home. Thus begins Crossing the River Kabul, the true story of Popal’s escape from Afghanistan and...

This compelling photographic history examines the war in its entirety, from its causes and protagonists to the strategies, weapons and battles. Goldstein and Maihafer have collected more than 450 vivid photographs, many never before seen by the general public. Published on the fiftieth anniversary...

In the late 1990s, NATO led the Kosovo Force (KFOR), charged with stabilizing Kosovo and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia after genocide and other atrocities were carried out in the Balkan region. Operation Kinetic is not only a history of the origins and operations of the Kosovo Force but...

John M. Collins has distilled the wisdom of historys great military minds to tutor readers on the necessary intellectual skills to win not only battles but also wars. He illuminates practices that worked well or poorly in the past, together with reasons why. He discusses national security interests,...

"This bipartisan study, coauthored by Aspin, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Dickinson, its ranking Republican member, aims to teach Congress the lessons of the Gulf war with a view toward future defense policy and budgeting."—Publishers Weekly

On the eve of the American Civil War, Wade Hampton, one of the wealthiest men in the South and indeed the United States, remained loyal to his native South Carolina as it seceded from the Union. Raising his namesake Hampton Legion of soldiers, he eventually became a lieutenant general of Confederate...

In a theater of war long forgotten and barely even known at the time, James Harry Hantzis and his fellow soldiers labored at a thankless task under oppressive conditions. Nonetheless, as Rails of War demonstrates, without the men of the 721st Railway Operating Battalion, the Allied forces would have...

The military adventure that George W. Bush embarked on within months of his inauguration in 2001 was to eclipse everything else in his presidency. His name will forever be synonymous with the war on terror. What started as a military response to al Qaedas attacks in New York and Washington on 9/11, with...