Books about Disastrous from Amazon.com

In House of War, the best-selling author James Carroll has created a history of the Pentagon that is both epic and personal Through Carroll we see how the Pentagon, since its founding, has operated beyond the control of any force in government or society, undermining the very national security it is sworn to protect.From its "birth" on September 11, 1941, through the nuclear buildup of the Cold War and the eventual "shock and awe" of Iraq, Carroll recounts how "the Building" and its officials have achieved what President Eisenhower called "a disastrous rise of misplaced power."

This is not faded history. House of War offers a compelling account of the virtues and follies that led America to permanently, and tragically, define itself around war. Carroll shows how the consequences of the American response to September 11, 2001 -– including two wars and an ignited Middle East -– form one end of an arc that stretches from Donald Rumsfeld back to James Forrestal, the first man to occupy the office of secretary of defense in the Pentagon. House of War confronts this dark past so we may understand the current war and forestall the next..
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This original and provocative book is certain to raise emotions Its justification of America's war in Southeast Asia directly contradicts other recent studies, such as Fredrik Logevall's Choosing War and Robert S. McNamara's Argument Without End. Michael Lind, Washington Editor for Harper's magazine, examines the American military response to North Vietnamese aggression; American credibility during the cold war; domestic politics; and constitutional aspects of the conflict. He places the war's center of gravity in American public opinion rather than in the population of South Vietnam or the North Vietnamese army. In doing so, he can be blunt, as when he claims that members of the Western left who made excuses for the North Vietnamese land-reform terror were "apologists for state-sponsored genocide." One of his conclusions is that if the United States is to continue to be the dominant world power, "then American soldiers must learn to swim in quagmires." Viewing America's Southeast Asian adventure in the context of the cold war, Lind regards it not as a crime, betrayal, or tragic error, but as an unavoidable confrontation. Whether you agree with his arguments, Vietnam: The Necessary War intelligently, often vehemently, challenges preconceptions that surround the most controversial military conflict in American history. --John Stevenson.
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During the last stages of the Republic, Rome suffered its greatest military disaster since Hannibal's invasion of Italy over 150 years earlier, though this defeat had more far-reaching consequences. While Rome was able to recover from its disaster at Cannae, it never did retrieve the results of Carrhae, a defeat that sealed the East as an impenetrable barrier to Roman ambition, and also signaled the demise of the Republic. In 53 BC, Marcus Crassus, the richest member of Rome's ruling Triumverate, which also included Caesar and Pompey, decided to enhance his military stature with an invasion of the Parthian Empire centered on Mesopotamia (today's Iraq). His 36,000 legionaries crossed the Euphrates and were met by a much smaller Parthian army, albeit one mounted on horseback in the dispersed, missile-firing steppe-war tradition. In the desolate territory around Carrhae the Roman legions were surrounded and beset by elusive horse warriors, who alternated deadly arrow-fire from recurved bows with devastating attacks by armored horsemen, wielding lances in the fashion of future European knights. At one point Crassus dispatched his son with the Roman cavalry and light infantry to break a hole through the deadly ring. The Parthians concentrated on the party and destroyed it. Crassus was just about to move with the main body to its aid when Parthian horsemen rode up wielding his son's head on the tip of a spear. Severely unnerved, Crassus ordered a retreat, the Parthians moving in to massacre the 4,000 wounded he left behind. The next day, called to a parlay he was forced to attend by his nearly mutinous soldiers, Crassus and his officers were murdered by the Parthians. The now-leaderless Roman army disintegrated, only some 6,000 able to escape. At least 20,000 Roman legionaries were dead on the field, with 10,000 more captured. In this book Dr. Gareth Sampson, currently a tutor in ancient history at the University of Manchester, lays out not only the gruesome outcome of the battle but its immense consequences. First, unlike Alexander's Greeks, who had marched all the way to the Indus, Rome was never again to challenge the civilizations beyond the Euphrates. Second, with Crassus dead, Caesar and Pompey engaged in a bloody civil war that would end the Republic and result in political dictatorship. The author also provides an analysis of the mysterious Parthians, a people who vied with Rome as the most powerful empire on earth. Though their polity and records have long since disappeared, the Parthians' mark on history is clear enough through their decisive victory over Rome at Carrhae..
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A real-life who-done-it, Neck Deep unravels what may become one of history's great mysteries: Who killed the American Republic? How did plutocrat George W. Bush come to lead the United States at the start of the 21st century -- and how did he get away with using the 9/11 tragedy to overwhelm the constitutional safeguards that had protected the nation's liberties for more than two centuries?.
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Disastrous Dates & Dream Boys is the story of teenaged boys who want what we all want, to love and be loved. The boys from A Better Place are back. Shawn yearns for a boyfriend, but fears his father’s wrath if he discovers the truth. Dane, too, is seeking a soul mate and trying to leave his checkered past behind. He yearns for Billy, but if he approaches him will the result be happiness or disaster? Brendan has created a new life for himself and his boyfriend, Casper, but what happened in his old hometown haunts him and he realizes he must face his father if he is to ever be at peace. Nathan also has issues to resolve with the parents who gave him and his little brother up far too easily. Disastrous Dates & Dream Boys is a tale of fathers & sons, lovers & friends, and above all love and understanding.

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Disastrous is precisely the right adjective to apply to Georgina Weldon (1837-1914), who caused trouble for everyone her path crossed, but most especially for herself. Yet the catalog of calamities that constitutes this eccentric Englishwoman's life is vastly entertaining to read, thanks to Brian Thompson's smooth prose and keen sense of the absurd. You can't help but laugh at poor Georgina, so sublimely self-absorbed and so pathetically inept at getting what she wants. There's something magnificent about the whirlwind way she pursues crackpot ventures, from establishing a "singing academy" (no one came to the concerts) to running a chaotic orphanage whose charges ran wild in her London home. Her behavior was so outrageous that she narrowly escaped being committed to an asylum by her infuriated husband. Indeed, Weldon's one claim to historical fame comes from her pioneering use of the 1882 Married Women's Property Act to sue the doctors who tried to put her away; the resulting court cases made public the arbitrary, often vindictive nature of England's lunacy laws. But Thompson, a novelist and scriptwriter who turned to biography after reading Weldon's over-the-top memoirs, is less interested in her lawsuits than in her turbulent affair with French composer Charles Gounod, her tangled relations with a pair of French con artists, and her overall inability to lead anything resembling a normal life. No need to feel guilty about enjoying her tale of woe, since Georgina seems never to have doubted herself and always to have blamed other people. It's all great fun, and it really ought to be made into an opera. --Wendy Smith.
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