Mark Mazzetti, “The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth” (Penguin, 2013)

Mark Mazzetti, “The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth” (Penguin, 2013)

There are many movies about evil CIA agents assassinating supposed enemies of the US. Those who saw the latest Captain America movie will have witnessed the plan by Hydra (a fascist faction within a secret agency presumably within the CIA) build floating gunships that can identify and eliminate those who pose a threat to national security. We are not there yet, but Mark Mazzetti‘s book The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth (Penguin, 2013) should give us some anxiety about the current technology used for “extra-judicial killings”. Mazzetti gives us the history of the drone wars – a term hated by the Air Force who note that the drones are piloted aircraft albeit from a remote location – and their ability to be used for the elimination of… well, enemies of the US and its allies. Having said that, this is not a diatribe of opposition but a balanced and careful examination of history and political process. At the core of the book is a discussion of how the CIA and the US military are running parallel drone operations with different criteria and standards of care and success. Mazzetti’s book presents us with, what I found to be, a frightening insight into operations that are so common that they rarely rate a mention in the media. I highly recommend the book and suggest that anyone running a course on military ethics include it in their reading list. There is more than enough ethical controversy raised in the book to fill a semester of discussion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Jaksot(1625)

Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw, "Fleeced: Unraveling the History of Wool and War" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw, "Fleeced: Unraveling the History of Wool and War" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Not everything about wool is warm and fuzzy. Wool, for millennia the cold climate textile fiber, has a long relationship to war, both in terms of supporting it and causing it. Wool's strategic value i...

1 Maalis 1h 9min

Elliot Dolan-Evans, "Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF, and the Conflict in Ukraine" (Bristol UP, 2025)

Elliot Dolan-Evans, "Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF, and the Conflict in Ukraine" (Bristol UP, 2025)

Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF, and the Conflict in Ukraine (Bristol UP, 2025) by Dr. Elliot Dolan-Evans examines the impact of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) ec...

28 Helmi 54min

Sarah Jones Weicksel, "A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era" (UNC Press, 2026)

Sarah Jones Weicksel, "A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era" (UNC Press, 2026)

During the American Civil War, clothing became central to the ways people waged war and experienced its cost. Through the clothes they made, wore, mended, lost, and stole, Americans expressed their al...

27 Helmi 55min

American Masterpiece: The Civil War Diaries of George Templeton Strong with Brenda Wineapple and Geoff Wisner

American Masterpiece: The Civil War Diaries of George Templeton Strong with Brenda Wineapple and Geoff Wisner

Wednesday, February 18—Called “the greatest American diary of the nineteenth century,” the journal of the patrician New York City lawyer George Templeton Strong stands as a remarkable documentary reco...

23 Helmi 1h

Colleen M. Moore, "The Peasants' War: Russia's Home Front in the First World War and the End of the Autocracy" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

Colleen M. Moore, "The Peasants' War: Russia's Home Front in the First World War and the End of the Autocracy" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

During the First World War, Russia relied on the mass mobilization of its peasant population. In the summer of 1914, approximately four million peasants answered the state’s call to arms, while the mi...

14 Helmi 55min

Amos Fox and Franz-Stefan Gady, "Multidomain Operations: The Pursuit of Battlefield Dominance in the 21st Century" (Howgate Publishing, 2026)

Amos Fox and Franz-Stefan Gady, "Multidomain Operations: The Pursuit of Battlefield Dominance in the 21st Century" (Howgate Publishing, 2026)

In Multidomain Operations: The Pursuit of Battlefield Dominance in the 21st Century (Howgate Publishing Limited, 2026), Amos Fox and Franz-Stefan Gady challenge one of modern war’s most influential do...

14 Helmi 1h 51min

Claire Morelon, "Streetscapes of War and Revolution: Prague, 1914–1920" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Claire Morelon, "Streetscapes of War and Revolution: Prague, 1914–1920" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Prague entered the First World War as the third city of the Habsburg empire, but emerged in 1918 as the capital of a brand new nation-state, Czechoslovakia. In Streetscapes of War and Revolution: Prag...

13 Helmi 42min

Mark Stout, "World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence" (UP of Kansas, 2023)

Mark Stout, "World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence" (UP of Kansas, 2023)

Ask an American intelligence officer to tell you when the country started doing modern intelligence and you will probably hear something about the Office of Strategic Services in World War II or the N...

11 Helmi 1h 12min

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