Bill Fawcett – författare

The U.S. Navy SEALs have long been considered among the finest, most courageous, and professional soldiers in American military history—an elite fighting force trained as parachutists, frogmen, demolition experts, and guerrilla warriors ready for sea, air, and land combat. Born out of a proud naval tradition dating back to World War II, the first SEAL teams were commissioned in the early 1960s. Vietnam was their proving ground.

In this remarkable volume, fifteen former SEALs—most of them original founding team members, or "plankowners"—share their vivid first-person remembrances of action in Vietnam. Here are honest, brutal, and relentlessly thrilling stories of covert missions, ferocious firefights, and red-hot chopper insertions and extractions, revealing astonishing little-known truths that will only add strength to the enduring SEAL legend.

A remarkable compendium of the worst military decisions and the men who made them

The annals of history are littered with horribly bad military leaders. These combat incompetents found amazing ways to ensure their army''s defeat. Whether it was a lack of proper planning, miscalculation, ego, bad luck, or just plain stupidity, certain wartime stratagems should never have left the drawing board. Written with wit, intelligence, and eminent readability, How to Lose a Battle pays dubious homage to these momentous and bloody blunders, including:

Cannae, 216 B.C.: the bumbling Romans lose 80,000 troops to Hannibal''s forces.

The Second Crusade: an entire Christian army is slaughtered when it stops for a drink of water.

The Battle of Britain: Hitler''s dreaded Luftwaffe blows it big-time.

Pearl Harbor: more than one warning of the impending attack is there, but nobody listens.

How to Lose a Battle includes more than thirty-five chapters worth of astonishing (and avoidable) disasters, both infamous and obscure -- a treasure trove of trivia, history, and jaw-dropping facts about the most costly military missteps ever taken.

A remarkable compendium of wild schemes, mad plans, crazy inventions, and truly glorious disasters

Every phenomenally bad idea seemed like a good idea to someone. How else can you explain the Ford Edsel or the sword pistol—absolutely absurd creations that should have never made it off the drawing board? It Looked Good on Paper gathers together the most flawed plans, half-baked ideas, and downright ridiculous machines throughout history that some second-rate Einstein decided to foist on an unsuspecting populace with the best and most optimistic intentions. Some failed spectacularly. Others fizzled after great expense. One even crashed on Mars. But every one of them at one time must have looked good on paper, including:

With more than thirty-five chapters full of incredibly insipid inventions, both infamous and obscure, It Looked Good on Paper is a mind-boggling, endlessly entertaining collection of fascinating failures.

How to Lose WWII is an engrossing, fact-filled collection from Bill Fawcett that sheds light on the biggest, and dumbest, screw-ups of the Great War. In the vein of his other phenomenal compendiums of amazing battlefield blunders, How to Lose a Battle and How to Lose a War, Fawcett focuses on some amazing catastrophic missteps of Axis and Allies alike.

“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” And so we have. Time and again, mankind has faced down problems, but have often failed to take the hard-earned knowledge into the next battle.

Doomed to Repeat is a collection of essays, edited by Bill Fawcett, that illuminates some of the problems we've faced repeatedly throughout history, including Islamic jihad, terrorism, military insurgencies, inflation and the devaluation of currency, financial disasters, ecological collapses, radical political minorities like the Nazis and Bolsheviks, and pandemics and epidemics like the Black Death.

With more than 35 chapters of the Groundhog Days of world history, both infamous and obscure, Doomed to Repeat: The Lessons of History We've Failed to Learn is chock-full of trivia, history, and fascinating looks at the world’s repeated mistakes.

An engrossing compendium of high-seas military disasters

From the days of the Spanish Armada to the modern age of aircraft carriers, battles have been bungled just as badly on water as they have been on land. Some blunders were the result of insufficient planning, overinflated egos, espionage, or miscalculations; others were caused by ideas that didn't hold water in the first place. In glorious detail, here are thirty-three of history's worst maritime mishaps, including:

Chock-full of amazing facts and hilarious trivia, How to Lose a War at Sea is the most complete volume of nautical failures ever assembled.

An all-star tribute to Gene Wolfe, featuring the work of Neil Gaiman, David Brin, Nancy Kress, and othersPerhaps no living author of imaginative fiction has earned the awards, accolades, respect, and literary reputation of Gene Wolfe. His prose has been called subtle and brilliant, inspiring not just lovers of fantasy and science fiction, but readers of every stripe, transcending genre and defying preconceptions.In this volume, a select group of Wolfe''s fellow authors pay tribute to the award-winning creator of The Book of the New Sun, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Soldier of the Mist, The Wizard Knight and many others, with entirely new stories written specifically to honor the writer hailed by The Washington Post as "one of America''s finest."Shadows of the New Sun features contributions by Neil Gaiman, David Brin, David Drake, Nancy Kress, and many others, plus two new short stories by Gene Wolfe himself.At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.