Michael Lee Lanning

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The American Revolution 100: The People, Battles, and Events of the American War for Independence, Ranked by Their Significance

Michael Lee Lanning

Furnishes a provocative ranking of the one hundred most important battles, events, military heroes, political leaders, and other aspects of the American Revolution, in an informative volume enhanced by a host of illustrations and maps.

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Inside The VC And The NVA: The Real Story of North Vietnam's Armed Forces

Michael Lee Lanning; Dan Cragg

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Michael Lee Lanning

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The African-American Soldier: From Crispus Attucks to Colin Powell

Michael Lee Lanning

y history of the United States, "The African-American Soldier" portrays the struggles of the courageous men and women who secured the right of black Americans to fight for their country--a country that provided them with nearly two centuries of discrimination. This account of the road to racial equality in the military tracks progress and setbacks as well as dramatic firsts for African Americans. Photos.

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Other editions: Softcover - 2004, Hardcover - 1997, Hardcover - 1997

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Blood Warriors: American Military Elites

Michael Lee Lanning

Rangers, Green Berets, SEALs, Delta Force, LRRPs, Force Recon—
and the struggle of the best and the bravest to keep America free

They’re some of the toughest and most highly trained fighting men in the world—going where no ordinary soldier would go and doing what no ordinary soldier would dare. Outnumbered and outgunned, operating in small teams of five or six-deep in enemy territory far from help, they rely on their wits, their skills, and each other to get out alive.

Blood Warriors is a penetrating, no-holds-barred account of the training, missions, and history of the military elites who mold America’s most dangerous and highly skilled warriors . . . from the navy’s SEALs and the Marine Corps’ Force Reconnaissance to the U.S. Army’s Delta Force, Rangers, and Special Forces. Here’s an in-depth look at each unit’s methods and standards: what’s required and what it takes to survive and succeed. Whether gathering intelligence, capturing prisoners, executing raids and ambushes, or just creating havoc in enemy territory, these men know that death is their constant companion—and one small misstep could mean body bags for everyone. Maybe that’s why America calls them heroes.


From the Paperback edition.

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Other editions: Softcover - 2002

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The Military 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Leaders of All Time

Michael Lee Lanning

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Defenders of Liberty: African Americans in the Revolutionary War

Michael Lee Lanning

A noted military historian reveals the critical and heroic role African Americans played in the American Revolution, the last war to use integrated units until the Korean Conflict. of illustrations.

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Inside the Crosshairs: Snipers in Vietnam

Michael Lee Lanning

"The American sniper could be regarded as the greatest all-around rifleman the world has ever known. . . ."At the start of the war in Vietnam, the United States had no snipers; by the end of the war, Marine and army precision marksmen had killed more than 10,000 NVA and VC soldiers--the equivalent of an entire division--at the cost of under 20,000 bullets, proving that long-range shooters still had a place in the battlefield. Now noted military historian Michael Lee Lanning shows how U.S. snipers in Vietnam--combining modern technology in weapons, ammunition, and telescopes--used the experience and traditions of centuries of expert shooters to perfect their craft. To provide insight into the use of American snipers in Vietnam, Lanning interviewed men with combat trigger time, as well as their instructors, the founders of the Marine and U.S. Army sniper programs, and the generals to whom they reported. Backed by hard information and firsthand accounts, the author demonstrates how the skills these one-shot killers honed in the jungles of Vietnam provided an indelible legacy that helped save American lives in Grenada, the Gulf War, and Somalia and continues to this day with American troops in Bosnia.

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The Military 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Military Leaders of All Time

Michael Lee Lanning

From the famous to the infamous to the obscure, The Military 100 provides the fascinating answers to a variety of questions about military leaders. In vivid biographical sketches, the author chronicles the lives and accomplishments of the world's most influential commanders, captains, generals, liberators and conquerors, from Alexander the Great to Hitler, from George Washington to Norman Schwarzkopf. Photos & illustrations.

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Other editions: Hardcover - 1996

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Senseless Secrets: The Failures of U.S. Military Intelligence from George Washington to the Present

Michael Lee Lanning; Carol Pub Group

Every American war and practically every battle has been marked by a failure of military intelligence, from Ticonderoga, Buena Vista, Fredericksburg, Little Big Horn, to the Ardennes, Pearl Harbor, Korea, Tet, Grenada, Panama, and Desert Storm. In all these instances, American lives were tragically lost as a direct result of intelligence breakdowns. Senseless Secrets reveals how and why the United States spends $28 billion annually to operate its intelligence activities and another $6 billion to classify and safeguard the information gathered. However, little of this data trickles down to the military leaders, and perhaps that's fortunate since even less is accurate, making it a collection of truly senseless secrets; from Benedict Arnold to Aldrich Ames, spies and traitors have successfully infiltrated the U.S. military intelligence community; American forces landed on Grenada with useless tourist maps and incorrect information about the location of the students and government officials they were sent to rescue; many small-unit commanders in Vietnam, including the author, did not recall ever receiving a single piece of useful intelligence; While Operation Desert Storm had available the best intelligence of any war in U.S. history, military commanders who needed accurate information the most received gross overestimates of the numbers and capabilities of the Iraqi forces with little indication of their willingness to fight. Military intelligence compounded their failures by greatly inflating the estimates of enemy equipment and troop losses once the battle actually began.

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The Battles Of Peace

Michael Lee Lanning

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Other editions: Softcover - 1992

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Inside the Vc and the Nva: The Real Story of North Vietnam's Armed Force

Michael Lee Lanning; Dan Cragg

"An intimate, candid portrait of the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army...An absolute necessity for Vietnamese-studies collections." During the war in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese communists had to place their trust in the oldest and most reliable tool of warfare: the individual soldier; America believed that firepower, lgoistics, and technology would be sufificent for victory. The North Vietnamese won. INSIDE THE VC AND THE NVA, written by two veterans with six-and-a-half years combined experience, shows how.A Dual Main Selection of the Military Book Club

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Vietnam at the Movies

Michael Lee Lanning

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, A COMPREHENSIVE AND FASCINATING CRITIQUE OF MOVIES ABOUT VIETNAM!Heroic. Brave. Daring. Until the 1960s, movies about war were good box office. That all changed with Vietnam. Since the war was unpopular and confusing -- lacking clear objectives and easily identified enemies --movie-makers, like many Americans, transferred their dislike for the conflict onto the soldier. Consequently, Hollywood produced pictures that can now be recognizes as misleading, distorted, sensationalistic, or just plain dishonest.In Vietnam at the Movies, Vietnam vet Michael Lee Lanning traces the genesis of the "war movie" from the Spanish American War all the way up to Vietnam, taking Tinseltown to task for its treatment of the Viet vet--painstakingly separating fact from the fiction, and reviewing the quality and accuracy of more than 380 films and TV movies, including: Air America * The Big Chill * Birdy * Born on the Fourth of July * Casualties of War * Coming Home * The Deer Hunter * Dogfight * Easy Rider * First Blood * For the Boys * Friendly Fire * Full Metal Jacket * Good Morning Vietnam * Hair * In Country * JFK * The Killing Fields * Lethal Weapon * Nashville * Platoon * Running On Empty * Slaughterhouse-Five * Streamers * Suspect * Swimming to Cambodia * Taxi Driver * Tender Mercies * Top Gun * Year of the Dragon * And many more!Alphabetically organized for quick and easy access, this comprehensive volume gives film audiences and VCR viewers the opportunity to understand exactly what they are watching when they see Vietnam at the movies.

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Inside Force Recon: Recon Marines in Vietnam

Michael Lee Lanning

Operating on four-to-eight-man teams, the heroic patrols of Force Recon ventured far into the very backyard of the enemy, using tacics associated more with their adversaries than with the U.S. military. They were the eyes and ears of the units they served, and their operations were marked by close combat, extraordinary bravery, and nearly unbelievable survival despite overwhelming odds.

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The Only War We Had: A Platoon Leader's Journal of Vietnam

Michael Lee Lanning

During his tour in Vietnam with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, Lieutenant Lee Lanning walked the booby-trapped rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, searching for elusive Viet Cong, and later macheted his way through the triple-canopy jungle, fighting North Vietnamese Army regulars. He served as an infantry platoon leader, reconnaissance platoon leader, and company commander. He sweated, thirsted, hunted, killed. And in all those experiences, he shared the terror, boredom, rage, and excitement of countless other American soldiers.Lee Lanning's story is based on the journal he kept of his time in Nam -- on pages often mud-splattered and occasionally bloodstained. In his words: "It was popular among many who fought to say that Vietnam 'wasn't much of a war, but it was the only war we had.' I can only add that it was enough of a war for me."

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