Honorable Men

From a New York Times–bestselling author: A novel about a member of the Greatest Generation wrestling with moral choices over the next generation’s war in Vietnam. Chip Benedict appeared to have the best of everything: wealth, education, good looks, charm, and intelligence. Shortly before entering law school, he married Alida, a pale beauty who also had the cunning and talent to become the debutante of the year, escaping the progressively threadbare world of tarnished elegance and unpaid bills to which she was born. Alida’s life continued in a storybook fashion with her marriage to Chip, a seemingly perfect and certainly honorable man. Called to serve in World War II, he returned a hero, decorated for bravery at the Normandy landing. Following in his father’s footsteps, he became chairman of the board of the prestigious Benedict Glass Company founded by his grandfather. And yet, with all of his gifts, Chip is haunted by dark guilt that drives him to excel, conform, and embrace a righteousness that he fails to perceive as hypocrisy. In business he becomes the perfect corporate executive, lauded in Fortune and Forbes. He serves his community, supports the arts, and patriotically honors his government. But when it comes to choosing sides on the issue of Vietnam, he will make a decision that casts aside the deepest ties and loyalties of his life. “Through a series of flashbacks the narrators come to realize how outside events have influenced their lives. Auchincloss uses their story to show us the frailties of human nature when confronted with politics and morality. This psychological novel is perceptive, elegantly spare, and well crafted.” —Library Journal

The OCS at Fort Knox Reunion held at the historic Sheraton Gunter Hotel, San Antonio, Texas, from August 18 to 21, 2016, was the inspiration for this book that hails the stories of Fort Knox OCS Candidates who lived to return from the Vietnam War and other postings in the Cold War. Their stories about survival and readjustment to life in their homeland inspired me. These stalwarts took to the stage and delivered personal sagas that left the audience spellbound. The writing muse nudged me. Stories were gathered from these honorable men. Exciting highlights unfold about their lives before, during, and after the Vietnam War. Why stop? Stories were sought from ordinary people, men and women, who served on battlefields; Gold Star moms who grieved the loss of military pilots; a spouse whose husband was missing for thirty-plus years; a mother whose son has never returned; World War II Italy warriors fighting alongside their brothers; the elite 10th Mountain Division Alpine Mountain Men; the US Coast Guard with daring rescues and routine lives that were anything but routine; and the average citizen, pilots facing horrific crash scenes, naval maneuvers offsetting war-meet these unsung heroes, the fabric of our United States of America.

In this sizzling fan-favorite tale from New York Times bestselling author Lori Foster, Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton Wulf’s career ambitions cost him the one woman he ever wanted—elementary school teacher Liv Avery. When tragedy strikes, he’s determined to win back her love…even if it means risking his life. First published in 2005

The veteran intelligence agent and former CIA director recalls the events, developments, and people of his career, describes the CIA's organization, workings, and procedures, and profiles famous and hazy world figures.

Abruptly roused from his prosaic existence as a small-town magistrate in Ming Dynasty China, Lin Jiang is summoned to the house of Lord Chang Da, an extremely wealthy landowner and cousin of the emperor. To Lin’s consternation, the crime he is asked to investigate is the supposedly deliberate killing of Chang Da’s pet songbird. Honor-bound to undertake the task, Lin soon discovers there is much more at stake in the great family of Chang. With the help of his trusty manservant Chen Ping, who himself has a dark connection to the House of Chang, Lin sets about discovering the truth. In so doing, he lays bare a tangled story of illicit love, jealousy, fraternal rivalry, and violent death.

"This gripping first novel in a spy thriller series, set in Washington D.C. at the height of the Red Scare, investigates a double agent in the CIA whose betrayals threaten to compromise the two lead investigators, the Agency, and the entire nation."--

This novel by one of America’s foremost writers—and perhaps the most truly American of all—is rock-based in values and virtues which most of the time seem to have disappeared from our fiction, if not from American life itself. The story of a storekeeper turned minister, A Simple Honorable Man is the fictional record of a life spent in the service of others, a life bringing the power of simple goodnessto obscure, sometimes earthy and violent people. Harry Donner (the father in Mr. Richter’s previous novel, The Waters of Kronos) stands in this novel as a man of integrity engaged in the day-by-day activities of son, husband, father, friend, and counselor in an age when home and family exerted moral conviction and social authority. Written with Conrad Richter’s customary grace of style and purity of vision, A Simple Honorable Man joins the long list of his moving and evocative portrayals in fiction of American life.

A scathing attack on Wall Street’s illegal ties to Nazi Germany before WWII—and the postwar whitewashing of Nazi business leaders by the US government Prior to World War II, German industry was controlled by an elite group who had used their money and influence to help bring the Nazi Party to power. After the Allies had successfully occupied Germany and removed the Third Reich, the process of reconstructing the devastated nation’s economy began under supervision of the US government. James Stewart Martin, who had assisted the Allied forces in targeting key areas of German industry for aerial bombardment, returned to Germany as the director of the Division for Investigation of Cartels and External Assets in American Military Government, a position he held until 1947. Martin was to break up the industrial machine these cartels controlled and investigate their ties to Wall Street. What he discovered was shocking. Many American corporations had done business with German corporations who helped fund the Nazi Party, despite knowing what their money was supporting. Effectively, Wall Street’s greed had led them to aid Hitler and hinder the Allied effort. Martin’s efforts at decartelization were unsuccessful though, largely due to hindrance from his superior officer, an investment banker in peacetime. In conclusion, he said, “We had not been stopped in Germany by German business. We had been stopped in Germany by American business.” This exposé on economic warfare, Wall Street, and America’s military industrial complex includes a new introduction by Christopher Simpson, author of Blowback:America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Destructive Impact on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy, and a new foreword from investigative journalist Hank Albarelli.