The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One

The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth

Mark Mazzetti · 400 pages

An account of the transformation of the CIA and America's special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines in the world's dark spaces: the new American way of war.

Obama's Wars

Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward interviewed dozens of high-ranking government officials to compile this record of the discussions and thought processes behind President Obama's decision to increase the American presence in Afghanistan by 30,000 military in early 2010 and begin phase-out of American involvement in mid-2011. The author used his access well in documenting secret discussions and public pronouncements

The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014

Carlotta Gall · 368 pages

In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

Seth G. Jones · 414 pages

This book is a definitive account of the American experience in Afghanistan from the rise of the Taliban to the depths of the insurgency. After the swift defeat of the Taliban in 2001, American optimism has steadily evaporated in the face of mounting violence; a new "war of a thousand cuts" has now brought the country to its knees. In the Graveyard of Empires is a political history of Afghanistan

America's War for the Greater Middle East

Andrew J. Bacevich · 370 pages

A critical assessment of America's foreign policy in the Middle East throughout the past four decades evaluates and connects regional engagements since 1990 while revealing their massive costs. From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action

The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War

Fred Kaplan · 413 pages

This book describes the attempt to reform the culture of the US Armed Forces in the face of the challenges of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from a cold war machinery focussed on major battles against a massive enemy towards the flexible dominance over an elusive, ingrained and invisible one.

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

Thomas E. Ricks · 487 pages

The definitive military chronicle of the Iraq war and a searing judgment on the strategic blindness with which America has conducted it, drawing on the accounts of senior military officers giving voice to their anger for the first time.Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post senior Pentagon correspondant Thomas E. Ricks's Fiasco is masterful and explosive reckoning with the planning and execution o

Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

Seymour M. Hersh · 432 pages

Since September 11, 2001, Seymour M. Hersh has riveted readers -- and outraged the Bush Administration -- with his stories in The New Yorker, including his breakthrough pieces on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Now, in Chain of Command, he brings together this reporting, along with new revelations, to answer the critical question of the last three years: how did America get from the clear morning w

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Jeremy Scahill · 464 pages

On September 16, 2007, machine gun fire erupted in Baghdad's Nisour Square leaving seventeen Iraqi civilians dead, among them women and children. The shooting spree, labeled "Baghdad's Bloody Sunday," was neither the work of Iraqi insurgents nor U.S. soldiers. The shooters were private forces working for the secretive mercenary company, Blackwater Worldwide. This is the explosive story of a compan

The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda

Peter L. Bergen · 502 pages

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

Rachel Maddow · 281 pages

Maddow shows how deeply militarized our culture has become--how the role of the national security sector has shape-shifted and grown over the past century to the point of being financially unsustainable and confused in mission.

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa

Jason Stearns · 416 pages

No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden

Mark Owen, Kevin Maurer · 366 pages

For the first time anywhere, the first-person account of the planning and execution of the Bin Laden raid from a Navy Seal who confronted the terrorist mastermind and witnessed his final moment. From the streets of Iraq to the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean, and from the mountaintops of Afghanistan to the third floor of Osama Bin Laden's compound, operator Mark Owen of the

How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

Rosa Brooks · 438 pages

The Pentagon's a strange place. Inside secure command centers, military officials make life and death decisions--but the Pentagon also offers food courts, banks, drugstores, florists, and chocolate shops. When Rosa Brooks gave her family a tour, her mother gaped at the glossy window displays: "So the heart of American military power is a shopping mall?" In a sense, yes: the U.S. military has becom

The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan

Michael Hastings

No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes

Anand Gopal · 320 pages

"As U.S. troops prepare to withdraw, the shocking tale of how the American military had triumph in sight in Afghanistan--and then brought the Taliban back from the dead. In the popular imagination, Afghanistan is often regarded as the site of intractable conflict, the American war against the Taliban a perpetually hopeless quagmire. But as Anand Gopal demonstrates in this stunning chronicle, top T

The Fall of Yugoslavia

Misha Glenny · 257 pages

The Fall of Yugoslavia tells the whole, true story of the Balkan Crisis - and the ensuing war - for those around the world who have watched the battle unfold with a mixture of horror, dread, and confusion. When Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence in June 1991, peaceful neighbors of four decades took up arms against each other once again and a savage war flared in the Balkans. The unde

Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine

Eugene Finkel · 336 pages

Benghazi: The Definitive Report

Jack Murphy, Brandon Webb

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

Chalmers Johnson · 394 pages

13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi

Mitchell Zuckoff · 352 pages

The harrowing, true account from the brave men on the ground who fought back during the Battle of Benghazi. This book presents, for the first time ever, the true account of the events of September 11, 2012, when terrorists attacked the US State Department Special Mission Compound and a nearby CIA station called the Annex in Benghazi, Libya. A team of six American security operators fought to repel

SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden

Chuck Pfarrer · 236 pages

On May 2, 2011, at 1:03 a.m. in Pakistan, a satellite uplink was sent from the town of Abbottabad crackling into the situation room of the White House in Washington, D.C.: "Geronimo, Echo, KIA." These words, spoken by a Navy SEAL, put paid to Osama bin Laden's three-decade-long career of terror. SEAL Target Geronimo is the story of Bin Laden's relentless hunters and how they took down the terroris

They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers

Romeo Dallaire, Jessica Dee Humphreys · 320 pages

Dans plus de trente conflits mondiaux, les gouvernements comme les acteurs non gouvernementaux ont recours aux enfants soldats : ils exigent une technologie limitée et des frais de subsistance minimes, font montre d'une polyvalence inégalée dans les combats de faible intensité et sont parfois capables d'une barbarie étonnante. L'homme a créé l'ultime arme, bon marché, renouvelable et pourtant raff

Courage Can Save Us: Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future

Rye Barcott

From a U.S. Marine and co-founder of With Honor, and written ahead of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, comes the story of principled veterans who work across party lines to shape our nation and inspire us to serve with courage in our own lives. When most Americans think of acts of courage, elected office is rarely the first place they look. And while more Americans than