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

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.

Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla

David Kilcullen · 347 pages

"In Out of the Mountains, David Kilcullen, one of the world's leading experts on modern warfare, offers a groundbreaking look ahead at what may happen after the war in Afghanistan ends. It is a book about future conflicts and future cities, about the challenges and opportunities that four powerful megatrends are creating across the planet. And it is about what national governments, cities, communi

The Forever War

Dexter Filkins · 376 pages

National Bestseller Winner of the National Book Critics Circle AwardA New York Times Book Review Best Book of the YearOne of the Best Books of the Year: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Boston Globe, and TimeAn instant classic of war reporting, The Forever War is the definitive account of America's conflict with Islamic fundamentalism and a searing exploration of its

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

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

The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014

Carlotta Gall · 368 pages

The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden

Mark Bowden · 296 pages

This work is a dramatic account of the hunt for and defeat of Osama bin Laden draws on unprecedented access to primary sources to trace how key decisions were made, revealing events from the perspectives of an adept President Obama and an increasingly despondent bin Laden. After masterminding the attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden managed to vanish. Over the next ten years, as the auth

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

Peter L. Bergen · 502 pages

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

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

The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole who Infiltrated the CIA

Joby Warrick · 248 pages

This work is a narrative account of the mysterious Jordanian who penetrated both the inner circle of al-Qaeda and the highest reaches of the CIA, with a devastating impact on the war on terror. In December 2009, a group of the CIA's top terrorist hunters gathered at a secret base in Khost, Afghanistan, to greet a rising superspy: Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian double agent who infiltrated the

Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan

Rajiv Chandrasekaran

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 Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East

Robert Fisk · 1,136 pages

During the thirty years that award-winning journalist Robert Fisk has been reporting on the Middle East, he has covered every major event in the region, from the Algerian Civil War to the Iranian Revolution, from the American hostage crisis in Beirut (as one of only two Western journalists in the city at the time) to the Iran-Iraq War, from the Russian invasion of Afghanistan to Israel’s invasions

The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008

Thomas E. Ricks · 394 pages

Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks’s #1 New York Times bestseller, transformed the political dialogue on the war in Iraq—The Gamble is the next news breaking installmentThomas E. Ricks uses hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with top officers in Iraq and extraordinary on-the-ground reportage to document the inside story of the Iraq War since late 2005 as only he can, examining the events that took pla

Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War

Helen Thorpe · 397 pages

Describes the experiences of three women soldiers deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq to reveal how their military service has affected their friendship, personal lives and families, detailing the realities of their work on bases and in war zones and how their choices and losses shaped their perspectives.

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.

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

Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq

Kirsten Holmstedt · 368 pages

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

Michael Hastings

Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War

Peter Maass · 320 pages

Two Sisters: Into the Syrian Jihad

Asne Seierstad · 432 pages

The riveting story of two sisters' journey to the Islamic State and the father who tries to bring them home. Asne Seierstad puts the problem of radicalization into painfully human terms, using instant messages and other primary sources to reconstruct a family's crisis from the inside. Eventually, she takes us into the hellscape of the Syrian civil war, as Sadiq risks his life in pursuit of his dau

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

Fearless: The Heroic Story of One Navy SEAL's Sacrifice in the Hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the Unwavering Devotion of the Woman Who Loved Him

Eric Blehm · 258 pages

Blehm presents a deeply personal glimpse inside the SEAL Team SIX brotherhood that shows how these elite operators live out the rest of their lives, away from danger, as husbands, fathers, and friends. Adam Brown waged a war against his own worst impulses, persevered to reach the top tier of the U.S. military, and his final act of bravery led to the ultimate sacrifice.