One Perfect Op: Navy SEAL Special Warfare Teams


Dennis Chalker - 2002
    Dennis Chalker was an original “plankowner” (founding member) of SEAL Team Six, and in One Perfect Op, he takes readers deep inside the remarkable world of America’s Special Forces operatives. With an introduction by Richard Marcinko of Rogue Warrior fame, One Perfect Op describes, step by breathtaking step, one extraordinary SEALs mission, shedding fascinating new light on the training, the planning, the courage and the skill of these exceptional warriors.

Live From The Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years in the World's War Zones


Peter Arnett - 1993
    In Live from the Battlefield, one of the most highly-celebrated journalistic memoirs ever written, Peter Arnett gives us an engrossing account of the Vietnam era, as well as an indispensable portrait of battlefield reporting.Live from the Battlefield captures the adventures, gambles, and glories that have marked this master journalist's life with a vividness and intelligence rare in any memoir. But more than that, Arnett provides an insider's view of some of the greatest and most tragic events of the century in a book of singular and enduring importance.

Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point


David Lipsky - 2003
    Powerful.... Wonderfully told." --The New York Times Book ReviewAs David Lipsky follows a future generation of army officers from their proving grounds to their barracks, he reveals the range of emotions and desires that propels these men and women forward. From the cadet who struggles with every facet of West Point life to those who are decidedly huah, Lipsky shows people facing challenges so daunting and responsibilities so heavy that their transformations are fascinating to watch. Absolutely American is a thrilling portrait of a unique institution and those who make up its ranks.With an updated Epilogue by the author.NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo


Tom Reiss - 2012
    The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature.Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave -- who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East – until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.