Guantánamo Diary: Restored Edition


Mohamedou Ould Slahi - 2015
    Since 2002, Mohamedou Slahi has been imprisoned at the detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In all these years, the United States has never charged him with a crime. Although he was ordered released by a federal judge, the U.S. government fought that decision, and there is no sign that the United States plans to let him go. Three years into his captivity Slahi began a diary, recounting his life before he disappeared into U.S. custody and daily life as a detainee. His diary is not merely a vivid record of a miscarriage of justice, but a deeply personal memoir -- terrifying, darkly humorous, and surprisingly gracious. Published now for the first time, Guantanamo Diary is a document of immense historical importance.

Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent Into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death


Jim Frederick - 2010
    Hit by near-daily mortars, gunfire, and roadside bomb attacks, suffering from a particularly heavy death toll, and enduring a chronic breakdown in leadership, members of one Black Heart platoon--1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion--descended, over their year-long tour of duty, into a tailspin of poor discipline, substance abuse, and brutality. Four 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the most heinous war crimes U.S. forces have committed during the Iraq War--the rape of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and the cold-blooded execution of her and her family. Three other 1st Platoon soldiers would be overrun at a remote outpost--one killed immediately and two taken from the scene, their mutilated corpses found days later booby-trapped with explosives. "Black Hearts" is an unflinching account of the epic, tragic deployment of 1st Platoon. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with Black Heart soldiers and first-hand reporting from the Triangle of Death, "Black Hearts" is a timeless story about men in combat and the fragility of character in the savage crucible of warfare. But it is also a timely warning of new dangers emerging in the way American soldiers are led on the battlefields of the twenty-first century.

A Tiger Among Us: A Story of Valor in Vietnam's A Shau Valley


Bennie Adkins - 2018
    Cunning. Ferocious. Fearless. The Indochinese tiger is just one of the formidable predators roaming Vietnam's jungle. In 1966 a small band of US Special Forces soldiers--most especially Bennie Adkins--spent four grueling days facing down the "tiger" among them.While the rain and mist of an early March moved over the valley, then-Sergeant First Class Bennie Adkins and sixteen other Green Berets found themselves holed up in an undermanned and unfortified position at Camp A Shau, a small training and reconnaissance camp located right next to the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, North Vietnam's major supply route. And with the rain came the North Vietnamese Army in force.Surrounded 10-to-1, the Green Berets endured constant mortar and rifle fire, direct assaults, treasonous allies, and volatile jungle weather. But there was one among them who battled ferociously, like a tiger, and when they finally evacuated, he carried the wounded to safety. Forty-eight years later, Command Sergeant Major Bennie Adkins's valor was recognized when he received this nation's highest military award, the Medal of Honor.Filled with the sights, smells, and sounds of a raging battle fought in the middle of a tropical forest, A Tiger among Us is a riveting tale of bravery, valor, skill, and resilience.