She crossed the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan with mujaheddin fighting the Russians and fell unequivocally in love with this fierce country of pomegranates and war, a relationship which has dominated her adult life.Since 2001, Lamb has watched with incredulity as the West fought a war with its hands tied, committed too little too late, failed to understand local dynamics and turned a blind eye as their Taliban enemy was helped by their ally Pakistan.Farewell Kabul tells how success was turned into defeat in the longest war fought by the United States in its history and by Britain since the Hundred Years War. It has been a fiasco which has left Afghanistan still one of the poorest nations on earth, the Taliban undefeated, and nuclear armed Pakistan perhaps the most dangerous place on earth.With unparalleled access to all key decision-makers in Afghanistan, Pakistan, London and Washington, from heads of state and generals as well as soldiers on the ground, Farewell Kabul tells how this happened.In Afghanistan, Lamb has travelled far beyond Helmand – from the caves of Tora Bora in the south to the mountainous bad lands of Kunar in the east; from Herat, city of poets and minarets in the west, to the very poorest province of Samangan in the north. She went to Guantánamo, met Taliban in Quetta, visited jihadi camps in Pakistan and saw bin Laden’s house just after he was killed. Saddest of all, she met women who had been made role models by the West and had then been shot, raped or forced to flee the country.This deeply personal book not only shows the human cost of political failure but explains how short-sighted encouragement of jihadis to fight the Russians, followed by prosecution of ill-thought-out wars, has resulted in the spread of terrorism throughout the Islamic world.

    By the thousands, they have flooded into the Islamic State's stronghold in Syria and Iraq and carried out attacks under its black banner in nearly every continent. How has the Islamic State surpassed al-Qaeda to become the most popular jihadist group on the planet? Its chilling mission is very specific: bring the immediate return of the Islamic empire and look ahead to the imminent end of days. These two powerful religious ideas, combined with a highly intelligent, meticulously organized membership, account for its popularity and shape its behavior. Its goal is not only to revive this Islamic empire but also usher in the End of Times--a concept that means ISIS anticipates a final battle that will restore the Muslim community to its medieval glory days. And they will not stop until they achieve their mission.Based almost entirely on primary sources in Arabic-including exclusive al-Qaeda memos that have not been made public before-The ISIS Apocalypse by William McCants explores how these two powerful ideas shaped the Islamic State's past and foreshadows its dark future, as well as seeks to explain the popularity of the Islamic State and its violent, terrifying behavior.

    Then they met the German Panther, with a gun so murderous it could shoot through one Sherman and into the next. Soon a pattern emerged: The lead tank always gets hit.After Clarence sees his friends cut down breaching the West Wall and holding the line in the Battle of the Bulge, he and his crew are given a weapon with the power to avenge their fallen brothers: the Pershing, a state-of-the-art “super tank,” one of twenty in the European theater.But with it comes a harrowing new responsibility: Now they will spearhead every attack. That’s how Clarence, the corporal from coal country, finds himself leading the U.S. Army into its largest urban battle of the European war, the fight for Cologne, the “Fortress City” of Germany.Battling through the ruins, Clarence will engage the fearsome Panther in a duel immortalized by an army cameraman. And he will square off with Gustav Schaefer, a teenager behind the trigger in a Panzer IV tank, whose crew has been sent on a suicide mission to stop the Americans.As Clarence and Gustav trade fire down a long boulevard, they are taken by surprise by a tragic mistake of war. What happens next will haunt Clarence to the modern day, drawing him back to Cologne to do the unthinkable: to face his enemy, one last time.

    Instead of opting for college life, Ryan Smithson joined the Army Reserve when he was seventeen. Two years later, he was deployed to Iraq as an Army engineer.His story—and the stories of thousands of other soldiers—is nothing like what you see on CNN or read about in the New York Times. This unforgettable story about combat, friendship, fear, and a soldier’s commitment to his country peels back the curtain on the realities of war in a story all Americans should read.

    and everywhere in Iraq, women in the US military fight. More than 155,000 of them have served in Iraq since 2003-4 times the number of women sent to Desert Storm in 1991 - and more than 430 have been wounded and over 70 killed, almost twice the number of US military women killed in action in Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm combined. But should women be in combat? Do they have what it takes to be warriors? Compelling questions once... but empty questions now, because more than ever, American women are in combat, and they are warriors. The real question is: What is their experience of war? We haven't heard their stories - until now.

    Those who serve America in harm’s way in the war against radical Islam have that quality in abundance. And so do their families and loved ones at home. Yet, they rarely get the attention or coverage they deserve.“Despite the way they are presented by too many in the press and politics, the men and women in uniform today are overwhelmingly good. I never cease to be amazed at the self-discipline of these brave young Americans. They can endure the adrenaline-pumping violence of an enemy engagement, and then, just minutes later, help school children get safely to their classes . . . No nation—ours included—has ever had a military force better than the one we have today. I’m proud of them. You should be too.” In American Heroes (a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post best seller), North offers an inspiring, first-hand account of the extraordinary men and women defending America against radical Islamic terror from his perspective as a forty year member of the United States military, a member of the National Security Council staff and serving as the U.S. government’s counter-terrorism coordinator from 1983-1986. This patriotic book also pulls in new reports and exclusive full-color photographs from War Stories, the award-winning FOX News Channel series hosted by North. Endorsements "Oliver North has spent his life among America’s heroes. This book with its moving words and powerful images will inspire patriots, reassure the faint of heart, and infuriate our nation’s adversaries. These are our heroes, they deserve to have their story told, and no one is better to tell it than Col. North, because when it comes to heroes, it takes one to know one. This book is a treasure."—Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and New York Times bestselling author of Real Change"Ollie North has ‘been there—done that’ with the American heroes who are winning the war against radical Islamic terror. This book is a magnificent tribute to the warriors who defend us all."—Sean Hannity, host of The Sean Hannity Show and FOX News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes

    Including interviews with military top brass, from commanding officers to General Petreaus himself, this book reveals the disturbing chasm between official rhetoric and the situation on the ground.Informed by more than 300 hours of firsthand frontline footage with the U.S. Marines, documentary filmmaker Anderson (HBO's "The Battle for Marjah") provides a gripping account of the Afghanistan war in Helmand province.

    Douglas, whom Stevens succeeded, and Stephen Field have served on the Court for a longer time. In Five Chiefs, Justice Stevens captures the inner workings of the Supreme Court via his personal experiences with the five Chief Justices -- Fred Vinson, Earl Warren, Warren Burger, William Rehnquist, and John Roberts -- that he interacted with. He reminisces of being a law clerk during Vinson's tenure; a practicing lawyer for Warren; a circuit judge and junior justice for Burger; a contemporary colleague of Rehnquist; and a colleague of current Chief Justice John Roberts. Along the way, he will discuss his views of some the most significant cases that have been decided by the Court from Vinson, who became Chief Justice in 1946 when Truman was President, to Roberts, who became Chief Justice in 2005. Packed with interesting anecdotes and stories about the Court, Five Chiefs is an unprecedented and historically significant look at the highest court in the United States.

    At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

    As Gordon and Trainor show, the brutal aftermath was not inevitable and was a surprise to the generals on both sides. Based on access to unseen documents and exclusive interviews with the men and women at the heart of the war, Cobra II provides firsthand accounts of the fighting on the ground and the high-level planning behind the scenes. Now with a new afterword that addresses what transpired after the fateful events of the summer of 2003, this is a peerless re-creation and analysis of the central event of our times.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    It brings to life the people and ideas that created the Bush administration’s war policy and led America to the Assassins’ Gate—the main point of entry into the American zone in Baghdad. The Assassins’ Gate also describes the place of the war in American life: the ideological battles in Washington that led to chaos in Iraq, the ordeal of a fallen soldier’s family, and the political culture of a country too bitterly polarized to realize such a vast and morally complex undertaking. George Packer’s best-selling first-person narrative combines the scope of an epic history with the depth and intimacy of a novel, creating a masterful account of America’s most controversial foreign venture since Vietnam.

    In The Iraq War, John Keegan offers a sharp and lucid appraisal of the military campaign, explaining just how the coalition forces defeated an Iraqi army twice its size and addressing such questions as whether Saddam Hussein ever possessed weapons of mass destruction and how it is possible to fight a war that is not, by any conventional measure, a war at all.Drawing on exclusive interviews with Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, Keegan retraces the steps that led to the showdown in Iraq, from the highlights of Hussein’s murderous rule to the diplomatic crossfire that preceded the invasion. His account of the combat in the desert is unparalleled in its grasp of strategy and tactics. The result is an urgently needed and up-to-date book that adds immeasurably to our understanding of those twenty-one days of war and their long, uncertain aftermath.

    Plunging readers into the murky world of violent religious extremism that spans the streets of Middle Eastern cities and the informant-filled alleys of American slums, Burton takes us behind the scenes to reveal how the United States tracked Libya-linked master terrorist Abu Nidal; captured Ramzi Yusef, architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; and pursued the assassins of major figures including Yitzhak Rabin, Meir Kahane, and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the president of Pakistan–classic cases that have sobering new meaning in the treacherous years since 9/11. Here, too, is Burton’s advice on personal safety for today’s most powerful CEOs, gleaned from his experience at Stratfor, the private firm Barron’s calls “the shadow CIA.”Told in a no-holds-barred, gripping, nuanced style that illuminates a complex and driven man, Ghost is both a riveting read and an illuminating look into the shadows of the most important struggle of our time.

    Relying on a diverse cast of unforgettable characters—not only Mao and Che but also the legendary Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi, the archaeologist-turned–military commander T. E. Lawrence, and the “Quiet American” Edward Lansdale, among others—Boot explodes everything we thought we knew about unconventional combat. The result is both an enthralling read and our most important work on nontraditional warfare.

    Founder and former president of Blackwater, the private contractor that provided security in Iraq and Afghanistan defends himself from the many accusations that his organization was trigger-happy and bilked the American taxpayer.