Iraq History

Mesopotamian Myths covers everything you'd want to know about Mesopotamian and Sumerian myths, including tales of gods and goddesses, creation myths, tales of kings and heroes, and also selections from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Get this captivating collection to know more about ancient times in Mesopotamia and Sumeria.

Imagine being at work, or lying in your bed, or even sitting wherever you are right now and knowing that at any moment the world could literally explode around you. Without warning. In her stirring memoir, Bronco Strong, Angela M. Odom, a personnel services battalion commander, recounts daily life as a soldier in an active war zone during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

This is a story of pain, loss, and hope. Our son was killed on foreign soil, and in an instant our world was forever changed. Just as yours would be. Chronicling the life of only one of the currently 7,000 Gold Star families from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, When Our Blue Star Turned Gold takes the listener from the early morning hours of his final and fatal battle to the ongoing journey of staff Sgt. Bryan Burgess’ family.

The Jihadi Next Door provides unprecedented information that can be used to actually combat terrorism. By laying bare the tactics used by ISIS to deceive and exploit new recruits and exposing the veneer these extremists operate under, Dr. Mehlman-Orozco hopes to empower listeners with the knowledge needed to prevent future recruitment and thereby preventing acts of terrorism.

A brand-new recording read by the author. The memoir of Jason Delgado, a US Marine scout sniper and MARSOC's first lead sniper instructor. The fight for Jason Delgado's life and soul began when he was just a boy. He ultimately escaped the death and drugs of a crime-riddled Bronx by way of the US Marine Corps. However, after earning his way into the esteemed ranks of the service's famed Scout Snipers, Delgado saw that old struggle reignited when he was dumped into the hell of war in Iraq.

In the second volume of Harrier Boys, as with the first, the history of this remarkable aircraft in service with UK armed forces is illustrated through personal reminiscences of the people who worked with it. The book begins with explanations of the mature concept of operations with the Harrier GR3 in the Cold War. It then progresses through the evolution of Harrier II, starting with the GR5, and updates to the Sea Harrier, while the potential battles to be fought necessitated ever-changing tactics and technology.

Now middle-aged, Meadows seeks out his former captors in their civilian lives to help him bury his son, a Marine killed in Iraq, in Arlington National Cemetery. When he learns that the authorities have told him a lie about the circumstances of his son's death, he decides, with the help of the two others, to transport him home to Portsmouth. And so begins the journey, centered around a solemn mission, but, as in the first book, a protest against injustice and celebration of life, too, at once irreverent, funny, profane, and deeply moving.

Buster, an English springer spaniel who has served his comrades and his country with unstinting devotion, has saved thousands of lives. This is the story of his partnership with RAF Police Sergeant Will Barrow, told by Will himself, describing how each came to save the other's life. It is a relationship that produced some heroic feats - including sniffing out explosive vests that led to the arrests of two suicide bombers - in the dust and desert heat of Afghanistan and beyond.

Curveball answers the crucial question of the Iraq war: How and why was America’s intelligence so catastrophically wrong? In this dramatic and explosive book, award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Drogin delivers a narrative that takes us to Europe, the Middle East, and deep inside the CIA to find the truth—the truth about the lies and self-deception that led us into a military and political nightmare.

Die Irrtümer des Kreuzzugs gegen den Terror. Todenhöfer ist ein bekennender Freund der USA und kein Pazifist, aber er empört sich über das unvorstellbare Leid, das ein Krieg gegen den Irak besonders über dessen Kinder bringen wird, die ohnehin seit Jahren schon die schwächsten Opfer der UN-Sanktionen sind. Er ist außerdem überzeugt, dass gegen Terror eines bestimmt nicht hilft: Krieg. Vielmehr hält er den Krieg gegen den Irak für völkerrechtswidrig, kontraproduktiv und unnötig.

In 2004, after several months as an interrogator, Eric Fair’s call to serve his country has led him to a dark and frightening place. By the time he leaves Iraq after that first deployment, Fair will have participated in or witnessed a variety of aggressive interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, diet manipulation, exposure, and isolation. Years later, with his health and marriage crumbling, haunted by the role he played in what we now know as “enhanced interrogation,” it is Fair’s desire to speak out that becomes a key to his survival.

What does it mean to kill for your country? How do you learn how to do it? What does it feel like in the moment? Once the killing starts, how do you control it? And what happens when you kill the wrong person or don’t kill someone you wish you had or look back, years later, at the people you killed? America has been at war in two countries for more than a decade. The killing that has been done and is being done is a crucial aspect of war and an integral part of the memories servicemen bring home with them.

Lost for 13 months in the wilds of Afghanistan, this is the dramatic, heart-warming and truly amazing story of Sarbi, the Army's most famous explosives detection dog - the miracle dog of Tarin Kot. Powerful, dramatic, heartwarming, this is the true story of Sarbi, the scruffy black Labrador-cross trained by the Australian Army as an explosives detection dog for the most dangerous combat mission imaginable. Thirteen months after Australia's most famous canine warrior went missing in action in 2008, she was found by an American Special Forces officer patrolling a village....

From one of the most important army officers of his generation, a memoir of the revolution in warfare he helped lead, in combat and in Washington. When John Nagl was an army tank commander in the first Gulf War of 1991, fresh out of West Point and Oxford, he could already see that America’s military superiority meant that the age of conventional combat was nearing an end.

The urgent truth about the privatization of America’s national security that exposes where this industry came from, how it operates, where it's heading—and why we should be concerned. Thirty years ago there were no private military and security companies (PMSCs); there were only mercenaries. Now the PMSCs are a bona-fide industry, an indispensable part of American foreign and military policy.

A Life Lost. A Love Cut Short. 'From the moment I set eyes on him I adored him. The connection between us was so strong it went beyond everything else. His job, my job, his lifestyle, my lifestyle. All that fell away...'Christina and Oz had their whole lives ahead of them. Oz was one of only a handful of bomb disposal experts serving in the British Army, but to Christina he was a loving and devoted husband and father - the one person she could never live without.

Russell Vineyard joined the United States Marine Corps as an M1A1 Tank crewman. After USMC Boot Camp and Marine Armor School, Vineyard found himself at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Training and Education Facility Twentynine Palms with 1st Tank Battalion. In November of 2004, he learned he'd be joining the Marine Corps' 1st Tank Battalion, Delta Company as a tank gunner and headed out on the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The United States Military would send the tank platoon across the ocean to participate in a global military exercise in Egypt and to fight the War on Terror in Iraq.

U.S. Army Captain Kimberly N. Hampton was living her dream: flying armed helicopters in combat and commanding D Troop, 1st Squadron, 17th Cavalry, the armed reconnaissance aviation squadron of the 82nd Airborne Division. On January 2, 2004, Captain Hampton was flying an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter above Fallujah, Iraq, in support of a raid on an illicit weapons marketplace, searching for an illusive sniper on the rooftops of the city. A little past noon her helicopter was wracked by an explosion....

In April 2004 the world was shocked by the brutal pictures of beatings, dog attacks, sex acts, and the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. As the story broke, and the world began to learn about the extent of the horrors that occurred there, the U.S. Army dispatched Colonel Larry James to Abu Ghraib with an overwhelming assignment: to dissect this catastrophe, fix it, and prevent it from being repeated. Fixing Hell shows us a perspective on Abu Ghraib that we've never seen before.

At age 25, Michael Hastings arrived in Baghdad to cover the war in Iraq for Newsweek. He had at his disposal a little Hemingway romanticism and all the apparatus of a 21st-century reporter: cell phones, high-speed Internet access, digital video cameras, fixers, drivers, guards, and translators.