Iraq Memoir

In 1958, Ahmad Chalabi’s wealthy Shiite family was exiled from Iraq after a revolution that ultimately put Saddam Hussein in power. The young Chalabi devoted his life to restoring his family to prominence. His first coup attempt was in 1963 at age nineteen, while on a school break from MIT. His next was aided by Iranian intelligence. But as the years passed and Saddam stayed in power, Chalabi made an audacious decision: he needed the support of both Iran and its powerful archenemy, the United States.

In The Puzzle Palace, James Bamford revealed the existence of the NSA, the largest, most secretive, and best-financed intelligence organization in the world. In Body of Secrets, he took readers inside the ultra-secret agency, charting its deeds and misdeeds. Now Bamford applies his relentless investigative drive and unparalleled access to intelligence sources to produce a headline-making book about the most pressing issues of the present day.

In this gorgeous memoir that moves from Jon Kerstetter's impoverished upbringing on an Oneida reservation, to his harrowing stints as a volunteer medic in Kosovo and Bosnia, through the madness of Iraq and his intense mandate to assemble a team to identify the remains of Uday and Qusay Hussein, and the struggle afterward to come to terms with a life irrevocably changed, Kerstetter beautifully illuminates war and survival, the fragility of the human body, and the strength of will that lies within.

Johnson Beharry was born in 1979 in Grenada as one of eight children, living in a two-bedroom hut, surviving on meagre meals of beans and rice and walking barefoot, three miles to school. In 1999 he scraped together the airfare for England and joined the Prince of Wales' Royal Regiment. He served six months in Kosovo, three months in Northern Ireland, and then went to Iraq.

Author and former intelligence officer Amy Waters Yarsinske breaks the incredible true story of the first American pilot shot down during the Gulf War - discovered alive 11 years after his own government left him for dead.

Author and former intelligence officer Amy Waters Yarsinske breaks the incredible true story of the first American pilot shot down during the Gulf War - discovered alive 11 years after his own government left him for dead.

The Commander in Chief of the United States Central Command from July 2000 through July 2003, General Tommy Franks made history leading American and Coalition forces to victory in Afghanistan and Iraq, the decisive battles that launched the war on terrorism.

During a nearly 40-year career in the United States Army, Hugh Shelton has been known as a straight shooter - when he speaks he means what he says. Whether serving under a Democratic president or a Republican president, whether in a war that was popular at home or not, Hugh Shelton gave all he had, and asked nothing less of the men and women who worked for him. Politically independent, Shelton told the truth - not what his superiors wanted to hear.

In 1990, U.S. Army Major Martin Stanton was a military advisor stationed in Saudi Arabia. Encouraged by the Army to broaden his cultural horizons, and assured by the U.S. embassy that Kuwait was perfectly safe, Stanton took off for a long weekend there. Roused by gunshots his first night in Kuwait City, Stanton looked out the window and discovered he was in the middle of a full-scale invasion.

Dick Cheney and Colin Powell emerged on the national scene more than 30 years ago, and it is easy to forget that they were once allies....

War is hell....but sometimes it's also funny as hell.

He is trained and ready for war. Instead of leading the Marines into combat, a Marine captain is given the mission of advising an Iraqi army battalion in one of the most violent cities in Iraq. The collected stories span seven months of nearly constant combat in 2006 and 2007, at the height of the insurgency in Iraq. This audiobook is the raw, visceral story of a combat adviser with a lot more combat than advising.

Jess enlisted in the Marines immediately after graduating from high school in 2001, and in 2004 she volunteered to serve in the Marine Corps' first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit in Iraq. Her platoon was tasked with recovering and processing the remains of fallen soldiers. With sensitivity and insight, Jess describes her job retrieving and examining the remains of fellow soldiers lost in combat in Iraq, and the psychological intricacy of coping with their fates, as well as her own.

This is a true story of war, the story of one man's transformation as he retraces the mine-strewn roads of a land itself transformed by mankind's most shockingly inhuman practice. It is the firsthand account of a member of one of the United States Army's three-man Tactical Psychological Operations Teams, groups of men tasked with winning the hearts and minds of Iraq's civilian population through leaflets, loudspeakers, conversation, and bribery.

In the summer of 2014, Firas Jumaah was working diligently to complete his doctorate in chemistry at Lund University in Sweden when he suddenly received news that an ISIS advance in northern Iraq threatened the lives of his wife and children. As the situation worsened by the minute, Firas managed to send a message to his professor, Charlotta Turner, to let her know that he did not expect to return to Sweden to complete his dissertation. She quickly organized a commando mission that resulted in the dramatic rescue of Firas from war-torn Iraq.

Not even old enough to drink, Corporal Savannah Cannon is a young enlisted United States Marine deployed to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2010. As a tactical data networking specialist, she is sent away from everyone she knows and attached to a Regimental Combat Team where women are not allowed to repair communications. Her experiences over the next few months shed light on the unique and difficult positions women are placed in when supporting combat roles, while offering a raw look at the painful choices women must sometimes make.

Sergeant Bill Bee is the Marine in one of the defining images from the War on Terror. He responded to gunfire without protective gear when a Taliban sniper shot hit a sandbank just a few inches from his head in Garmsir, Helmand Province. When his world plunged into darkness, he thought his luck had run out. But he somehow survived, and his brush with death on May 18, 2008, was captured by a Reuters photographer. The images were broadcast around the world and became an iconic display of bravery at a time when support for the war in Afghanistan was low.

Replacement Marines recounts the Iraq war for an audience that cannot be imagined. For an audience that has watched the last 20 years of America's longest war with patriotism, skepticism, and somewhat indifference. Those who have seen war do not envy the civil pomp of our wartime circumstances as anything but a test of survival. As within any large vessel, if the ship were to sink, it is those left below deck who would bear the Titanic cost of the tragedy. And we were this war's steerage who were caught below deck.

As a young boy, I was engulfed by the romanticism associated with warfare and was destined for a career within the infantry, but I was never prepared for what comes after and the hidden wounds of warfare that always seem to remain. In the 1990s, the British Army was world-renowned as being "The Best", yet, when it came to the welfare of its soldiers, this was far from the case. Our behavioral conditioning had been perfected, and we were trained to dehumanize and kill the enemy without question or hesitation, but what are the long-term psychological effects of such methods?

In 1971, Rod Barton applied for a junior scientist role in the Australian Department of Defence. Little did he know what it entailed: As the Cold War intensified, Barton was inducted into the murky world of espionage. This is an extraordinary behind-the-scenes account of a world marked by risk, secrecy and individual acts of courage. The Life of a Spy will introduce you to a man of principle in a time of chaos, and take you to the frontlines of politics and war.