The British Army suffered one of its greatest crises when in December 1899 the Boer irregulars inflicted three reverses in South Africa in 'Black Week'. A nation grown accustomed to success was stunned. Part of the answer was a very British blend of patriotism and pragmatism. For the first time civilian volunteers and part-time soldiers were allowed to fight overseas to the horror of traditionalist professional soldiers. Yet, by the end of the Boer...

• The dynamic story of the life and times of five Marine corporals and sergeants, men at the front lines of the war in Iraq • First extended account of the Marine experience fighting the Iraq insurgency from the grunt's perspective • Author interviewed charismatic and controversial Marine Gen. James N. "Mad Dog" Mattis, a legendary Marine commander revered by the grunts and gives new details about the battle for Fallujah. A sometimes harrowing,...

War has always attracted journalists, such as Ernest Hemingway in the Spanish Civil War or David Halberstam in Vietnam. And, war reporting has often been controversial, as well as, influential, like William Randolph Hearst's, "yellow journalism" in the Spanish-American War. But what happens when 24/7 news channels and the Internet make news instantaneous...when the public's attention span decreases...when political and military leaders employ slick...

"In this ... memoir, award-winning poet Brian Turner retraces his war experience--pre-deployment to combat zone, homecoming to aftermath. Free of self-indulgence or self-glorification, his account combines recollection with the imagination's efforts to make reality comprehensible. Across time, he seeks parallels in the histories of others who have gone to war, especially his taciturn grandfather (World War II), father (Cold War), and uncle (Vietnam)....

Daniel Rodriguez joined the army just weeks after graduating from high school. At age eighteen he had no idea what war really was; he just wanted to get out of town. Almost immediately, he was deployed to Iraq where he would spend seventeen months. He would later serve a tour of duty in Afghanistan. And he grew up fast. He stopped sleeping, started smoking, and killing became second nature. He fought in the Battle of Kamdesh, one of the bloodiest...

In 2008, CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan candidly speculated about the human side of the war in Iraq: "Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier. What does that look like? Who in America knows what that looks like? Because I know what that looks like, and I feel responsible for the fact that no one else does . . ." Logan's query raised some important yet ignored questions: How did the remains of American service...

This groundbreaking book provides the first systematic comparison of America's modern wars and why they were won or lost. John D. Caldwell uses the World War II victory as the historical benchmark for evaluating the success and failure of later conflicts. Unlike WWII, the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraqi Wars were limited, but they required enormous national commitments, produced no lasting victories, and generated bitter political controversies. Caldwell...

"Every juncture in Jon Kerstetter's life has been marked by a crossing from one world into another: from civilian to doctor to soldier; between healing and waging war; and between compassion and hatred of the enemy. When an injury led to a stroke that ended his careers as a doctor and a soldier, he faced the most difficult crossing of all, a recovery that proved as shattering as war itself. Crossings is a memoir of an improbable, powerfully drawn...

A three-star general offers a gripping insider account of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how it all went wrong. Over a thirty-five year career, Daniel Bolger rose through the army infantry to become a three-star general, commanding in both theaters of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He participated in meetings with top level military and civilian players, where strategy was made and managed. At the same time, he regularly...

"For nearly a decade Brett Velicovich was at the center of America's new warfare: using unmanned aerial vehicles--drones--to take down the world's deadliest terrorists across the globe. One of an elite handful in the entire military with the authority to select targets and issue death orders, he worked in concert with the full human and technological network of American intelligence--assets, analysts, spies, informants--and the military's elite operatives,...