During the war's worst fighting in 2006 and 2007, a handful of Iraqi interpreters put their lives on the line to help American troops. Families threatened, a bounty on their heads, ignored by the powers that be, they faced execution as collaborators with the enemy if they remained in their homeland. A Task Force Commander decides a promise made should be a promise kept. After the murders of several Iraqi allies, Lt. Col Steve Miska decides to slice through the bureaucratic red tape to get interpreters to safety. His team creates the Baghdad Underground Railroad to get the "terps" and other allies out of the country to Jordan for their Embassy interviews. Soldiers also tap their own families in the United States to serve as sponsors to house and assist the new immigrants. For the Iraqis, they face the struggle of adapting to a culture vastly different from their own. One of them even joins the U.S. Army and returns to Iraq as an American soldier. In this compelling memoir that illustrates humanity and compassion in the midst of war, Steve Miska highlights the plight of local allies, who are essential to the American cause in foreign wars but are often left behind. He also offers an insider's look at the complex and frustrating political reality of Iraq facing U.S. commanders and policymakers following the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Library Journal Top Ten Best Books of 2011 A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Bestselling author Tony Horwitz tells the electrifying tale of the daring insurrection that put America on the path to bloody war Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, Midnight Rising portrays Brown's uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Brown, the descendant of New England Puritans, saw slavery as a sin against America's founding principles. Unlike most abolitionists, he was willing to take up arms, and in 1859 he prepared for battle at a hideout in Maryland, joined by his teenage daughter, three of his sons, and a guerrilla band that included former slaves and a dashing spy. On October 17, the raiders seized Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation and prompting a counterattack led by Robert E. Lee. After Brown's capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South, which considered Brown a terrorist. The raid also helped elect Abraham Lincoln, who later began to fulfill Brown's dream with the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure he called "a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale." Tony Horwitz's riveting book travels antebellum America to deliver both a taut historical drama and a telling portrait of a nation divided—a time that still resonates in ours.

The Iraqi Triangle of Death, south of Baghdad, was a raging inferno of insurgent activity in August of 2006; by November 2007, attacks had been suppressed to such an extent as to return the area to near obscurity. In the intervening months, the U.S. Army 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry ("Polar Bears") employed a counterinsurgency approach that set the conditions for a landmark peace agreement that has held to the present. With a focus on counterinsurgency, this book is the first to look at the breadth of military operations in Yusifiyah, Iraq, and to analyze the methods the Polar Bears employed. It is a story not of those who fought in the Triangle of Death, but of how they fought.

In 2003, Major William Edwards and Lt. Col. Robert P. Walters of the 165th Military Intelligence Battalion were given the near-impossible task of improving the U.S. Army's security posture at Abu Ghraib prison under unfathomable conditions. With input from officers who served with them, their candid firsthand accounts of life at the notorious prison reveal unpublished details of the human devastation that took place there, along with unexpected glimpses of humanity.

A frontline witness account of the deadly urban combat of the Battle of Mosul told by former Navy SEAL and frontline combat medic Ephraim Mattos. After leaving the US Navy SEAL teams in spring of 2017, Ephraim Mattos, age twenty-four, flew to Iraq to join a small group of volunteer humanitarians known as the Free Burma Rangers, who were working on the frontlines of the war on ISIS. Until being shot by ISIS on a suicidal rescue mission, Mattos witnessed unexplainable acts of courage and sacrifice by the Free Burma Rangers, who, while under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, assaulted across ISIS minefields, used themselves as human shields, and sprinted down ISIS-infested streets-all to retrieve wounded civilians. In City of Death: Humanitarian Warriors in the Battle of Mosul, Mattos recounts in vivid detail what he saw and felt while he and the other Free Burma Rangers evacuated the wounded, conducted rescue missions, and at times fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Iraqi Army against ISIS. Filled with raw and emotional descriptions of what it's like to come face-to-face with death, this is the harrowing and uplifting true story of a small group of men who risked everything to save the lives of the Iraqi people and who followed the credence, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." As the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestselling American Sniper, Scott McEwen has teamed up with Mattos to help share an unforgettable tale of an American warrior turned humanitarian forced to fight his way into and out of a Hell on Earth created by ISIS.

This collection of essays reflects the proceedings of a 1991 conference on "The United States Air Force: Aerospace Challenges and Missions in the 1990s," sponsored by the USAF and Tufts University. The 20 contributors comment on the pivotal role of airpower in the war with Iraq and address issues and choices facing the USAF, such as the factors that are reshaping strategies and missions, the future role and structure of airpower as an element of US power projection, and the aerospace industry's views on what the Air Force of the future will set as its acquisition priorities and strategies. The authors agree that aerospace forces will be an essential and formidable tool in US security policies into the next century. The contributors include academics, high-level military leaders, government officials, journalists, and top executives from aerospace and defense contractors.

A family divided, a country going to war, and a girl desperate to feel at home converge in this stunning novel in verse. Selected for Kids Indies Introduce List AND Kids Indie Next List It's early September 2001, and twelve-year-old Abbey is the new kid at school. Again. I worry about people speaking to me / and worry just the same / when they don't. Tennessee is her family's latest stop in a series of moves due to her dad's work in the Army, but this one might be different. Her school is far from Base, and for the first time, Abbey has found a real friend: loyal, courageous, athletic Camille. And then it's September 11. The country is under attack, and Abbey's "home" looks like it might fall apart. America has changed overnight. How are we supposed / to keep this up / with the world / crumbling / around us? Abbey's body changes, too, while her classmates argue and her family falters. Like everyone around her, she tries to make sense of her own experience as a part of the country's collective pain. With her mother grieving and her father prepping for active duty, Abbey must learn to cope on her own. Written in gorgeous narrative verse, Abbey's coming-of-age story accessibly portrays the military family experience during a tumultuous period in our history. At once personal and universal, it's a perfect read for fans of sensitive, tender-hearted books like The Thing About Jellyfish. An NCTE Notable Book in Poetry A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year