Tyler E. Boudreau is a twelve-year veteran of the Marine Corps infantry. He trained and committed himself physically and intellectually to the military life. Then his intense devotion began to disintegrate, bit by bit, during his final mission in Iraq. After returning home, he discovered a turmoil developing in his mind, estranging him from his loved ones and the bill of goods he eagerly purchased as a marine officer.Packing Inferno is the spectacularly written story of th...

Moral injury has developed in earnest since 2009 within psychology and military studies, especially through work with veterans of the U.S. military’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A major part of this work is the attempt to identify means of healing, recovery, and repair for those morally injured by their experiences in combat (or similar situations). What this volume does is to provide insight into the identification of moral injury, the development of the notion, attempts to work with th...

Explosive SAS action in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan.The command came: 'Stop those vehicles!'It was like a red rag to a bull. Instantly streams of 7.62 mm tracer and 50 mm calibre machine gun rounds arced across the night sky and smashed into the bus and truck.Elite SAS Patrol Commander Stuart 'Nev' Bonner takes us inside the extraordinary and dangerous world of secret combat operations in this explosive, behind-the-scenes look at life inside the...

The true story of Australia's SAS and the soldier who was there from the start.Clint Palmer has spent much of his adult life in the SAS and has fought in this elite military unit as it developed from its fledgling beginnings into the highly trained, specialised fighting force it is today. He is an insider with the long view and this is his unique story of life in the SAS.As a bush kid in the Northern Territory of Australia, growing up in a one dog mining to...

The search for a friend’s killer is a riveting lesson in the way war has changed.The EOD-explosive ordnance disposal-community is tight-knit, and when one of their own is hurt, an alarm goes out. When Brian Castner, an Iraq War vet, learns that his friend and EOD brother Matt has been killed by an IED in Afghanistan, he goes to console Matt's widow, but he also begins a personal investigation. Is the bomb maker who killed Matt the same man American forces have been...

An underemployed, skateboarding party animal, Colby Buzzell traded a dead-end future for the army—and ended up as a machine gunner in Iraq. To make sense of the absurd and frightening events surrounding him, he started writing a blog about the war—and how it differed from the government’s official version. But as his blog’s popularity grew, Buzzell became the embedded reporter the Army couldn’t control—despite its often hilarious efforts to do so.The result is an extraordinary narr...

A female marine's "absorbing memoir" recounting her work with the remains and personal effects of fallen soldiers and her battle with PTSD ( Publishers Weekly).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 res...

At the age of seventeen, Marco Martinez was a thug—a gun-toting, car-stealing gang member. At the age of twenty-two, he was a hero—the recipient of the Navy Cross, the second-highest honor a U.S. Marine can receive, for extraordinary heroism under fire in the Iraq War. Hard Corps tells the story of his incredible transformation and of his experiences on the front lines of the War on Terror.Writing with passion and candor, Martinez brings us back to his gang days, detailing experie...

"Unsparing, scathingly direct, and gut-wrenching . . . the war Washington doesn't want you to see" (Andrew J. Bacevich, New York Times–bestselling author of Washington Rules)This "uncompromisingly visceral" account ( Mother Jones) of what combat does to American soldiers comes from a veteran journalist who was embedded with troops in Afghanistan and reveals the harrowing journeys of the wounded, from the battlefield to back home.A...

A celebration of the extraordinary courage, dedication, and sacrifice of this generation of American veterans on the battlefield and their equally valuable contributions on the home front.Because so few of us now serve in the military, our men and women in uniform have become strangers to us. We stand up at athletic events to honor them, but we hardly know their true measure. Here, Starbucks CEO and longtime veterans’ advocate Howard Schultz and National Book Award finalist Rajiv C...

As a First Lieutenant and Infantry Platoon Leader for the U.S. Army National Guard, Paul Rieckhoff was charged with leading thirty-eight men in Iraq. He spent almost a year in one of the bloodiest and most volatile areas of Baghdad. And when he finally came home, he vowed to tell Americans the harrowing truth. He does just that, uncensored and unrehearsed, "and with wit and passion" (Arianna Huffington), in Chasing Ghosts-the first criticism of the Iraq war written by a soldier wh...

“The only way this war is going to end is if the American people truly understand what we have done in their name.”—Kelly Dougherty, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the WarIn spring 2008, inspired by the Vietnam-era Winter Soldier hearings, Iraq Veterans Against the War gathered veterans to expose war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here are the powerful words, images, and documents of this historic gathering, which show the reality of life in Afghanistan and Iraq....