Berlin, 1979. When the CIA's most valuable spy is compromised, the Agency realizes it does not have the capability to bring him to safety. If he cannot evade the dreaded East German security service, the result will be chaos and a cascade of failures throughout the Agency's worldwide operations. Master Sergeant Kim Becker lived through the hell of Vietnam as a member of the elite Studies and Operations Group. When he lost one of his best men in a pointless operation, he began to question his mission. Now, he is serving with an even more secretive Army Special Forces unit based in Berlin.

In 1993 Lieutenant James Lechner, a member of the 3rd Ranger Battalion, was selected for a top secret special operations task force being sent to Mogadishu, Somalia, to capture the insurgent leader Mohamed Farah Aideed. In early October, after weeks on the ground and conducting a number of raids in the city, the Task Force is called upon to conduct a daylight mission into the heart of Aideed’s territory. During the raid, following the initial dangerous fast rope insertion and subsequent capture of a group of Aideed’s lieutenants, one of the Task Force Black Hawk helicopters is shot down.

In 1812 the most powerful man in the world assembled the largest army in history and marched on Moscow with the intention of consolidating his dominion. But within months, Napoleon's invasion of Russia—history's first example of total war—had turned into an epic military disaster. Over 400,000 French and Allied troops perished and Napoleon was forced to retreat.

Putin's Wars is a timely overview of the conflicts in which Russia has been involved since Vladimir Putin became prime minister and then president of Russia, from the First Chechen War to the two military incursions into Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and the eventual invasion of Ukraine itself. But it also looks more broadly at Putin's recreation of Russian military power and its expansion to include a range of new capabilities, from mercenaries to operatives in a relentless information war against Western powers.

Of the 1.3 million active-duty service members in the US military, only a tiny fraction are selected as “operators.” Shannon Kent was one of the first women to serve at this level and was widely recognized as one of the best. Shannon served as a Navy cryptologic technician, responsible for signals intelligence and electronic warfare, but her proficiency with language set her apart. She was assigned to a unit so secretive that its name can’t even be printed here, where she worked clandestinely to hunt the most wanted terrorists in the world.