Iraq Memoir

Thousands of miles away from where her son was deployed, a powerful premonition is devastatingly confirmed by a knock on the door from two faceless strangers bearing the news that her son had stepped on an improvised explosive device in the poppy fields of Afghanistan. He had lost both of his legs and suffered multiple other injuries, including partial amputation of all the fingers of his left hand. For forty-eight days she stood at his bedside.

On October 3, 2005, Kapacziewski and his soldiers were coming to the end of their tour in Northern Iraq when their convoy was attacked by enemy fighters. A grenade fell through the gunner’s hatch and exploded, shattering Kapacziewski’s right leg below the knee, damaging his right hip, and severing a nerve and artery in his right arm. He endured more than forty surgeries, but his right leg still wasn’t healing as he had hoped, so in March 2007, Kapacziewski chose to have it amputated.

Join Air Force veteran Dr. W. Lee Warren as he chronicles his fascinating, heartbreaking, and enlightening experience as a neurosurgeon in an Iraq War combat hospital.

This narrative presents a firsthand account of a Marine who played a small role in the Afghan War. It begins with his enlistment in the Marine Corps immediately after high school, driven by dreams of earning the prestigious title of United States Marine and serving his country in combat. The story culminates with his reentry into the civilian world, marked by the challenging task of making sense of the profound experiences he underwent.

Brooke King has been asked over and over what it's like to be a woman in combat, but she knows her answer is not what the public wants to hear. The answers people seek lie in the graphic details of war - the sex, death, violence, and reality of it all as she experienced it. In her riveting memoir War Flower, King breaks her silence and reveals the truth about her experience as a soldier in Iraq.

Cdr. Richard Jadick's story is one of the most extraordinary to come out of the war in Iraq. At 38, the last place the Navy doctor was expected to be was on the front lines. He was too old to be called up, but not too old to volunteer. In November 2004, with the military reeling from an acute doctor shortage, Jadick chose to accompany the First Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment (the "1/8") to Iraq.

For more than 25 years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993 to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out lifesaving operations and field surgery in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital.

A candid and multifaceted look at life as a security contractor in Iraq in the early years after the American invasion. It’s not just a story of surviving IEDs and firefights while protecting American contractors—though those moments are vividly recounted—it’s also an exploration of the broader, often unexpected, experiences that defined the author’s two and a half years in Iraq.

Soldier Girls follows the lives of three women on their paths to the military. These women, who are quite different in every way, become friends, and we watch their interaction and also what happens when they are separated. We see their families, their lovers, their spouses, their children. We see them work extremely hard, deal with the attentions of men on base and in war zones, and struggle to stay connected to their families back home.

Georges Sada was one of Saddam's top generals and foremost military advisors. A truth-teller in a government that made the truth dangerous. A devout Christian in a Muslim country. And a man who would stand up for what was right—even at the risk of his own life. In this eye-opening exposé, General Sada shares his bizarre yet amazing journey as an insider to one of history's most sinister regimes.

No one is born a leader. But through sheer determination and by confronting life’s challenges, Ant Middleton has come to know the meaning of true leadership. In First Man In, he shares the core lessons he’s learned over the course of his fascinating, exhilarating life. Special forces training is no walk in the park. The rules are strict, and they make sure you learn the hard way, pushing you beyond the limits of what is physically possible. There is no mercy. Even when you are bleeding and broken, to admit defeat is failure.

Anti-Hero's Journey: The Zero With a Thousand Faces is “the most concise, entertaining, irreverent, and punk-rock set of pointing-out instructions ever seen.” (From the foreword by Dr. Mike Stone, MD) Joseph Campbell famously described the pattern imbedded in every good story, from ancient mythology to science fiction, as the Hero’s Journey, the Monomyth: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are encountered and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow ...

As A SEAL and combat medic, Mark served his country with valorous distinction for almost 25 years and survived some of the most dangerous combat actions imaginable. From the rigors of BUD/S training to the horrors of the battlefield, Battle Ready dramatically immerses the listener in the unique life of the elite warrior-medic who advances into combat with life-saving equipment in one hand and life-taking weapons in the other. It is also an uplifting human story that reveals how a young Hispanic American bootstrapped himself out of a life that promised a dead-end future by enlisting in the military.

After serving in a scout-sniper platoon in Mosul, Tom Voss came home carrying invisible wounds of war - the memory of doing or witnessing things that went against his fundamental beliefs. This was not a physical injury that could heal with medication and time but a "moral injury" - a wound to the soul that eventually urged him toward suicide. Desperate for relief from the pain and guilt, Voss embarked on a 2,700-mile journey across America with a fellow veteran. Listeners walk with these men as they meet other veterans, Native American healers, and spiritual teachers.

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.

The explosive narrative of the life, captivity, and trial of Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier who was abducted by the Taliban and whose story has served as a symbol for America's foundering war in Afghanistan.

The Desert Warrior is an extraordinary memoir of trauma recovery and resilience, while providing a fascinating look at one soldier’s return from the early, grisly years of the Iraq war. After losing her money, possessions, and fiancé, a soldier returns to the U.S. from war feeling disconnected from family, friends, and everyday American life. When she encounters rejection from her compatriots and the VA as a female combat veteran, she decides to embark on a global odyssey to find her own true meaning of “home.” While she may appear different than most as a multiracial woman who was ...

He shares that experience in Rolling Through Afghanistan for the benefit of those who have wondered what it's like to be part of the United States armed forces fighting on the front lines in war...and to help those who may not be ready to face the memory of their own experiences.

Zainab Salbi was 11-years-old when her father was chosen to serve as Saddam Hussein's personal pilot, her family often forced to spend weekends with Saddam where he watched their every move. As a palace insider, Zainab offers a singular glimpse of what it is like to come of age under a dictator and provides an intimate portrait of the man she was taught to call "uncle". She watched as Saddam pitted friends, spouses, and even children against each other to compete for his approval.

A captain in 29 Commando, Johnny Mercer served in the army for 12 years. On his third tour of Afghanistan, he was a joint fires controller, with the pressurized job of bringing down artillery and air strikes in close proximity to his own troops. Based in an area of Northern Helmand that was riddled with Taliban leaders, he walked into danger with every patrol, determined to protect them. Then, one morning, in brutal close-quarter combat, everything changed....