Download or read book The Outpost written by Jake Tapper and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 789 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The basis of the film starring Orlando Bloom and Scott Eastwood, The Outpost is the heartbreaking and inspiring story of one of America's deadliest battles during the war in Afghanistan, acclaimed by critics everywhere as a classic. At 5:58 AM on October 3rd, 2009, Combat Outpost Keating, located in frighteningly vulnerable terrain in Afghanistan just 14 miles from the Pakistani border, was viciously attacked. Though the 53 Americans there prevailed against nearly 400 Taliban fighters, their casualties made it the deadliest fight of the war for the U.S. that year. Four months after the battle, a Pentagon review revealed that there was no reason for the troops at Keating to have been there in the first place. In The Outpost, Jake Tapper gives us the powerful saga of COP Keating, from its establishment to eventual destruction, introducing us to an unforgettable cast of soldiers and their families, and to a place and war that has remained profoundly distant to most Americans. A runaway bestseller, it makes a savage war real, and American courage manifest. "The Outpost is a mind-boggling, all-too-true story of heroism, hubris, failed strategy, and heartbreaking sacrifice. If you want to understand how the war in Afghanistan went off the rails, you need to read this book." -- Jon Krakauer

Download or read book Red Platoon written by Clinton Romesha and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The only comprehensive, firsthand account of the fourteen-hour firefight at the Battle of Keating in Afghanistan by Medal of Honor recipient Clinton Romesha, for readers of Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden and Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell. “‘It doesn't get better.’ To us, that phrase nailed one of the essential truths, maybe even the essential truth, about being stuck at an outpost whose strategic and tactical vulnerabilities were so glaringly obvious to every soldier who had ever set foot in that place that the name itself—Keating—had become a kind of backhanded joke.” In 2009, Clinton Romesha of Red Platoon and the rest of the Black Knight Troop were preparing to shut down Command Outpost (COP) Keating, the most remote and inaccessible in a string of bases built by the US military in Nuristan and Kunar in the hope of preventing Taliban insurgents from moving freely back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three years after its construction, the army was finally ready to concede what the men on the ground had known immediately: it was simply too isolated and too dangerous to defend. On October 3, 2009, after years of constant smaller attacks, the Taliban finally decided to throw everything they had at Keating. The ensuing fourteen-hour battle—and eventual victory—cost eight men their lives. Red Platoon is the riveting firsthand account of the Battle of Keating, told by Romesha, who spearheaded both the defense of the outpost and the counterattack that drove the Taliban back beyond the wire and received the Medal of Honor for his actions.

Download or read book The K firs of the Hindu Kush written by Sir George Scott Robertson and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 684 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kafiristan, or "The Land of the Infidels," was a region of eastern Afghanistan where the inhabitants had retained their traditional pagan culture and religion and rejected conversion to Islam. The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush is a detailed ethnographic account of the Kafirs, written by George Scott Robertson (1852-1916), a British administrator in India. With the approval of the government of India, Robertson made a preliminary visit to Kafiristan in October 1889, and then lived among the Kafirs for almost a year, from October 1890 to September 1891. Robertson describes his journey from Chitral (in present-day Pakistan) to Kafiristan and the difficulties he encountered in traveling about the country and in gaining information about the Kafir culture and religion. The latter, he writes, "is a somewhat low form of idolatry, with an admixture of ancestor-worship and some traces of fire-worship also. The gods and goddesses are numerous, and of varying degrees of importance or popularity." Robertson describes religious practices and ceremonies, the tribal and clan structure of Kafir society, the role of slavery, the different villages in the region, and everyday life and social customs, including dress, diet, festivals, sport, the role of women in society, and much else that he observed first-hand. The book is illustrated with drawings, and it concludes with a large fold-out topographical map, which shows the author's route in Kafiristan. In 1896 the ruler of Afghanistan, Amir 'Abd al-Rahman Khan (reigned 1880-1901), conquered the area and brought it under Afghan control. The Kafirs became Muslims and in 1906 the region was renamed Nuristan, meaning the "Land of Light," a reference to the enlightenment brought by Islam.

Download or read book True War Stories written by Alex De Campi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sniper in Haiti faces the repercussions of the shot he never took. A team of SEALs help rescue a kidnapped girl in the Philippines. Army interpreters in Iraq battle their toughest foe: the rats of Saddam’s palace. A soldier on a late-night run surprises a motorpool saboteur. A young cavalry lieutenant, fresh off the Battle of Kamdesh, meets the Marine half-brother he’s never known. A Navy ship reacts to an unexpected man overboard. And if you’ve ever wondered what Christmas was like in a war zone, you’re about to find out. True War Stories is a 260-page full color graphic novel anthology containing fifteen true tales of American service members overseas. Nearly every branch of the military is represented in this collection of stories that are heartwarming, heroic, harrowing, and even at times, hilarious, spanning the globe. This unique project, assembled by the multiple-Eisner nominated writer/editor, Alex de Campi and co-written/edited by Iraq War veteran Khai Krumbhaar is an entertaining and moving work of graphic nonfiction, pairing members of the US military with the biggest names in comics to share real war stories told by those who lived them. Artists include Peter Krause, Ryan Howe, Skylar Patridge (drawing her own father's Vietnam story), Eoin Marron, Tish Doolin (a former Army medic), Dave Acosta, A. D'Amico, Drew Moss, Josh Hood, PJ Holden, Chris Peterson, Sam Hart, Jeff McComsey, and Paul Williams. Colors are by Dee Cunniffe, Matt Soffe, Kelly Fitzpatrick, Tarsis Cruz, and Aladdin Collar. All lettering is done by de Campi herself.

Download or read book Strategic Compensation and Talent Management written by Jed DeVaro and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging core textbook on compensation develops a market-driven perspective, written with managers in mind.

Download or read book The Valley written by John Renehan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Named one of Wall Street Journal's Best Books of 2015 *Selected as a Military Times's Best Book of the Year “You’re going up the Valley.” Black didn’t know its name, but he knew it lay deeper and higher than any other place Americans had ventured. You had to travel through a network of interlinked valleys, past all the other remote American outposts, just to get to its mouth. Everything about the place was myth and rumor, but one fact was clear: There were many valleys in the mountains of Afghanistan, and most were hard places where people died hard deaths. But there was only one Valley. It was the farthest, and the hardest, and the worst. When Black, a deskbound admin officer, is sent up the Valley to investigate a warning shot fired by a near-forgotten platoon, he can only see it as the final bureaucratic insult in a short and unhappy Army career. What he doesn’t know is that his investigation puts at risk the centuries-old arrangements that keep this violent land in fragile balance, and will launch a shattering personal odyssey of obsession and discovery as Black reckons with the platoon’s dark secrets, accumulated over endless hours fighting and dying in defense of an indefensible piece of land. The Valley is a riveting tour de force that changes our understanding of the men who fight our wars and announces John Renehan as one of the great American storytellers of our time.

Download or read book Rise written by Daniel Rodriguez and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic story of Daniel Rodriguez, a soldier who fought in one of the bloodiest battles in Afghanistan, and against all odds, lived to pursue his dream of playing Division 1 college football

Download or read book The Unlikely Hero written by Dorothy Anderson and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2008-11-01 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning his career as a British Surgeon Major in Afghanistan, George Scott Robertson found himself defending Chitral Fort in 1895 against a besieging force of thousands of tribesmen. He was celebrated as a hero, but this was only one chapter in what was an extraordinary life. This book is the story of an adventurer, ethnographer, and soldier.

Download or read book Culture Conflict and Counterinsurgency written by Thomas H. Johnson and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-22 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors of Culture, Conflict and Counterinsurgency contend that an enduring victory can still be achieved in Afghanistan. However, to secure it we must better understand the cultural foundations of the continuing conflicts that rage across Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, and shift our strategy from an attritional engagement to a smarter war plan that embraces these cultural dimensions. They examine the nexus of culture, conflict, and strategic intervention, and attempt to establish if culture is important in a national security and foreign policy context, and to explore how cultural phenomena and information can best be used by the military. In the process they address just how intimate cultural knowledge needs to be to counter an insurgency effectively. Finally, they establish exactly how good we've been at building and utilizing cultural understanding in Afghanistan, what the operational impact of that understanding has been, and where we must improve to maximize our use of cultural knowledge in preparing for and engaging in future conflicts.

Download or read book To Valhalla written by Pierce Kelley and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Paul Buchanon, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, returns from a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2009 with a service-related disability. Instead of being discharged, he is sent to Fort Creech, Nevada, and taught how to operate drones. Following the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011, as the United States begins to withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan, and as the military downsizes, he is discharged. Three years later, Chris is recruited to become a part of a black-op in the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan, where he had been stationed years earlier. His job is to operate a drone and kill specific high level al-Qaeda and Taliban targets. When information from an embittered Pakistani elder leads the team to the possible location of Mohammad Mogabbi, the leader of the Taliban, on whose head a $10 million bounty exists, a decision must be made. Should the United States kill the man who has eluded it for over a dozen years, who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of U.S. soldiers, or should it allow the newly-elected leaders of the country try to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the conflict with the Taliban, as they wish to do. Chris Buchanon awaits his orders, with his fingers on the trigger of a Predator drone loaded with hell-fire missiles, with Mogabbi in his sights…

Download or read book Military Construction Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations for 2008 written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 900 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book On Monsters written by Stephen T. Asma and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A comprehensive modern-day bestiary."--The New Yorker

Download or read book The Hardest Place written by Wesley Morgan and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: COLBY AWARD WINNER • “One of the most important books to come out of the Afghanistan war.”—Foreign Policy “A saga of courage and futility, of valor and error and heartbreak.”—Rick Atkinson, author of the Liberation Trilogy and The British Are Coming Of the many battlefields on which U.S. troops and intelligence operatives fought in Afghanistan, one remote corner of the country stands as a microcosm of the American campaign: the Pech and its tributary valleys in Kunar and Nuristan. The area’s rugged, steep terrain and thick forests made it a natural hiding spot for local insurgents and international terrorists alike, and it came to represent both the valor and futility of America’s two-decade-long Afghan war. Drawing on reporting trips, hundreds of interviews, and documentary research, Wesley Morgan reveals the history of the war in this iconic region, captures the culture and reality of the conflict through both American and Afghan eyes, and reports on the snowballing missteps—some kept secret from even the troops fighting there—that doomed the American mission. The Hardest Place is the story of one of the twenty-first century’s most unforgiving battlefields and a portrait of the American military that fought there.

Download or read book The Lovecraft Code written by Peter Levenda and published by Red Wheel/Weiser. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Gregory Angell, the present day descendant of George Angell is summoned by a nameless covert agency of the US Government to retrieve a sacred book from the grasp of an Islamist terror network. Angell's quest takes him from the streets of Brooklyn to the deserts of the Middle East, to Central Asia, northern India and an island in the Pacific Ocean where a city that has been buried comes to the surface after a tsunami. The reader is taken on side trips to Nazi Germany, the laboratory of a South Florida necrophile, post-Katrina New Orleans, and to the origins of the modern science of archaeology in the late nineteenth century. This book will thrill ancient aliens fans, and Lovecraft followers and all readers interested in Codes and secrets"--

Download or read book Hammerhead Six written by Ronald Fry and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two years before the action in Lone Survivor, a team of Green Berets conducted a very different, successful mission in Afghanistan's notorious Pech Valley. Led by Captain Ronald Fry, Hammerhead Six applied the principles of unconventional warfare to "win hearts and minds" and fight against the terrorist insurgency. In 2003, the Special Forces soldiers entered an area later called "the most dangerous place in Afghanistan." Here, where the line between civilians and armed zealots was indistinct, they illustrated the Afghan proverb: "I destroy my enemy by making him my friend." Fry recounts how they were seen as welcome guests rather than invaders. Soon after their deployment ended, the Pech Valley reverted to turmoil. Their success was never replicated. Hammerhead Six finally reveals how cultural respect, hard work (and the occasional machine-gun burst) were more than a match for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Download or read book A History of Kafferistan written by Amar Singh Chohan and published by Atlantic Publishers & Distri. This book was released on 1989 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Historical and Political Gazetteer of Afghanistan written by India. Army. General Staff Branch and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 1020 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: