Battalion 3/5 suffered the highest number of casualties in the war in Afghanistan. This is the story of one platoon in that distinguished battalion. Aware of U.S. plans to withdraw from the country, knowing their efforts were only a footprint in the sand, the fifty Marines of 3rd Platoon fought in Sangin, the most dangerous district in all of Afghanistan.

In the fall of 2009, Taliban insurgents ambushed a patrol of Afghan soldiers and Marine advisors in a mountain village called Ganjigal. Firing from entrenched positions, the enemy was positioned to wipe out 100 men who were pinned down and were repeatedly refused artillery support. Ordered to remain behind with the vehicles, 21 year-old Marine corporal Dakota Meyer disobeyed orders and attacked to rescue his comrades.

A platoon of Marines and CIA operatives clash in a fight to the death with the drug lords and the Taliban, while in Washington, the president seeks a way out. This authentic war story vividly displays how a warrior must replenish his own moral courage and not allow ambition to coarsen his sense of decency.

Based on months spent with the battalions in Fallujah and hundreds of interviews at every level (senior policymakers, negotiators, generals, and soldiers and Marines on the front lines) No True Glory is a testament to the bravery of the American soldier and a cautionary tale about the complex, and often costly, interconnected roles of policy, politics, and battle in the twenty-first century.

Call Sign Chaos is the account of Jim Mattis’ storied career, from wide-ranging leadership roles in three wars to ultimately commanding a quarter of a million troops across the Middle East. Along the way, Mattis recounts his foundational experiences as a leader, extracting the lessons he has learned about the nature of warfighting and peacemaking, the importance of allies, and the strategic dilemmas - and short-sighted thinking - now facing our nation.

The Last Stand of Fox Company is a fast-paced and gripping account of heroism and self-sacrifice in the face of impossible odds. The authors have conducted dozens of firsthand interviews with the battle's survivors, and they narrate the story with the immediacy of such classic accounts of single battles as Guadalcanal Diary, Pork Chop Hill, and Black Hawk Down.

Eighteen-year-old Marine recruit William V. Taylor, Jr. and his brother Marines are assembled into a new reaction force that is immediately tested in the fire of a bloody conflict known as Operation Beaver Cage. After a traumatic first fight, they push through back-to-back operations with little time to rest or reflect. Those who survive will return home ensnared by everlasting memories of a real but entirely surreal nightmare. Now, after more than 50 years of holding everything in, Taylor shares his experience in explicit—and often horrific—detail.

At 24 years of age, U.S. Army Ranger Sean Parnell was named commander of a forty-man elite infantry platoon - a unit that came to be known as the Outlaws - and was tasked with rooting out Pakistan-based insurgents from a mountain valley along Afghanistan's eastern frontier. Parnell and his men assumed they would be facing a ragtag bunch of civilians, but in May 2006 what started out as a routine patrol through the lower mountains of the Hindu Kush became a brutal ambush.

Southern Afghanistan was slipping away. That was clear to then-Captain Rusty Bradley as he began his third tour of duty there in 2006. The Taliban and their allies were infiltrating everywhere, poised to reclaim Kandahar Province, their strategically vital onetime capital. To stop them, the NATO coalition launched Operation Medusa, the largest offensive in its history. The battlefield was the Panjwayi Valley, a densely packed warren of walled compounds that doubled neatly as enemy bunkers.

Dale Hanson takes us from a northern Minnesota boyhood to the incredible stresses of US special operations during the Vietnam War, the deadly world of MAC-V-SOG, the top-secret Special Forces project that conducted America’s secret war against the Communist forces on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Shrouded in mystery and equipped with exotic weaponry, SOG operators suffered casualty rates in excess of 100 percent for three successive years.

In November 1965, some 450 men of the First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped to pieces. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War. How these men persevered makes a vivid portrait of war at its most inspiring and devastating.

They were called a generation without heroes. Then they were called upon to be heroes. Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terrorism fell to those like the 23 Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ended combat since Vietnam.

There have been many Marines. There have been many marksmen. But there has been only one Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, a legend of Marine lore. He stalked the Viet Cong behind enemy lines. His record has never been matched: 93 confirmed kills. This is his story. Powerful, chilling, and all true.

For eight years, far beyond the battlefields of Vietnam and the glare of media distortions, American Green Berets fought a deadly secret war in Laos and Cambodia under the aegis of the top secret Military Assistance Command Vietnam - Studies and Observations Group, or SOG. Go deep into the jungle with five SOG warriors surrounded by 10,000 enemy troops as they stack up the dead to build a human buttress for protection. Witness a Green Beret, shot in the back four times and left for dead, who survives to fight savagely against incredible odds to complete his missions.

He was a young American soldier - and the most powerful man in a remote rural District of Vietnam.

In the spring of 1969, First Lieutenant David Donovan arrived in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam to work as military advisor with village chiefs and local militia to win the war.

But as he was the highest-ranking person in the entire district, his life there was far more complex than anyone could have imagined.

He was a young American soldier - and the most powerful man in a remote rural District of Vietnam.

In the spring of 1969, First Lieutenant David Donovan arrived in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam to work as military advisor with village chiefs and local militia to win the war.

But as he was the highest-ranking person in the entire district, his life there was far more complex than anyone could have imagined.

In the U.S. Marine Corps, the most dangerous job in combat is that of the sniper. With no backup and little communication with the outside world, these men disappear for weeks on end in the wilderness with nothing but intellect and iron will to protect them - as they watch, wait, and finally strike. But of all of the snipers who ever hunted human prey, one man stands above the rest as the most legendary fighting man to ever pull a trigger. That man is Carlos Hathcock.

There have been many Marines. There have been many marksmen. But there has been only one Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, a legend of Marine lore. He stalked the Viet Cong behind enemy lines. His record has never been matched: 93 confirmed kills. This is his story. Powerful, chilling, and all true.

Robin Moore became one of the first true embedded journalists by training with and fighting alongside the Green Berets in Vietnam. Though fictionalized, his work is an eye-opening exposé of the horrors of the Vietnam War and the basis for the hit John Wayne movie of the same title. Taut, fast-paced, and interspersed with unforgettable accounts of combat, Moore’s novel features an American major who goes "native" with Montagnard tribesmen, a courageous Vietnamese girl who poses as a rabid anti-American Communist to capture a murderous Viet Cong officer, and the unforgettable acts of courage of soldiers in the field.

A remarkable memoir of small-unit leadership and the coming of age of a young soldier in combat in Vietnam.

Among the best books ever written about men in combat, The Killing Zone tells the story of the platoon of Delta One-six, capturing what it meant to face lethal danger, to follow orders, and to search for the conviction and then the hope that this war was worth the sacrifice. The book includes a new chapter on what happened to the platoon members when they came home.

Good to Go is Constance's powerful, firsthand account of his three tours of duty as a member of America's most elite, razor-sharp stealth fighting force. It is a breathtaking memoir of harrowing missions and covert special-ops - from the floodplains of the Mekong Delta to the beaches of the South China Sea - that places the listener in the center of bloody ambushes and devastating firefights. But Constance's extraordinary adventure goes even farther - beyond 'Nam.

The personal account of a guerrilla fighter in the French Foreign Legion reveals the Nazi Battalion's inhumanities to Indochinese villagers.

David Kenyon Webster's memoir is a clear-eyed, emotionally charged chronicle of youth, camaraderie, and the chaos of war. Relying on his own letters home and recollections he penned just after his discharge, Webster gives a firsthand account of life in E Company, 101st Airborne Division, crafting a memoir that resonates with the immediacy of a gripping novel.

On Friday, November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress approved a resolution for the organization of the Corps, creating what would become the hallowed few, the proud - the Marines. Since then, the men and women of the United States Marine Corps have created the finest traditions of service and honor, and supplied a pantheon of heroes who have upheld them.

A Yale graduate who volunteered to serve his country, Larry Gwin was only 23 years old when he arrived in Vietnam in 1965. After a brief stint in the Delta, Gwin was reassigned to the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in An Khe. There, in the hotly contested Central Highlands, he served almost nine months as executive officer for Alpha Company, 2/7, fighting against crack NVA troops in some of the war's most horrific battles.

In the fall of 2009, Taliban insurgents ambushed a patrol of Afghan soldiers and Marine advisors in a mountain village called Ganjigal. Firing from entrenched positions, the enemy was positioned to wipe out 100 men who were pinned down and were repeatedly refused artillery support. Ordered to remain behind with the vehicles, 21 year-old Marine corporal Dakota Meyer disobeyed orders and attacked to rescue his comrades.

This is the riveting true story of Paul Martelli, a 15-year-old German-Italian who fought in Pomerania, on the Eastern Front, in 1945 as a member of the 33rd Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS "Charlemagne" and later as a soldier with French forces during three years (1951-1954) in the Tonkin area, Vietnam.

Battalion 3/5 suffered the highest number of casualties in the war in Afghanistan. This is the story of one platoon in that distinguished battalion. Aware of U.S. plans to withdraw from the country, knowing their efforts were only a footprint in the sand, the fifty Marines of 3rd Platoon fought in Sangin, the most dangerous district in all of Afghanistan.

At 24 years of age, U.S. Army Ranger Sean Parnell was named commander of a forty-man elite infantry platoon - a unit that came to be known as the Outlaws - and was tasked with rooting out Pakistan-based insurgents from a mountain valley along Afghanistan's eastern frontier. Parnell and his men assumed they would be facing a ragtag bunch of civilians, but in May 2006 what started out as a routine patrol through the lower mountains of the Hindu Kush became a brutal ambush.

Based on months spent with the battalions in Fallujah and hundreds of interviews at every level (senior policymakers, negotiators, generals, and soldiers and Marines on the front lines) No True Glory is a testament to the bravery of the American soldier and a cautionary tale about the complex, and often costly, interconnected roles of policy, politics, and battle in the twenty-first century.

Policing Saigon isn't Platoon or Apocalypse Now, but the story of Loren W. Christensen's experience as a military policeman (MP) in a city of millions at a time when chaos and fear reigned. As a 23-year-old from a small town in Washington State, the author was plunged into a chaotic city of brawling servicemen, prostitutes, racial violence, enemy rockets, riots, and death. It was a place that would give him a unique opportunity to see up close a different side of the Vietnam War and its effect on the human condition.

The strategic potential of the three-day attack of two NVA regiments on Kham Duc—a remote and isolated Army Special Forces camp—on the eve of the first Paris peace talks in May 1968, was so significant that former President Lyndon Johnson included it in his memoirs. This gripping, original, eyewitness narrative and thoroughly researched analysis of a widely misinterpreted battle at the height of the Vietnam War radically contradicts all the other published accounts of it.

In late 1971, the People's Army of Vietnam launched Campaign "Z" into northern Laos, escalating the war in Laos with the aim of defeating the last Royal Lao Army troops. The NVA troops numbered 27,000 and brought with them 130mm field guns and T-34 tanks, while the North Vietnamese air force launched MiG-21s into Lao air space. General Giap's specific orders to this task force were to kill the CIA army under command of the Hmong war lord Vang Pao and occupy its field headquarters in the Long Tieng valley of northeast Laos.

Battalion 3/5 suffered the highest number of casualties in the war in Afghanistan. This is the story of one platoon in that distinguished battalion. Aware of U.S. plans to withdraw from the country, knowing their efforts were only a footprint in the sand, the fifty Marines of 3rd Platoon fought in Sangin, the most dangerous district in all of Afghanistan.