Iraq Memoir

Khidhir Hamza, the Iraqi scientist who designed Baghdad's nuclear bomb, tells how he secretly developed the bomb with the cynical help of U.S., French, German, and British suppliers and experts and kept it hidden from U.N. inspectors after the Gulf War.

Jess enlisted in the Marines immediately after graduating from high school in 2001, and in 2004 she volunteered to serve in the Marine Corps' first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit in Iraq. Her platoon was tasked with recovering and processing the remains of fallen soldiers. With sensitivity and insight, Jess describes her job retrieving and examining the remains of fellow soldiers lost in combat in Iraq, and the psychological intricacy of coping with their fates, as well as her own.

Across Cultures and Empires is above all an immigrant's story. Mahir Ibrahimov's fluency in multiple languages offers the perspective of someone who found a way to successfully cross boundaries amid the fall of empire and the resulting cascade of conflicts, even as he provides the listener with insight into an era where mass migration has become a defining dynamic. In the course of telling his personal story and reflecting upon his experiences, Ibrahimov offers clear observations on the deep connections he has made about freedom and America's role in the world.

The Jihadi Next Door provides unprecedented information that can be used to actually combat terrorism. By laying bare the tactics used by ISIS to deceive and exploit new recruits and exposing the veneer these extremists operate under, Dr. Mehlman-Orozco hopes to empower listeners with the knowledge needed to prevent future recruitment and thereby preventing acts of terrorism.

In 1999, Munjed Al Muderis was a surgical resident working in Baghdad when the military police marched into the operating theatre and ordered the team to mutilate army deserters. When the head of surgery refused, he was executed. Munjed's choices were stark - comply and breach the medical oath, refuse and face death or flee. That day, Munjed's life changed forever. He escaped to Indonesia and boarded a boat to Australia.

In 2012, American journalist Theo Padnos, fluent in Arabic, Russian, German, and French, traveled to a Turkish border town to write and report on the Syrian civil war. One afternoon in October, while walking through an olive grove, he met three young Syrians - who turned out to be al Qaeda operatives - and they captured him and kept him prisoner for nearly two years. On his first day, in the first of many prisons, Padnos was given a blindfold - a grime-stained scrap of fabric - that was his only possession throughout his horrific ordeal.

In The Puzzle Palace, James Bamford revealed the existence of the NSA, the largest, most secretive, and best-financed intelligence organization in the world. In Body of Secrets, he took readers inside the ultra-secret agency, charting its deeds and misdeeds. Now Bamford applies his relentless investigative drive and unparalleled access to intelligence sources to produce a headline-making book about the most pressing issues of the present day.

In the summer of 2014, Firas Jumaah was working diligently to complete his doctorate in chemistry at Lund University in Sweden when he suddenly received news that an ISIS advance in northern Iraq threatened the lives of his wife and children. As the situation worsened by the minute, Firas managed to send a message to his professor, Charlotta Turner, to let her know that he did not expect to return to Sweden to complete his dissertation. She quickly organized a commando mission that resulted in the dramatic rescue of Firas from war-torn Iraq.

For soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division, the road to Baghdad began with a midnight flight out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in late February 2003. For Rick Atkinson, who would spend nearly two months covering the division for The Washington Post, the war in Iraq provided a unique opportunity to observe today's U.S. Army in combat.

Christopher Meyer was Ambassador to the United States from 1997 to 2003, during which time he was an eyewitness to and participant in the events following 9/11 and the preparations for the Iraq war. Never before has there been such a riveting and candid memoir of life behind the diplomatic scenes. Meyer's is an honest account of what he saw, what he heard, and how he felt.

Jeff and Ray had "la vida": selling "Yankees Suck" T-shirts five months of the year in front of Fenway Park and spending the rest of the year traveling the world. Sure, they'd go back to college at some point, but for now, the future was comfortably on hold. But the play button got pushed for them after the Sox broke their hearts in the 2003 Series. In the painfully clear light of the morning after, they looked at each other and faced up to the fact that they were in danger of becoming losers. Sad cases.

A few weeks after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11, journalist Megan K. Stack, a 25-year-old national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was thrust into Afghanistan and Pakistan, dodging gunmen and prodding warlords for information. From there, she traveled to war-ravaged Iraq and Lebanon and other countries scarred by violence, witnessing the changes that swept the Muslim world and laboring to tell its stories.

In Service to Civilian: A Journey Through PTSD you will enter the mind of a combat vet who became a law enforcement officer after a tour in Iraq where comrades were killed and wounded. Policing the streets, he faced the balance between selfless service, integrity, bureaucracy, and the weight of the negative policing culture around him. All this while fighting ever-increasing depression and ultimately a PTSD incident that brought him to the edge of suicide.

A detailed personal account of a combat advisor, mentoring the developing Afghanistan National Army in 2006 in the mountainous and hostile eastern region...Living with and supporting a foreign military, Andy was critical in enabling the Afghan forces to fire their howitzer indirectly, a historical objective milestone to set the conditions for coalition withdrawal.

In 1990, U.S. Army Major Martin Stanton was a military advisor stationed in Saudi Arabia. Encouraged by the Army to broaden his cultural horizons, and assured by the U.S. embassy that Kuwait was perfectly safe, Stanton took off for a long weekend there. Roused by gunshots his first night in Kuwait City, Stanton looked out the window and discovered he was in the middle of a full-scale invasion.

Robert O'Neill, the man that killed Bin Laden, tells us his story leaving nothing to the imagination. O'Neill has definitely lived a life full of jaw dropping stories; the attempts to rescue Marcus Luttrell and Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates and who could ever forget, terminating the life of the most wanted terrorist in the world. Finally, we have the chance to listen all about it in The Operator where he tells us the unabridged story of his life and work as a SEAL.

This is a story of pain, loss, and hope. Our son was killed on foreign soil, and in an instant our world was forever changed. Just as yours would be. Chronicling the life of only one of the currently 7,000 Gold Star families from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, When Our Blue Star Turned Gold takes the listener from the early morning hours of his final and fatal battle to the ongoing journey of staff Sgt. Bryan Burgess’ family.

Jay Kopelman sets forth more than a dozen lessons, including: Life can change in an instant, but you'll be able to handle it; passion for something can help you tap into your most powerful reserve of energy; have a standard operating procedure for everything; and never forget who you are or how you got here. Active and retired troops, soldiers' friends and families, and everyone who has ever loved a dog will embrace this book.

He is trained and ready for war. Instead of leading the Marines into combat, a Marine captain is given the mission of advising an Iraqi army battalion in one of the most violent cities in Iraq. The collected stories span seven months of nearly constant combat in 2006 and 2007, at the height of the insurgency in Iraq. This audiobook is the raw, visceral story of a combat adviser with a lot more combat than advising.