Akron Public Library

Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL, recounts his life and military experiences, discusses his record for the most career sniper kills in United States military history and the bounty placed on his head by Iraqi insurgents, provides an eye-witness account of war in Iraq, shares the strains of war on his marriage and family, and honors his fellow soldiers.

Lt. Col. Kopelman won the hearts of readers with his moving story of adopting an abandoned puppy named Lava in a hellish corner of Iraq. For this Marine and his comrades, the puppy served as an important emotional touchstone in a grim and seemingly endless war. Kopelman now writes about what it's like to be home. He credits his canine best friend with finding his wife--in the park, Lava began playing with her dog and the two owners met--and for keeping...

This true account follows twenty-three Marines of First Recon, in a platoon that spearheaded the blitzkrieg on Iraq. This elite unit, nicknamed "First Suicide Batallion", took the fight directly to the enemy by racing ahead of American battle forces, literally driving into suspected ambush points from the opening days of the invasion until the fall of Baghdad.

Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world than Anderson Cooper, whose groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the way we watch the news. In this memoir, he offers an unstinting, up-close view of the most harrowing crises of our time, and the profound impact they have had on his life." "After growing up on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Cooper felt a magnetic pull toward the unknown, an attraction to the far corners...

Private First Class Jessica Lynch retells the events surrounding her capture by Iraqi soldiers in March 2003, and her rescue by American troops.

In the first memoir from a young soldier who deserted from the war in Iraq, Joshua Key offers a vivid and damning indictment of what we are doing there. Key, a young husband and father from a conservative background, enlisted in 2002 to lift his family out of poverty. A year later, he found himself participating in a war that was not the campaign against evildoers he had expected. He saw Iraqi civilians beaten, shot, and killed for little or no provocation....

A former captain in the Marines' First Recon Battalion, who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, reveals how the Corps trains its elite and offers a point-blank account of twenty-first-century battle. Only one Marine in a hundred qualifies for Recon, charged with working clandestinely, often behind enemy lines. Fick's training begins with a hellish summer at Quantico, and advances to the pinnacle--Recon--four years later, on the eve of war with Iraq. Along...

An on-the-ground commander describes his brigade's first year in Iraq after the U.S. forces seized Baghdad in the spring of 2003, and explains what went right and wrong as the U.S. military confronted an insurgency, in a firsthand analysis of success and failure in Iraq.

Mike and Kate Blaise fell in love during high school in small-town Missouri. Sharing a deep sense of patriotism, they both entered the U.S. Army--she as a commissioned officer and he as an enlisted infantry soldier who later became a helicopter pilot with the Air Cavalry. Forced to accept the realities of a military marriage yet determined to stay with her husband, Kate passed up her dream assignment in the United States to be with Mike, who was deployed...