Correspondents by Tim Murphy is a powerful story about the legacy of immigration, the present-day world of refugeehood, the violence that America causes both abroad and at home, and the power of the individual and the family to bring good into a world that is often brutal.

Spanning the breadth of the twentieth century and into the post-9/11 wars and their legacy, Correspondents is a powerful novel that centres on Rita Khoury, an Irish-Lebanese woman whose life and family history mirrors the story of modern America. Both sides of Rita’s family came to the United States in the golden years of immigration, and in her home north of Boston Rita grows into a stubborn, perfectionist, and relentlessly bright young woman. She studies Arabic at university and moves to cosmopolitan Beirut to work as a journalist, and is then posted to Iraq after the American invasion in 2003.

In Baghdad, Rita finds for the first time in her life that her safety depends on someone else, her talented interpreter Nabil al-Jumaili, an equally driven young man from a middle-class Baghdad family who is hiding a secret about his sexuality. As Nabil’s identity threatens to put him in jeopardy and Rita’s position becomes more precarious as the war intensifies, their worlds start to unravel, forcing them out of the country and into an uncertain future.

Quicksilver War is a panoramic political history of the wars that coursed through Syria and Iraq in the wake of the 'Arab Spring' and eventually merged to become a regional catastrophe: a kaleidoscopic and constantly shifting conflict involving many different parties and phases. William Harris distils the highly complex dynamics behind the conflict, starting with the brutalising Baathist regimes in Damascus and Baghdad. He charts the malignant consequences of incompetent US occupation of Iraq and Bashar al-Assad's self-righteous mismanagement of Syria, through the implosion of Syria, and the emergence of eastern and western theatres of war focused respectively on future control of Syria and the challenge of ISIS. Beyond the immediate arena of conflict, geopolitical riptides have also been set in motion, including Turkey's embroilment in the war and the shifting circumstances of the Kurds. This sweeping history addresses urgent questions for our time. Will the world rubber-stamp and bankroll the Russian-led 'solution' in Syria, backed by Turkey and Iran? Is the 'Quicksilver War' about to reach an explosive finale? Or will ongoing political manoeuvring mutate into years of further violence?

In the 40 years since the end of World War II, Vietnam has been the focal point of the struggle for and against colonialism, of the war between capitalism and socialism and, more recently, of the clash between contending socialisms. For the first time, a nation divided in two by the ideological schisms of the Cold War has been reunified. With a population of 65 million it has become the 12th largest country in the world and it is the third largest socialist country. It has mineral, agricultural and labour resources which could ultimately see it become a major economic power in Southeast Asia. However, it remains one of the poorest economies in the world at present and the reunification process has created difficult problems for the economic development strategy being pursued. In focussing on the theme of economic unification, this book hopes to throw some new light on these domestic developments and on Vietnam's potential for growth in the future. The study explains the economic upheavals in terms of historical developments, especially the legacy of separation of North and South from 1954 to the 1975 Communist victory. The author traces those aspects of the divided economies which have been of significance for post-War development and argues that the process of unifying radically different economic systems has been the key to understanding the economic crisis facing Vietnam since 1975 and its potential for constructing a strong, socialist economy in future. The Vietnamese experience with reunification also contains important lessons for other countries in the region. The author has also written "A Manual of Political Economy" and "Vietnam: Politics, Economics and Society".

This book analyses the various ways counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is gendered. The book examines the US led war in Afghanistan from 2001 onwards, including the invasion, the population-centric counterinsurgency operations and the efforts to train a new Afghan military charged with securing the country when the US and NATO withdrew their combat forces in 2014. Through an analysis of key counterinsurgency texts and military memoirs, the book explores how gender and counterinsurgency are co-constitutive in numerous ways. It discusses the multiple military masculinities that counterinsurgency relies on, the discourse of 'cultural sensitivity', and the deployment of Female Engagement Teams (FETs). Gendering Counterinsurgency demonstrates how population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine and practice can be captured within a gendered dynamic of 'killing and caring' - reliant on physical violence, albeit mediated through 'armed social work'. This simultaneously contradictory and complementary dynamic cannot be understood without recognising how the legitimation and the practice of this war relied on multiple gendered embodied performances of masculinities and femininities. Developing the concept of 'embodied performativity' this book shows how the clues to understanding counterinsurgency, as well as gendering war more broadly are found in war's everyday gendered manifestations. This book will be of much interest to students of counterinsurgency warfare, gender politics, governmentality, biopolitics, critical war studies, and critical security studies in general.

The Horse Soldiers is the true, dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who entered Afghanistan immediately following September 11, 2001 and, riding to war on horses, defeated the Taliban. Heavily outnumbered, they nonetheless succeed in capturing the strategic Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, where they are welcomed as liberators as they ride on horseback into the city, the streets thronged with Afghans overjoyed that the Taliban have been kicked out. The soldiers rest easy, as they feel they have accomplished their mission. Then the action takes a wholly unexpected turn. During a surrender of Taliban troops, the Horse Soldiers are ambushed by the would-be P.O.W.s and, still dangerously outnumbered, they must fight for their lives in the city's ancient fortress known as Qala-I Janghi, or the House of War...

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It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. It became known as "the surge." Among those called to carry it out were the young, optimistic army infantry soldiers of the 2-16, the battalion nicknamed the Rangers. About to head to a vicious area of Baghdad, they decided the difference would be them.
Fifteen months later, the soldiers returned home -- forever changed. The chronicle of their tour is gripping, devastating, and deeply illuminating for anyone with an interest in human conflict. With "The""Good Soldiers," Pulitzer Prize-winning "r"eporter David Finkel has produced an eternal story -- not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time.

Following his prizewinning studies of the Vietnam War, renowned anthropologist Heonik Kwon presents this ground-breaking study of the Korean War's enduring legacies seen through the realm of intimate human experience. Kwon boldly reclaims kinship as a vital category in historical and political enquiry and probes the grey zone between the modern and the traditional (and between the civil and the social) in the lived reality of Korea's civil war and the Cold War more broadly. With captivating historical detail and innovative conceptual frames, Kwon's moving, creative analysis provides fresh insights into the Korean conflict, civil war and reconciliation, history and memory and critical political theory.

Days of the Fall takes the reader into the heart of the terrible wars in Syria and Iraq. The book combines frontline reporting with analysis of the deeper causes and effects of the conflict. Over five years, Jonathan Spyer reported from the depths of the wars, spending time in Aleppo, Baghdad, Damascus, Mosul, Idlib, Hasaka and other frontline areas. He witnessed some of the most dramatic events of the conflict - the rescue of the trapped Yezidis from the attempted ISIS genocide in 2014, the Assad regime's assault on Aleppo, the rise of independent Kurdish power in north east Syria, the emergence of the Shia militias in Iraq as a key force. The book depicts these events, and seeks to place them within a broader framework. The author notes the ethnic and sectarian faultlines in both Syria and Iraq, and contends that both countries have now effectively separated along these lines, leading to the emergence of de facto fragmentation and the birth of a number of new entities. The book also notes that this confused space has now become an arena for proxy conflict between regional and global powers. Containing interviews with key figures from all sides of the conflict, such as the Shia militias in Iraq, and even ISIS members, Days of the Fall serves as an invaluable and comprehensive guide to the complex dynamics and the tragic human impact of the wars.

In spring 2008, inspired by the Vietnam war veterans who spoke out against the war in public hearings, Iraq veterans gathered to expose the war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. In this book Aaron Glantz and the Iraq war veterans reveal the atrocities they have witnessed.

A manifesto about America's unchallenged war machine, from an Afghanistan veteran and new kind of military hero.

Before engaging in war, Erik Edstrom asks us to imagine three, rarely imagined scenarios: First, imagine your own death. Second, imagine war from “the other side.” Third: Imagine what might have been if the war had never been fought. Pursuing these realities through his own combat experience, Erik reaches the unavoidable conclusion about America at war. But that realization came too late-the damage had been done.

Erik Edstrom grew up in suburban Massachusetts with an idealistic desire to make an impact, ultimately leading him to the gates of West Point. Five years later, he was deployed to Afghanistan as an infantry lieutenant. Throughout his military career, he confronted atrocities, buried his friends, wrestled with depression, and struggled with an understanding that the war he fought in, and the youth he traded to prepare for it, was in contribution to a bitter truth: The War on Terror is not just a tragedy, but a crime. The deeper tragedy is that our country lacks the courage and conviction to say so.

Un-American is a hybrid of social commentary and memoir that exposes how blind support for war exacerbates the problems it's intended to resolve, devastates the people allegedly being helped, and diverts assets from far larger threats like climate change. Un-American is a revolutionary act, offering a blueprint for redressing America's relationship with patriotism, the military, and military spending.

In the highly politicized memory space of postwar South Korea, many families have been deprived of their right to mourn loved ones lost in the Korean War. Only since the 1990s has the government begun to acknowledge the atrocities committed by South Korean and American troops that resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee, new laws honoring victims, and construction of monuments and memorials have finally opened public spaces for mourning. In Right to Mourn, Suhi Choi explores this new context of remembering in which memories that have long been private are brought into official sites. As the generation that once carried these memories fades away, Choi poses an increasingly critical question: can a memorial communicate trauma and facilitate mourning? Through careful examination of recently built Korean War memorials (the Jeju April 3 Peace Park, the Memorial for the Gurye Victims of Yosun Killings, and the No Gun Ri Peace Park), Right to Mourn provokes readers to look at the nearly seven-decade-old war within the most updated context, and shows how suppressed trauma manifests at the transient interactions among bodies, objects, and rituals at the sites of these memorials.

Beginning with a brief account of the troubled historical past of this small country that had long known invasion and the threat of invasion, Carl Berger sets the stage for Korea's catastrophic hour resulting from World War II-the division of a once-united nation into two separate countries. It is this division, he maintains, that holds the key to the Korean tragedy. The book ranges from the Cairo Pledge to the present, examining the shifts in international diplomacy, Russia's change in attitude after Yalta and the death of Roosevelt, the intransigence of the Communist occupiers of northern Korea after the defeat of Japan. Berger also vividly describes the Communist invasion of South Korea and the conviction of President Truman that led ot the united Nations action to meet the challenge under the leadership of the United States. The bitter warfare of the "police action," the worldwide shock at the Chinese "volunteer" army's sudden entry into North Korea, the recall of General MacArthur, the struggles to work out an armistice, President' Rhee's despairing attempts to force the unification of his country and his final downfall-the entire dramatic story is unfolded in sequence. Carefully documented, The Korea Knot is an objective and detailed study that makes an important contribution to our understanding of the dilemmas-of war and peace, of freedom and repression-that still face a divided world.

In recent years questions of ethical responsibility and justice in war have become increasingly significant in international relations. This focus has been precipitated by United States (U.S.) led invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq. In turn, Western conceptions of ethical responsibility have been largely informed by human rights based understandings of morality. This book directly addresses the question of what it means to act ethically in times of war by drawing upon first-hand accounts of U.S. war fighting in Iraq during the 2003 invasion and occupation. The book focuses upon the prominent rights based justification of war of Michael Walzer. Through an in-depth critical reading of Walzer's work, this title demonstrates the broader problems implicit to human rights based justifications of war and elucidates an alternative account of ethical responsibility: ethics as response. Putting forward a compelling case for people to remain troubled and engaged with questions of ethical responsibility in war, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars in a range of areas including international relations theory, ethics and security studies.

In June 2005 four US Navy SEALs left their base in Afghanistan for the Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al-Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less than twenty-four hours later, only one of those Navy SEALs was alive. This is the story of team leader Marcus Luttrell, the sole survivor of Operation Redwing. Blasted unconscious by a rocket grenade, blown over a cliff, but still armed and still breathing, Luttrell endured four desperate days fighting the al-Qaeda assassins sent to kill him, before finding unlikely sanctuary with a Pashtun tribe who risked everything to protect him from the circling Taliban killers.

World champion boxer Lew Jenkins fought his whole life. As a child, he fought extreme poverty during the Great Depression; in his twenties, he fought as a professional boxer and became a world champion; and at the pinnacle of his boxing career, Jenkins fought in World War II and the Korean War. From Boxing Ring to Battlefield: The Life of War Hero Lew Jenkins details for the first time this extraordinary story. Despite his talent for boxing, Jenkins often fought and trained in drunken stupors. Although he became the world lightweight champion, he soon wasted his ring title and all his money. Jenkins eventually found purpose during World War II and the Korean War, fighting in major battles that included D-Day, Bloody Ridge, and Heartbreak Ridge. His efforts earned him one of the highest decorations for bravery, the Silver Star. Unable to find meaning in life at the peak of his boxing success, Jenkins discovered values to which he could cling during war. From Boxing Ring to Battlefield features exclusive interviews with Lew Jenkins's son and grandson, providing a personal perspective on the life of this complicated war hero. The first biography of Jenkins, this book will fascinate boxing fans and historians alike.

This book identifies some of the main lessons for civil-military interactions that can be derived from the experiences of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan.

A key underlying theme of the book is simply that the ways in which civil and military actors interact in theatres of operations such as Afghanistan "matter" for both those categories of actors, and for the ordinary people who their interactions serve. But a second, equally important, theme is that these interactions are invariably complex. A third, which arises specifically from the PRT experience in Afghanistan, is that such teams vary significantly in their roles, resourcing, and operational environments, so that if one is seeking to appraise the value of the PRT experience, it is necessary to unpack with some care the experiences of different PRTs, which the use of case studies allows one to do.

The volume comprises an introduction, identifying some key questions to which the PRT experience gives rise, and case studies of the experiences of the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, The Netherlands, Australia, Germany and France; chapters dealing with the roles played by NGOs and the UN system; a discussion from an Afghan perspective of the implications of civilian casualties; and a conclusion. It is the combination of the diverse cases discussed in this book with a focus on the broad challenges of optimising civil-military interactions that makes this book distinctive.

This book will be of much interest to students of the Afghan War, civil-military relations, statebuilding, Central Asian politics and IR in general."

In November 1950 The US 1st Marine Division was trapped in the Chosin Reservoir following the intervention of Red China in the Korean War. Fought during the worst blizzard in a century, the ensuing battle is considered by the United States Marine Corps to be 'the Corps' Finest Hour.' The soldiers who fought there would later become known as the `Frozen Chosen'. Published now in paperback, this incredible story is based on first hand interviews from surviving veterans, telling of heroism and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, as a handful of Marines fought desperately against wave after wave of Chinese forces. Sometimes forced into desperate hand to hand combat, the fighting retreat from Chosin marked one of the darkest moments for Western forces in Korea, but would go on to resonate with generations of Marines as a symbol of the Marine Corps' dogged determination, fighting skill, and never-say-die attitude on the battlefield.

When Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, triggering the First Gulf War, a coalition of thirty-five countries led by the United States responded with Operation Desert Storm, which culminated in a onehundred- hour coordinated air strike and ground assault that repelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Though largely forgotten in descriptions of the war, an eight-day barrage of artillery fire made this seemingly rapid offensive possible. At the forefront of this offensive were the brave field artillerymen known as "redlegs." In Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War, veteran and former redleg of the First Infantry Division Artillery (otherwise known as the "Big Red One") Col. L. Scott Lingamfelter recounts the logistical and strategic decisions that led to a coalition victory. Drawing on original battle maps, official reports, and his and his comrades' personal journals, Lingamfelter describes the experience of the First Gulf War through a soldier's eyes and attempts to answer the question of whether the United States "got the job done" in its first sustained Middle Eastern conflict. Part military history, part personal memoir, this book provides a boots-on-theground perspective on the largest US artillery bombardment since World War II.

Exploring Korean history from its ancient roots to the present day, A Brief History of Korea is the story of a people with a rich and united culture that has become two Koreas in modern times--one isolated and secretive and the other among the world's most successful economies. Korean culture developed on a 600-mile-long peninsula, bordered on the north by mountains and three sides by the sea, set apart from the Asian mainland. Korea was one of the last countries in Asia to be visited by Westerners and its borders have remained largely unchanged since it was unified in the seventh century. Though it is one of the world's oldest and most ethnically homogeneous states, Korea was not born in a vacuum. Geographically isolated, the country was heavily influenced by powerful China and was often used as a bridge to the mainland by Japan. Calling themselves as "a shrimp among whales," Koreans borrowed elements of government, culture and religion all the while fiercely fighting to maintain independence from powerful neighbors. This fascinating book tells the story of Korean domestic dynasties, empires and states, as well as foreign conquest, occupation and division. Today, the two Koreas are starkly different--North Korea a nation closed to the world and South Korea an economic powerhouse and center of Asian democracy. Chronicling significant events right up through 2018's Singapore Summit, author Michael J. Seth presents a relevant, interesting and important history of Korea within a larger global context. Korea's history is a turbulent one, but ultimately the story of a resistant and resourceful people in search of lasting peace.

On July 29, 2009, Air National Guard major Mary Jennings 'MJ' Hegar was shot down while on a Medevac mission on her third tour in Afghanistan. Despite being wounded, she continued to fight and saved the lives of her crew and their patients. But soon she would face a new battle: to give women who serve on the front lines the credit they deserve. After being commissioned into the U.S. Air Force, MJ Hegar was selected for pilot training by the Air National Guard, finished at the top of her class, then served three tours in Afghanistan, flying combat search-and-rescue missions, culminating in a harrowing rescue attempt that would earn MJ the Purple Heart as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Device. But it was on American soil that Hegar would embark on her greatest challenge- to eliminate the military's Ground Combat Exclusion Policy, which kept female armed service members from officially serving in combat roles despite their long-standing record of doing so with honor. In Shoot Like A Girl, MJ takes the reader on a dramatic journey through her military career: an inspiring, humorous, and thrilling true story of a brave, high-spirited, and unforgettable woman who has spent much of her life ready to sacrifice everything for her country, her fellow man, and her sense of justice.