Afghanistan Memoir

Band of Brothers meets Argo in this dramatic and heartfelt dual memoir of the war in Afghanistan told by two men from opposite worlds. Always Faithful entwines the stories of Marine Major Tom Schueman, and his friend and Afghan interpreter, Zainullah “Zak” Zaki, as they describe their parallel lives, converging paths, and unbreakable bond in the face of overwhelming danger, culminating in Zak and his family’s harrowing escape from Kabul.

Enno Lenze war auf dem Weg nach Butscha, als dieser Ort noch nicht als Synonym für russische Kriegsverbrechen galt. Er berichtet von der Front aus der Ukraine, vom Kampf gegen den IS in der Autonomen Region Kurdistan, von der Herrschaft der Taliban in Afghanistan, von Tränengasangriffen auf Studenten in Hongkong. Waffenmessen in Paris und Dubai sind ebenso sein Thema wie der versuchte Sturm des Bundestags durch Reichsbürger.

Senior Chief Turbo, Memoir of a Navy SEAL K-9 recounts the life of a military working dog named Turbo, from his birth in Holland and participation in Dutch police dog (KNPV) trials, to training with a Navy SEAL dog handler and joining him for two combat deployments to Afghanistan. Written from a dog's unique perspective, and based on actual, first-hand accounts of a SEAL handler-dog team, Senior Chief Turbo illustrates the bonds of loyalty and friendship that drive all warriors.

It takes a tough mindset to be a successful sniper, to be able to dig in for days on your own as you wait for your target, to stay calm on a battlefield when you yourself have become the target the enemy most wants to take out. Craig Harrison has what it takes, and in November 2009 in Afghanistan, under intense pressure, he saved the lives of his comrades with the longest confirmed sniper kill: 2,475 meters. In this unflinching autobiography, Craig catapults us into the heat of the action as he describes his active service in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Fresh out of high school, Kelsi Sheren, a diminutive nineteen-year-old woman, sought to join the military to help liberate those oppressed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. While she was often the smallest person in basic training, she proved she had the biggest heart and often the most energy. She made it to Afghanistan and joined a British military unit for house-to-house insurgent patrol. What she saw there was unimaginable death and destruction.

One in three will experience a significant trauma in their life. Brilliantly read by author and army Apache pilot Lt. Col. Brian L. Slade, experience the war from the cockpit as he shares his experience with trauma in Afghanistan.

They marched under the heat with 40-pound rucksacks on their backs. They fired weapons out of the windows of military vehicles, defending their units in deadly battles. And they did things their male counterparts could never do—gather intelligence on the Taliban from the women of Afghanistan. Beyond the Call follows the groundbreaking journeys of three women as they first fight military brass and culture and then enemy fire and tradition. And like the men with whom they served, their battles were not over when they returned home.

Dr. Sima Samar has been fighting for equality and justice for most of her life. Born into a polygamous family, she learned early that girls had inferior status, and she had to agree to an arranged marriage if she wanted to go to university. By the time she was in medical school, she had a son, Ali, and had become a revolutionary. After her husband was disappeared by the pro-Russian regime, she escaped. With her son and medical degree, she took off into the rural areas—by horseback, by donkey, even on foot—to treat people who had never had medical help before.

In early 2022, veteran journalist Andrew North was kidnapped by the Taliban. By the time he found himself imprisoned in a jail cell, he had been reporting from Afghanistan for two decades, coming to know hundreds of Afghans along the way. This book brings together both his and their stories.

"You will be a son, my daughter." With these stunning words Ukmina learned that she was to spend her childhood as a boy. In Afghanistan there is a widespread practice of girls dressing as boys to play the role of a son. These children are called bacha posh: literally "girls dressed as boys." This practice offers families the freedom to allow their child to shop and work - and in some cases, it saves them from the disgrace of not having a male heir. But in adolescence, religion restores the natural law.

The key to understanding the calamitous Afghan war is the complex, ultimately failed relationship between the powerful, duplicitous Karzai family and the United States, brilliantly portrayed here by the former Kabul bureau chief for The Washington Post.

When America retreated from Kabul amid chaos in 2021, Lieutenant General Sami Sadat, the last commander of the army of the Afghan republic, was still fighting to the end. In this firsthand account, he reveals how his troops were starved of ammunition for two years before the final pullout, while America was glad-handing the Taliban.

For eight months in 2008, US Army Capt. Matt Zeller served as an embedded combat adviser with the Afghan security forces in Ghazni, Afghanistan. Watches Without Time is a compilation of the emails and letters he sent home to family and friends during that period - so that, as he writes in the preface, "should anything have ever happened to me, they would know what I went through."

Captain Benjamin Tupper spent a year in Afghanistan in an Embedded Training Team, tasked with training, leading in combat, and mentoring the Afghan Army to victory against the brutal Taliban. Writing and recording from a remote outpost, Tupper's dispatches were posted on the blog The Sandbox and broadcast on NPR, bringing vivid snapshots of America's longest ongoing war to a wide audience back home.

What happens when a regular person accidentally finds themselves lost in the middle of a war? In 1991, BBC journalist Chris Woolf travelled to Afghanistan. The government in Kabul was fighting for survival, after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. The parallels to today are extraordinary. Woolf was visiting a colleague to see if he’d like the life of a foreign correspondent. They hitched a ride with an aid convoy and bumbled straight into the war. They kept going, despite the horror and terror. There was no choice.

In August 2021 a women's creative writing group in Afghanistan shared news of political turmoil and the Fall of Kabul. These women were in the process of publishing a short-story collection when their world was turned upside down by the Taliban. In staying connected via WhatsApp messages, they established a lifeline; a vital space to keep their creativity alive, support each other and bear witness to the events unfolding around them.

Marine Sgt. John Peck survived an IED during the War on Terror that left him with a traumatic brain injury, amnesia, and cost him his marriage. He survived another three years later, one that left him with three and a half limbs missing. He’s one of only two living people to survive the flesh-eating fungus he contracted in recovery at Walter Reed, one that left him as a quadruple amputee. And that’s only the beginning of his story. What followed was a recovery nothing short of miraculous.

Not even old enough to drink, Corporal Savannah Cannon is a young enlisted United States Marine deployed to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2010. As a tactical data networking specialist, she is sent away from everyone she knows and attached to a Regimental Combat Team where women are not allowed to repair communications. Her experiences over the next few months shed light on the unique and difficult positions women are placed in when supporting combat roles, while offering a raw look at the painful choices women must sometimes make.

Being inspired to act can take many forms. For some, it's taking a weekend to volunteer, but for Shannon Galpin, it meant leaving her career, selling her house, launching a nonprofit, and committing her life to advancing education and opportunity for women and girls. Focusing on the war-torn country of Afghanistan, Galpin and her organization, Mountain2Mountain, have touched the lives of hundreds of men, women, and children.

From foot patrols, deadly enemy engagements, and sinister insider attacks to meals and conversations with the men of the Afghan Border Police, Izant's account confronts the gauntlet of violence and anguish that transformed a generation of American and Afghan warriors from idealist volunteers for a just war to disillusioned veterans of a lost cause.