Middle East War

James Verini arrived in Iraq in the summer of 2016 to write about life in the Islamic State. He stayed to cover the jihadis' last great stand, the Battle of Mosul, not knowing it would go on for nearly a year, nor that it would become, in the words of the Pentagon, "the most significant urban combat since WWII." They Will Have to Die Now takes the listener into the heart of the conflict against the most lethal insurgency of our time. We see unspeakable violence, improbable humanity, and occasional humor.

The Assassins' Gate, so dubbed by American soldiers, is the entrance to the American zone in the city of Baghdad. In 2003, the United States blazed into Iraq to depose dictator Saddam Hussein. But after three years and unknown thousands killed, that country faces an escalating civil war and an uncertain fate. How did it get to this point?

In 2011, an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, the man the United States had begun chasing before the devastating attacks of 9/11. The news did much to boost President Obama’s first term and played a major part in his reelection victory of the following year. But much of the story of that night, as presented to the world, was incomplete, or a lie. The evidence of what actually went on remains hidden.

A CIA station chief, later Jordan's lawyer in Washington, reveals the secret history of a lost peace.

Jack O'Connell possessed an uncanny ability to be at the center of things. On his arrival in Jordan in 1958, he unraveled a coup aimed at the young King Hussein, who would become America's most reliable Middle East ally. Over time, their bond of trust and friendship deepened. His narrative contains secrets that will revise our understanding of the Middle East.

On the morning of August 2, 1990, Iraqi armored divisions invaded the tiny emirate of Kuwait. The Iraqi Army, after its long war with Iran, had more combat experience than the US Army. The Kuwaitis had collapsed easily enough, but the invasion drew fierce condemnation from the United Nations, which demanded Hussein's withdrawal. Undeterred by the rhetoric, the Iraqi dictator massed his forces along the Saudi Arabian border and dared the world to stop him.

1983: the United States Marine Corps experiences its greatest single-day loss of life since the Battle of Iwo Jima, when a truck packed with explosives crashes into their headquarters and barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. This horrifying terrorist attack, which killed 241 servicemen, continues to influence US foreign policy and haunts the Marine Corps to this day. Now, the full story is revealed as never before by Jack Carr and historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist James M. Scott.

On May 2, 2011, at 1:03 a.m. a satellite uplink was sent from Pakistan crackling into the situation room of the White House: "Geronimo, Echo, KIA." These words, spoken by a Navy SEAL, ended Osama bin Laden's reign of terror. SEAL Target Geronimo is the story of Neptune's Spear from the men who were there. After talking to members of the SEAL team involved in the raid, Pfarrer shares never-before-revealed details in an exclusive account of what happened as he takes listeners inside the walls of Bin Laden's compound.

Only once in a lifetime does a war so brutal erupt. A war that becomes an official genocide, causes millions to run from their homes, compels the slaughtering of thousands in the most horrific of ways, and inspires terrorist attacks to transpire across the world. That is the chilling legacy of the ISIS onslaught, and Only Cry for the Living takes a profoundly personal, unprecedented dive into one of the most brutal terrorist organizations in the world.

On November 20, 1979, worldwide attention was focused on Tehran, where the Iranian hostage crisis was entering its third week. The same morning, the first of a new Muslim century, hundreds of gunmen stunned the world by seizing Islam's holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Armed with rifles that they had smuggled inside coffins, these men came from more than a dozen countries, launching the first operation of global jihad in modern times.

When the establishment of the State of Israel was announced on May 14, 1948, it seemed to many people that the new nation could not survive for long. The haste with which it was created meant that Israel lacked the infrastructure of government, and its armed forces consisted of little more than a handful of lightly armed former guerilla fighters. Ranged against it were some of the most powerful nations in the Arab world, including Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria.

Among the many books trying to understand the terrifying rise of ISIS, none has given voice to the women in the organization; but women were essential to the establishment of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s caliphate. Responding to promises of female empowerment and social justice, and calls to aid the plight of fellow Muslims in Syria, thousands of women emigrated to join the Islamic State. Guest House for Young Widows charts the different ways women were recruited, inspired, or compelled to join the militants.

In Degrade and Destroy, the bestselling author and Wall Street Journal national security correspondent Michael R. Gordon reveals the strategy debates, diplomatic gambits, and military operations that shaped the struggle against the Islamic State. With extraordinary access to top U.S. officials and military commanders and to the forces on the battlefield, Gordon offers a riveting narrative that ferrets out some of the war’s most guarded secrets.

On the night of September 11, 2012, the American diplomatic mission at Benghazi, Libya, came under ferocious attack by a heavily armed group of Islamic terrorists. The prolonged firefight, and the attack hours later on a nearby CIA outpost, resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the American ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, the Information Officer, Sean Smith, and two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Told from Stewart's distinctly Western perspective, The Prince of the Marshes chronicles his time acting as the deputy governor of two southern Iraqi provinces.

Previously published as Horse Soldiers, 12 Strong is the dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11 and rode to war on horses against the Taliban. Outnumbered 40 to one, they pursued the enemy army across the mountainous Afghanistan terrain and, after a series of intense battles, captured the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The bone-weary American soldiers were welcomed as liberators as they rode into the city. Then the action took a wholly unexpected turn.

Pirates and Emperors is a brilliant exploration of the role of the United States in the Middle East that exposes how the media manipulates public opinion about what constitutes "terrorism". Chomsky masterfully argues that appreciating the differences between state terror and nongovernmental terror is crucial to stopping terrorism and understanding why atrocities like the bombing of the World Trade Center and the killing of the Charlie Hebdo journalists happen.

Argentina, 1960. A car speeds through the streets of Buenos Aires. Inside are four Israeli secret agents and their prisoner: Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious war criminals of Nazi Germany. In this detailed memoir, Rafi Eitan tells the story of his remarkable life and career. He describes how as a teenager, he smuggled Jewish refugees into Palestine, and how, as a spy in the newly established Mossad, he swam through sewers to blow up a British radar station. He goes on to describe in detail his involvement in the extraordinary hunt for the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

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.

From drones to satellites, missile defense systems to cyber warfare, Israel is leading the world when it comes to new technology being deployed on the modern battlefield. The Weapon Wizards shows how this tiny nation of 8,000,000 learned to adapt to the changes in warfare and in the defense industry and become the new prototype of a 21st century superpower, not in size, but rather in innovation and efficiency - and as a result of its long war experience.

Combat veteran and author Hans Halberstadt takes listeners deeper inside the elusive world of snipers than ever before, from recruitment and training to the brutality of the killing fields. Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews, Halberstadt gets inside the sniper mind and shows how snipers think and interact with each other, how missions are planned and executed, how the weapons work, and even what happens when a bullet finally strikes its target.

There are only a few hundred snipers from all the services put together in combat at any one time, making this true inside story a rare and important event.