The groundbreaking investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America's longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban's recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: to defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military became mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public's understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains startling revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war, from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government's strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn't know the name of his Afghanistan war commander--and didn't want to make time to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted he had "no visibility into who the bad guys are." His successor, Robert Gates, said: "We didn't know jack shit about al-Qaeda." The Afghanistan Papers is a shocking account that will supercharge a long overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

As the first Russian bombs drop on Oulu, Finland in early 1940 during the Winter War, Aarne Kovala is a young boy with a great love of the sea. While the war rages, Aarne takes fate into his own hands and joins the Finnish merchant marines. He spends his days delivering war materials between Finland, Poland, and Germany. But when Finland’s ties with Germany are severed after the signing of the Moscow Armistice in 1944, Aarne and his fellow sailors are arrested by the Nazis and sent by cattle car to the infamous Stutthof concentration camp deep in the Polish forest. Surviving Stutthof is a tale of survival, hope, and ultimately the triumph of the human spirit.

Damien Lewis tells the extraordinary true story of the smallest and arguably bravest dog of World War II. Among many other feats, this tiny trooper with eight battle stars to her name once ran a vital communications cable through a seventy-foot pipe no wider than four inches in places, saving hundreds of ground-crew from exposure to enemy bombing and preventing both injury and death.

The never-before-told inside story of how Israel stopped Syria from becoming a global nuclear nightmare--and its far-reaching implications. On September 6, 2007, shortly after midnight, Israeli fighters advanced on Deir ez-Zour in Syria. Israel often flew into Syria as a warning to President Bashar al-Assad. But this time, there was no warning and no explanation. This was a covert operation, with one goal: to destroy a nuclear reactor being built by North Korea under a tight veil of secrecy in the Syrian desert. Shadow Strike tells, for the first time, the story of the espionage, political courage, military might and psychological warfare behind Israel's daring operation to stop one of the greatest known acts of nuclear proliferation. It also brings Israel's powerful military and diplomatic alliance with the United States to life, revealing the debates President Bush had with Vice President Cheney and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as well as the diplomatic and military planning that took place in the Oval Office, the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, and inside the IDF's underground war room beneath Tel Aviv. These two countries remain united in a battle to prevent nuclear proliferation, to defeat Islamic terror, and to curtail Iran's attempts to spread its hegemony throughout the Middle East. Yaakov Katz's Shadow Strike explores how this operation continues to impact the world we live in today and if what happened in 2007 is a sign of what Israel will need to do one day to stop Iran's nuclear program. It also asks: had Israel not carried out this mission, what would the Middle East look like today?

From decorated Green Beret sniper, UFC headliner, and all around badass, Tim Kennedy, a rollicking, inspirational memoir offering lessons in how to embrace failure and weather storms, in order to unlock the strongest version of yourself. Tim Kennedy has a problem; he only feels alive right before he's about to die. Kennedy, a Green Beret, decorated Army sniper, and UFC headliner, has tackled a bull with his bare hands, jumped out of airplanes, dove to the depths of the ocean, and traveled the world hunting poachers, human traffickers, and the Taliban. But he's also the same man who got kicked out of the police department, fire department, and as an EMT, before getting two women pregnant four days apart, and finally, been beaten up by his Special Forces colleagues for, quite simply, "being a selfish asshole." In Scars and Stripes, Kennedy describes how these failures shaped him into the successful businessman and devoted husband and father he is today. Through unbelievably vivid, wild anecdotes Kennedy reveals all the dumb, violent, embarrassing, and undeniably heroic things he's done in his life, including multiple combat missions in Afghanistan, building a school in Texas for elementary kids, and creating two-multimillion-dollar businesses. You will learn that failure isn't the end--rather it's the first step towards unearthing the best version of yourself and finding success, no matter how overwhelming the setbacks may feel

Always remember . . . When the Canadians were called to the front line in the fall of 1917, the battle for Flanders had become a stalemate. Repeated assaults by Allied armies had gained nothing while costing tens of thousands of lives. Sixteen days later, the Canadians had accomplished what many had believed to be impossible. They had prevailed, and written a defining chapter of the nation's history with their courage and their blood...this thoroughly illustrated, readily accessible account of the Battle of Passchendaele tells the story of Canada's trumph and tragedy in the War to End All Wars. It is a story we must always remember. . . Never Forget.

Sandra Perron, Canada's first female infantry officer, describes her experiences serving in the Canadian Forces, including the harassment she suffered during training and her deployments to Bosnia and Croatia.

The little-known true story of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the woman who headed the largest spy network in occupied France during World War II, from the best-selling author of Citizens of London and Last Hope IslandIn 1941 a 31-year-old Frenchwoman, a young mother born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour, became the leader of a vast intelligence organization -- the only woman to serve as a chef de résistance during the war. Strong-willed, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country's conservative, patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was temperamentally made for the job. Her group's name was Alliance, but the Gestapo dubbed it Noah's Ark because its agents used the names of animals as their aliases. The name Marie-Madeleine chose for herself was Hedgehog: a tough little animal, unthreatening in appearance, that, as a colleague of hers put it, "even a lion would hesitate to bite. No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence -- including providing American and British military commanders with a 55-foot-long map of the beaches and roads on which the Allies would land on D-Day -- as Alliance. The Gestapo pursued them relentlessly, capturing, torturing, and executing hundreds of its three thousand agents, including Fourcade's own lover and many of her key spies. Although Fourcade, the mother of two young children, moved her headquarters every few weeks, constantly changing her hair color, clothing, and identity, she was captured twice by the Nazis. Both times she managed to escape -- once by slipping naked through the bars of her jail cell -- and continued to hold her network together even as it repeatedly threatened to crumble around her. Now, in this dramatic account of the war that split France in two and forced its people to live side by side with their hated German occupiers, Lynne Olson tells the fascinating story of a woman who stood up for her nation, her fellow citizens, and herself.

In February 2004 the first of many U.S. soldiers came to Canada, seeking sanctuary after saying "no" to the war on Iraq. Unlike the Vietnam War when over 40,000 draft dodgers and military deserters successfully struggled to make Canada their home, this new generation of war resisters has been denied refuge by the Canadian government. Now they fight a battle they could not have predicted: to make their home in a country that publicly refused to join the Iraq War and that continues to deport them. Let Them Stay is a book of oral histories, public statements and personal narratives by these soldiers of conscience and their supporters. Collected together for the first time are the declarations of a dozen war resisters, alongside important documents in the legal and political campaign to prevent their deportation to military prison in the U.S. The anthology includes essays and updates by Rachel Brett, Lawrence Hill, Staughton Lynd, Alyssa Manning, Patricia Molloy, Noah Richler, Michelle Robidoux and Michael Valpy.