Brothers Forever: The Enduring Bond between a Marine and a Navy SEAL that Transcended Their Ultimate Sacrifice by Tom Sileo and COL Tom Manion (Retired). 312 pages (May 13, 2014) Da Capo Press. Remember these names: 1LT Travis Manion, US Marine, and LT Brendan Looney, US Navy SEAL, two best friends and Naval Academy roommates buried side by side at Arlington National Cemetery, their bond in life unbroken by their deaths three years apart, Manion in Iraq and Looney in Afghanistan. The book follows their military careers from Annapolis through training, deployment, war zones, and their eventual battlefield deaths. Their decisions, thought processes, family interactions and the selfless, fully committed values of today's volunteer military are all developed in detail. Even though the patriotic warriors perish, the book is illuminating, uplifting, inspiring.

Memoirs from Babylon: A Combat Chaplain's Life in Iraq's Triangle of Death by Jeff Bryan. 252 pages (August 25, 2011) Combat Chaplain Ministries. America's unofficial nightmare during the Iraq War was the infamous Triangle of Death, sometimes referred to by Iraqis as the Graveyard of the Americans. While serving in the Triangle, Chaplain Jeff Bryan ministered to a 1,200-man infantry task force, often while patrolling streets, fields, and villages as his unit cleared them in close-quarters combat. During the most violent and controversial phase of the war, Chaplain Bryan brought God to the American warrior. He witnessed life, death, and faith at every level, including a worst-case scenario in which several troops in his unit were ambushed and captured. Memoirs from Babylon is a dramatic account of humanity at its best and worst, a gut-wrenching experience of fear and faith under fire. Chaplain Bryan’s story is a unique combination of military history, battlefield leadership, and God-centered hope in the midst of America’s nightmare. (Review from CombatChaplain.com)

Sergeant Rex: The Unbreakable Bond Between a Marine and His Military Working Dog by Mike Dowling. 304 pages (December 13, 2011) Atria Books. Mike Dowling is a Marine who fought in Iraq, deployed in 2004, where he served with the battle-hardened Warlords unit that was based in the ultraviolent Triangle of Death. The author recounts how he and his German shepherd comrade Rex risked their lives on a near-daily basis while laying the groundwork for future K9 teams serving in battlefield units in Iraq. (Review by Mike Householder, AP)

Armed Humanitarians: The Rise of the Nation Builders by Nathan Hodge. 352 pages (February 15, 2011) Bloomsbury USA. The author covers the "nation building" role of the US armed forces in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, a role the Army and Marines were ill-prepared for but have taken up with some success. Hodge does his own firsthand reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan and builds on extensive interviews with key figures to show how 9/11 forced a change in policy from conventional warfare and foreign policy to an entirely different approach. Will it work? The book cautions that it's a long slog that will be a challenge to the U.S. way of doing things.

War by Sebastian Junger. 304 pages (May 11, 2010) Twelve. War is the story developed by the author during five months with an Army platoon in Afghanistan. He describes the details of daily life in great detail, coupled with an examination of the motivations of the men and how they manage the stress and dangers of combat. The fact that many of them like it and willingly put themselves in harms way is central to the book.

The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars by Patrick Hennessey. 336 pages (September 7, 2010) Riverhead Trade. Ignore the title. The book is a fast paced window into the exhausting routine of a young officer of the British professional Army. First, Oxford graduate Hennessey describes his time at Sandhurst, Britain's elite military acadamy. Then, as a newly minted British army officer he hopes to find fulfillment when assigned to Iraq but finds boredom instead, only punctuated with action. His transfer to Afghanistan puts him more in the fight and he finds the personal tests he was looking for as the battle rages daily.

Rage Company: A Marine's Baptism By Fire by Thomas P. Daly. 384 pages (April 12, 2010) Wiley. Exceptional memoir and history of the war in Iraq, as experienced by Marines. Vividly descriptive and personal.

Joker One by Donovan Campbell. 336 pages (March 10, 2009) Random House. Lieutenant Campbell went from Princeton U. to Marine OCS to Iraq, leading a platoon called Joker One. He tells the fast paced, deeply factual, and un-whitewashed story of what happened there with refreshing candor and meaningful detail, making us part of the team as the platoon goes about the tough business of counterinsergency. This moving biography will help readers understand what it means to be a combat Marine as they carry out their mission and cope with the enormous stress on body and soul.

The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 by Thomas E. Ricks. 400 pages (February 10, 2009) Penguin Press HC. Follow up to the author's book Fiasco , detailing the changes that accompanied the surge under Gen. Petraeus and turned Iraq from a quagmire to a hopeful country with minimal violence.

In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point's Class of 2002 by Bill Murphy. 384 pages (September 16, 2008) Henry Holt and Co. The 1,246 entering Cadets of the Class of 2002, whose graduation fell on the 200th anniversary of West Point, were the Army's Golden Children from Reception Day in 1998. These idealistic, motivated young men and women signed up in peacetime when no one saw what was coming: 9-11 and the wars that would make seasoned combat leaders out of young Second Lieutenants, if they survived. Some were from service families with the military in their blood, while others had to overcome parental objections. They came together sharing a common vision of military service mixed with a practical choice of career and a way to finance a first class education.

Through interviews, letters, email, diaries and his own visits to Iraq as a reporter, Bill Murphy smoothly relates the interlocking stories of the Cadets, their years at West Point, followed by their service in the Army. In many ways they are like other American young adults, choosing where to live and work, making friends, dating, marrying and starting families. But underlying reality in this case is uniformed service, which meant that most of them deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq or both, most serving two or three tours before the chronicle ends in early 2008.

Following graduation, the classmates kept in touch, carrying the remarkable bonds forged at West Point through their Army careers and private lives. They shared their friends' joys of marriage, children and promotion, often travelling long distances to be together. They shared the family disruption of geographical separation and the agony of injury and death, all too common in this group of combat arms junior officers who lead dangerous missions day after day. Observing this in exceptional detail, the book's bottom-up view of the wars and these officers' lives is an emotional rollercoaster mixing pride of accomplishment and personal growth with the grind of duty and horrors of the battlefields.

And when the Army Casualty Notification Team comes to the door, it's not only the young widow who bears the pain of loss. The extended clan of family and friends suffer and find it hard to accept, as the slaughter of America's best and brightest in distant battles hits home. Both on the battlefield and in the sacrifices of the families, war is indeed hell.

For the reader too, it's an emotional blow to feel the loss of soldiers you have come to know and care about in these pages. It will help you to understand the wars of the 21st Century at a micro level, and to appreciate what service to country really means.

Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New 'Greatest Generation' of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope by Michael Yon. 256 pages (April 23, 2008) Richard Vigilante Books. The war in Iraq could have been a hopeless bloodbath, a true quagmire. Many ill informed people -- Americans and world wide -- believe it actually is all bad with the only solution an immediate pull out of U.S. and allied forces. Michael Yon, who according to the New York Times has spent more time in combat situations in Iraq than any other reporter, tells it like it is. He finds that the American troops are winning the war, not by brute force but through highly sensitive and effective counterinsurgency tactics. They have made firm allies of the Iraqi population and turned them against the foreign fighters who are causing most of the harm. Under Gen. David Petraeus's brilliant leadership, the combined U.S. forces have forged partnerships of trust and respect with the people and indigenous leaders of one Iraqi community after another, forming the basis for a free society and lasting peace. The war is not over because Iran, al Qaeda and other external enemies are desperate to prevent American success, but the corner has been turned.

Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond by Robert D. Kaplan. 448 pages (September 12, 2006) Vintage. The U.S. military is in every corner of the globe, dealing with small conflicts and unstable situations that threaten, immediately or distantly, the U.S. interests and strategic alliances. This book explores the nature of those efforts, especially the Special Operations forces that get down and dirty with the local population to change the equation to favor the outcome preferred by the U.S. Since many of these operations are "out of the headlines", i.e. not covered by the conventional media, Imperial Grunts provides much needed insight into the conflicts, the U.S. military approach, and most of all the under-recognized military personnel who are carrying the load far from home.

Raid on the Sun: Inside Israel's Secret Campaign that Denied Saddam the Bomb by Rodger Claire. 288 pages (April 13, 2004) Broadway. A gripping account of Operation Babylon, the Israelis' 1981 raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, the first book to draw on planners' and pilots' own memories.