by Chuck Pfarrer (2011)
On May 2, 2011, at 1:03 a.m. in Pakistan, a satellite uplink was sent from the town of Abbottabad crackling into the situation room of the White House in Washington, D.C.: "Geronimo, Echo, KIA." These words, spoken by a Navy SEAL, put paid to Osama bin Laden's three-decade-long career of terror. SEAL Target Geronimo is the story of Bin Laden's relentless hunters and how they took down the terrorist mastermind, told by Chuck Pfarrer, a former assault element commander of SEAL Team Six and author of the bestselling Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL. After talking to members of the SEAL team involved in the raid, Pfarrer shares never-before-revealed details of the historic raid and the men who planned and conducted it in an exclusive boots-on-the-ground account of what happened during each minute of the mission--both inside the building and outside.
Howard E. Wasdin & Stephen Templin
Howard E. Wasdin takes readers deep inside the world of Navy SEALs and Special Forces sniper training. The battle of Mogadishu left eighteen American soldiers dead. Wasdin's dramatic account, combined with inside details of becoming one of the world's deadliest snipers, make this one of the most explosive military memoirs in years.
Justin St. Germain
"In Tombstone, Arizona, September 2001, Debbie St Germain is found dead in her trailer, apparently murdered by her fifth husband. For her twenty-year-old son, Justin, the tragedy marks the line that separates his world into before and after. Long after his mother's death is solved, Justin still sleeps with a loaded rifle under his bed. Ultimately, he sets out into the desert landscape of his childhood in an attempt to make sense of the unfathomable. Justin's journey takes him back to the ghost town of Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the OK Corral, to the trailers he and Debbie shared, to the string of stepfathers who were a constant presence in his life. He confronts people from his past and delves into the police records in an attempt to make sense of his mother's life and death. All the while he tries to be the type of man she would have wanted him to be. Brutally honest and beautifully written, Son of a Gun is a brave, unexpected and unforgettable memoir"--Publisher's description.
Mark Bowden
This work is a dramatic account of the hunt for and defeat of Osama bin Laden draws on unprecedented access to primary sources to trace how key decisions were made, revealing events from the perspectives of an adept President Obama and an increasingly despondent bin Laden. After masterminding the attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden managed to vanish. Over the next ten years, as the author shows, America found that its war with al Qaeda, a scattered group of individuals who were almost impossible to track, demanded an innovative approach. Step by step, the author describes the development of a new tactical strategy to fight this war, the fusion of intel from various agencies and on the ground special ops. After thousands of special forces missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the right weapon to go after bin Laden had finally evolved. By Spring 2011, intelligence pointed to a compound in Abbottabad; it was estimated that there was a 50/50 chance that Osama was there. The author shows how three strategies were mooted: a drone strike, a precision bombing, or an assault by Navy SEALs. In the end, the President had to make the final decision. It was time for the finish.
Chris Kyle, with Jim DeFelice and Scott McEwen
A member of Navy SEAL Team 3 describes his life as a father and husband, and as the serviceman with the most confirmed sniper kills in the U.S. military's history, in a memorial edition filled with remembrances from family and friends.