[mybooktable book="relentless-strike-the-secret-history-of-joint-special-operations-command" display="default" buybutton_shadowbox="false"]
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Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command

The New York Times Bestseller and Winner of the 2015 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History

Since the attacks of September 11, one organization has been at the forefront of America's military response. Its efforts turned the tide against al-Qaida in Iraq, killed Bin Laden and Zarqawi, rescued Captain Phillips and captured Saddam Hussein. Its commander can direct cruise missile strikes from nuclear submarines and conduct special operations raids anywhere in the world.

Relentless Strike tells the inside story of Joint Special Operations Command, the secret military organization that during the past decade has revolutionized counterterrorism, seamlessly fusing intelligence and operational skills to conduct missions that hit the headlines, and those that have remained in the shadows-until now. Because JSOC includes the military's most storied special operations units-Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, the 75th Ranger Regiment-as well as America's most secret aviation and intelligence units, this is their story, too.

Relentless Strike reveals tension-drenched meetings in war rooms from the Pentagon to Iraq and special operations battles from the cabin of an MH-60 Black Hawk to the driver's seat of Delta Force's Pinzgauer vehicles as they approach their targets. Through exclusive interviews, reporter Sean Naylor uses his unique access to reveal how an organization designed in the 1980s for a very limited mission set transformed itself after 9/11 to become the military's premier weapon in the war against terrorism and how it continues to evolve today.

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http://elendara.com/books/relentless-strike-the-secret-history-of-joint-special-operations-command/

No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama Bin Laden

The #1 New York Times bestselling first-person account of the planning and execution of the Bin Laden raid from a Navy SEAL who confronted the terrorist mastermind and witnessed his final moments.

From the streets of Iraq to the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean, and from the mountaintops of Afghanistan to the third floor of Osama Bin Laden’s compound, operator Mark Owen of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group—known as SEAL Team Six—has been a part of some of the most memorable special operations in history, as well as countless missions that never made headlines.

No Easy Day puts readers alongside Owen and his fellow SEAL team members as they train for the biggest mission of their lives. The blow-by-blow narrative of the assault, beginning with the helicopter crash that could have ended Owen’s life straight through to the radio call confirming Bin Laden’s death, is an essential piece of modern history.

In No Easy Day, Owen also takes readers into the War on Terror and details the formation of the most elite units in the military. Owen’s story draws on his youth in Alaska and describes the SEALs’ quest to challenge themselves at the highest levels of physical and mental endurance. With boots-on-the-ground detail, Owen describes several missions that illustrate the life and work of a SEAL and the evolution of the team after the events of September 11.

In telling the true story of the SEALs whose talents, skills, experiences, and exceptional sacrifices led to one of the greatest victories in the War on Terror, Mark Owen honors the men who risk everything for our country, and he leaves readers with a deep understanding of the warriors who keep America safe.
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http://elendara.com/books/no-easy-day-the-firsthand-account-of-the-mission-that-killed-osama-bin-laden/

The Secret History of MI6: 1909-1949

The authorized history of the world's oldest and most storied foreign intelligence service, drawing extensively on hitherto secret documents

Britain's Special Intelligence Service, commonly called MI6, is not only the oldest and most storied foreign intelligence unit in the world - it is also the only one to open its archives to an outside researcher. The result, in this authorized history, is an unprecedented and revelatory look at an organization that essentially created, over the course of two world wars, the modern craft of spying. Here are the true stories that inspired Ian Fleming's James Bond's novels and John le Carré George Smiley novels. Examining innovations from invisible ink and industrial-scale cryptography to dramatic setbacks like the Nazi sting operations to bag British operatives, this groundbreaking history is as engrossing as any thriller - and much more revealing.

"Perhaps the most authentic account one will ever read about how intelligence really works." -The Washington Times

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http://elendara.com/books/the-secret-history-of-mi6-1909-1949/

Agent 110: An American Spymaster and the German Resistance in WWII

The “lively and engrossing” (The Wall Street Journal) story of how OSS spymaster Allen Dulles built an underground network determined to take down Hitler and destroy the Third Reich.

Agent 110 is Allen Dulles, a newly minted spy from an eminent family. From his townhouse in Bern, Switzerland, and in clandestine meetings in restaurants, back roads, and lovers’ bedrooms, Dulles met with and facilitated the plots of Germans during World War II who were trying to destroy the country’s leadership. Their underground network exposed Dulles to the political maneuverings of the Soviets, who were already competing for domination of Germany, and all of Europe, in the post-war period.

Scott Miller’s “absorbing and bracing” (The Seattle Times) Agent 110 explains how leaders of the German Underground wanted assurances from Germany’s enemies that they would treat the country humanely after the war. If President Roosevelt backed the resistance, they would overthrow Hitler and shorten the war. But Miller shows how Dulles’s negotiations fell short. Eventually he was placed in charge of the CIA in the 1950s, where he helped set the stage for US foreign policy. With his belief that the ends justified the means, Dulles had no qualms about consorting with Nazi leadership or working with resistance groups within other countries to topple governments.

Agent 110 is “a doozy of a dossier on Allen Dulles and his early days spying during World War II” (Kirkus Reviews). “Miller skillfully weaves a double narrative of Dulles’ machinations and those of the German resistance” (Booklist) to bring to life this exhilarating, and pivotal, period of world history—of desperate renegades in a dark and dangerous world where spies, idealists, and traitors match wits and blows to ensure their vision of a perfect future.
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http://elendara.com/books/agent-110-an-american-spymaster-and-the-german-resistance-in-wwii/