First published 2014
Jack Coughlin opens the secretive world of American military snipers fighting in the War on Terror. The retired Marine sniper draws from extensive interviews with active duty marksmen to expose how these warriors operate in Iraq and Afghanistan. Coughlin takes readers from Ramadi's urban battlefields to Baghdad's towering structures, where snipers face impossible odds in desperate combat. These elite soldiers hunt enemy leaders, navigate tense international crises, and uncover disturbing human rights violations by supposed allies. Long dismissed as outcasts within the infantry and misrepresented by media and Hollywood as unstable killers, snipers have actually transformed America's military campaigns against al Qaeda across the Middle East and Africa. Coughlin and co-author John Bruning reveal the human stories behind the rifle scopes, showing how these misunderstood warriors changed modern warfare through precision and sacrifice.
Genres: war, military-fiction, action, non-fiction, biography-memoir, american-history
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: human-stories, misunderstood-warriors
Setting: Ramadi, Baghdad, Middle East, Africa
Period: War on Terror
326 pages · Hardcover · St. Martin's Press
Content warnings: violence