Books about Afghanistan
Recommended Books to Read
for Deployment to Afghanistan
Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan: A Man to Match
His Mountains, by Eknath Easwaran, 1984 (1999). A story
about the life and achievements of Pashtun nonviolent leader Khan Abdul
Ghaffar Khan. Read a book review of
Nonviolent Soldier of Islam by Abdul Rahman Rahmani.
No Way Out: A Story of Valor in the
Mountains of Afghanistan. By Mitch Weiss and Kevin
Maurer. The description of the Battle of Shok Valley in Nuristan Province,
Afghanistan. A Special Forces team and Afghan Commandos are ambushed
and fight through a day-long battle. Read more about this book
here.
The Tender Soldier: A True Story of
War and Sacrafice. Stories about the Human Terrain Teams
(HTTs) of Afghanistan. Read more about this book
here.
The Dress Maker of Khair Khana.
By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. The real-life story of a women living in Kabul
under the rule of the Taliban who opens a dressmaking business in her home
that employs over 100 women in her neighborhood. Read more about
this book here.
Assassin. By Duncan
Falconer. A fiction book about a Special Boat Service (SBS)
operative who works in Afghanistan and other parts of the world.
Read a book review
here.
88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary.
By Robert L. Grenier. The story of how Hamid Karzai came to power in the
fall of 2001 - aided by the CIA and Special Forces. Grenier, station chief
for the CIA in Pakistan at the time, played a key role in the planning and
execution of the fall of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Read a book
review here.
Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to
a More Dangerous World. By Christina Lamb. A journalist
writes on her perspective of the war in Afghanistan. (Harper Collins,
2015). Read book reviews
here.
Books about SOF in Afghanistan
Books about Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan
SOF News Book Shop
More Books to Enjoy
Arnold, James R. Jungle of Snakes: A Century
of Counterinsurgency Warfare from the Philippines to Iraq. Bloomsbury
Press, 2010.
Chayes, Sarah. The Punishment of Virture:
Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban. Penguin Press, May 2006.
Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of
the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Union to September
10, 2001. Penguin Books, 2004.
Crews, Robert D. The Taliban and the Crisis of
Afghanistan. Harvard University Press, 2009.
Crile, George. Charlie Wilson's War: The
Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in US History.
Grove Press, 2004.
Galula, David. The Pacification of Algeria,
1956-1958. 2nd Edition. RAND Corporation, 2006.
Griffiths, John Charles. Afghanistan: Land of
Conflict and Beauty. Andre Deutsch, 2009.
Guistozzi, Antonio. Decoding the New Taliban:
Insights from the Afghan Field. Columbia University Press, 2009.
Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner.
Penguin Group, 2004.
Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Penguin Group, 2007.
Jones, Seth G. In the Graveyard of Empires:
America's War in Afghanistan. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2010.
Kilcullen, David. Counterinsurgency. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Kilcullen, David. The Accidental Guerrilla:
Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One. Oxford University
Press, 2009.
Maley, William. The Afghanistan Wars.
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Nagl, John A. Learning to Eat Soup with a
Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. University
of Chicago Press, 2005.
Naylor, Sean. Not a Good Day to Die: The
Untold History of Operation Anaconda. Berkley, 2007.
Rashid, Ahmed. Descent into Chaos: The U.S.
and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. New
York: Penguin Group, 2009.
Stanton, Doug. Horse Soldiers: The
Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in
Afghanistan. Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 2009.
Stewart, Rory. The Places in Between.
Mariner Books, 2006.
Tanner, Stephen. Afghanistan: A Military
History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Nation. Da Capo
Press, 2009.
Bibliography for Resolute Support. Afghan War News has
compiled a "Resolute Support Annotated Bibliography" for the use of ISAF
staff and SFA advisors participating in the NATO mission in Afghanistan.
It is an Adobe Acrobat PDF, almost 200 pages long, and less than 3 MBs
big. Easy to read online or download and it is available at the link
below:
www.afghanwarnews.info/pubs/RSM-Bibliography.htm
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