Dead Men Risen: An Epic Story of War and Heroism in Afghanistan - Hardcover

Harnden, Toby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1621572714 ISBN 13: 9781621572718

Publisher: Regnery History, 2014

Synopsis

Dead Men Risen, winner of the prestigious Orwell Prize for Books, is the epic story of a beleaguered British battle group fighting desperately to prevent the Taliban from seizing Afghanistan's Helmand province just as the U.S. Marines arrive to take over.

Bestselling author Toby Harnden describes how men from the coal mining valleys and slate quarry villages of Wales found themselves in the most intense combat faced by British troops for a generation. Underequipped and overstretched, the fighting prowess of the Welsh Guards in the killing fields of Sangin and Nawa awed the U.S. Marines. NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal, who was awaiting a response to his urgent request to President Barack Obama for more troops, hailed their "burn-in-your-gut passion."

Harnden was on the ground with the Welsh Guards in Helmand in 2009. He gained access to a trove of secret military documents and conducted nearly three hundred interviews in Afghanistan, England, Wales, and the United States to produce this timeless and profound account of men at war.

Commanding the Welsh Guards was Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, a passionate believer in the justness of the war who was dismayed by the military and political incompetence surrounding it. In chilling detail, Harnden reveals how and why Thorneloe the first British battalion commander to die in action since the 1982 Falklands War was killed by an IED during Operation Panther’s Claw. By the time the fighting was over, almost no rank had been spared.

From the searing heat of the poppy fields and the mud compounds of Helmand to the dreaded knock on the door back home, the reader is transported there. Harnden weaves the experiences of the soldiers, their historical forbears and the flawed NATO strategy into a masterly narrative. No other book about modern conflict succeeds on so many levels. Dead Men Risen is essential for anyone who wants to understand the reality of the Afghan war for the U.S and its allies.

About this title

Review:

"Extraordinary in its research, scope, empathy, and raw emotive power... read this magnum opus and ponder deeply upon the nature of patriotism, sacrifice, and love."
—BING WEST, U.S. Marine Corps veteran and author of No True Glory

"Very powerful and important."
—JAKE TAPPER, CNN anchor and author of The Outpost

"Incontrovertibly speaks the truth... Dead Men Risen resonates with a terrible beauty."
—The Australian

"Dead Men Risen dilutes the saccharine perception of soldiering and replaces it with the gritty and gruesome reality of war."
—PATRICK HENNESSEY, author of The Junior Officers' Reading Club

"Desperately moving... Dead Men Risen is a serious work, far removed from the blood-and-thrills of the Bravo Two Zero school of military literary campaigning. Such books may grip but they do not engage. Harnden's does both."
—The Spectator

About the Author:

Toby Harnden is a dual American and British citizen who has reported from across the world and was embedded with U.S. and British troops numerous times in Iraq and Afghanistan. A former naval officer, he holds a First Class degree in Modern History from Oxford. Imprisoned in Zimbabwe and threatened with jail in Britain for refusing to identify confidential sources, Harnden is the author of Bandit Country, the critically acclaimed bestseller that penetrated the heartland of the IRA. He is Washington bureau chief for the Sunday Times of London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Regnery History
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1621572714
• ISBN 13: 9781621572718
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512