Whether you're a war correspondent or an aid worker, a tourist worried about an increasingly hostile world or an armchair traveler concerned that your own backyard is fast becoming a war zone, How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone will help you survive some of the world's most volatile environments. Well-traveled journalist Rosie Garthwaite offers practical advice drawn from her own personal experience and that of others, including many seasoned colleagues, who have worked in some of the world's most hostile regions. Topics covered include everything from avoiding land mines and hostage situations to amputating a limb and foraging for safe food. The book is a true survival manual (all medical advice has been vetted by doctors from Doctors Without Borders), but it is also a transporting read, filled with vicarious thrills and written with brio and humor by a woman who has seen it all. Perfect for those planning short trips or extended stays in dangerous destinations, or-much like the popular Worst-Case Scenario handbooks-for readers who simply prefer to be thoroughly prepared, wherever life may take them.

This book combines practical advice with contributions from journalists and commentators who share their experiences and advice on surviving in difficult and dangerous situations. Topics include how to avoid being misunderstood; how to avoid bombs and booby traps; how to escape from a riot; how to deal with frostbite and heat exhaustion; how to avoid trouble in sex, love and war; and how to cope with traumatic experiences. Medical information has been vetted by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which also receives a share of the royalties.

Offers advice on surviving the extreme conditions of war zones, covering topics ranging from how to avoid land mines and amputate a limb to handling hostage situations and foraging for safe food.

Brooke King has been asked over and over what it’s like to be a woman in combat, but she knows her answer is not what the public wants to hear. The answers people seek lie in the graphic details of war—the sex, death, violence, and reality of it all as she experienced it. In her riveting memoir War Flower, King breaks her silence and reveals the truth about her experience as a soldier in Iraq. Find out what happens when the sex turns into secret affairs, the violence is turned up to eleven, and how King’s feelings for a country she knew nothing about as a nineteen-year-old become more disturbing to her as a thirty-year-old mother writing it all down before her memories fade into oblivion. The story of a girl who went to war and returned home a woman, War Flower gathers the enduring remembrances of a soldier coming to grips with post-traumatic stress disorder. As King recalls her time in Iraq, she reflects on what violence does to a woman and how the psychic wounds of combat are unwittingly passed down from mother to children. War Flower is ultimately a profound meditation on what it means to have been a woman in a war zone and an unsettling exposé on war and its lingering aftershocks. For veterans such as King, the toughest lesson of service is that in the mind, some wars never end—even after you come home.

A controversial psychological examination of how soldiers’ willingness to kill has been encouraged and exploited to the detriment of contemporary civilian society. Psychologist and US Army Ranger Dave Grossman writes that the vast majority of soldiers are loath to pull the trigger in battle. Unfortunately, modern armies, using Pavlovian and operant conditioning, have developed sophisticated ways of overcoming this instinctive aversion. The mental cost for members of the military, as witnessed by the increase in post-traumatic stress, is devastating. The sociological cost for the rest of us is even worse: Contemporary civilian society, particularly the media, replicates the army’s conditioning techniques and, Grossman argues, is responsible for the rising rate of murder and violence, especially among the young. Drawing from interviews, personal accounts, and academic studies, On Killing is an important look at the techniques the military uses to overcome the powerful reluctance to kill, of how killing affects the soldier, and of the societal implications of escalating violence.

A classic from the New York Times bestselling author of The Things They Carried "One of the best, most disturbing, and most powerful books about the shame that was / is Vietnam." —Minneapolis Star and Tribune Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre. Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content.

Looks at the effect of deadly battle on the body and mind and offers new research findings to help prevent lasting adverse effects.