The shocking and affecting memoir from a gold-star widow searching for the truth behind her Green Beret husband's death, this book bears witness to the true sacrifices made by military families. When Green Beret Bryan Black was killed in an ambush in Niger in 2017, his wife Michelle saw her worst nightmare become a reality. She was left alone with her grief and with two young sons to raise. But what followed Bryan's death was an even more difficult journey for the young widow. After receiving very few details about the attack that took her husband's life, it was up to Michelle to find answers. It became her mission to learn the truth about that day in Niger--and Sacrifice is the result of that mission. In this heartbreaking and revelatory memoir, Michelle uses exclusive interviews with the survivors of her husband's unit, research into the military leadership and accountability, and her own unique vantage point as a gold-star widow to tell a previously unknown story. Sacrifice is both an honest, emotional look inside a military marriage and a searing investigation of the people and decisions at the heart of the US military.

The idea and practice of sacrifice play a profound role in religion, ethics, and politics. In this brief book, philosopher Moshe Halbertal explores the meaning and implications of sacrifice, developing a theory of sacrifice as an offering and examining the relationship between sacrifice, ritual, violence, and love. On Sacrifice also looks at the place of self-sacrifice within ethical life and at the complex role of sacrifice as both a noble and destructive political ideal. In the religious domain, Halbertal argues, sacrifice is an offering, a gift given in the context of a hierarchical relationship. As such it is vulnerable to rejection, a trauma at the root of both ritual and violence. An offering is also an ambiguous gesture torn between a genuine expression of gratitude and love and an instrument of exchange, a tension that haunts the practice of sacrifice. In the moral and political domains, sacrifice is tied to the idea of self-transcendence, in which an individual sacrifices his or her self-interest for the sake of higher values and commitments. While self-sacrifice has great potential moral value, it can also be used to justify the most brutal acts. Halbertal attempts to unravel the relationship between self-sacrifice and violence, arguing that misguided self-sacrifice is far more problematic than exaggerated self-love. In his exploration of the positive and negative dimensions of self-sacrifice, Halbertal also addresses the role of past sacrifice in obligating future generations and in creating a bond for political associations, and considers the function of the modern state as a sacrificial community.

To bring peace and order to a galaxy at war, Jacen Solo will sacrifice anything - or anyone. Now the moment of choice is at hand. Jacen must pass one final test before he can gain the awesome power of a true Sith Lord: he must bring about the death of someone he values dearly. Who will he choose?

Dispatched on what was to be an easy assignment of attacking the Privoser Oil Refinery and associated railroad yards at Moravska Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, the 20th Squadron of the 2nd Bombardment Group saw the bloodiest day in their history. Not a single one of the 20th Squadron's B-17 bombers returned from the mission. In this book, the 90 airmen on that mission provide a remarkable personal window into the Allies' Combined Bomber Offensive at its height during World War II. Their stories encapsulate how the U.S. Army Air Force built, trained, and employed one of the mightiest war machines ever seen. These stories also illustrate, however, the terrible cost in lives demanded by that same machine.

On a freezing January in 1992, five teenage girls crowded into a car. By the end of the night, only four of them were alive. The fifth had been tortured and mutilated nearly beyond recognition. Her name was Shanda Sharer; her age-twelve. When the people of Madison, Indiana heard that a brutal murder had been committed in their midst, they were stunned. Then the story became even more bizarre. The four accused murderers were all girls under the age of eighteen: Melinda Loveless, Laurle Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Tonl Lawrence. Here, for the first time, veteran true crime journalist Aphrodite Jones reveals the shocking truth behind the most savage crime in Indiana history-a tragic story of twisted love and insane jealousy, lesbianism, brutal child abuse, and sadistic ritual killing in small-town America...and of the young innocent who paid the ultimate price.

Marcel Mauss was the nephew and most distinguished pupil of mile Durkheim, whose review L'Ann e sociologique he helped to found and edit. Henri Hubert was another member of the group of sociologists who developed under the influence of Durkheim. The present book is one of the best-known essays pulbished in L'Ann e sociologique and has been regarded as a model for method and mode of interpretation. Its subject is at the very center of the comparative study of religion. The authors describe a basic sacrifice drawn from Indian sources and show what is fundamental and constant, comparing Indian and Hebrew practices in particular, then Greek and Roman, then additional practices from many eras and cultures.

Raymond Donne wasn't always a schoolteacher. Not only did he patrol the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as one of New York's Finest, but being the nephew of the chief of detectives, he was expected to go on to bigger things. At least he was until the accident that destroyed his knees. Unable to do the job the way he wanted, he became a teacher in the same neighborhood, and did everything he could to put the force behind him and come to terms with the change. Then Frankie Rivas, a student in Ray's class and a baseball phenom, stops showing up to school. With Frankie in danger of failing and missing out on a scholarship, Ray goes looking for him, only to find Frankie's father bludgeoned to death in their apartment. Frankie and his younger sister are gone, possibly on the run. But did Frankie really kill his father? Ray can't believe it. But then who did, and where are Frankie and his sister? Ray doesn't know, but if he's going to have any chance of bringing them home safely, he's going to have to return to the life, the people, and the demons he walked out on all those years ago. Intense, authentic, and completely gripping, Tim O'Mara's Sacrifice Fly is an outstanding debut from a stellar new voice in crime fiction.