Awakening Victory: How Iraqi Tribes and American Troops Reclaimed Al Anbar and Defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq

An "instructive first-hand account of how Iraq's insurgents were defeated" in the surge of 2007—written by a Combat Arms Battalion Commander who lived it (Publishers Weekly).

In August 2006, the American war in Iraq was looking grim. Control of Al Anbar Province, the seat of the Sunni insurgency, was said to be irrevocably lost to the insurgents. Al Qaeda in Iraq had planted their flag in the provincial capital, Ramadi, declaring it the capital of their new "Islamic State of Iraq."

In ...