The Valley's Edge: A Year with the Pashtuns in the Heartland of the Taliban

In this gripping, firsthand account, Daniel Green tells the story of U.S. efforts to oust the Taliban insurgency from the desolate southern Afghan province of Uruzgan. Nestled between the Hindu Kush mountains and the sprawling wasteland of the Margow and Khash Deserts, Uruzgan is a microcosm of U.S. efforts to prevent Afghanistan from falling to the Taliban insurgency and Islamic radicalism.

Green, who served in Uruzgan from 2005 to 2006 as a U.S. Department of State political adviser to a P...