Sniper

Heart-pounding real-life tales from the military’s most experienced snipers, the best of the best snipers in action today. Gunfights, long distance shots, stalking, and more.

From the peaks of Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush to the subtropical marshes of south central Iraq, American snipers have braved heart-pounding situations to hit their human targets dead-on. Few military feats stir the imagination like the image of a pair of riflemen waiting quietly in a building, in a bomb crater or a mountain pass for the enemy to walk into their crosshairs. Sniper comprises real-life tales from the military’s front line snipers, their hits and their misses, the anguish of loss and the anxiety of the first kill. Authors Gina Cavallaro and Matt Larsen provide riveting accounts of Soldiers and Marine scout snipers on the battlefield, take a rare look at how Rangers and Special Forces snipers train and operate and why the war on terror has changed the role of military snipers.

Few military feats stir the imagination as does the image of the lone hero-marksman, positioned a seemingly impossible distance away from a target he must hit dead-onfrom snipers in the world's dry-land hotspots to those on the Navy destroyer Bainbridge who, in April 2009, picked off three Somali pirates holding an American ship captain hostage.Snipercomprises heart-pounding real-life tales about the top front-line snipers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere around the globe todayNavy Seals, Silver Starwinners, long-distance record-holders, and more. Authors Matt Larsen and Gina Cavallaro also provide a close look at sniper schools (the U.S. Army has two of them; the U.S. Marine Corps has another), sniper profiles, and who makes a good sniper.

About the Author

Gina Cavallaro is one of America’s most experienced war correspondents. She has traveled to every corner of today’s war zones and walked the dangerous streets with the troops to tell their real stories of life on the ground in America’s most protracted conflict since the Vietnam War. She is a writer for Army Times.

Matt Larsen, a longtime trainer in hand-to-hand combat and survival techniques, served as a sniper in the U.S. Marine Corps and the Army Rangers during the course of a twenty-two-year career in the military. He recently revised and updated the U.S. Army Survival Handbook (Lyons). He is the Director of the Modern Army Combatives Program, which he created, and the Commandant of the U.S. Army Combatives School, which he founded at Fort Benning, Georgia.